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Trochu’s drums were beating on the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville. A battalion of Breton mobiles debauched in the midst of the H�tel-de-Ville through subterranean passage of the Napoleon Barracks, surprised and disarmed many of the tirailleurs. Jules Ferry invaded the Government room. The indisciplinable mass offered no resistance. Jules Favre and his colleagues were set free. As the Bretons became menacing, General Tamisier reminded them of the convention entered upon during the evening, and, as a pledge of mutual oblivion, left the H�tel-de-Ville between Blanqui and Flourens. Trochu paraded the streets amidst the pompous pageantry of his battalions. Thus this day, which might have buoyed up the Defence, ended in smoke. The desultoriness, the indiscipline of the patriots restored to the Government its immaculate character of September. It took advantage of it that very night to tear down the placards of Dorian and Schoelcher; it accorded the municipal elections for the 5th, but in exchange demanded a plebiscite, putting the question in the t style, ‘Those who wish to maintain the Government will vote aye.’ In vain the Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto; in vain the R�veil, the Patrie en Danger, the Combat, enumerated the hundred reasons which made it necessary to answer No. Six months after the plebiscite which had made the war, the immense majority of Paris voted the plebiscite that made the capitulation. Let Paris remember and accuse herself. For fear of two or three men she opened fresh credit to this Government which added incapacity to insolence, and said to it, ‘I want you’ 322,000 times. The army, the mobiles, gave 237,000 ayes. There were but 54,000 civilians and 9,000 soldiers to say boldly, no. How did it happen that those 60,000 men, so clear-sighted, prompt and energetic, could not manage to direct public opinion? Simply because they were wanting in cadres, in method, in organizers. The feel of the siege had been unable to discipline the revolutionary Sporty, in such dire confusion a few weeks before, nor had the patriarchs of 1848 tried to do so. The Jacobins like Delescluze and Blanqui, instead of leading the people, lived in an exclusive circle of friends. F�lix Pyat, vibrating between just ideas and literary epilepsy, only became practical[18] when he had to save his own skin. The others, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, the hope of the Republicans under the Empire, returned from exile shallow, pursy, rotten to the core with vanity and selfishness, without courage or patriotism, disdaining the Socialists. The dandies of Jacobinism, who called themselves Radicals, Floquet, Cl�menceau, Brinon, and other democratic politicians, carefully kept aloof from the working men. The old Montagnards themselves formed a group of their own, and never came to the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, which only wanted method and political experience to become a power. So it was only a centre of emotions, not of direction — the Gravilliers section of 1870-71, daring, eloquent, but, like its predecessor, treating of everything by manifestos. There at least was life, a lamp, not always bright, but always burning. What is the lower middle class contributing now? Where are their Jacobins, even their Cordeliers? At the Corderie I see the workers of the lower middle class, men of the pen and orators, but where is the bulk of the army? All is silent. Save the faubourgs, Paris was a vast sick chamber, where no one dared to speak above his breath. This moral abdication is the true psychological phenomenon of the siege, all the more extraordinary in that it coexisted with an. admirable ardour for resistance. Men who speak of going to seek death with their wives and children, who say, ‘We will burn our houses rather than surrender them to the enemy,’[19] get angry at any controversy as to the power entrusted to the men of the H�tel-de-Ville. If they dread the giddy-headed, the fanatics, or compromising collaborators, why do they not take the direction of the movement into their own hands? But they confine themselves to crying, ‘No insurrection before the enemy! No fanatics!’ as though capitulation were better than an insurrection; as though the 10th of -August 1792 and 31st May 1793 had not been insurrections before the enemy; as though there were no medium between abdication and delirium. And you, citizens of the old sections of 1792-93, who furnished ideas to the Convention and the Commune, who dictated to them the means of safety, who directed the clubs and fraternal societies, entertained in Paris a hundred luminous centres, do you recognise your offspring in these gulls, weaklings, jealous of the people, prostrate before the Left like devotees before the host? On the 5th and 7th they renewed their plebiscitory vote, naming twelve of the twenty mayors named by Arago. Four amongst them, Dubail, Vautrain, Tirard, and Desmarets, belong to the pure reaction. The greater part of the adjuncts were of the Liberal type. The faubourgs, always at their post, elected Delescluze in the nineteenth arrondissement and Ranvier, Milli�re, Lefran�ais, and Flourens in the twentieth. These latter could not take their seats. The Government, violating the convention of Dorian and Tamisier, had issued warrants for their arrest, and for that of about twenty other revolutionaries.[20] Thus, out of seventy-five effective members, mayors and adjuncts, there were not ten revolutionaries.
These shadows of municipal councillors looked upon themselves as the stewards of the Defence, forbade themselves any indiscreet question, were on their best behaviour, feeding and administering Trochu’s patient. They allowed the insolent and incapable Ferry to be appointed to the central mairie, and C1�ment-Thomas, the executioner of June 1848, to be made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. For seventy days, feeling the pulse of Paris growing from hour to hour more weak, they never had the honesty, the courage to say to the Government, ‘Where are-you leading us?’ Nothing was lost in the beginning of November. The army, the mobiles, the marines numbered, according to the plebiscite, 246,000 men and 7,000 officers: 125,000 National Guards capable of serving a campaign might easily have been picked out in Paris, and 129,000 left for the defence of the interior.[21] The necessary armaments might have been furnished in a few weeks, the cannon especially, every one depriving himself of bread in order to endow his battalion with five pieces, the traditional pride of the Parisians. ‘Where find 9,000 artillerymen?’ said Trochu. Why, in every Parisian mechanic there is the stuff of a gunner, as the Commune has sufficiently proved. In everything else there was the same superabundance. Paris swarmed with engineers, overseers, foremen, who might have been drilled into officers. There lying wasted were all the materials for a victorious army. The gouty martinets of the regular army saw here nothing but barbarism. This Paris, for which Hoche, Marcea, Kleber [generals of the French Revolution] would have been neither too young, nor too faithful, nor too pure, had for generals the residue of the Empire and Orleanism, Vinoy of December, Ducrot, Luzanne, Lefl�, and a fossil like Chaboud-Latour. In their pleasant intimacy they made much fun of the defence.[22] Finding, however, that the joke was lasting a little too long, the 31st October enraged them. They conceived an implacable, rabid hatred to the National Guard, and up to the last hour refused to utilize it. Instead of amalgamating the forces of Paris, of giving to all the same cadres, the same uniforms, the same flag, the proud name of National Guard, Trochu had maintained the three divisions: the army, mobiles, and civilians. This was the natural consequence of his opinion of the Defence. The army, incited by the staff, shared its hatred of Paris, who imposed on it, it was said, useless fatigues. The mobiles of the provinces, prompted by their officers, the cream of the country squires, became also embittered. All, seeing the National Guard despised, despised it, calling them, ‘Les � outrance! Les trente sous!’ (Since the siege the Parisians received thirty sous — 1s. 2 1/2d. — as indemnity.) Collisions were to be feared every day.[23] The 31st October changed nothing in the real state of affairs. The Government broke off the negotiations, which, notwithstanding their victory, they could not have pursued without foundering, decreed the creation of marching companies m the National Guard, and accelerated the cannon-founding, but did not believe a whit the more in defence, still steered towards peace. Riots formed the chief subject of their preoccupation.[24] It was not only from the ‘folly of the siege’ that they wished to save Paris, but above all from the revolutionaries. In this direction they were pushed on by the big bourgeoisie. Before the 4th September the latter had declared they ‘would not fight if the working class were armed, and if it had any chance of prevailing;[25] and on the evening of ‘ the 4th September Jules Favre and Jules Simon had gone to the Corps L�gislatif to reassure them, to explain to them that the new tenants would not damage the house. But the irresistible force of events had provided the proletariat with arms, and to make them inefficient in their hands became now the supreme aim of the bourgeoisie. For two months they had been biding their time, and the plebiscite told them it had come. Trochu held Paris, and by the clergy they held Trochu, all the closer in that he believed himself to be amenable only to his conscience. Strange conscience, full of trapdoors, with more complications than those of a theatre. Since the 4th of September the General had made it his duty to deceive Paris, saying, ‘I shall surrender thee, but it is for thy good.’ After the 31st October he believed his mission twofold — saw in himself the archangel, the St. Michael of threatened society. This marks the second period of the defence. It may perhaps be traced to a cabinet in the Rue des Postes, for the chiefs of the clergy saw more clearly than any one else the danger of inuring the working men to war. Their intrigues were full of cunning. Violent reactionists would have spoilt all, precipitated Paris into a revolution. They applied subtle tricks in their subterranean work, watching Trochu’s every movement, whetting his antipathy to the National Guard, penetrating everywhere into the general staff, the ambulances, even the mairies. Like the fisherman Struggling with too big a prey, they bewildered Pads, now apparently allowing her to swim in her own element, then suddenly weakening her by the harpoon. On the 28th November Trochu gave a first performance to a full-band accompaniment. General Ducrot, who commanded, presented himself like a leonidas: ‘I take the oath before you, before the whole nation. I shall return to Paris dead or victorious. You may see me fall; you will never see me retreat.’ This ation exalted Paris. She fancied herself on the eve of Jemmapes, when the Parisian volunteers scaled the artillery-defended heights;
for this time the National Guard was to take part in the proceedings. We were to force an opening by the Marne in order to join the mythical armies of the provinces, and cross the river at Nogent. Ducrot’s engineer had taken his measures badly; the bridges were not in a fit state. It was necessary to wait till the next day. The enemy, instead of being surprised, was able to put himself on the defensive. On the 30th a spirited assault made us masters of Champigny. The next day Ducrot remained inactive, while the enemy, emptying out of Versailles, accumulated its forces upon Champigny. On the 2nd they recovered part of the village. The whole day we fought severely. The former deputies of the Left were represented on the field of battle by a letter to their ‘very dear president.’ That evening we camped in our positions, but half frozen, the ‘dear president’ having ordered the blankets to be left in Paris, and we had set out — a proof that the whole dons had been done in mockery — without tents or ambulances. The following day Ducrot declared we must retreat, and, ‘before Paris, before the whole nation,’ this dishonoured braggart sounded the retreat. We had 8,000 dead or wounded out of the 100,000 men who had been sent out, and of the 50,000 engaged. For twenty days Trochu rested on his laurels. Cl�ment-Thomas took advantage of this leisure time to disband and stigmatize the tirailluers of Belleville, who had, however, had many dead and wounded in their ranks. On the mere report of the commanding general at Vincennes, he also stigmatized the 200th battalion. Flourens was arrested. On the 20th of December these rabid purgers of our own ranks consented to take a little notice of the Prussians. The mobiles of the Seine were launched without cannons against the walls of Stains and to the attack of Bourget. The enemy received them with a crushing artillery. An advantage obtained on the right of the Ville-Evrard was not followed up. The soldiers returned in the greatest consternation, some of them crying, Vive la paix! Each new enterprise betrayed Trochu’s plan, enervated the troops. but had no effect on the courage of the National Guards engaged. During two days on the plateau D'Ouron they sustained the fire of sixty pieces. When there was a goodly number of dead, Trochu discovered that the position was of no importance, and evacuated. These repeated foils began to wear out the credulity of Paris. From hour to hour the sting of hunger was increasing, and horse-flesh had become a delicacy. Dogs, cats, and rats were eagerly devoured. The women waited for hours in the cold and mud for a starvation allowance. For bread they got black grout, that tortured the stomach. Children died on their mothers’ empty breasts. Wood was worth its weight in gold, and the poor had only to warm them the despatches of Gambetta, always announcing fantastic successes.[26] At the end of December their privations began to open the eyes of the people. Were they to give in, their arms intact? The mayors did not stir. Jules Favre gave them little weekly receptions, where they gossiped about the cuisine of the siege.[27] Only one did his duty — Delescluze. He had acquired great authority by his articles in the R�veil, as free of partiality as they were severe. On the 30th December he challenged Jules Favre, said to his colleagues, ‘You are responsible,’ demanded that the municipal council should be joined to the Defence. His colleagues protested, more especially Dubail and Vacherot. He returned to the charge on the 4th. of January, laid down a radical motion — the dismissal of Trochu and of Cl�ment-Thomas, the mobilization of the National Guard, the institution of a council of defence, the renewal of the Committee of War. No more attention was paid him than before. The Committee of the twenty arrondissements supported Delescluze in issuing a red poster on the 6th: ‘Has the Government which charged itself with the national defence fulfilled its mission? No. By their procrastination, their indecision, their inertia, those who govern us have led us to the brink of the abyss. They have known neither how to administer nor how to fight. We die of cold, almost of hunger. Sorties without object, deadly struggles without results, repeated failures. The Government has given the measure of its capacity; it is killing us. The perpetuation of this regime means capitulation.
The perpetuation of this regime means capitulation. The politics, the strategies, the administration of the Empire continued by the men of the 4th of September have been judged. Make way for the people! Make way for the Commune![28] This was outspoken and true. However incapable of action the Committee may have been, its idea were just and precise, and to the end of the siege it remained thee indefatigable, sagacious monitor of Paris. The multitude who wanted illustrious names, paid no attention to these posters. Some of those who had signed it were arrested., Trochu, however, felt under attack, and the very same evening had posted on the walls, ‘The governor of Paris will never capitulate.’ And Paris again applauded, four months after the 4th September. It was even wondered at that, in spite of Trochu’s declaration, Delescluze and his adjuncts should tender their resignations.[29] Nevertheless, without obstinately shutting one’s eyes it was impossible not to see the precipice to which the Government was hurrying us on. The Prussians bombarded our houses from the forts of Issy and of Vanves, and on the 30th December, Trochu, having declared all further action impossible, invoked the opinion of all his generals, and wound up by proposing that he should be replaced. On the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th January the Defenders discussed the election of an Assembly which was to follow the catastrophe.[30] But for the irritation of the patriots, Paris would have capitulated before the 15th. The faubourgs no longer called the men of the Government other than ‘the band of Judas.’ The great democratic lamas, who had withdrawn after the 31st October, returned to the Commune, thus their own helplessness and the common sense of the people. Republican Alliance, where Ledru-Rollin officiated before half-a-dozen incense bearers, the Republican Union, and other bourgeois chapels, went so far as to very energetically demand a Parisian Assembly to organize the defence. The Government felt it had no time to lose. If the bourgeoisie joined the people, it would become impossible to capitulate without a formidable uprising. The population which cheered under the shells would not allow itself to be given up like a flock of sheep. It was necessary to mortify it first, to cure it of its ‘infatuation’, as Jules Ferry said, to purge it of its fever. ‘The National Guard will only be satisfied when 10,000 National Guards have fallen,’ they said at the Government table. Urged on by Jules Favre and Picard on the one hand, and on the other by the simple-minded Emmanuel Arago, Garnier-Pages, and Pelletan, the quack Trochu consented to give a last performance. It was got up as a farce[31] at the same time as the capitulation.[32] On the 19th the Council of Defence stated that a new defeat would be the signal of the catastrophe. Trochu was willing to accept the mayors m coadjutors on the question of capitulation and revictualling. Jules Simon and Garnier-Pages were willing to surrender Paris, and only make some reserve with regard to France. Garnier-Pages proposed to name by special elections mandatories charged to capitulate. Such was their vigil before the battle. On the 18th the din of trumpets and drums called Paris to arms and put the Prussians on the alert. For this supreme effort Trochu had been able to muster only 84,000 men, of whom nineteen regiments belonged to the National Guard. He made them pass the night, which was cold and rainy, in the mud of the fields of Mont-Valdrien. The attack was directed against the defences that covered Versailles from the side of La Bergerie. At ten o'clock, with the impulse of old troops,[33] the National Guards and the mobiles, who formed the majority of the left wing and centre,[34] had stormed the redoubt of Montretout, the part of Buzenval, a part of St. Cloud, pushing forward as far as Garches, occupying, in one word, all the posts designated. General Ducrot, commanding the left wing, had arrived two hours behind time, and though his army consisted chiefly of troops of the line, he did not advance. We had conquered several commanding heights which the generals did not arm. The Prussians were allowed to sweep these crests at their ease, and at four o'clock sent forth assault columns. Ours gave way at first, then, steadying themselves, checked the onward movement of the enemy. Towards six o'clock, when the hostile f ire diminished, Trochu ordered a retreat. Yet there 40,000 reserves between Mont-Vald�rien and Buzenval. Out of 150 artillery pieces, thirty only had been employed. But the generals, who during the whole day had hardly deigned to communicate with the National Guard, declared they could not hold out a second nigh!, and Trochu had Montretout and all the conquered positions evacuated. Battalions returned weeping with rage. All understood that the whole affair was a cruel mockery.[35] Paris, which had gone to sleep victorious, awoke to the sound of Trochu’s alarm-bell. The General asked for an armistice of two days to carry off the wounded and bury the dead. He said, ‘We want time, carts, and many litters.’ The dead and wounded did not exceed 3,000 men. This time Paris at last saw the abyss. Besides, the Defenders, disdaining all further disguise, suddenly dropped the mask. Jules Favre and Trochu summoned the mayors. Trochu declared that all was lost and any further struggle impossible.[36] The sinister news immediately spread over the town. During four months’ siege, patriotic Paris had foreseen, accepted all; pestilence, assault, pillage, everything save capitulation.
On this the 20th of January found Paris, notwithstanding her credulity, her weakness, the same Paris as on the 20th September. Thus, when the fatal word was uttered, the city seemed at first wonder-struck, as at the sight of some monstrous, unnatural crime. The wounds of four months opened again, crying for vengeance. Cold, starvation, bombardment, the long nights in the trenches, the little children dying by thousands, death scattered abroad in the sorties, and all to end in shame, to form an escort for Bazaine, to become a second Metz. One fancied one could hear the Prussian sneering. With some, stupor turned into rage. Those who were longing for the surrender threw themselves into attitudes. The white-livered mayors even affected to fly into a passion. On the evening of the 2 Ist they were again received by Trochu. That same morning all the generals had unanimously decided that another sortie was impossible. Trochu very philosophically demonstrated to the mayors the absolute necessity of making advances to the enemy, but declared he would have nothing to do with it, insinuating that they should capitulate in his stead. They cut wry faces, protested, still imagining they were not responsible for this issue. After their departure the Defenders deliberated. Jules Favre asked to tender his resignation. But he, the apostle, insisted upon being by them, fancying thus to cheat history into the belief that he had to the last resisted capitulation.[37] The discussion was growing heated when, at three o'clock in the morning, they were informed of the rescue of Flourens and other political prisoners confined at Mazas. A body. of National Guards headed by an adjunct from the eighteenth arrondissement had presented themselves an hour before in front of the prison. The bewildered governor had let them have their way. The Defenders, fearing a repetition of the 31st October, hurried on their resolution replacing Trochu by Vinoy. He wanted to be implored. Jules Favre and Lefl� had to show him the people in arms, an insurrection imminent. At that very moment, the morning of the 22nd, the prefect of police, declaring himself powerless, had sent in his resignation. The men of the 4th September had fallen so low as to bend their knees before those of the 2nd December. Vinoy condescended to yield. His first act was to arm against Paris, to dismantle her lines before the Prussians, to recall the troops of Suresne, Gentilly, Les Lilas, to call out the cavalry and gendarmerie. A battalion of mobiles commanded by Vabre, a colonel of the National Guard, fortified itself in the H�tel-de-Ville. Cl�ment-Thomas issued a furious proclamation: ‘The factions are joining the enemy.’ He adjured the ‘entire National Guard to rise in order to smite them.’ He had not called upon it to rise against the Prussians. There were signs of anger afloat, but no symptoms of a serious collision. Many revolutionaries, well aware that all was at an end, would not support a movement which, if successful, would have saved the men of the Defence and forced the victors to capitulate in their stead. Others, whose patriotism was not enlightened by reason, still warm from the ardour of Buzenval, believed in a sortie en masse. We must at least, said they, save our honour. The evening before, some meetings had voted that an armed opposition should be offered to any attempt at capitulation, and had given themselves a rendezvous before the H�tel-de-Ville. At twelve o'clock the drums beat to arms at the Batignolles. At one o'clock several armed groups appeared in the square of the H�tel-de-Ville; the crowd was gathering. A deputation, led by a member of the Alliance, was received by G. Chaudey, adjunct to the mayor, for the Government was seated at the Louvre since the 31st October. The orator said the wrongs of Paris necessitated the nomination of the Commune. Chaudey answered that the Commune was nonsense; that he always had, and always would oppose it. Another, more eager deputation arrived. Chaudey received it with insults. Meanwhile the excitement was spreading to the crowd that filled the square. The 101st battalion arrived from the left bank crying ‘Death to the traitors!’ when the 207th of the Batignolles, who had marched down the boulevards, debauched on the square through the Rue du Temple and drew up before the H�tel-de-Ville, whose doors and windows were closed. Others joined them. Some shots were fired, the windows of the H�tel-de-Ville were clouded with smoke, and the crowd dispersed with a cry of terror. Sheltered by lamp-posts and some heaps of sand, some National Guards sustained the fire of the mobiles. Others fired from the houses in the Avenue Victoria. The fusillade had been going on for half an hour when the gendarmes appeared at the corner of the Avenue. The insurgents, almost surrounded, made a retreat. About a dozen were arrested and taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, where Vinoy wanted to despatch them at once.
About a dozen were arrested and taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, where Vinoy wanted to despatch them at once. Jules Ferry recoiled, and had them sent before the regular court-martials. Those who had got up the demonstration and the inoffensive crowd of spectators had thirty killed or wounded, among others a man of great energy, Commandant Sapia. The H�tel-de-Ville had only one killed and two wounded. The same evening the government closed all the clubs and issued numerous warrants. Eighty-three persons, most of them innocent,[38] were melted. This occasion was also taken advantage of to send Delescluze, notwithstanding his sixty-five years, and an acute bronchitis which was undermining his health, to rejoin the prisoners of the 31st October, thrown pell-mell into a damp dungeon at Vincennes. The R�veil and the Combat were suppressed. An indignant proclamation denounced the insurgents as ‘the partisans of the foreigners,’ the only resource left the men of the 4th September in this shameful crisis. In this only they were Jacobins. Who served the enemy? The Government ever ready to negotiate, or the men ever offering a desperate resistance? History will tell how at Metz an immense army, with cadres, well-trained soldiers, allowed itself to be given over without a single marshal, chef-de-corps, or a regiment rising to save it from Bazaine;[39] whereas the revolutionaries of Paris, without leaders, without organization, before 240,000 soldiers and mobiles gained over to peace, delayed the capitulation for months and revenged it with their blood. The simulated indignation of traitors raised only a feeling of disgust. Their very name, ‘Government of Defence,’ cried out against them. On the very day of the affray they played their last farce. Jules Simon having assembled the mayors and a dozen superior officers,[40] offered the supreme command to the military men who could propose a plan. This Paris, which they had received exuberant with life, the men of the 4th September, now that they had exhausted and bled her, proposed to abandon to others. Not one of those present resented the infamous irony. They confined themselves to refusing this hopeless legacy. This was exactly the thing Jules Simon waited for. Someone muttered, ‘We must capitulate.’ It was General Lecomte. The mayors understood why they had been convoked, and a few of them squeezed out a tear. From this time forth Paris existed like the patient who is expecting amputation. The forts still thundered, the dead and the wounded were still brought in, but Jules Favre was known to be at Versailles. On the 27th at midnight the cannon were silenced. Bismarck and Jules Favre had come to an honourable understanding.[41] Paris had surrendered. The next day the Government of the Defence published the basis of the negotiations — a fortnight’s armistice, the immediate convocation of an Assembly, the occupation of the forts, the disarmaments of all the soldiers and mobiles with the exception of one division. The town remained gloomy. These days of anguish had stunned Paris. Only a few demonstrations were made. A battalion of the National Guard came before the H�tel-de-Ville crying ‘Down with the traitors!’ In the evening, 400 officers signed a pact of resistance, naming as their chief Brunel, an ex-officer expelled from the army under the Empire for his republican opinions, and resolved to march on the forts of the east, commanded by Admiral Saisset, whom the press credited with the reputation of a Beaurepaire. At midnight the call to arms and the alarm bell summoned the tenth, thirteenth, and twentieth arrondissements. But the night was icy cold, the National Guard too enervated for an act of despair. Two or three battalions only came to the rendezvous. Brunel was arrested two days after. On the 29th January the German flag was hoisted on our forts. All had been signed the evening before. 400,000 men armed with muskets and cannons capitulated before 200,000. The forts, the enceinte were disarmed. Paris was to pay 200,000,000 francs in a fortnight. The Government boasted of having preserved the arms of the National Guard, but every one knew that to take these it would have been necessary to storm Paris. In the end, not content with surrendering Paris, the Government of the National Defence surrendered all France. The armistice applied to all the armies of the provinces save Bourbaki’s, the only one that would have profited by it. On the following days there arrived some news from the provinces. It was known that Bourbaki, pressed by the Prussians, had, after a comedy of suicide, thrown his whole army into Switzerland. The aspect and the weakness of the Delegation of the Defence in the provinces had just began to reveal themselves, when the Mot d'Ordre founded by Rochefort, who had abandoned the Government after the 31st October, published a proclamation by Gambetta, stigmatizing a shameful peace, and a whole litany of Radical decrees: ineligibility of all the great functionaries and official deputies of the Empire; dissolution of the conseils-g�n�raux, revocation of some of the judges[42] who had formed part of the mixed commission of the 2nd December. It was ignored that during the whole war the Delegation had acted in contradiction to its last decrees, which, coming from a fallen power, were a mere electoral trick, and Gambetta’s name was placed on most of the electoral lists. Some bourgeois papers supported Jules-Favre and Picard, who had been clever enough to make themselves looked upon as the out-and-outers of the Government; none dared to go so far as to support Trochu, Simon and Ferry.
none dared to go so far as to support Trochu, Simon and Ferry. lie variety of electoral lists set forth by the republican party explained its impotence during the siege. The men of 1848 refused to accept Blanqui, but admitted several members of the International in order to usurp its name, and their list, a medley of Neo-Jacobins and Socialists, entitled itself ‘the fist of the Four Committees.’ The clubs and working men’s groups drew up lists of a more outspoken character; one bore the name of the German Socialist deputy, Liebknecht. The most decided one was that of the Corderie. The International and the Federal Chamber of the working-men’s societies, mute and disorganized during the siege, again taking up their programme, said, ‘We must also have working men amongst those in power.’ They came to an arrangement with the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, and the three groups issued the same manifesto. ‘This,’ said they, ‘is the list of the candidates presented ‘m the name of a new world by the party of the disinherited. France is about to reconstitute herself; working men have the right to find and take their place in the new order of things. The socialist revolutionary candidatures signify the denial of the right to discuss the existence of the Republic; affirmation of the necessity for the accession of working men to political power; overthrow of the oligarchical Government and of industrial feudalism.’ Besides a few names familiar to the public, Blanqui, Gambon, Garibaldi, Felix Pyat, Ranvier, Tridon, Longuet, Lefran�ais, Vall�s, these Socialist candidates were known only in the working men’s centres — mechanics, shoemakers, ironfounders, tailors, carpenters, cooks, cabinetmakers, carvers.[43] Their proclamations were but few in number. These disinherited could not compete with bourgeois enterprise. Their day was to come a few weeks later, when two-thirds of them were to be elected to the Commune. Now those only received a mandate who were accepted by the middle-class papers, five in all: Garibaldi, Gambon, F�lix Pyat, Tolain, and Malon. The list of representatives of the 8th February was a harlequinade, including every republican shade and every political crotchet. Louis Blanc, who had played the part of a goody during the siege, and who was supported by all the committees except that of the Corderie, headed the procession with 216,000 votes, followed by Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and Garibaldi; Delmcluze obtained 154,000 votes. Then came a motley crowd of Jacobin fossils, radicals, officers, mayors, journalists, and inventors. One single member of the Government slipped in, Jules Favre, although his private life had been exposed by Milli�re, who was also elected.[44] By a cruel injustice, the vigilant sentinel, the only journalist who during the siege had always shown sagacity, Blanqui, found only 52,000 votes, about the number of those who opposed the plebiscite, while F�lix Pyat received 145,000 for his piping in the Combat.[45] This confused incongruous ballot affirmed at least the republican idea. Paris, trampled upon by the Empire and the Liberals, clung to the Republic, who gave her promise for the future. But even before her vote had been proclaimed she heard coming forth from the provincial ballot boxes a savage cry of reaction. Before a single one of her representatives had left the town, she saw on the way to Bordeaux a troop of rustics, of Pourceaugnacs, of sombre clericals, spectres of 1815, 1830, 1848, high and low reactionaries, who, mumbling and furious, came by the grace of universal suffrage to take possession of France. What signified this sinister masquerade? How had this subterranean vegetation contrived to pierce and overgrow the summit of the country? It was that Paris and the provinces should be crushed, that the Prussian Shylock should drain our milliards and cut his pound of flesh, that the state of slew should for four years weigh down upon forty-two departments, that 100,000 Frenchmen should be cut off from life or banished from their native soil, that the black brotherhood should conduct their processions over France, to bring about this great conservative machination, which from the first hour to the last explosion, the revolutionaries of Paris and of the provinces had not ceased to denounce to our treacherous or sluggish governors. In the provinces the field and the tactics were not the same. The conspiracy, instead of being carried on within the Government, circumvented it. During the whole month of September the reactionaries hid in their lairs. The Government of National Defence had only forgotten one element of defence — the provinces, seventy-six departments. Yet they were agitating, showed life; they alone held in check the reaction. Lyons had even understood her duty earlier than Paris; in the morning of the 4th September she proclaimed the Republic, hoisted the red flag and named a Committee of Public Safety. Marseilles and Toulouse organized regional commissions. The Defenders understood nothing of this patriotic zeal, thought France disjointed, and delegated to put it right again two very tainted relics, Cr�mieux and Glais-Bizoin, together with a former governor of Cayenne, the Bonapartist Admiral Fourichon. They reached Tours on the 18th. The patriots hastened thither to meet them. In the west and south, they had already organized Leagues to marshal the departments against the enemy and supply the want of a central impulse. They surrounded the delegates of Paris, asking them for orders, vigorous measures, the sending of commissioners, and promised their absolute co-operation. The scoundrels answered, ‘We are face to face, let us speak frankly.
Well. then, we have no longer any army; all resistance is impossible. ‘We only hold out for the sake of making better conditions.’ We ourselves witnessed the scene.[46] There was but one cry of indignation: ‘What! is this your answer when thousands of Frenchmen come to offer you their lives and fortunes?’ On the 28th, the Lyonese broke out. Hardly four departments separated them from the enemy, who might at any moment come to levy a contribution on their city, and since the 4th September they had in vain demanded arms. The municipality, elected on the 16th in place of the Committee of Public Safety, passed its time in squabbling with the Prefect, Challemel-Lacour, an arrogant Neo-Jacobin. On the 27th, instead of any serious measures of defence, the council had reduced by five-pence the pay of the working men employed in the fortifications, and appointed Cluseret general without troops of an army to be created.[47]. The Republican committees of Les Brotteaux, of La Guilloti�re, of La Croix-Rousse,[48] and the Central Committee of the National Guard decided to urge on the H�tel-de-Ville, and laid before it on the 28th an energetic programme of defence. The working men of the fortifications, led by Saigne, supported this step by a demonstration. They filled the Place des Terreaux, and what with the speeches, what with the excitement, invaded the H�tel-de-Ville. Saigne proposed the nomination of a revolutionary commission, and perceiving Cluseret, named him commander of the National Guard. Cluseret, much concerned for his future, only appeared on the balcony to propound his Plan and recommend calm. However, the commission being constituted, he no longer dared to resist, but set out in search of his troops. At the door, the mayor, H�non, and the prefect arrested him. They had penetrated into the H�tel-de-Ville by the Place de la Com�die. Saigne, springing upon the balcony, announced the news to the crowd, which, throwing itself upon the H�tel-de-Ville, delivered the prospective general and in turn arrested the mayor and the prefect. The bourgeois battalions soon arrived at the Place des Terreaux; shortly after those of La Croix-Rousse and of La Guilloti�re emerged. Great misfortune might have resulted from the first shot. They parleyed. -Me commission disappeared and the general swooned. This was ‘a warning. Other symptoms manifested themselves in several towns. The prefects even presided over Leagues and met each other. At the commencement of October, the Admiral of Cayenne had only been able to set on foot 30,000 men, and nothing came from Tours but a decree convoking the election for the 16th. On the 9th, when Gambetta alighted from his balloon, all the patriots started. The Conservatives, who had begun to creep out of their recesses, quickly drew back again. The ardour and the energy of his. first proclamation carried people away. Gambetta held France absolutely; he was all-powerful. He disposed of the immense resources of France, of innumerable men; of Bourges, Brest, L'Orient, Rochefort, Toulon for arsenals; workshops like Lille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons; the seas free; incomparably greater strength than that of 1793, which had to fight at the same time the foreigner and internal rebellions. The centres were kindling. The municipal councils made themselves felt, the rural districts as yet showing no signs Of resistance; the national reserve intact. The burning metal needed only moulding. The debut of the delegate was a serious blunder. He executed the decree of Paris for the adjournment of the elections, which promised to be republican and bellicose. Bismarck himself had told Jules Favre that he did not want an Assembly, because this Assembly would be for war. Energetic circulars, some measures against the intriguers, formal instructions to the prefects, would have brightened and victoriously brought out this patriotic fervour. An Assembly fortified by all the republican aspirations, vigorously led, sitting in a populous town, would have increased the national energy a hundred-fold, brought to light unhoped-for talents, and might have exacted everything from the country, blood and gold. It would have proclaimed the Republic, and in case of being obliged by reverses to negotiate, would have saved her from foundering, prevented reaction. But Gambetta’s instructions were formal. ‘Elections at Paris would bring back days like. June,’ said he. ‘We must do without Paris,’ was our answer.
‘We must do without Paris,’ was our answer. All was useless. Besides, several prefects, incapable of influencing their surroundings, predicted pacific election. Lacking the energy to grapple with the real difficulties of the situation, Gambetta fancied he might shift them by the expedient clap-trap of his dictatorship. Did he bring a great political revolution? No. His whole programme was. ‘To maintain order and liberty and push on the war.’[49] Cr�mieux had called the Bonapartists ‘republicans going astray.’ Gambetta believed, or pretended to believe, in the patriotism of the reactionaries. A few pontifical zouaves who offered themselves, the abject submission of the Bonapartist generals, the wheedling of a few bishops,[50] sufficed to delude him. He continued the tactics of his predecessors, to conciliate everybody; he spared even the functionaries. In the department of Finance and Public Instruction, he and his colleagues forbade the dismissal of any official. The War Office for a long time remained under the supreme direction of a Bonapartist, and always carried on an underhand war against the defence. Gambetta -maintained in some prefectures the same employees who had drawn up the proscription lists of the 2nd December, 1851. With the exception of a few justices of the peace and a small number of magistrates, nothing was changed in the political personnel, the whole subordinate administration remaining intact. Was he wanting in authority? His colleagues of the council did not even dare to raise their voices; the prefects knew only him; the generals put on the manner of school boys in his presence. Was a personnel wanting? The Leagues contained solid elements; the petty bourgeoisie and proletariat might have given the cadres. Gambetta saw here only obstacles, chaos, federalism, and roughly dismissed their delegates. Each department possessed groups of known, tried republicans, to whom the administration and the part of spurring the Defence under the direction of commissioners might have been entrusted. Gambetta refused almost everywhere to refer to them; the few whom he appointed he knew how to fetter closely. He vested all power in the prefects, most of them ruins of 1848, or his colleagues of the Conf�rence Mol�,[51] nerveless, loquacious, timorous, anxious to have themselves well spoken of, and many anxious to feather themselves a nest in their department. The Defence in the provinces set out on these two crutches — the War Office and the prefects. On this absurd plan of conciliation the Government was conducted. Did the new delegate at least bring a powerful military conception? ‘No one in the Government, neither General Trochu nor General Lefl�, no one had suggested a military operation of any kind.’[52] Did he at least possess that quick penetration which makes up for want of experience? After twenty days in the provinces he comprehended the military situation no better than he had done at Paris. The capitulation of Metz drew from him indignant proclamations, but he understood no more than his colleagues of the H�tel-de-Ville that this was the very moment to make a supreme effort. With the exception of three divisions (30,000) men and the greater part of their cavalry, the Germans had been obliged to employ for the investment of Paris all their troops, and they had no reserve left them. The three divisions at Orl�ans and Ch�teaudun were kept in check by our forces of the Loire. The cavalry, while infesting a large extent of territory in the west, north and east, could not hold out against infantry. At the end of October, the army before Paris, strongly fortified against the town, was not at all covered from the side of the provinces. The appearance of 50,000 men, even of young troops,, would have forced the Prussians to raise the blockade. Moltke was far from disregarding the danger. He had decided in case of need to raise the blockade, to sacrifice the park of artillery then being formed at Villecoublay, to concentrate his army for action in the open country, and only to re-establish the blockade after the victory, that is to say, after the arrival of the army of Metz. ‘Everything was ready for our decampment; we only had to team the horses,’ reported an eye-witness, the Swiss Colonel D'Erlach. The official papers of Berlin had already prepared public opinion for this event. The blockade of Paris raised, even momentarily, might have led, under the pressure of Europe, to an honourable peace; this was almost certain. Paris and France recovering their salutary buoyancy, the revictualling of the great town, and the consequent prolongation of her resistance, would have given the time necessary for the organization of the provincial armies. At the end of October our army of the Loire was in progress of formation, the 15th corps at Salbris, the 16th at Blois, already numbering 80,000 men. If it had driven through between the Bavarians at Orl�ans and the Prussians at Ch�teaudun; if — and this was an easy matter with its numerical superiority — it would have beaten the enemy one after another, the route to Paris would have been thrown open, and the deliverance of Paris almost sure. The Delegation of Tours did not see so far. It confined its efforts to recovering Orl�ans, in order to establish there an entrenched camp;
It confined its efforts to recovering Orl�ans, in order to establish there an entrenched camp; so on the 26th General D'Aurelles de Paladines, named by Gambetta commander-in-chief of the two corps, received the order to rescue the town from the Bavarians. He was a senator, a bigoted, rabid reactionary, at best fit only to be an officer of zouaves, fuming in his heart at the defence. It was resolved to make the attack from Blois. instead of conducting the 15th corps on foot, which by Romorantin would have taken forty-eight hours, the Delegation sent it by the Vierzon railway to Tours, a journey which took five days and could not be hidden from the enemy. Still, on the 28th, D'Aurelles encamped before Blois, with at least 40,000 men, and the next day he was to have left for Orl�ans. On the 28th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the commander of the German troops had him informed ‘of the capitulation of Metz. D'Aurelles, jumping at this pretext, telegraphed to Tours that he should call off his movement. A general of some ability, of some good faith, would, on the contrary, have precipitated everything. Since the army before Metz, now disengage, would swoop down upon the centre of France, there was not a day to lose to get ahead of it. Every hour told. This was the critical juncture of the war. The delegation of Tours was as foolish as D'Aurelles. Instead of dismissing him, it contented itself with moans, ordering him to concentrate his forces. This concentration was terminated on the 3rd November.[53] D'Aurelles then had 70,000 men established from Mer to Marchenoir. He might have aired before events overtook him. That very day a whole brigade of Prussian cavalry had been obliged to abandon Mantes and to retreat before bands of franc-tieurs; French forces were observed to be marching from Courville in the direction of Chartres. D'Aurelles did not stir, and the Delegation remained as paralysed as he. ‘M. le Ministre’, wrote on the 4th November the Delegate at War, M. de Freycinet,[54] ‘for some days the army and myself do not know if the Government wants peace or war. At this Moment, when we are just disposing ourselves to accomplish projects laboriously Prepared, rumours of an armistice disturb the minds of our generals, and I myself, I seek to revive their spirits and push them on, I know not whether the next day I shall not be disavowed by the Government.’ Gambetta the same day answered: ‘I agree with you as to the detestable influence of the political hesitations of the Government. From today we must decide on our march forward;’ and on the 7th D'Aurelles still remained motionless. At last, on the 8th, he set out, and went about fifteen kilometres, and in the evening again spoke of making a halt.[55] All his forces together ed 100,000 men. On the 9th he made up his mind to attack at Coulmiers. The Bavarians immediately evacuated Orl�ans. Far from pursuing them, D'Aurelles announced that he was going to fortify himself before the town. The Delegation let him do as he liked, and gave him no orders to pursue the enemy.[56] Three days after the battle Gambetta came to the headquarters and approved of D'Aurelle’s plan. The Bavarians during this respite had fallen back upon Toury, and two divisions hurried from Metz by the railway arrived before Paris. Moltke could at his ease direct the 17th Prussian division towards Toury, where it arrived on the 12th. Three other corps of the army of Metz approached the Seine by forced marches. The ignorance of the Delegation, the obstruction of Trochu, the ill-will and blunders of D'Aurelles, frustrated the only chances of raising the blockade of Paris. On the 19th, the army of Metz protected the blockade in the north and in the south. Henceforth the Delegation had but one part to play — to prepare sound, manoeuvrable armies for France, and find the necessary time for this, as in ancient times the Romans did, and in our days the Americans. It preferred bolstering up vain appearances, amusing public opinion with the din of arms, imagining that they could thus puzzle the Prussians also. It threw upon them men raised but a few days before, without instruction, without discipline, without instruments of war, fatally destined to defeat. The prefects charged with the organization of the mobiles, and those on the point of being mobilized, were in continual strife with the generals, and lost themselves in the details of the equipments. The generals, unable to make anything of those W-supplied contingents, only advanced on compulsions Gambetta on his arrival had said in his proclamation ‘We will make young leaders,’ and the important commands were given to the men of the Empire, worn out, ignorant, knowing nothing of patriotic wars. To these young recruits, who should have been electrified by stirring appeals, D'Aurelles preached the word of the Lord and the interest of the service.[58] The accomplice of Bazaine, Bourbaki,[59] on his return from England, received the command of the army of the East. The weakness of the new Delegate encouraged the resistance of all malcontents. Gambetta asked the officers whether they would accept service under Garibaldi;[60] he not only allowed them to refuse, but even released a cur� who in the pulpit had set a price on the General’s head. He humbly explained to the royalist officers that the question at issue was not to defend the Republic but the territory. He gave leave to the pontifical zouaves to hoist the banner of the Sacred Heart. He suffered Admiral Fourichon to contend for the disposal of the navy with the Delegation.[61] He indignantly rejected every project for an enforced loan, and refused to sanction those voted in some departments.
He left the railway companies masters of the transport, in the hands of reactionaries, always ready to raise difficulties. From the end of November, these boisterous and contradictory orders, these accumulations of impracticable decrees, these powers given and taken back, clearly proved that only a sham resistance was meant. The country obeyed, giving everything with passive blindness. The contingents were raised without difficulty; there were no refractory recruits in rural districts, although the gendarmerie were absent with the army; the Leagues had given way on the first remonstrance. There .was only a movement on the 3 Ist October. The Marseilles revolutionaries, indignant at the weakness of their Municipal Council, proclaimed the Commune. Cluseret, who from Geneva had asked the ‘Prussian’ Gambetta for the command of an army corps, appeared at Marseilles, got himself named general, again backed out and retired to Switzerland, his dignity forbidding him to serve as a simple soldier. At Toulouse, the population expelled the general. At Saint-Etienne the Commune existed for an hour. But everywhere a word sufficed to replace the authority in the hands of the Delegation; such was the apprehension of everybody of creating the slightest embarrassment. . This abnegation only served the reactionaries. The Jesuits, who resumed their intrigues, had been reinstated by Gambetta at Marseilles, whence the indignation of the people had expelled them. The delegate cancelled the suspension of papers that published letters from Chambord and D'Aumale. He protected the judges who had formed part of the mixed commission’ released the one who had decimated the department of the Var, and dismissed the prefect of Toulouse for having suspended the functions of another in the Haute-Garonne. The Bonapartists mustered again.[62] When the prefect of Bordeaux, an ultra-moderate Liberal, asked for the authorization to arrest some of their ringleaders, Gambetta severely answered him, ‘These are practices of the Empire, not of the Republic.’ Cr�mieux, too, said, ‘The Republic is the reign of law.’ Then the Conservative Vend�e arose. Monarchists, clericals, capitalists, waited for their time; cowering in their castles, all their strongholds remained intact; seminaries, tribunals, general councils, which for a long time the Delegation refused to dissolve en masse. They were clever enough to figure here and there in the field of battle, in order to preserve the appearance of patriotism. In a few weeks they had seen through Gambetta and found out the Liberal behind the Tribune. Their campaign was laid and conducted from the be by the only serious political tacticians ~ France possesses — by the Jesuits, masters of the clergy. The arrival of M. Thiers provided the apparent leader. The men of the 4th September had made him their ambassador. France, almost without diplomatists since Talleyrand, has never possessed one more easily gulled than this little man. He had gone naively to London, to Petersburg, to Italy, whose inveterate enemy he had always been, begging for vanquished France alliances which had been refused her when yet intact. He was trifled with everywhere. He obtained but one interview with Bismarck, and negotiated the armistice rejected by the 3 Ist October. When he arrived at Tours in the firs days of November, he knew that peace was impossible, and that henceforth it must be war to the knife. Instead of courageously making the best of it, of placing his existence at the service of the Delegation, he had but one object, to baffle the defence. It could not have had a more redoubtable enemy. lie success of this man, without ideas, without principles of government, without comprehension of progress, without courage, would have been impossible everywhere, save with the French bourgeoisie. But he has always been at hand when a Liberal was wanted to shoot down the people, and he is a wonderful artist in Parliamentary intrigue. No one has known like him how to attack, to isolate a Government, to group prejudices hatred, and interests, to hide his intrigues behind a mask of patriotism and common sense. The campaign of 1870-71 will certainly be his masterpiece. He had made up his mind as to the lion’s share due to the Prussians, and took no more notice of them than they had crossed the Moselle. For him the enemy was the defender. When our poor mobiles, without cadres, without military training, succumbed to a temperature as fatal as that of 1812, M. Thiers exulted at our disasters. His house had become the headquarters for the Conservative notabilities. At Bordeaux especially it seemed to be the true seat of the Government. Before the investment the reactionary press of Paris had o provincial service, and from the outset cooled down the Delegation. After the arrival of M. Thiers it carried on a regular war. It never ceased harassing, accusing, pointing out the slightest shortcomings, with a view not to instruct, but to slander, and to wind up by the .foregone conclusion: Fighting is madness, disobedience legitimate. From the middle of December this watchword, faithfully followed by all the papers of the party, spread over the rural districts. For the first time country squires found their way to the ear of the peasant.
For the first time country squires found their way to the ear of the peasant. This war was about to draw off all the men who were not in the army or in the Garde Mobile, and camps were being prepared to receive them. The prisons of Germany held 260,000 men; Paris, the Loire, the army of the East, more than 350,000. Thirty thousand were dead, and thousands filled the hospitals. Since the month of August France had given at least 700,000 men. Where are they to stop? This cry was echoed in every cottage: ‘It is the Republic that wants war! Paris is in the hands of the levellers.’ What does the French peasant know of his fatherland, and how many could say where Alsace lies? It is he above all whom the bourgeoisie have in view when they resist compulsory education. For eighty years all their efforts tended to transforming into coolies the descendants of the volunteers of 1792. Before long a spirit of revolt infected the mobiles, almost everywhere commanded by noted reactionaries. Here an equerry of the Emperor, there rabid royalists led battalions. In the army of the Loire they muttered, ‘We will not fight for M. Gambetta.’[63] Officers of the mobilized troops boasted of never having exposed the lives of their men. In the beginning of 1871 the provinces were undermined from end to end. Some general councils that had been dissolved met publicly, declaring that they considered themselves elected. The Delegation followed the progress of this enemy, cursed M. Thiers in private, but took good care not to arrest him. The revolutionaries who came to tell it the lengths things were going to were curtly shown out. Gambetta, worn out, not believing in the defence, thought only of conciliating the men of influence and rendering himself acceptable for the future. At the signal of the elections, the scenery, laboriously prepared, appeared all of a piece, showing the Conservatives grouped, supercilious, their lists ready. We were far now from the month of October, when, in many departments, they had not dared to put forward their candidates. The decrees on the ineligibility of the high Bonapartist functionaries only affected shadows. The coalition, disdaining the broken-down men of the Empire, had carefully formed a personnel of pig-tailed nobles, well-to-do farmers, captains of industry, men likely to do the work bluntly. The clergy had skilfully united on their lists the Legitimists and Orleanists, perhaps laid down the basis for a fusion. The vote was carried like a plebiscite. lie republicans tried to speak of an honourable peace; the peasants would only hear of peace at any price. The towns knew hardly how to make a stand; at the utmost elected Liberals. Out of 750 members, the Assembly counted 450 born monarchists. ‘Me apparent chief of the campaign, the king of Liberals, M. Thiers, was returned in twenty-three departments. The conciliator � outrance could rival Trochu. The one had worried out Paris, the other the Republic. Glossary \| Contents \| Chapter I \| The Civil War in France \| Paris Commune Archive
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871 Chapter III The eighteenth of March We then did what we had to do: nothing provoked the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.) The execution was as foolish as the conception. On the 18th of March, at three o'clock in the morning, several columns dispersed in various directions to the Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, the Faubourg du Temple, the Bastille, the H�tel-de-Ville, Place St. Michel, the Luxembourg, the thirteenth arrondissement and the Invalides. General Susbielle marched on Montmartre with two brigades about 6,000 men strong. All was silent and deserted. The Paturel brigade took possession of the Moulin de la Galette without striking a blow. The Lecomte brigade gained the Tower of Solferino only meeting with one sentinel, Turpin, who crossed bayonets with them and was hewn down by the gendarmes. They then rushed to the post of the Rue des Rosiers, stormed it, and threw the National Guards into the caves of the Tower of Solferino. At six o'clock the surprise was complete. M. Cl�menceau hurried to the Buttes to congratulate General Lecomte. Everywhere else the cannon were surprised in the same way. The Government triumphed all along the line, and D'Aurelles sent the papers a proclamation written in the conqueror’s vein. There was only one thing wanting — teams to convey the spoil. Vinoy had almost forgotten them. At eight o'clock they began to put some horses to the pieces. Meanwhile the faubourgs were awaking and the early shops opening. Around the milkmaids and before the wineshops the people began talking in a low voice; they pointed to the soldiers, the machine-gun [a multiple-barrelled gun, forerunner of the modern machine-gun] levelled at the streets, the walls covered with the still wet poster signed by M. Thiers and his Ministers. The spoke of paralysed commerce, suspended orders, frightened capital: ‘Inhabitants of Paris, in your interest the Government has resolved to act. Let the good citizens separate from the bad ones; let them aid public force; they will render a service to the Republic herself,’ said MM. Pouyer-Quertier, De Larcy, Dufaure and other Republicans. The conclusion is borrowed from the phraseology of December: ‘The culpable shall be surrendered to justice. Order, complete, immediate and unalterable, must be re-established.’ They spoke of order — blood was to be shed. As in our great days, the women were the first to act. Those of the 18th March, hardened by the siege — they had had a double ration of misery — did not wait for the men. They surrounded the machineguns, apostrophized the sergeant in command of the gun, saying, ‘This is shameful; what are you doing there?’ The soldiers did not answer. Occasionally a non-commissioned officer spoke to them: ‘Come, my good women, get out of the way.’ At the same time a handful of National Guards, proceeding to the post of the Rue Doudeauville, there found two drums that had not been smashed, and beat the rappel. At eight o'clock they numbered 300 officers and guards, who ascended the Boulevard Ornano. They met a platoon of soldiers of the 88th, and, crying, Vive la R�publique! enlisted them. The post of the Rue Dejean also joined them, and the butt-end of their muskets raised, soldiers and guards together marched up to the Rue Muller that leads to the Buttes Montmartre, defended on this side by the men of the 88th. These, seeing their comrades intermingling with the guards, signed to them to advance, that they would let them pass. General Lecomte, catching sight of the signs, had the men replaced by sergents-de-ville, and confined them in the Tower of Solferino, adding, ‘You will get your deserts.’ The sergents-de-ville discharged a few shots, to which the guards replied. Suddenly a large number of National Guards, the butt-end of their muskets up, women and children, appeared on the other flank from the Rue des Rosiers. Lecomte, surrounded, three times gave the order to fire. His men stood still, their arms ordered. The crowd, advancing, fraternized with them, and Lecomte and his officers were arrested. The soldiers whom he had just shut up in the tower wanted to shoot him, but some National Guards having succeeded in disengaging him with great difficulty — for the crowd took him for Vinoy — conducted him with his officers to the Ch�teau-Rouge, where the staff of the battalions of the National Guard was seated. There they asked him for an order to evacuate the Buttes. He signed it without hesitation. [82] The order was immediately communicated to the officers and soldiers of the Rue des Rosiers. The gendarmes surrendered their chassepots, and even cried, Vive la R�publique! Three discharges from the cannon announced the recapture of the Buttes. General Paturel, who wanted to carry away the cannon, surprised at the Moulin de la Galette, came into collision with a living barricade in the Rue Lepic. The people stopped the horses, cut the traces, dispersed the artillerymen, and took back the cannon to their post.
The people stopped the horses, cut the traces, dispersed the artillerymen, and took back the cannon to their post. In the Place Pigalle, General Susbielle gave the order to charge the crowd collected in the Rue Houdon, but the chasseurs, intimidated, spurred back their horses and were laughed at. A captain, dashing forward, sabre in hand, wounded a guard, and fell, pierced with balls. The General fled. The gendarmes, who commenced firing from behind the huts, were soon dislodged, and the bulk of the soldiers went over to the people. At Belleville, the Buttes Chaumont, the Luxembourg, the troops fraternized everywhere with the crowds that had collected at the first alarm. By eleven o'clock the people had vanquished the aggressors at all points, preserved almost all their cannon, of which only ten had been carried off, and seized thousands of chassepots. All their battalions were now on foot, and the men of the faubourgs commenced unpaving the streets. Since six o'clock in the morning D'Aurelles had had the rappel beaten in the central quarters, but in vain. Battalions formerly noted for their devotion to Trochu sent only twenty men to the rendezvous. All Paris, on reading the posters, said ‘This is the coup-d'�tat. At twelve o'clock D'Aurelles and Picard sounded the alarm: ‘The Government calls on you to defend your homes, your families, your property. Some misguided men, under the lead of some secret leaders, turn against Paris the cannon kept back from the Prussians.’ These reminiscences of June, 1848, this accusation of indelicacy toward the Prussians, failing to rouse any one, the whole Ministry came to the rescue: ‘An absurd rumour is being spread that the Government is preparing a coup-d'�tat. It has wished and wishes to make an end of an insurrectional Committee, whose members only represent Communist doctrines.’ These alarms, repeatedly sounded, raised in all 500 men.[83] The Government were at the Foreign Office, and, after the first reverses, M. Thiers had given the order to fall back with all the troops on the Champs-de-Mars. When he saw the desertion of the National Guards of the Centre, he declared that it was necessary to evacuate Paris. Several Ministers objected, wanted a few points to be guarded — the H�tel-de-Ville, its barracks occupied by the brigade Derroja, the Ecole Militaire — and that they should take a position on the Trocadero. The little man, quite distracted, would only hear of extreme measures. Lef�, who had almost been made a prisoner at the Bastille, vigorously supported him. It was decided that the whole town should be evacuated, even the forts on the south, restored by the Prussians a fortnight before. Towards three o'clock the popular battalions of the Gros Caillou marched past the H�tel-de-Ville, headed by drums and trumpets. The Council believed itself surrounded.[84] M. Thiers escaped by a back stair, and left for Versailles so out of his senses that at the bridge of S�vres he gave the written order to evacuate Mont-Val�rien. At the self-same hour when M. Thiers ran away, the revolutionary battalions had not yet attempted any attack or occupied any official posts.[85] The aggression of the morning had surprised the Central Committee, as it had all Paris. The evening before they had separated as usual, giving themselves a rendezvous for the 18th, at eleven o'clock at night, behind the Bastille, at the school in the Rue Basfroi; the Place de la Corderie, actively watched by the police, no longer being safe. Since the 15th new elections had added to their numbers, and they had appointed a Committee of Defence. On the news of the attack, some ran to the Rue Basfroi, others applied themselves to raising the battalions of their quarters: Varlin at the Batignolles, Bergeret, recently named chef-de-l�gion, at Montmartre, Duval at the Panth�on, Pindy in the third arrondissement, Faltot in the Rue de S�vres. Ranvier and Brunel, without belonging to the Committee, were agitating Belleville and the tenth arrondissement. At ten o'clock a dozen members met together, overwhelmed with messages from all sides, and receiving from time to time some prisoners. Positive intelligence only came in towards two o'clock. They then drew up a kind of plan by which all the federalist battalions were to converge upon the H�tel-de-Ville, and then dispersed in all directions to transmit orders.[86] The battalions were indeed on the alert, but did not march. The revolutionary quarters, fearing a resumption of the attack, and ignoring the plenitude of their victory, were strongly barricading themselves, and remained where they were. Even Montmartre was only swarming with guards in search of news, and disbanded soldiers for whom collections were being made, as they had had nothing to eat since the morning. Towards half-past three o'clock the Committee of Vigilance of the eighteenth arrondissement, established in the Rue de Clignancourt, was informed that General Lecomte was in great danger. A crowd, consisting chiefly of soldiers, surrounded the Ch�teau-Rouge and demanded the General. The members of the Committee of Vigilance, Ferr�, Jaclard, and Bergeret, immediately sent an order to the commander of the Ch�teau-Rouge to guard the prisoner, who was to be put on trial. When the order arrived Lecomte had just left. He had long been asking to be taken before the Central Committee. The chiefs of the post, much perturbed by the cries of the crowd, anxious to get rid of their responsibility, and believing this Committee was sitting in the Rue des Rosiers, decided to conduct the General and his officers there. They arrived at about four o'clock, passing through a terribly irritated crowd, yet no one raised a hand against them.
The General was closely guarded in a small front room on the ground floor. There the scenes of the Ch�teau-Rouge recommenced. The exasperated soldiers asked for his death. The officers of the National Guard made desperate efforts to quiet them, crying, ‘Wait for the Committee.’ They succeeded in posting sentinels and appeasing the commotion for a time. No member of the Committee had arrived when, at half-past four, formidable cries filled the street, and hunted by a fierce multitude, a man with a white beard was thrust against the wall of the house. It was Cl�ment-Thomas, the man of June, 1848, the insulter of the revolutionary battalions. He had been recognized and arrested at the Chauss�e des Martyrs, where he was examining the barricades. Some officers of the National Guard, a Garibaldian captain, Herpin-Lacroix, and some franc-tireurs had tried to stop the deadly mass, repeating a thousand times, ‘Wait for the Committee! Constitute a court-martial!’ They were jostled, and Cl�ment-Thomas was again seized and hurled into the little garden of the house. Twenty muskets levelled at him battered him down. During this execution the soldiers broke the windows of the room where General Lecomte was confined, threw themselves upon him, dragging him towards the garden. This man, who in the morning had three times given the order to fire upon the people, wept, begged for pity, and spoke of his family. He was forced against the wall and fell under the bullets. These reprisals over, the wrath of the mass subsided. They allowed the officers of Lecomte’s suite to be taken back to the Ch�teau-Rouge, and at nightfall they were set at liberty. While these executions took place, the people, so long standing on the defensive, had begun to move. Brunel surrounded the Prince Eug�ne Barracks, held by the 120th of the line. The colonel, accompanied by about a hundred officers, assuming lofty airs, Brunel had them all locked up. Two thousand chassepots fell into the hands of the people. Brunel continued his march by the Rue du Temple towards the H�tel-de-Ville. The Imprimerie Nationale was occupied at five o'clock. At six the crowd attacked the doors of the Napol�on Barracks with hatchets. A discharge was made, fired from the opening, and three persons fell; but the soldiers made signs from the windows of the Rue de Rivoli, crying, ‘It is the gendarmes who have fired. Vive la R�publique!’ Soon after they opened the doors and allowed their arms to be carried off.[87] At half-past seven the H�tel-de-Ville was almost surrounded. The gendarmes who occupied it fled by the subterranean passage of the Lobau Barracks. About half-past eight Jules Ferry and Vabre, entirely abandoned by their men, left without any order by the Government, also stole away. Shortly after Brunel’s column arrived at the place and took possession of the H�tel-de-Ville, where Ranvier arrived at the same time by the quays. The number of the battalions augmented incessantly. Brunel had given order to raise barricades in the Rue de Rivoli, on the quays, manned all the approaches, distributed the posts, and sent out strong patrols. One of these, surrounding the mairie of the Louvre, where the mayors were deliberating, almost succeeded in catching Ferry, who saved himself by jumping out of a window. The mayors returned to the mairie of the Place de la Bourse. They had already met there during the day together with many adjuncts, much offended at the senseless governmental attack, waiting for information and for ideas. Towards four o'clock they sent delegates to the Government. M. Thiers had already made off. Picard politely showed them out. D'Aurelles washed his hands of the whole affair, saying the lawyers had done it. At night, however, it became necessary to take a resolution. The federal battalions already surrounded the H�tel-de-Ville and occupied the Place Vend�me, whither Varlin, Bergeret, and Arnold had conducted the battalions of Montmartre and the Batignolles. Vacherot, Vautrain, and a few reactionaries spoke of resisting at any price, as though they had had an army to back them. Others, more sensible, sought for some expedient. They thought they could calm down everything by naming as prefect of police Eduard Adam, who had distinguished himself against the insurgents of June, 1848, and as General of the National Guards the giddy Proudhonist Langlois, a former Internationalist, who had been for the movement of the 31st of October in the morning, against it in the evening, and was named deputy, thanks to a scratch received while gesticulating at Buzenval. The delegates went to propose this brilliant solution to Jules Favre. He refused outright, saying, ‘We cannot treat with assassins.’ This comedy was only played to justify the evacuation of Paris, which he concealed from the mayors. During the conference it was announced that Jules Ferry had abandoned the H�tel-de-Ville. The other Jules feigned surprise, and engaged the mayors to call out the battalions of order for the purpose of replacing the vanished army. They returned overwhelmed by this raillery, humbled at having been altogether left in the dark about the intention of the Government. If possessed of some political courage, they would have gone straight to the H�tel-de-Ville, instead of commencing to deliberate again in their mairie. At last, at ten o'clock in the morning, Picard informed them that they might bring out their Lafayette. They immediately sent Langlois to the H�tel-de-Ville.
They immediately sent Langlois to the H�tel-de-Ville. Some members of the Central Committee had been there since ten o'clock, generally very anxious and very hesitant. Not one of them had dreamt that power would fall so heavily upon their shoulders. Many did not want to sit at the H�tel-de-Ville. They deliberated. At last it was decided that they would only stay during the two or three days wanted for the elections. Meanwhile it was necessary to ward off any attempt at resistance. Luilier was present, buzzing around the Committee, in one of his intervals of grave lucidity, promising to ward off all danger and appealing to the vote of Vauxhall. He had played no part during the whole day.[88] The Committee committed the blunder of appointing him commander-in-chief of the National Guard, while Brunel, who had rendered such service since the morning, was already installed in the H�tel-de-Ville. At three o'clock, Langlois, the competitor of Luilier, announced himself. He was full of confidence in himself, and had already sent his proclamation to the Journal Officiel. ‘Who are you?’ the sentinels asked him. ‘General of the National Guard,’ answered Langlois. Some deputies of Paris, Lockroy, Cournet, etc. accompanied him. The Committee consented to receive them. ‘Who has named you?’ said they to Langlois. ‘M. Thiers.’ They smiled at this madman’s aplomb. As he pleaded the rights of the Assembly they put him to the test; ‘Do you recognize the Central Committee?’ ‘No.’ He decamped and ran away after his proclamation. The night was calm, fatally calm for liberty. By the gates of the south Vinoy marched off his regiments, his artillery, and his baggage to Versailles. The disbanded troops jogged along peevishly, insulting the gendarmes.[89] The staff, true to its traditions, had lost its head, and left in Paris three regiments, six batteries, and all the gunboats, which it would have sufficed to leave to the current of the river. The slightest demonstration by the federals would have stopped this exodus. Far from thinking of closing the gates, the new commander of the National Guard — he boasted of it before the council of war — left open all issues to the army. Glossary \| Contents \| next chapter
Thomas Sankara A Death that Must Enlighten and Strengthen Us Speech on death of Samora Machel Delivered: October 1986. This edition: Marxists Internet Archive, December 2022, thanks to Liz Blaczak. Samora Machel, president of Mozambique and leader of Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front), was killed on October 19, 1986, when his plane crashed in South Africa. Many supporters of the African freedom struggle expressed suspicion that the Apartheid regime was responsible for the crash. The following speech given in Ougadougou was published in the October 31, 1986, issue of Carrefour Africain. Comrade militants: Our task today is not to weep, but to adopt a revolutionary attitude as we face the tragic situation caused by Samora Machel's disappearance. To avoid falling into sentimentalism, we must not weep. With sentimentalism one cannot understand death. Sentimentalism belongs to the messianic vision of the world, which, since it expects a single man to transform the universe, inspires lamentation, discouragement, and despondency as soon as this man disappears. Another reason we should not weep is to avoid being confused with all the hypocrites here and elsewhere, those crocodiles, those dogs, who make believe that Samora Machel's death saddens them. We know very well who is saddened and who is delighted by the disappearance of this fighter. We do not want to join in the competition among cynics who decree here and there this-and-that many days of mourning, each one trying to establish and advertise his distress with tears that we revolutionaries should recognize for what they are. Samora Machel is dead. This death must serve to enlighten and strengthen us as revolutionaries, because the enemies of our revolution, the enemies of the people's of the world, have once again revealed one of their tactics, one of their traps. We have discovered that the enemy knows how to strike down combatants even when they're in the air. We know that the enemy can take advantage of a moment's inattention on our part to commit its odious crimes. Let us draw the lessons from this direct and barbaric aggression, together with the brothers of Mozambique. It's only purpose is to disorganize the political leadership of Frelimo and definitively jeopardize the Mozambican people's struggle, thus putting an end to the hopes of an entire people, of more than one people, of all people's. We say to imperialism and to all our enemies that every time they carry out such actions, it will be yet another lesson we have learned. Certainly these are not free lessons, but they're ones we deserve all the more. Yesterday, when Eduardo Mondlane was killed in cowardly, barbaric, and treacherous fashion by the enemies of the people's of the world, the enemies of freedom for the people, they thought they had done well, that they had been successful.[1] They hoped that in this way the flag of Liberation would fall in the mud and that the people would take fright and give up the fight forever. But they did not reckon with the people's determination, with their desire for freedom. They did not reckon with the special force men have within them that makes them say no despite the bullets and the traps. They did not reckon with the fearless combatants of Frelimo. These were the conditions in which Samora Machel dared to pick up the flag carried by Eduardo Mondlane, whose memory is still with us. Machel immediately established himself as a leader, a force, a star that guides and lights the way. He knew how to put his internationalism at the service of others. He fought not only in Mozambique, but elsewhere too, and for others. Let's ask ourselves a question today: who killed Samora Machel? We're told that investigations are being conducted, and experts are meeting to determine the cause of Machel's death. With the help of imperialist radio stations, South Africa is already trying to peddle the theory of an accident. They would have us believe that lightning struck the plane. They would have us believe that pilot error led the plane where it should not have gone. Without being pilots or aeronautical experts, there is one question we can logically ask ourselves: how could a plane flying at such a high altitude suddenly graze the trees and flip over, that is, come within 200 meters of the ground? We're told that the number of survivors is proof this was an accident and not an assassination. But comrades, how can a plane's passengers, awakened brutally by the impact, say how and why their plane flipped over and crashed? In our opinion, this event is purely and simply the continuation of the racist policies of South African whites. It is another manifestation of imperialism. To discover who killed Samora Machel, let us ask ourselves who is rejoicing, and who has an interest in having Machel killed. We find, side by side and hand in hand, first the racist whites of South Africa, whom we have never stopped denouncing. At their side we find those puppets, the armed bandits of the MNR, the so-called National Resistance Movement.[2] Resistance to what? To the Liberation of the Mozambican people, to the March to freedom of the Mozambican people and others, and to the internationalist aid that Mozambique provided, via Frelimo, to other people's. We also find the Jonas Savimbis. He is planning to go to Europe. We protested against this. We told the Europeans, in particular France, that if they were to issue an entry visa in order to fight terrorism, if they're looking for terrorists, they've found one: Jonas Savimbi. By their side we find the African traitors who allow arms for use against the people's of Africa to pass through their countries. We also find those people who cry "peace" here and there, yet who deploy their knowledge and energies every day to help and support traitors to the African cause. These are the ones who assassinated Samora Machel. Alas, we Africans also delivered Samora Machel to his enemies by not providing him with the necessary support.
When Mozambique answered the call by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and completely severed relations with South Africa, who in the OAU supported it? Yet Mozambique, economically tied to South Africa, was experiencing enormous difficulties. The Mozambicans fought against and resisted South Africa alone. This is why we Africans within the OAU bear a heavy responsibility for Samora Machel's disappearance. Today's speeches will never count for anything if we don't try to be more consistent with our resolutions in the future. Burkina Faso put forward the same position in Harare [at the Eighth Summit of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries]. It's not enough to applaud Robert Mugabe, and put him forward as the Nonaligned Movement's worthy son if, a few hours after our departure, South Africa starts bombing Zimbabwe, and each of us stays snugly at home in his capital, doing nothing more than sending messages of support. Some states applauded us. Others thought we were going too far. But history has proven us right. Shortly after the Nonaligned Summit, South Africa did its dirty deed. And here we are, simply issuing verbal condemnations. It is imperialism that organizes and orchestrates all these misfortunes. That's who armed and trained the racists. That's who sold them the radar equipment and the fighter planes to track and bring down Samora Machel's plane. That's also who placed their puppets in Africa to communicate the information as to the plane's takeoff time, and when it would pass over their territory. That's who is now trying to take advantage of the situation, and that's who is already trying to figure out who will succeed Samora Machel. That's also who is trying to divide the Mozambican combatants by categorizing them as moderates or extremists. Samora Machel was a great friend of our revolution, a great backer of our revolution. He said so everywhere and demonstrated it in his attitude toward Burkinab� delegations. We made contact with him for the first time through his writings on revolution. We read and studied Machel's works and we were intellectually close to him. The second time we met him was in New Delhi at the [1983] Nonaligned summit. He told us he was following the situation in our country, but was worried by imperialism's desire to dominate. After that, we met him twice in Addis Ababa. We had discussions together. We admired this man who never vowed his head, not even after the Nkomati Accords, the tactical character of which he understood, and that certain opportunist elements tried to use against him, making him out to be a coward. The Burkinab� delegations took the floor to say that those who were attacking Mozambique had no right to speak as long as they had not taken up arms to go fight in South Africa. We supported him a great deal, but he too supported us. At the last OAU summit, when Burkina's position was under attack by certain states, Machel took the floor and said, "If they didn't have the gratitude and courage to applaud Burkina Faso, they should at least have some shame and keep quiet." We met up with him again in his homeland in Maputo. He helped us a lot to understand the extremely difficult internal and external situation in which he found himself. Everyone knows the role SamoraMachel played among the Frontline States. Finally, we met him again at the last Nonaligned summit in Harare where we had numerous exchanges. Samora Machel knew he was being targeted by imperialism. He also made a commitment to visit Burkina Faso in 1987. We agreed to exchange delegations from our CDRS, from the army, from our ministries, and so on. We must learn from all of this. We must stand firm, hand in hand with other revolutionaries, because there are other plots lying in wait for us, other crimes in preparation. Comrades, we are taking this medal, this distinction of honor, to Mozambique to confer on Samora Machel, and I would ask you all to send your thoughts with it. We will send him the highest distinction of Burkina Faso, of our revolution, because we think that his work contributed and contributes to the progress of our revolution. He therefore deserves the award of the Gold Star of Nahouri. At the same time, I ask you to name streets, buildings, and so on, after Samora Machel over the whole expanse of our territories, because he deserves it. Posterity must remember this man and all that he did for his people and for other people's. We will thus shape his memory in our country, so that other men remember him forever. Comrades we are gathered here today to think about the loss of Samora Machel. Tomorrow we must go forward, we must win. Homeland or death, we will win! Notes [1] Eduardo Mondlane, founder of Frelimo, was assassinated by agents of Portuguese colonialism in 1969. He was succeeded by Samora Machel. [2] A reference to the Mozambican National Resistance, or Renamo. This was an organization closely tied to the South African Apartheid regime, which was waging a terrorist war against Mozambique's government and people that killed thousands. Thomas Sankara Archive \| Samora Machel Archive
MIA: Subjects: Africa: FRELIMO The Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) Documents A Look Back at the Past, to Understand the Present: The Founding of FRELIMO, Mozambican Notes, Numbers 1 and 2, September 1983 and January 1984 Statement on the Founding of the "Conference of Nationalist Organizations in Portuguese Colonies" (C.O.N.C.P.), (1961) Joint Press Communique from MANU and UDENAMO [on uniting to form FRELIMO] (June 1962) Mozambique Political Parties Fuse [to form FRELIMO] (June 1962) Initial Programme and Standing Orders in Preparation for First Congress (June 1962) Declarations and Resolutions of the First FRELIMO Congress (September 1962) FRELIMO Constitution and Programme (1962) FRELIMO: To the Portuguese People, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1962) Speech of Uria T. Simango, FRELIMO Vice-President, to a Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa Conference (1962) UDENAMO and MANU Declare FRELIMO "Dissolved" (May 21, 1963) Telegram to the Conference of African Independent States and Prime Ministers [on UDENAMO and MANU withdrawing from FRELIMO] (May 22, 1963) Memorandum on Withdrawl from FRELIMO [by UDENAMO and MANU] (May 27, 1963) FRELIMO: Memorandum to the Addis Ababa Conference [on FRELIMO's origins and programme] (1963) FRELIMO: Why We Fight, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1963) FRELIMO: To the Mozambican People, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1964) FRELIMO: 1964 Brochure (1964) Joint Memorandum Submitted by the African National Liberation Movements to the Conference of the Heads of African States Held in Cairo 17th to 21st July, 1964 (1964) The Role of the Church in Mozambique, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1964) Proclamation to the Mozambican People, Mozambique Revolution, Special Issue, 25 September 1967 FRELIMO: Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1965) The Political Situation in Portugal and the Liberation Struggle in the Portuguese Colonies, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1965) Statements and Resolutions of the Second "Conference of Nationalist Organizations in Portuguese Colonies" (C.O.N.C.P.) (1965) Development of Nationalism in Mozambique, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1965) Mozambique: 25th of September (1966) FRELIMO Speaks on the Conscience of the Mozambique Revolution (1967) Message from the Central Committee to the Mozambican People, Mozambique Revolution, Special Issue, 25 September 1967 Participation of Students in the Struggle for National Liberation, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1967) FRELIMO Fights for Human Rights, by Eduardo Mondlane, Sechaba, Volume 2, Number 3, March 1968 FRELIMO: Smith, Sanctions, and Salazar, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1968) Mozambique: An Album of the Struggle [for the FRELIMO Second Congress] (1968) AAPSO Permanent Secretariat Delegation Attends the Second National Conference of FRELIMO, Afro-Asian Bulletin, Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968 Highlights of the Second National Conference of FRELIMO, Afro-Asian Bulletin, Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968 Report of the Central Committee the Second National Conference of FRELIMO, Afro-Asian Bulletin, Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968 Resolutions of FRELIMO's Second Congress (1968) Mozambique in the Framework of Southern Africa, by Jose Oscar Monteiro [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1968) On the Necessity of Prolonged War, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1968) FRELIMO Women's Detachment: The Mozambican Woman in the Revolution (1968) Comrade Jose Monteiro, FRELIMO representative in Algeria, answers questions on the Mozambique Revolution, Sechaba, September 1968 Mozambique: A Country on the Road to Liberation, Tricontinental Bulletin, Year III, Number 30, September 1968 Documents of Frelimo – The Mozambique Liberation Front (1968) "Our Struggle at Home and Abroad". Interview with Miguel Murupo, Sechaba, Volume 3, Number 2, February 1969 Mozambique Now One-Fifth Under African Rule, by Eduardo Mondlane Sechaba, Volume 3, Number 4, April 1969 Eduardo Mondlane, by M.P. Naicker, Labour Monthly, March 1969 Statement of the Central Committee, [on the Mondlane assassination] Mozambique Revolution, Number 38, March-April 1969 Central Committee Communique, Mozambique Revolution, Number 38, March-April 1969 The Kavandame Affair, Southern Africa, May 1969 FRELIMO: Caetano: No Essential Change, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1969) FRELIMO: Self-Criticism, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1969) The Mercenaries of the Empire [Portuguese colonies in Africa], by Basil Davidson, Tricontinental, Number 11 (1969) Gloomy Situation in FRELIMO, by Uria T.
Simango, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1969) FRELIMO: On Uria T. Simango, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1969) FRELIMO Women's Section Brochure (1969) National Liberation Wars in the Portuguese Colonies by the Permanent Secretariat of the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization (1970) Communique of the Central Committee, Mozambique Revolution, Number 43, April-June 1969 FRELIMO... Opportunist Policies Defeated, Sechaba, March 1970 Portuguese Colonies: Front of Solidarity Against Reaction, Tricontinental Bulletin, Year V, Number 48, March 1970 Why We Fight, by Moises Machel Samora, Tricontinental, Number 18, May-June 1970 FRELIMO: Change of Policy in the Vatican?, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1970) Nation Building in Mozambique, Sechaba, Volume 4, Number 8, August 1970 Marcelino Dos Santos talks to Sechaba, Part 1, Sechaba, Volume 4, Number 10, October 1970 Marcelino Dos Santos talks to Sechaba, Part 2, Sechaba, Volume 4, Numbers 11-12, November-December 1970 Aspects of the Mozambican Struggle by FRELIMO An International War, by Marcelino dos Santos, Tricontinental, Numbers 23, April-May 1971 immediate Objective: Cabora Bassa, by Peter Kellner, Tricontinental, Numbers 23, April-May 1971 FRELIMO: Interview with Marcelino dos Santos, Part 1, by Boubaker Adjali (1971) Interviews in Depth: Mozambique, FRELIMO: Marcelino dos Santos, Vice-President of FRELIMO, Part 2 (1971) Building Freedom: Mozambique's FRELIMO (1971) Producers and Students, by Samora Machel, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1971) Education in Free Mozambique, Tricontinental Bulletin, Year VII, Number 73, April 1972 Revolutionary Education, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1972) The First Steps, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1972) FRELIMO: 10th Anniversary 1972 Caetano's Reforms Sink in a Sea of Contradictions, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1972) FRELIMO: The Coup d'Etat of April 25, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1974) Address by the Frelimo Delegation to the Sixth Pan-African Congress (1974) The Mozambican Woman in the Revolution (1974) Mozambique Independence Celebrations (1975) Frelimo President's Independence Message by Samora Machel (1975) Mozambique: Revolution or Reaction? Two Speeches by Samora Machel, FRELIMO President (1975) Mozambicans Put Down Right Wing Violence in Maputo, CFM News & Notes, Number 34, April 1976 Report from the CC of Frelimo to the Third Congress, by Samora Machel, Tricontinental, Number 52, 1977 Charting a Socialist Course – FRELIMO Third Party Congress, by William Minter, Southern Africa, April 1977 FRELIMO Reorganizes, Sechaba, Third Quarter 1977 MPLA and FRELIMO: Perspectives on the Struggle Southern Africa, Sechaba Volume 11, Fourth Quarter 1977 Mozambique, by Wilfred Burchett [from the book Southern Africa Stands Up 1978] The People's Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique, Part 1, Dawn, February 1980 Mozambique Reorganizes: The Political and Ideological Offensive, by Paul and Andy Epstein (1980) Getting Hold of the Lions Tail: The Campaign Against Bureaucracy, by Roberta Washington (1980) The Unity of Our Peoples. Address of ANC President Oliver Tambo to the Fourth Congress of FRELIMO, Sechaba, July 1983 FRELIMO Fights for the Future of Mozambique [on FRELIMO's Fourth Party Congress] The African Communist, Fourth Quarter 1983 The Fourth FRELIMO Party Congress, Mozambican Notes, September 1983 ANC and FRELIMO, Mozambican Notes, November 1984 Mozambique – Ideals and Reality, by Paul Fauvet (1984) Background to the Mozambique Conflict, by Moeletsi Mbeki (1985) Economic Reform in Mozambique: Two Views by John Loxley and Otto Roesch, Southern Africa Report, October 1988 On the Ropes: Socialism and FRELIMO's Fifth Congress by Judith Marshall, Southern Africa Report, November 1989 Nampula: What's Left?
Address of ANC President Oliver Tambo to the Fourth Congress of FRELIMO, Sechaba, July 1983 FRELIMO Fights for the Future of Mozambique [on FRELIMO's Fourth Party Congress] The African Communist, Fourth Quarter 1983 The Fourth FRELIMO Party Congress, Mozambican Notes, September 1983 ANC and FRELIMO, Mozambican Notes, November 1984 Mozambique – Ideals and Reality, by Paul Fauvet (1984) Background to the Mozambique Conflict, by Moeletsi Mbeki (1985) Economic Reform in Mozambique: Two Views by John Loxley and Otto Roesch, Southern Africa Report, October 1988 On the Ropes: Socialism and FRELIMO's Fifth Congress by Judith Marshall, Southern Africa Report, November 1989 Nampula: What's Left? [on FRELIMO's Fifth Party Congress] by Otto Roesch, Southern Africa Report, November 1989 Mozambique: Debating the Terms of Solidarity Southern Africa Report, February 1990 Mozambique: The Debate Continues, by Michael Cahen and Otto Roesch, Southern Africa Report, May 1990 Mozambique: The Failure of Socialism?, by John S. Saul, Southern Africa Report, November 1990 Interpretations Matter: Evaluating the War in Mozambique, by Bridget O'Laughlin and Christian Geffrey, Southern Africa Report, March 1992 Mozambique: What is to Be Done?, by Bridget O'Laughlin, Southern Africa Report, March 1992 "Let Us Fight Peacefully": Interview with Marcellino dos Santos (1993) Twenty Years After Recolonization in Mozambique, by John S. Saul, Southern Africa Report, January 1996 Periodicals Patriota, Number 1, n.d., [1962] Patriota, Number 2, n.d., [1962] FRELIMO Information Bulletin, Number 1, October 14, 1963 FRELIMO Information Bulletin, Volume II, June-July 1966 FRELIMO Information Bulletin, Volume II, August-September 1966 Mozambique Revolution (1969-1973) Mozambican Notes (1983-1986) See also: Eduardo Mondlane: Archive of Works Samora Machel: Archive of Works Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa
Samora Machel 1970 Educate Man to Win the War, Create a New Society and Develop our Country Written: 1970; First Published: 1970; Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 37-45; Transcription: Liz Blasczak; Speech at the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture, September 1970. Comrade delegates to the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture, Comrades, We are happy to take part in this 2nd Conference of the Department of Education and Culture because Culture and Education are fundamental problems of our people on which the creation of a new mentality ultimately depends. We also believe that meeting and discussing our work and methods is the reliable way of guiding our action. This Conference is starting at a time when we are celebrating the most important date in our history. The fact that this Conference is taking place is a result of our struggle, of the fierce struggle against colonialism, and the tough and tricky struggle against reactionary forces amongst us. It is a victory of the many who have sacrificed their lives to drive out the Portuguese colonialists and to expose the new exploiters. The Conference therefore takes on special significance, for bloodshed and sacrifice lie behind it. It was made possible by the clarification and consolidation embarked on amid our ranks. We must therefore carry on the work that has just been started and avoid patting ourselves on the back for victories achieved, forgetting the very great deal that remains to be done. Because our Education has been born of bloodshed, it is only right that we should pay tribute to those who have fallen for our country. More than anyone else, Eduardo Mondlane symbolized our struggle to free Man from the colonial yoke and from obscurantism. I therefore request that we observe a minute of silence in his memory and in memory of all the comrades who have laid down their lives. This Conference has set itself the task of analyzing the work achieved, discovering the errors and shortcomings in our activity and, based on our principles, promoting the implementation of the task entrusted to the Department by FRELIMO’s leading organs. Other documents to be submitted to the Conference contain detailed analysis of the work done, of the great deal that has been done and the vast amount we still have to do. Here we wish simply to put forward a few themes for reflection which, as they express the preoccupations of FRELIMO’s leadership, will help to guide us in our work. After demonstrating the harmfulness of both traditional and colonial education, we should like to explain the educational goals we have set ourselves in relation to the new society we are struggling for. At the same time, it is essential that we establish guiding lines which take into account the immediate imperatives of the situation, the need to unite the people, to deepen our knowledge of our country’s society and environment, to advance the war and to reconstruct the nation. Finally, we wish to formulate what seem to us the most correct methods of facing problems successfully within a revolutionary perspective. I. Education and Society Each society always seeks to ensure its survival through new generations, passing on its accumulated knowledge and experience. However, since society exists within the framework of its structures, its survival obviously involves the perpetuation of these structures, however oppressive they may be. In this context, the education that is passed on, because it is a reflection of an actual society, serves to justify that society: its economic structures, its social customs, its ethical and artistic concepts, in short, the culture of that society. In the present phase in Mozambique, there are three antagonistic types of education, two of them reflecting societies which are on their way out and the third directed towards the future. (a) Traditional education and the paralysis of society Although the colonialists dealt a powerful blow to traditional society, traditional education is still the dominant form of education in Mozambique. Owing to their superficial knowledge of nature, members of traditional society conceive of it as a series of forces of supernatural origin which are to varying degrees hostile to man. Hence the fact that superstition takes the place of science in education. Furthermore, the poor development of the traditional economy based on subsistence agriculture results in the isolation of the community. Taking advantage of the superstition among the masses and the community’s isolation, certain social groups are able to maintain their retrograde rule over society. In this context education aims at passing on tradition, which is raised to the level of a dogma. The system of age groups and initiation rites is intended to keep the youth under the sway of old ideas, to destroy their initiative. All that is new, different and foreign is opposed in the name of tradition. Thus all progress is prevented and the society survives in a completely static way. Women are regarded as second class human beings, subjected to the humiliating practice of polygamy, acquired through a gift made to their families, inherited by the husband’s family on his death, and educated to serve man passively. (b) The colonial education system based on social discrimination Whereas innovation and science are seen to disrupt the fossilized structures of the past, conversely capitalism uses them to exploit men more. The more traditional society fights individualism, the more capitalism promotes it, in that it creates in the exploiter the required mentality for exploiting his victim and prevents the exploited from uniting with their comrades to overcome oppression. In Mozambique, a colonial country, social discrimination in education is accentuated by racial discrimination. Education is reserved almost exclusively for the children of settlers, and particularly higher education, which is for the children of rich settlers. In addition to its overall purpose of reinforcing bourgeois oppression, colonial education seeks particularly to de-personalize the Mozambican. Removed from his people whom he is taught to look down upon, isolated by the individualism instilled in him, with no dimension in time provided by his own history, ignorant by the space determined by his own geography, living on imported ideas, deformed by the decadent attitudes of colonial society, the Mozambican is supposed to become a black-skinned Portuguese, a docile tool of colonialism whose highest ambition is to live like the settler in whose image he is created. (c) Revolutionary education and the creation of the New Man When we took up arms to defeat the old order, we felt the obscure need to create a new society, strong, healthy and prosperous, in which men free from all exploitation would cooperate for the progress of all.
(c) Revolutionary education and the creation of the New Man When we took up arms to defeat the old order, we felt the obscure need to create a new society, strong, healthy and prosperous, in which men free from all exploitation would cooperate for the progress of all. In the course of our struggle, in the tough fight we have had to wage against reactionary elements, we came to understand our objectives more clearly. We felt especially that the struggle to create new structures would fail without the creation of a new mentality. Creating an attitude of solidarity between people to enable them to carry out collective work presupposes the elimination of individualism. Developing a healthy and revolutionary morality which promotes the liberation of women and the creation of a new generation with a collective feeling of responsibility requires the destruction of inherited corrupt ideas and tastes. In order to lay the foundations of a prosperous and advanced economy, science has to overcome superstition. To unite all Mozambicans, transcending traditions and different languages, requires that the tribe must die in our consciousness so that the nation may be born. What I mean by this is that to us education does not mean teaching how to read and write, creating an elite group of graduates, with no direct relationship to our objectives. In other words, just as one can wage an armed struggle without carrying out a revolution, one can also learn without educating oneself in a revolutionary way. We do not want to form an educated elite at the service of an exploitative group. We do not want science to be used to enrich a minority, oppress man and stifle the creative initiative of the masses, the inexhaustible source of collective progress. Each of us must assume his revolutionary responsibilities in education, regarding books, study, as tools at the exclusive service of the masses. Studying must be seen as a revolutionary task to be combined with the revolutionary tasks of production and fighting. He who studies should be like a spark lighting the flame which is the people. The principal task of education, in our teaching, textbooks, and programs, is to instill in each of us the advanced, scientific, objective and collective ideology which enables us to progress in the revolutionary process. Education must prepare us to internalize the new society and its requirements. Education must give us a Mozambican personality which, without subservience of any kind and steeped in our own realities, will be able, in contact with the outside world, to assimilate critically the ideas and experiences of other peoples, also passing on to them the fruits of our thought and practice. We need a consciousness of responsibility and collective solidarity, free from all individualism and corruption. We have to acquire a scientific attitude, open and free from the dead weight of superstition and dogmatic traditions. We need particularly to create a new attitude in women, emancipating their consciousness and behavior, and at the same time instill in men new behavior and attitudes towards women. We must make everyone aware of the need to serve the people, to participate in production, to respect manual labor, to release creative initiative and to develop a sense of responsibility. In short, what we want is a revolutionary mentality which uses science to serve the people. Our continued progress depends on the new generation. For the first time in our history, there are children, young people, growing up away from colonialism, away from dogmatic traditions. There is a generation, the first, which is being formed in the heat of the revolution. This is the generation which will be called upon in the 20 years to come to carry on the task we are starting. They are the plant nursery from which will come the selected plants ensuring the ultimate triumph of the revolution. In this respect the task of the teachers and cadres in education is an extraordinarily delicate one, because like us they grew up and were formed in the old world, and carry within them many bad habits and defects, a lot of individualism and ambition, many corrupt and superstitious attitudes which are harmful and might contaminate the new generation. Teachers and education cadres must behave like the doctor who, before approaching the patient in the operating theatre, disinfects and sterilizes himself so as not to infect the patient. Through constant meetings, through continual criticism and self-criticism, teachers and education cadres must eliminate old ideas and tastes, so as to be able to acquire the new mentality and pass it on to the next generation. How would we classify a doctor or nurse who contaminates patients? Who instead of caring for them and saving them, passes on diseases to them. We must show maximum severity towards anyone among the teachers and education cadres who displays subjectivism, individualism, tribalism, arrogance, superstition or ignorance. In short, the teacher, the education cadre, united with the masses, must wage an internal struggle, must disinfect himself, getting rid of the old and wholly internalizing the new. II. The present Situation and Its Requirements Apart from the long-term task of creating a new mentality, there are requirements of the present situation which education is called upon to meet. We can’t create a new society without destroying the old, without overthrowing colonialism and its vestiges, without creating the economic foundations for advancing the war and our society. (a) The unity of the people and education One of the prime concerns of education should be the unity of the people. Colonialism sought to accentuate all ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural divisions there might be among the Mozambican people. At the same time, traditional education by extolling the cult of the linguistic community to which a person belongs, instills in him an attitude of contempt, and at times even of hatred, towards other communities. In our teaching we should bring out the similarities in the conditions of the Mozambican people as a whole. We should explain how colonialism exploits every region. The pupil needs to realize that the Mueda peasant’s struggle against cotton growing is no different to the struggle of the sugar cane growers on the banks of the Zambezi, that the struggle of the stevedores in Louren�o Marques is the same as that of the miners in Tete. Workers shipped from Nampula to S�o Tom� or to the Louren�o Marques railways suffer the same exploitation as the men from Gaza who are sold to South Africa.
The fishermen and rice cultivators in Manica e Sofala are exploited by the same foreigner as occupies the oilfields of Inhambane. Taxes were just as crushing a burden on the people of Niassa who, like all Mozambicans, never saw a school or hospital which catered for them. At the same time, the pupil must identify with the heroic traditions of our whole country: the fight of Maguiane, the resistance of Baru�, the splendor of Sofala and the magnificence of Monomotapa. Mozambique’s cultural wealth does not belong to any one region. The contribution of the Zavala marimba players is as much a source of pride to us as Makonde sculpture and the gold filigree work of the Tete goldsmiths. In this connection, we should like to hail the decision to invite Mozambican sculptors to teach the boys and girls at the Tunduru Pilot School the wonders of their art. We hope that there will be more and more similar initiatives in the fields of painting, goldsmithing, iron and copper working, artistic handicrafts, mat-making, basketry, etc. Regionalism, tribalism and the attitude of looking down on other communities are the result of ignorance, of lack of knowledge of other values. No one loves what he does not know. This is why we regard the First Cultural Festival the DEC proposes to hold as a valuable contribution to our national unity, for the development of our culture. It is to be hoped that regional and provincial festivals will be held prior and subsequent to the First Cultural Festival. Let art seek to combine old form with new content, then giving rise to new form. Let painting, written literature, theatre and artistic handicrafts be added to the traditionally cultivated dance, sculpture and singing. Let the creativity of some become that of all, men and women young and old, from the North to the South, so that the new revolutionary and Mozambican culture may be born of all. In the schools, on the classroom benches, in the house and canteens and in production, we should always endeavor to join pupils and teachers from different regions, so that through day-to-day familiarity we rid ourselves of regional reflexes and acquire Mozambican feelings and consciousness. It is by uniting in work that we really unite. Teachers and pupils should work side by side at all tasks, because there are no greater or lesser tasks in the revolution, only revolutionary tasks. Because words have no life without practice, a body without flesh is a skeleton and a body without bones can’t stay upright on its own, it is necessary constantly to transform the assertion of unity into the practice of unity. Uniting with one another means knowing and understanding one another. It is in joint effort, in sweat expended at the same time, in the tree trunk torn out by combining our strength, in the dance composed through the creativity of minds working together that knowing and understanding come into being and unity is consolidated. (b) Knowledge of the society and environment In our struggle against the colonialists, one of the decisive factors for our victory is that we are struggling in our own country, that is, in a society and on a terrain which are ours and which we know better than anyone. The development of our struggle requires that we constantly deepen our knowledge of our country, that this knowledge becomes increasingly scientific. Studying the history, geography, zoology, botany and mineralogy of our land will enable us to know how to use our resources better. It should be considered especially that our people have a great deal of knowledge about the resources of nature, even though this knowledge is empirical and often distorted by superstition. In our education we should encourage teachers and pupils to compile the empirical knowledge of the masses and analyze it critically and objectively so as to develop our knowledge and science for the benefit of society. It is also necessary to promote constant discussion and study on the usages and customs of each region, so as to know them better, assimilate them and purify them through criticism. Each of us must understand that the task he is called upon to perform is in Mozambique. In other words, Mozambique is not a given region, village or province, but a vast country with a great diversity of conditions which we need to understand if we are to be effective. (c) Technology and the advance of the struggle We are confronting an enemy army which is backed by all the resources of modern technology, and in order to face up to the growing needs of the masses and the war we are obliged to continually increase and diversify production. At the same time, our social and administrative needs require the use of more personnel and more complex technology. While it is true that it is in military camps and especially in the field that we discover the ways of destroying the enemy’s military machine, it is still necessary to impart a minimum of scientific knowledge to militants, to cadres, to enable them to increase their mastery of military technology. Production requires ever more attention. In facing up to the needs of the masses under war conditions we should rely above all on our own efforts. However, diversifying production, improving techniques, using nature to fight against natural calamities, digging wells and irrigation channels, building dams and so forth, requires of us knowledge we do not always have. We want pupils to acquire such practical knowledge at school. Cotton spinning and weaving should be taught with the natural sciences; the theory and practice of building dams and irrigation channels should be combined with arithmetic and physics; there should be practice in building water wheels, mills turned by animals and windmills. In short, there is a great deal of scientific and practical knowledge which could help us to develop our agriculture and promote the establishment of such craft-based industries as cabinet making, carpentry, masonry, pottery, soap making, spinning and weaving, making furnaces for iron production, kilns for bricks, etc. Combining education with production means above all the theoretical and practical acquisition of knowledge to be made available for production, administration, social services and combat. III. Revolution and Education methods It is obvious that if we are to solve all the problems that face us successfully we must use methods suited to our situation. To be effective, our methods must derive from our principles and practice, they must be based on that which constitutes our strength. (a) Education and the mass line Our chief strength, the primary cause of all we do, is the people.
In solving our problems we should rely on the people in defining our objective interests and struggling to achieve them. Only by following this line can we distinguish the essential from the secondary, the immediate from the long term, defining what are our interests and distinguishing that which belongs to the enemy from that which is ours. These principles also apply to our work in education. The chief characteristic of the situation in education in our country is the illiteracy prevailing among the overwhelming majority of our people, as well as the obscurantist practices caused by colonialism and superstition. The main battle in the field of education is therefore against illiteracy and obscurantism. If we are to succeed, we must mobilize the masses in this battle, making them aware of the need to learn and showing them the catastrophic consequences of ignorance. Without the active participation of the masses in the battle against illiteracy it will not be possible to wipe it out, and without an understanding of the evils introduced by obscurantism nothing will make them struggle against it. It is also by following the mass line that we define the priorities and establish the education program. How are we to know, for example, where we should devote the greatest efforts, whether in literacy teaching, higher education, training primary school teachers or establishing secondary education? Should a pupil who has completed primary education carry on with his studies or should he devote himself to teaching literacy? Should we be content to state that 20,000 children in the liberated areas are receiving schooling when in those same areas there are still hundreds of thousands of children who have no contact with any school? Should we give priority to children or to the army, which is the backbone of our movement? These are extremely serious problems requiring deep thought. The priorities in our education work have not as yet been properly established, and this 2nd Conference must make a careful study of the problem. (b) Learning war in the war This problem stems mainly from the concept that a pupil needs continuous education, that is, that the pupil must remain in school from the primary level until he obtains his higher education diploma. However, the circumstances under which we are living, of war and massive illiteracy, demand concepts and methods which meet both our future objectives and our most immediate objectives, for unless these are solved there will be no future. This means that instead of continuous education we should give priority to permanent and progressive education. We mean that all militants should at all times be able to raise their technical, cultural and political level. At the same time it means that after priorities have been established, some people will be selected for special crash courses, so that they can then impart their newly-acquired knowledge to broader sectors of the people. In the final analysis, this is the method we have already been using successfully for some years in our war. As soon as a fighter receives a minimum of training, he goes into battle where he further develops his practical knowledge and passes it on to others. Some are selected from the battlefield for more advanced training, and they then return to raise the general level. We do not wait to train generals in order to fight battles. (c) Relying on our own forces Stemming from what we have just said is the principle of relying on our own forces. We do not wait for others to come and solve our problems for us. We do not wait for help from outside in order to face situations we come up against. We are all aware that to solve the problems of education and to prepare textbooks and programs, highly specialized personnel are required. It seems to us that more productive use should be made of the higher cadres in education – both national and foreign. We feel that these people should devote themselves primarily to training and refresher courses for education cadres, the drawing up and supervision of programs and correspondence courses. In short, the programs should be directed towards raising the general level, which is a fundamental need in our war. In line with this, we think it would be wasteful to use foreign teachers solely for teaching secondary school pupils, who will only be productive in the long term, when the very requirements of education calls for cadres with a minimal scientific base to teach literacy to children, the army, workers in cooperatives and the militia. This approach might land us in the situation of some independent countries which have a few hundred graduates on the one hand, and a vast mass of illiterates on the other, without the middle cadres needed to ensure a proper output from the higher cadres. It is like a house with a roof but no foundations. Let us pool our little knowledge and it will add up to a great deal. Let us discuss frequently, subjecting our ideals and knowledge to criticism and practice, studying a lot, holding regional and provincial seminars to increase our knowledge and exchange experiences. Let us try to organise correspondence courses to raise the knowledge of teachers and cadres. Conclusions If we rely on the masses, learning war in the war and relying on our own forces, we shall be able to win the battle of education. We have already achieved a great deal and this 2nd Conference shows us the distance we have covered since 1962, when education meant only the Mozambique Institute and good will in helping a few militants in Dar es Salaam. Today our education means thousands and thousands of children in schools in liberated Mozambique, hundreds of teachers, adults studying, secondary education being re-organized, and about two hundred Mozambicans following technical and higher education courses abroad. It is appropriate here to congratulate all the comrades who have made this reality possible, and in particular to pay tribute to the memory of our beloved President Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane. We must also congratulate his wife, Comrade Janet Mondlane. These two comrades were among the first to understand that the destruction of obscurantism, of ignorance, was a fundamental task in our struggle. May this Conference, may the Department of Education and Culture put into practice the watchword we are here issuing: Educate man to win the war, create a new society and develop our country. THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH.
INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN. Samora Machel Archive
Samora Machel 1973 The Liberation of Women is a Fundamental Necessity for the Revolution Written: 1973; First Published: 1973; Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 21-36; Transcription: Liz Blasczak. Opening Speech at the First Conference of Mozambican Women, 4 March, 1973. This is a historic and glorious moment in the life of our organization. For the first time we are holding a conference of Mozambican women engaged in all sectors of activity within our revolution. For the first time FRELIMO militants are meeting together to pool their efforts and jointly work out a strategy for the emancipation of women. We should like first, on behalf of FRELIMO’s Central Committee to express warm greetings to all of the delegations present here. Allow us to extend a special welcome to the delegates from the war provinces, who have left very important sectors of work so that through their presence and experience they may contribute to the success of this conference. Their presence here is both proof of their understanding of the value of this conference, and a guarantee of its success. We hail the women comrades from Cabo Delagado who are fighting heroically on every front, many since the start of the war, advancing and consolidating the revolution and dealing tremendous blows against the colonialist and reactionary forces. We hail the comrades who have come from Niassa, such a large province with a small population. These comrades are facing great difficulties, but they have proved that they are able to overcome them, showing unbreakable determination and revolutionary spirit, daily defending our organization’s central ideas, transporting equipment, mobilizing the population, producing, feeding the guerillas, creating conditions whereby in Niassa FRELIMO’s presence remains undisputed. The comrades from Tete have a special responsibility. This province is of great strategic importance; it represents the door to the liberation of the whole of Southern Africa and is a center of direct conflict between the forces of revolution and reaction. We warmly welcome the comrades from Tete and congratulate them for having so completely assumed the watchwords of our movement, so that only in about four years, alongside the men, their comrades in arms, they have been able to carry the torch of freedom throughout the whole of Tete province, now also taking it into Manica e Sofala to light the way there. We should like to hail the comrades doing clandestine work in the zones still occupied by the Portuguese colonialists. Working in the midst of the enemy, subject to incalculable risks and to the temptations of corruption in which the enemy specializes, these comrades put the interests of the people above all else, facing the risks and rejecting corruption as they create the conditions for the outbreak of armed struggle. They give us extremely valuable information and make a very important contribution to the progress of our liberation struggle. We would also like to extend special greetings to the comrades who work in the FRELIMO camps outside the country, in various sectors of activities. As FRELIMO representatives, where they play an outstanding role in supplying the new fronts; in the secondary school where they are training the cadres who will assume our policies, discovering the secrets of science and destroying myths, so as to mobilize both society and nature in the interests of the revolution. We also hail the comrades from Americo Boavida hospital at Mtwara, who are carrying out our principle of putting the health services at the service of the masses, treating the sick and the war wounded, so as to make them fit to return to the struggle, and training cadres who will defend the health of our people on the front line. The comrades of the Centre for Political and Military Training deserve special mention. They are carrying out a delicate and difficult mission, that of turning men and women hitherto guided by outmoded ideas and prejudices into politically conscious fighters, prepared to destroy the enemy’s physical and ideological forces of exploitation and oppression. The comrades in our children’s home have three decisive tasks. Educating the new generation, instilling in children the new way of thinking which will make them true perpetuators of the revolution. Teaching students so that, understanding our line, they master science and become agents for the transformation of society. And making the wives of militants into active militants themselves, into true mothers of the revolution. To these comrades, who are the hosts at this conference today, we address warm greetings, conscious as we are of their important role as educators. We can state with pride that this conference is a great victory, a victory against the traditions and obscurantism which doom women to passivity, a victory against the exploitative society which enslaves women and a victory for the revolution, which is liberating the exploited and the oppressed and which is releasing the creative initiative of the masses. But victories are built and sustained through blood and sacrifice. There are many women and many men who should have been here with us today, those who in the fight against the enemy and in the internal struggle that took place, have created the political, moral and even physical conditions for our meeting here. They are not physically with us. Their sacrifice is a bridge to our future success. Some gave up their lives in a final heroic act; for others each day of their lives was a heroic act, an example of service to the masses, of defense of our line. We are what we are because of the sacrifices which have gone into the revolution. It is therefore fitting that as we being our conference we observe a minute of silence in memory of the women and men who have fallen serving the people, serving the revolution. Gathered here are women from all the provinces, from all the regions and ethnic groups of our country, with varying levels of education and culture. There are mothers and even grandmothers, side by side with young single women. We have here teachers, instructresses, soldiers, nurses, students and also peasant women. Men will also be attending the conference, your comrades in arms not only in the liberation of the nation, but also in the very struggle for the emancipation of women. THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN a.
THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN a. The historical context of this conference. This conference is taking place at a specific historical moment in the life of our organization. It is this historical context that gives the conference its importance, its profound significance. We have just celebrated the tenth anniversary of the founding of FRELIMO. Achieving the unity of the Mozambican people from the Rovuma to the Maputo provided us with an indispensible instrument for launching the process of liberation. Unity constitutes the driving forces of our action. The transformation of our unity into an operative force in other words, the launching of our armed struggle on the 25th of September 1964 created the conditions for the beginning of a radical process of transformation in our country. The recent celebrations of the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the armed struggle for national liberation take on a special importance now that the struggle has already become a revolution and as such is gradually spreading to all regions of our country, as shown by the recent opening of the Manica e Sofala front. The eighth anniversary we celebrated also corresponds to an advanced phase in the process of collapse in the enemy’s military and political effort. As pointed out by the recent Central Committee meeting, we are now entering upon the stage of generalized offensives by our forces in the politico-military field, a stage which will change the balance of forces between us and the enemy in our favor. The constant clarification and strengthening of our line over the four and a half years since the Second Congress have made our achievements possible and provided the guidance needed to enable us all to reach this point. This is the context in which the conditions that led us to call this conference became ripe. The opening of the conference almost coincides with the 8th of march, International Women’s day, the day when all of progressive mankind solemnly reaffirms its support for the struggle for women’s liberation. This fortunate coincidence should be an incentive to us, since it reminds us of the fact that our struggle is not isolated, showing us that the struggle of women is the struggle of humanity and making us aware of the progress already achieved. The main purpose of this conference is to study questions concerning the emancipation of women, to find lines of action which will lead to their emancipation. But a preliminary question arises: why bother with the emancipation of women? And another: why call this conference now? There are people among us, as our movement is well aware, who feel that we should devote all our efforts to the struggle against colonialism and that the task of women’s emancipation is therefore secondary because it will dissipate our forces. They further add that our present situation, with a shortage of schools, very few educated women and with women still bound by tradition, does not provide any basis for embarking upon consistent action, and that it is therefore necessary to wait for independence for the establishment of sound economic, social, and educational foundations for launching the fight. Yet others, giving a twisted interpretation of Statutes, claim that certain local traditions must be respected and that we can’t oppose them at this stage for fear of losing the support of the masses. They then ask why there is a need to emancipate women at this point, when the vast majority of women are indifferent to the matter. After all they conclude, emancipation would be artificial, imposed on women by FRELIMO. This is a very serious question. It demands careful study and clear thought. b. The need for emancipation The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the revolution, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its victory. The main objective of the revolution is to destroy the system of exploitation and build a new society which releases the potentialities of human beings, reconciling them with labor and with nature. This is the context within which the question of women’s emancipation arises. Generally speaking, women are the most oppressed, humiliated and exploited beings in society. A woman is even exploited by a man who is himself exploited, beaten by the man who is lacerated by the palmatoria, humiliated by the man who is crushed under the boot of the boss and the settler. How can the revolution triumph without the liberation of women? Will it be possible to get rid of the system of exploitation while keeping one part of society exploited? One can’t only partially wipe out exploitation and oppression, one can’t tear up only half the weeds without even stronger ones spreading from out from the half that has survived. How then can one make a revolution without mobilizing women? If more than half the exploited and oppressed people consist of women, how can they be left on the fringe of the struggle? To make a revolution it is necessary to mobilize all the exploited and oppressed, and consequently women as well. If it is to be victorious, the revolution must eliminate the whole system of exploitation and oppression, liberating all the exploited and oppressed. Therefore it must eliminate the exploitation and oppression of women, it is forced to liberate women. Moreover, if we also consider the basic need for the revolution to be continued by the new generation, how can we ensure the revolutionary education of the generation which will carry on our work if mothers, the first educators, are marginal to the revolutionary process? How can one turn the homes of the exploited and the oppressed into cells of revolutionary struggle, centers for the diffusion of our line, encouraging the involvement of the family, if women remain apathetic to this process, indifferent to the society which is being built and deaf to the call of the people, To say that women do not feel the need to liberate themselves, or that it is often FRELIMO, and not the women, which upholds women’s emancipation is a paltry argument which can’t stand up to analysis. Women feel their subjection, they feel the need to change their situation. What happens is that the domination imposed by society, by stifling their initiative, often prevents them from expressing their aspirations, often prevents them from thinking of how to wage their struggle. It is here that FRELIMO intervenes. As the conscious vanguard of the women and men of Mozambique, of the oppressed people, FRELIMO formulates the line and indicates the methods of the struggle.
It is essential that we understand this phenomenon so as to avoid false and futile debates. c. The right time to launch the fight The other question that arises is when is the right time to launch the struggle? We can’t limit the revolutionary process to certain people while neglecting others, because this would halt the revolution, destroy it. The roots of an evil which we underestimate and decide to pull out at a later date become the roots of a cancer which can destroy us, invading the whole body, before we get to that ‘later date’. Under the present conditions, FRELIMO is no longer able to wage an armed struggle without carrying a revolution. The preconditions for advancing the armed struggle is to attack the very roots of exploitation. The idea of waiting until later to emancipate women is erroneous; it means allowing reactionary ideas to gain ground only to fight them when they are strong. It is like not fighting the alligator on the bank only to fight him in the middle of the river. The armed struggle, acting like an incubator, has already created the conditions for the masses to be receptive to the ideas of progress and revolution. To avoid joining battle when conditions are ripe is lack of political foresight, an error of strategy. This close and indissoluble link between revolution and the liberation of women also enables us to understand why this conference is taking place now and not five years ago, for example. Let us recall an experience we had, that of the Mozambican Women’s League (LIFEMO). LIFEMO was created in Mbeya in June 1966. At that meeting, attended virtually only by women who were on the fringe of the struggle, they elected a leadership which was ignorant of the struggle and of the country, and which set itself some tasks outside the real perspectives of the struggle. A few months after the LIFEMO conference, all that remained of the leadership were the names. Like a rotten fruit, LIFEMO decayed of its own accord. Why? When LIFEMO was established, what stage had been reached by FRELIMO, the Mozambican revolution and women? FRELIMO did not yet have sound structures and its line had not been sufficiently well understood and internalized because it had not yet been put to test in the struggle. Its cadres and leadership had not been sufficiently seasoned by struggle and they lacked experience. This situation, where although the line was clear it had not been internalized, where the structures were not sound, the leadership was not experienced and the cadres were not seasoned, blocked the development of our line through practice. We were unable to distinguish the essential from the secondary, unable to define our tasks correctly, establishing proper priorities. Therefore we had only reached a very embryonic stage of the popularization of the war, the point of departure under our conditions for transforming the struggle into a revolution. We can therefore say that at the time of LIFEMO’s creation the revolutionary process was still at the initial stage. This shows why it was difficult to wage the battle for the emancipation of women: it is inseparable from the development of the revolution. Consequently, for LIFEMO to talk of the emancipation of women was merely an empty verbal exercise, an imitation of what was going on elsewhere in the world, a superficial fashion. It was so because at that time women as a whole were not involved in the struggle. And what is more important, those who were involved were discriminated against. They were not invited to attend the conference. Having no involvement or tasks, LIFEMO was doomed to wither away and die. And this is precisely what happened. Today the conditions for launching a victorious battle really exist. FRELIMO’s line has been internalized and developed in practice, our cadres are gaining experience, being tempered in the struggle, and the process of purifying our ranks has thus begun. The revolutionary process has been assured, the struggle has already been transformed into a revolution and national unity is becoming ideological unity. The participation of women in the armed struggle, the principal task at our present historical stage, enables them to put our unity into practice and creates the conditions for transforming their consciousness, so that they feel their responsibilities, become consciously involved, undertake critical analysis and understand that society is created by ourselves. So the wind of revolution blows, and with it, necessarily, the wind of women’s emancipation. FRELIMO’s Central Committee is making us hoist our sails, and this is a favorable moment for us to set sail. 2. THE BASIS OF WOMEN’ ALIENATION a. The system of exploitation. The starting point To speak of the emancipation of women clearly implies that they are oppressed and exploited. It is important to understand the basis of that oppression and exploitation. Let us begin by saying that the oppression of women is the result of their exploitation; oppression in society is always the result of imposed exploitation. Colonialism did not come to occupy our country for the purpose of arresting us, flogging us and beating us with the palmatoria.
Colonialism did not come to occupy our country for the purpose of arresting us, flogging us and beating us with the palmatoria. It invaded and occupied our country for the purpose of exploiting our wealth and labor. In order to exploit us, in order to quell our resistance to exploitation and prevent us from rebelling against it, it then introduced the system of oppression; physical oppression, through the courts, the police, the armed forces, imprisonment, torture and massacre; and spiritual oppression, through obscurantism, superstition and ignorance, designed to destroy the spirit of creative initiative, to kill the sense of justice and criticism, to reduce the individual to passivity and make him accept his exploited and oppressed state as a normal thing. Humiliation and contempt came into being in the process, since he who exploits and oppresses tends to humiliate and despise his victims, regarding them as inherently inferior beings. And then racism appears, the supreme form of humiliation and contempt. The mechanism of women’s alienation is identical to the mechanism of the alienation of the colonized man in colonial society, or of the worker in capitalist society. From the moment when early man started to produce more than he consumed, the material foundations were laid for the emergence of a stratum in society which would appropriate the fruits of the majority’s labor. This appropriation of the product of the masses labour by a handful of people in society is the essence of the system of the exploitation of man by man and the crux of the antagonistic contradiction which has divided society for centuries. As soon as the process of exploitation was unleashed, women as a whole – like men – were subjected to the domination of the privileged strata. Women are also producers, and workers, but with specific characteristics. To possess women is to possess workers, unpaid workers, workers whose entire labor power can be appropriated without resistance by the husband, who is the lord and master. In an agrarian economy, marrying many women is a sure way of accumulating a great deal of wealth. The husband is assured of free labor which neither complains nor rebels against exploitation. Hence the important role played by polygamy in the rural areas of a primitive economy. Society, realizing that women are a source of wealth, demands that a price be paid for them. The girl’s parents demand from their future son in law the payment of a bride-price – lobolo – before giving up their daughter. The woman is bought and inherited just like material goods, or any source of wealth. But what is more important is that compared with, say, the slave, who is also a source of wealth and an unpaid worker, the woman offers her owner two added advantages. She is a source of pleasure and above all, she produces other workers, she produces new sources of wealth. This last aspect is particularly significant. Society grants the husband the right to repudiate his wife and demand re-payment of the lobolo should she prove barren, or if the husband thinks that she is. It can also be noted that in many societies, mindful of the value of the labor power of the woman’s children, the principal is established that the children belong to the mother’s clan or family. In our society, it is also current practice for the children to continue to belong to the mother’s family, especially if the husband has not paid the entire lobolo, that is, the purchase price for the wealth. This situation has led to the excessive emphasis on women’s fertility and the transformation of the man-woman relationship into the mere act of procreation. But a particular situation emerged. Owing to his control over the masses, the exploiter acquired vast riches, vast estates, large herds of cattle, gold and jewels and so on. Yet despite his wealth he was still mortal, like other men. The problem then of the fate of his wealth – in other words, the question of inheritance – became crucial. Women are the producers of heirs. It is therefore clear that the exploitation of women and their consequent oppression starts in the system of private ownership of the means of production, in the system of exploitation of man by man. b. The ideological and cultural mechanisms of domination A society based on private ownership of the means of production, on the exploitation of men, creates and imposes the ideology and culture which uphold its values and ensure its survival. The economic exploitation of women, their transformation into mere producers with no rights, at the service of their owners – whether their husbands or fathers – requires the establishment of a corresponding ideology and culture, together with an educational system to pass them on. Obviously, this is not something which happens all at once, but a process developed and refined over thousands of years of the society’s existence. Obscurantism is the beginning of the process. The general principle is to keep women in ignorance or give them only an essential minimum of education. Everywhere we find that illiteracy is higher among women, they are always a minority in schools, colleges and universities, even though they are the majority of the population. Science has always been kept as man’s monopoly, his exclusive domain, in the developed civilizations of the past as in capitalist society today. To keep women away from science is to prevent them from discovering that society is created as a function of certain specific interests and that it is therefore possible to change society. Obscurantism and ignorance go hand in hand with superstition and give rise to passivity. All superstitions and religions find their most fertile soil amongst women, because they are submerged in the greatest ignorance and obscurantism. In our society, rites and ceremonies are the main vehicle for the transmission of society’s concept of women’s inferiority, and their subservience to men. It is here too that countless myths and superstitions are propagated with the express intention of destroying women’s sense of initiative and reducing them to passivity. Family education itself emphasizes and reinforces this. From infancy the girl is brought up differently from the boy and a feeling of inferiority instilled in her.
From infancy the girl is brought up differently from the boy and a feeling of inferiority instilled in her. None of this is surprising. As we have said, exploitative society promotes the ideology, culture and education that serves its interests. It does so with women, just as it does colonized people and with workers in capitalist society. All are deliberately kept in ignorance, obscurantism and superstition with a view to making them resigned to their position, of instilling in them an attitude of passivity and servility. This is where racism comes in. The colonized man is called a second class human being by virtue of his skin. The woman is called an inferior human being by virtue of her sex. In capitalist countries in Europe, they claim that women are creatures with long hair and short ideas. The process of alienation reaches its peak when the exploited person, reduced to total passivity, is no longer capable of imagining that the possibility of liberation exists and in turn becomes a tool for the propagation of the ideology of resignation and passivity. It must be recognized that the centuries old subjugation of women has to a great extent reduced them to a passive state, which prevents them from even understanding their condition. c. The nature of the antagonism It is important to understand correctly the nature of the contradiction or contradictions involved, for only after understanding them will we be in a position to define the target of our attack and plan the appropriate strategy and tactics for our struggle. We have seen that the basis of the domination of women lies in the system of economic organization of society, private ownership of the means of production, which necessarily leads to the exploitation of man by man. This means that apart from the specific features of their situation, the contradiction between women and the social order is in essence a contradiction between women and the exploitation of man by man, between women and the private ownership of the means of production. In other words, it is the same as the contradiction between the working masses and the exploitative social order. Let us be clear on this point. The antagonistic contradiction is not between women and men, but between women and the social order, between all exploited people, both women and men, and the social order. The fact that they are exploited explains why they are not involved in all planning and decision making tasks in society, why they are excluded from working out the concepts which govern economic, social, cultural and political life, even when their interests are directly affected. This is the main feature of the contradiction: their exclusion from the sphere of decision making in society. This contradiction can only be solved by revolution, because only revolution destroys the foundations of exploitative society and rebuilds society on new foundations, freeing the initiative of women, integrating them in society as responsible members and involving them in decision making. Therefore, just as there can be no revolution without the liberation of women, the struggle for women’s emancipation can’t succeed without the victory of the revolution. It should be pointed out that the ideological and cultural precepts of the exploitative society which maintain the subjugation of women are destroyed by the advance of the ideological and cultural revolution which introduces into society new values, a new content to education and culture. But apart from the antagonistic contradiction between women and the social order, other contradictions of a secondary nature also arise between women and men as a kind of reflex. The marriage system, marital authority based solely on sex, the frequent brutality of the husband and his consistent refusal to treat his wife as an equal, are sources of friction and contradiction. If they are not correctly solved, these secondary contradictions may become more acute and produce such serious consequences as divorce. But however serious they may be, these factors do not alter the nature of the contradiction. It is important to stress this aspect, because we now see an ideological offensive taking place particularly in the capitalist world, in the guise of a women’s liberation struggle. The aim is to transform the contradiction with men into an antagonistic one, thereby dividing exploited men and women to prevent them from fighting the exploitative society. In fact, leaving aside the demagoguery which hides its true nature, this ideological offensive is an offensive by capitalism to confuse women, to divert their attention from the real target. We see small manifestations of this offensive appearing among us. Here and there we hear women grumbling about men, as if the cause of their exploitation lay in the difference between the sexes, as if the men were sadistic monsters who derive pleasure from the oppression of women. Men and women are products and victims of the exploitative society which has created and formed them. It is essentially against this society that men and women should fight united. Our practical experience has proved that the progress achieved in the liberation of women is the result of the successes gained in our common struggle against colonialism and imperialism, against the exploitation of man by man, and to build a new society. 3. STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL QUESTIONS a. Our main lines of action The fight for women’s emancipation demands, as a first step, the clarification of our ideas. Such clarification is all the more imperative in that there is a profusion of erroneous ideas about the emancipation of women. There are those who see emancipation as mechanical equality between men and women. This vulgar concept is often seen among us. Here emancipation means that women and men do exactly the same tasks, mechanically dividing their household duties. ‘If I wash the dishes today you must wash them tomorrow, whether or not you are busy or have the time.’ If there are still no women truck drivers or tractor drivers in FRELIMO, we must have some right away regardless of the objective and subjective conditions. As we can see from the example of capitalist countries, this mechanically conceived emancipation leads to complaints and attitudes which utterly distort the meaning of women’s emancipation. An emancipated woman is one who drinks, smokes, wears trousers and mini skirts, who indulges in sexual promiscuity, who refuses to have children, etc. Others associate emancipation with the accumulation of diplomas, and particular university degrees, which are regarded as certificates of emancipation. Yet others think that emancipation consists of achieving a certain economic, social and cultural level.
Yet others think that emancipation consists of achieving a certain economic, social and cultural level. All these are erroneous and superficial concepts. Not one of them either gets to the heart of the contradiction or suggests a line that will really emancipate women. Emancipation requires action on several essential levels. First of all, a political line of action must be lined down. For women to emancipate themselves there must be conscious political commitment. What does this mean in practical terms? It means, firstly, that the line must be laid down by a revolutionary political organization which, defending the interests of the exploited masses as a whole, leads them in the fight against the old society. Only such an organization is in a position to formulate a global strategy for the fight for liberation. In our case, what this means in concrete terms is that in order to liberate themselves, women must internalize FRELIMO’s political line and live by it in a creative way. Otherwise they will throw themselves into sterile and secondary battles which will exhaust them uselessly and to no effect. To internalize and live by our line requires involvement in the tasks laid down by the organization. Just as plants need to strike roots in the ground in order to grow, so does the political line take root in revolutionary practice. Revolutionary practice destroys the exploitative society, unleashes the internal struggle, demolishes our erroneous ideas and releases our critical sense and creative initiatives. In this context women must be mobilized for internal struggle and for mass struggle, and they must be organized. They will then be able to internalize the political line to start the offensive. They must be involved in the battle for the political education of the next generation and in the battle for the large scale mobilization and organization of the masses. Their commitment to the liberation struggle will then become concrete action, leading them to take part in making decisions affecting the country’s future. There also arises the need to engage in production. Releasing the productive forces and launching the process of economic development will lead to deeper ideological understanding and a sounder knowledge of reality, of society and nature. A third aspect is scientific and cultural education. A scientific and cultural grounding enables women to achieve a correct understanding of their relationship with nature and society, thus destroying the myths fostered by obscurantism which oppress them psychologically and deprive them of initiative. In this way, women will gradually attain all levels of planning, decision making, and implementation in organizing the affairs of children, hospitals, schools, factories, the armed forces, diplomacy, art, science, culture and so on. It should also be emphasized here that all these needs do not apply solely to women, because men are also alienated, though in different ways. The last aspect is that of the relationship between men and women, that is, the new revolutionary concept of the couple and the home. We can already see clearly what this relationship should not be. Until now it has been based on the alleged superiority of man over woman, aimed at satisfying the male ego. We must state here – and this is something new in society – that the family relationship, the man-woman relationship should be founded exclusively on love. We do not mean the the banal, romantic concept of love which amounts to little more than emotional excitement and an idealized view of life. For us, love can only exist between free and equal people who have the same ideals and commitment in serving the masses and the revolution. This is the basis upon which the moral and emotional affinity which constitutes love is built. We need to discover this new dimension, hitherto unknown in our country. b. The organization of women Following the principle of mobilizing, organizing and uniting all our forces in the struggle, the Central Committee, satisfying the aspirations of the increasingly conscious Mozambican women, has decided to establish the Organization of Mozambican Women (OMM). The Organization of Mozambican Women is a body which will provide leadership and guidance for all Mozambican women in the struggle for the emancipation of women and for the revolution. Apart from this, its central task is to mobilize international public opinion in favor of our struggle and to express the solidarity of the Mozambican women and people with the liberating and revolutionary struggle of the women and the peoples of the whole world. One battle the organization has to wage is that of keeping the true sense of emancipation permanently alive, reinforcing the ideological struggle against attempts to disparage the women’s struggle and isolate it from the revolution. Firm adherence to the line, which must be understood, internalized and lived by in the details of everyday life, will give the organization and women themselves the sense of vigilance required to nip in the bud even the slightest reactionary ideological offensive. We can be sure that the colonialist army, like other reactionary and conservative forces, will react against this conference and its results and do their utmost to make our decisions remain a dead letter. Comrades of ours who still cling to erroneous concepts will find it difficult to understand the profound meaning of the women’s struggle and they will put obstacles in its way. But the greatest obstacle will be created by women themselves, by their habit of dependence, their passivity and the dead weight of tradition they carry over from the old society. Women must unite. Unity is the main weapon of the struggle, its driving force. FRELIMO’s political line is your platform for unity, while tribalism, regionalism and racism stand against it. Tribalism and regionalism prevent one from realizing the greatness of our country and of our struggle. They make it impossible to understand the complexity of our country, and above all, they disperse one’s forces. Racism is a reactionary attitude.
Racism is a reactionary attitude. The enemy has no color. The function of racism in our case and in any struggle is to make it difficult to define the real target, creating confusion so as to divide the national revolutionary and progressive forces, weakening them and leading to their annihilation by the common enemy and exploiter. Our struggle would remain isolated from the world-wide struggle of the progressive forces against the exploitation of man by man. Seeds planted among us by the enemy can’t be destroyed by words or magic formulas. The ideological struggle must be started among all women to make them clearly understand the harm of these reactionary ideas. At the same time efforts must be made to explain to women that their experiencing of suffering, exploitation and oppression in Cabo Delegado, Gaza, Niassa, Inhambane, Tete and Maputo, in Zambezia, Manica e Sofala and Nampula, is the same. All bear the same scars, all have known the same hunger, the same poverty, the same suffering, the same shackles, the same widowhood, the same orphanhood, the same tears caused by colonialism and exploitation. We are united through the discovery of common wounds and scars, but above all unity is realized through common effort, links are forged through collective work and study, through collective internal struggle, through criticism and self-criticism, and through action against colonialism. We must also learn from the experience of our sisters throughout the world. That will help us to understand that there are no races or peoples who are exploiters or oppressors. There are no racist peoples, no colonialist peoples. By opening our minds to the experience of others we will not only learn useful lessons, but we will also understand that all countries, all peoples, all races, are waging the same struggle as we are: a struggle against the colonialists and imperialists who have no country, a struggle against the exploiters who have no race. In this way we will be able to see how the struggle of Mozambican women and of our people is the struggle of all of humanity, and we will understand the warmth of the solidarity between us. We must give up the pernicious habit of identifying only with those who come from the same village as ourselves, who speak the same language and have the same culture, traditions and educational background. Those with whom we must identify and see as our sisters, giving them our friendship and affection, our help and fraternal warmth, are all those who, like us, are exploited and oppressed, and who are with us in the great struggle for the liberation of women, the country and the working people. These are all sacred tasks for the Organization of Mozambican Women, because it is the women’s responsibility to bring up the next generation free from tribalism, regionalism, and racism, free from the archaic attitude of oppressing women or passively accepting oppresion, free from superstition and imbued with our class feeling and internationalism. It is also necessary to fight against certain very negative subjective attitudes. Many women comrades think of their commitment as temporary, while they are single, and have a tendency to give up their revolutionary duties as soon as they are married. It is considered normal for wives to return to the village, and for being a wife to become a woman’s sole duty. In many cases this is encouraged by the husband himself who still sees the woman as his private property, dependent on him, existing by virtue of him, and tied to him, almost like a piece of luggage, whom he can use as he pleases, who is obliged to go where he goes. This conflicts both with the requirements of the national liberation struggle and with the women’s struggle for emancipation. We must mobilize all women, so that they feel the need to participate in concrete tasks, to feel responsible, and to be actively engaged in the transformation of society. In this respect, married women especially must concern themselves with setting a positive example to the younger single women and show them in practice that marriage is an incentive for the pursuit of revolutionary tasks. c. The structures of the Organization of Mozambican Women In order to function, to carry out its tasks of leading and guiding women in the struggle for their emancipation, and to involve them ever more deeply in the tasks of the revolution, the Organization of Mozambican Women needs to be properly structured. We are sure that the participation of many comrades engaged in the different sectors of the struggle, the experience they have accumulated and will synthesize here, and their knowledge of the existing difficulties and needs, will enable them to define the basis for the structures to be created and their functions. However, some questions arise. Who should join the Organization of Mozambican Women? How should it function and what should its relationship with the Women’s Detachment be? What should its place be within FRELIMO as a whole? We have said that the duty of the OMM is to involve all Mozambican women in the struggle for emancipation and revolution. It must therefore form the broadest possible front, mobilizing, organizing, and uniting all the women who until now have remained outside the process of transformation of our new society, young and old, single and married, educated and non-educated, militants and non-militants. The OMM must organize Mozambican women, wherever they are to be found, at places of work, in schools, hospitals, detachments, co-operatives and nurseries, organizing women in every base, circle and village. The OMM is a new wing of FRELIMO to reach and involve the women whom we have not yet properly reached or involved. But to carry out this process requires experienced leadership, people who have understood and internalized the line, and lived by it in the process of engaging in the everyday tasks of the revolution. The members of the leadership must therefore have had politico-military training and experience, the indispensable prerequisite for grasping the complexity of the situation and for always being able to see clearly the path to be followed. The Women’s Detachment, because it involves women in the central task of the present phase – direct combat against the colonialist and imperialist enemy – is the vanguard body for the women’s participation in the struggle, and it is now playing an extremely active role in the transformation of society. It therefore constitutes the driving nucleus of the OMM, its main source of cadres.
But the Women’s Detachment is not the OMM and the OMM is not the Women’s Detachment. The Detachment is an integral part of our army, of the People’s Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique, an armed political body. The OMM on the other hand, involves all women, from those who have remained marginal to the struggle until now, to those who are combatants on the health, education, production, army and other fronts. The relationship between the two must be complementary and based on mutual help, the Women’s Detachment being a driving force, a source of cadres, and the OMM a mobilizing force which expands our base and provides new forces for the Women’s Detachment. In order that the OMM may be in a position to take up and carry out the important tasks with which FRELIMO entrusts it, FRELIMO’s central Committee has decided to organize a training course for women cadres, to be held under the leadership of the Executive Committee. Integrated in FRELIMO, inspired by FRELIMO’s revolutionary line, acting as a part of our revolutionary family’s harmonious body, in the context of the structures of FRELIMO, the OMM will accomplish the difficult task which the people, the women and the revolution has entrusted to it. Comrades, the proceedings of the First Conference of Mozambican Women are about to start. Millions of Mozambican Women, who for centuries have been oppressed, are anxiously and hopefully waiting for the dawn of freedom which will be born here. The Mozambican people, the Mozambican revolution, need your commitment, your struggle. You have a decisive weapon in your hand which is FRELIMO’s political line on the emancipation of women. We must once more underline the most important aspects of our thought. The exploitation of women is an aspect of the general system of exploitation of man by man. This exploitation creates the conditions for the alienation of women; it reduces them to passivity and excludes them from the sphere of decision-making in society. The antagonistic contradictions which thus exist, are between women and the social order. These contradictions are between all the exploited masses in our country and in the world, and the exploiting classes. Only revolution can definitely resolve this contradiction, because it alone is the incarnation of the interests of the exploited masses; it mobilizes, organizes and unites them for the struggle; it alone can destroy the social order. Revolution puts the exploited masses in power, the masses who lived under oppression and were forced into passivity. Our people’s armed struggle against colonialism and imperialism is the fundamental starting point for the Mozambican revolution; the moment of the unleashing of the process of liberation of our land, women and men. The armed struggle which is gaining in popularity in our country acts like an incubator in which the revolutionary process starts to take root. The centuries old experience of exploitation and suffering of the women and the men of Mozambique and the discovery of the freedom born of the people’s power in the areas under our control, have made our people receptive to the ideas of progress and revolution. The conditions are ripe for an offensive on the women’s liberation front, an important moment in our revolutionary struggle. We already know what our strategy and tactics should be in the struggle, in which we will not only have to fight against the colonialist enemy, but will also have to face the opposition aroused by erroneous concepts rooted in the minds of both women and men. It is essential that women be involved in FRELIMO, for only FRELIMO is in a position to take up all the interests of the exploited masses of our country and thus formulate the concrete line of battle. The OMM which is being formed is emerging in the FRELIMO structure as a new arm of our revolution which must reach the broad masses of women who until now have remained marginal to the process of transformation which is taking place in our country. The OMM must draw into the struggle for the emancipation of women and into the national revolutionary struggle the millions of our countrymen. Our struggle is not an isolated struggle. The Mozambican Women’s fight, the Mozambican people’s fight, is an integral part of the world-wide front of struggle against colonialism and imperialism, against the exploitation of man by man, and for the construction of a new popular social order. For this very reason we feel that the struggle of our sisters and brothers in Angola, who, under the leadership of the MPLA, have been fighting Portuguese colonialism and imperialism for twelve years is our own. We feel that the struggle of our sisters and brothers in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, who, led by the PAIGC have been fighting Portuguese colonialism since 1963, is our own struggle. Hence we feel bereaved by the recent assassination of our comrade Amilcar Cabral, secretary-general of the PAIGC. This barbarous crime, like the assassination of our first president, Comrade Eduardo Mondlane is an attempt to stop the revolutionary advance of our peoples. It failed in Mozambique and it will fail in Guinea-Bissau. The fight for the consolidation of independence and for revolutionary development in Tanzania and Zambia, Somalia, Congo, Guinea and the whole of Africa is our fight, the fight to consolidate our strategic rear. The recent victory of the heroic peoples of Vietnam and Indochina, is a great incentive in our struggle. The women and men of Vietnam, of a small country, of an economically backward country, succeeded in defeating the largest and most cruel imperialist power in the world, the United States of America. We feel encouraged by the successes achieved by our sisters and brothers in the socialist countries, who are building a new society of freedom and progress for women and men. The women and men of Mozambique congratulate the Portuguese people for the intensification of the struggle against the colonial war and fascism in Portugal. The opening of the fourth battle front against Portuguese colonialism in Portugal itself, consolidates the solidarity and friendship of our peoples. We salute all peoples, we salute the women and men of all continents, who anonymously are like us, fighting to build a new society. To all of them we say that our people’s struggle will be intensified, our revolution will be consolidated and triumphant, thus contributing towards the common victory.
Long Live the First Conference of Mozambican Women! Long Live the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women! Long Live the Mozambican revolution! Long live the Struggle of the Mozambican people, united from the Rovuma to the Maputo! Long Live Africa! Long Live the Organization of Mozambican Women! Long Live FRELIMO! THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN. Samora Machel Archive
Samora Machel 1972 Sowing the Seeds of Revolution Written: 1971-1972; First Published: 1971-1972; Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 56-62; Transcription: Liz Blasczak. Directives issued at the beginning of the productive cycle 1971-1972. We shall soon be starting to prepare the land for new crops. To many people production may seem a rite, a necessity, just something we are obliged to do in order to eat and clothe ourselves. It is true that production is aimed at satisfying our basic biological needs, but we also need it to free ourselves from poverty, to better know, control and use nature, and to educate ourselves politically. We are revolutionaries, our activities always have political meaning and content. Therefore our production, besides having an economic meaning and content, must also have political content. In the enemy zone, under capitalism, under colonialism, there is also production. There too man wields the hoe to break the soil. There too, on the factory machine – which we do not as yet have in our zone – man makes things. Yet we say that production in the enemy zone is exploitation, whereas in our zone production liberates man. But it is the same hoe, the same man, the same act of breaking the soil. Why then is there this dividing line? Almost everyone knows the G3 gun. In the hands of the enemy the G3 is used to oppress and slaughter the people, but when we capture a G3, it becomes an instrument for liberating the people, for punishing those who slaughter the people. It is the same gun, but its content has changed because those who use it have different aims, different interests. What use is made of the produce of a Mozambican peasant who grows rice in Gaza? Is it used to feed him, to satisfy his family’s needs? To a certain extent perhaps. But what is certain is that out of what he gets for his produce he has to pay the colonial taxes, taxes to pay the police who arrest him, taxes to pay the salary of the administrator who oppresses him, taxes to buy arms for the soldiers who will tomorrow drive the peasant off his land, taxes to pay for transporting and installing settlers who will occupy the peasant’s land. The peasant produces to pay taxes. Through his labor, the peasant finances the oppression of which he is the victim. Let us continue with the example of the peasant who grows rice. In order to live he needs other things apart from rice. He needs clothing. He needs oil. He needs many things which he has to buy in the shop. To buy he needs money, and money does not fall from heaven. This means that our peasant has to go and sell rice to the store or company. He sells his things at low prices and buys at prices four or five times higher than what he sells for. Many meters of cotton cloth, many shirts, can be made out of one sack of cotton. When we sell a sack of cotton however, the money we get for the one sack is barely enough to buy one shirt. This means that what we produce, our sweated labor acting on the soil, benefits the companies, the traders who do nothing. In the enemy zone these are the mildest, the least cruel forms of exploitation. There are others which are much worse. There is the sale of workers to the mines, the many strong young men who go off to the mines. Many die in mine disasters. More than 2,500 die in the mines each year. Others, we do not know how many, return without arms, without a foot, with their lungs eaten away by tuberculosis. The mine owners are the richest men in the world. The wealth extracted from the mines is sold at very high prices, but how much do the men who die in the mines earn? Along the Zambezi, are the rich lands of Sena Sugar. Sena Sugar makes many thousands of contos a year. But how much do those work on the rich land of Sena Sugar earn? In the Moatize coal mines, in the Zambezia company’s power groves, in the Gurue tea highlands, everywhere Mozambicans are cultivating rich lands, building big buildings, making complex machinery produce goods, but nowhere is it those who work, who sweat over the soil, who risk their lives in the mine shafts, who benefit from their own labor. In the enemy zone, manual labor, the labor that creates everything, is for the poor, for the “stupid,” the “illiterate.” The less a person works, the more educated he is, the less he works, the more civilized he is, the more he exploits the labor of others and the more he is respected, the higher his status in society. Who can imagine a governor, a doctor, a general or a banker with calloused hands, his feet in the soil, sweating under the sun with the effort of hoeing? It would be though dishonorable, shameful, low. In the enemy zone where the exploiters live like leeches off the labor of the exploited, in the schools, on the radio, at the cinema, everywhere contempt is taught for manual labor and veneration of the exploiters. In our zone it is different. Here labor does not serve to enrich companies and traders, speculators and parasites.
Here labor does not serve to enrich companies and traders, speculators and parasites. Labor is to satisfy the needs of the people and the war. This is why our production is the target of constant enemy attack. In our zone labor is a liberating activity because the product of labor benefits the workers, serves the interests of the workers, i.e. it serves to liberate man from hunger and poverty and to advance the struggle. This is because in our zone we have abolished the exploitation of man by man, because what is produced is the property of the people, serving the people. We are producing in our own interest. It is in our interest to bring up healthy children, children free from disease, strong children free from hunger and rickets. Through production we are contributing towards feeding our children and our people properly. By cultivating the land we are producing vitamin-rich foods. We are growing carrots, which have vitamins that are good for our eyesight. We are growing cassava, which has leaves rich in iron. We are growing an infinite number of crops, from maize to tomatoes, from beans to lettuces, which strengthen the body and which, owing to the very diversity and wealth of them, provide us with a diet which, because it is varied is not only more agreeable but is also a more balanced diet, in itself a defense against many diseases, making us more resistant. Moreover, the physical effort of agricultural production especially, not only strengthens the muscles, hardening our bodies, but, because it keeps us in contact with nature, keeps us in the sun, which provides us with vitamins which are necessary for the body’s resistance creating the condition for us to enjoy good health. At the same time, it is through production, by advancing it, and only through production that we will succeed in meeting our growing needs. In certain regions, because we are able to export our surpluses to friendly countries, the clothing problem has been attenuated. What we export provides us with the means to buy things we do not yet produce. Our needs in clothing, footwear and soap can be solved in only two ways. One is to step up our exports, thereby enabling ourselves to buy more. The second way, which is more effective but a long-term prospect, is to produce these goods ourselves. We are purposely talking about cloth, footwear and soap. The reason for this is quite simple. Our country, our cultivators, grow the cotton from which the cloth is made. Craft production of cotton cloth is within the realm of our possibilities. We have the skins of cows, goats, and many other animals, and such skins are used to make footwear. Craft production of leather and shoes is within the realm of our possibilities. We have the agricultural raw materials from which soap is made and experiments in Cabo Delegado have proved that we are in a position to make soap. At the same time, increasing production through better use of our resources – >using manure and irrigation, improving agriculture and livestock raising, etc. – is possible, as proved by experiments made at certain military bases and in pilot centers. Production therefore serves to solve the essential problems of a rich diet for health and to meet all our needs. This is why work is respected in our zone and why he who works is praised, while he who lives by exploiting the work of others is criticized, denounced, fought against and despised. Through work we are also becoming more united, cementing our unity. If I am a Nyanja, and cultivate the land alongside an Ngoni, I sweat with him, wrest life from the soil with him, learn with him, appreciating his efforts, and I feel united with him. If I am from the center and am with a comrade from the north, discussing with him how to use a plot of land, how and what to plant, we plan together, fight the difficulties together and share the joy of picking the ear of maize which has grown through our joint effort. I and that comrade are united, our liking for each other increases. If I am from the north and learn how to make a kitchen garden with a comrade from the south, how to water the fleshy red tomatoes, or if I am from the centre and learn for the first time how to grow cassava with a comrade from the north, I am becoming more united with those comrades, tangibly living the unity of our country, the unity of our working class. With him I am destroying tribal, religious and linguistic prejudices, all that is secondary and divides us. Unity grows with the growing plant, with the sweat and intelligence we both mingle with the soil. In FRELIMO we always emphasize the importance of production. To our army we give the tasks of fighting, producing and mobilizing the masses. To our youth we give the tasks of studying, producing and fighting. In our discussions, in our documents, we constantly stress the importance of production, pointing out that this is an important front in our fight and a school for us. We can see that production is satisfying our everyday needs at the same time as liberating and uniting us. But we do not yet see that production is a school, that we learn through production. Some people might be surprised that in our schools there are those who devote long hours to production, and that our army also has this task. These people might feel that this is absurd, that it would be more worthwhile for the pupils to spend this time reading books, attending classes, that the army’s job is is to fight and not to produce. But we also learn through production. Our ideas do not fall from the skies like rain. Our knowledge and experience do not come from dreaming in our sleep. Without ever having been to school, our illiterate peasants know more about cassava, cotton, groundnuts and many other things than the honorable capitalist gentleman who has never touched a hoe. Without knowing how to read, it is clear that our mechanics know more about car engines, how to assemble them and repair them and how to mend broken parts, than the honorable capitalist gentleman who has never wished to soil his hands with motor oil. We see our “ignorant” masons, our “stupid” carpenters and laborers, so despised by the capitalist gentleman, making beautiful houses, beautiful furniture which the honorable gentleman appreciates immensely and which he has no idea how to make.
This clearly shows that we learn through production. What we learn we do, and when we do, we see what is wrong. So we learn also from our mistakes and achievements. The mistakes show where there are no shortcomings in our knowledge, weak points which have to be examined. This means that it is in the process of producing that we correct our mistakes. Production shows us that if good tomatoes are going to grow in it, this soil needs more manure, that there more water is needed. It was by making experiments that failed our pupils learned how to make soap. It was by making soap that they improved the quality of the soap. Production is a school because it is one of the sources of our knowledge, and it is through production that we correct our mistakes. It is by going to the people, that we both learn and teach the people. If our army did not produce, how would we have grown cassava in Tete when the people had no knowledge of cassava? If we had contented ourselves with making speeches about cassava, would the cassava have grown? What better way of defending our production in Tete against bombing raids, chemical weapons and enemy incursions than diversification of production, introduction of new crops and crops which are resistant to enemy action? How can the people improve their production methods, how can they know what is wrong and what is right, unless they produce? We are in the habit of saying that it is in the war that we learn war, which means, in fact, that it is by carrying out a revolution that one learns how to carry out a revolution better, that it is by fighting that we learn how to fight better and that it is by producing that we learn to produce better. We can study a lot, but what use is tons of knowledge if it is not taken to the masses, if we do not produce? If someone keeps maize seeds in a drawer, will he harvest ears of maize? If someone learns a lot and never goes to the masses, is never involved in practice, he will remain a dead compendium, a mere recorder who is able to quote by heart many passages from scientific works, from revolutionary works, but who will live his whole life without writing a single new page, a single new line. His intelligence would remain sterile, like those seeds locked in the drawer. We need constant practice, we need to be immersed in the revolution and in production, to increase our knowledge and, in this way, to advance our revolutionary work, our productive work. The seed of knowledge only grows when it is buried in the soil of production of struggle. If we already have so greatly transformed our country, if we have won so many successes in production, education, health and combat, it is because we are always with the masses. We consistently apply what we know to production, correct our mistakes and enrich our knowledge. But we should not be satisfied. Practice is not enough. One must also know, study. Without practice, without being combined with force, intelligence remains sterile. Without intelligence, without knowledge, force remains blind, a brute force. There are still many shortcomings in our work which me must and can correct. These shortcomings are a result of the insufficient use of intelligence in our work. All our shortcomings boil down to two aspects: political shortcomings and shortcomings in our scientific knowledge. In many places we could produce more and better with less effort and with greater protection from enemy action. If we do not do so it is because we have not adopted our political line, because we are still strongly influenced by the individualism and corruption inherited from the old society. However energetic they may be and however hard they work, one man and his family can’t cultivate many small plots all at the same time, i.e they can’t disperse the enemy’s targets, in other words protect production. This man and his family can’t at the same time cultivate various plots providing different crops and, therefore, a richer diet. It is impossible for him to organize a system of guarding and protecting all the plots, all the granaries, his house and the village from enemy incursions and looting. One man can’t do productive work and at the same time patrol various areas to watch out for the enemy and prevent surprise attacks. This means that individualism and the private property mentality, (I have my plot and my cattle, you have your plot and cattle, I have my granary and my house, and you have your granary and your house), lead to defeats, making us lose the cattle, plot, house and granary. Another serious consequence of a lack of collective spirit in production, of shortcomings in collective methods, is that this prevents us from learning from each other, from benefiting from mutual experience and knowledge. There was no progress in the past, because we did not discuss our knowledge and experience. The knowledge and experience passed on to us by our grandparents had become a dogma which no one discussed, and we remained sterile, without initiative. Therefore, we leaders, cadres, fighter and militants must work hard to make the masses adopt and live by the collective spirit, using collective methods of production, which will make it possible to enhance the spirit of collective living, thereby increasing the sense of unity, discipline and organization. Adopting a collective consciousness in work means renouncing individualism and considering that all the cultivated plots belong to us, to the people, that all the granaries and houses are ours, the people’s. It means that I must unite with others in a co-operative, in a production brigade. We will cultivate, harvest and stand guard together, and together we will protect that which belongs not to me or you, but to us. That field is not mine or yours, but ours. The pupil in the school, the soldier in the base, and the patient and the nurse in the hospital all have a collective consciousness. No one looks upon the school, the base or the hospital as their private property, and everyone therefore takes an enthusiastic interest in advancing the work of the school, base or hospital. As a result progress is made, the work advances, and the enemy can’t so easily attack. Where there is a collective spirit, we are more organized, there is better discipline and a proper division of labor. There is also more initiative, a greater spirit of sacrifice and we learn more, produce more and fight better, with more determination. Other shortcomings are a result of superficial or even mistaken ideas on the laws which govern natural phenomena.
These are shortcomings in our scientific knowledge. We often live near a source of water – a river or a well – waiting for rain for the crops, although there is water there which would solve our problems. Other times we go about complaining that the soil is poor, completely ignoring natural fertilizers, the animal and human manures which enrich the soil. We have the raw materials for making soap, yet we go on doing without soap. We can grow, spin and weave cotton and yet we go on doing without clothing. There are many examples, all of which show that our lack of scientific knowledge blinds us. The solution to a problem facing us is right under our noses and we do not see it, we do not have the courage to show initiative. We are fighting our insufficient knowledge through study, learning, discussion and practice. There are comrades who look down on study because they do not know its value. Study is like a lamp in the night which shows us the way. To work without studying is to advance in the dark. One can go forward, of course, but at great risk of stumbling or taking the wrong path. At some bases, among some comrades, the regular habit has been established of devoting some time to study. This is good, but it is not enough. All leaders and cadres, together with the units must organize consistent and regular study programs. Depending on the situation at least one hour a day should be devoted to study activities. Study should be organized in the spirit of collective work, collective consciousness, with small groups in which some teach others and everyone fights ignorance together. Because our starting point is a fairly weak one, we advise that in this first phase every effort should be made to raise the level of basic knowledge, especially by wiping out illiteracy in the units and among the cadres. The Political Commissar, in co-operation with the Department of Education and Culture and working closely with the Provincial organizations, must organize the program of fighting illiteracy and ignorance in such a way that each FRELIMO bases becomes a base for fighting against obscurantism. Closely related to this program should be a program of seminars for comrades with higher scientific knowledge – agronomists, engineers, mechanics, sociologists, nurses etc. – to help raise the general level of knowledge of leaders and cadres in the districts and provinces. These should be specialized seminars on precise subjects such as irrigation, hygiene, mill construction, the introduction of new crops and the introduction of new production methods. In this way our comrades will be able to relate their scientific studies to practice, and raise the level both of their own work and of the work of the masses. Soil without manure produces weak plants, but manure without soil burns the seeds and also produces nothing. Our intelligence, our knowledge, are like that manure. Manure must be mixed with soil, intelligence with practice. Because their very existence depends on exploiting us, capitalism and colonialism keep knowledge away from the masses, creating an educated elite which does not work and is used only to better exploit the masses. We say that it is the workers who must have knowledge, who must rule and who must benefit from labor. This is what we say and practice. And this is why our Armed Struggle has been transformed into a Revolution, why everything is in constant transformation and we are liberating the creative energy of the masses. This, finally, is why the enemy hates us. Nothing exists without production, and nothing exists without workers. The planes and bombing raids, the colonialist crimes, are aiming at keeping the workers producing for the capitalists, at keeping them exploited. The target of our bullets, the purpose of our struggle is, definitely, to end the exploitation of man by man, colonialism being its principal form in our country today. Our objective is to hand production over to the creative ability of the masses. We are about to enter our eighth year of war. Next year we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of our Front. We are growing a great deal, but to grow more, to meet the growing needs of the war and the people, it is essential that our production increase in both quantity and quality, that more things be produced in our country. Revolution liberates man. It liberates his intelligence and his work. This liberation manifests itself in the development of our production, which serves the people, which serves the struggle. Therefore, at this time when preparations are being made in agriculture for sowing the crops of the new season, we say to all the comrades: TO PRODUCE IS TO LEARN, LEARN IN ORDER TO PRODUCE AND STRUGGLE BETTER. THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN. Samora Machel Archive
Samora Machel 1972 Building a Nation Written:1972; First Published:1972; Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Tanzania, pp63-68; Transcription: Liz Blasczak. Interview in the Sunday News (Tanzania) 2 April, 1972. Samora Moises Machel has been president of the Mozambique Liberation Front since shortly after the death of Dr. Eduardo Mondlane in 1969. He is rarely seen in Dar es Salaam and seldom gives interviews but on a recent visit he spoke to Sunday News staff writer Iain Christie about FRELIMO; what it stands for; what it is doing; and where it is going. In this interview the word “Cahora” is used instead of “Cabora” in the name of the giant dam project in Mozambique. FRELIMO uses Cahora because it more closely approximates the local people’s pronunciation of the site. Interviewer: Since you began military operations near Cahora Bassa, developments in South Tete have received a great deal of publicity, and successful FRELIMO operations are reported so frequently, even by the Portuguese, that it appears as though the struggle is more developed here than anywhere else in Mozambique. Is this so? And how do South Tete and Cahora Bassa fit into FRELIMO’s overall strategy? Samora Machel: The struggle in Tete province is not separated from the development of the struggle in the other provinces. Therefore in order to understand the situation in Tete you have to know the political and military situation in the whole of Mozambique. Tete is an integral part of our country. The arm can’t live outside the body and Tete is something like an arm in the context of our country. Only when the other parts of the body work properly can the arm also function. It is because the political and military struggle is developing properly in the other provinces that we are having successes in Tete. It was necessary to develop the war in the other provinces to create conditions for it to start in Tete in 1968. By that time, in Niassa and Cabo Delegado, we were already launching large scale, important combats, already capturing prisoners and war equipment. We were developing the process of national reconstruction in these two provinces we had hospitals and schools. So the struggle had already determined important changes in society there. These conditions enabled us to begin the fighting in Tete again in 1968 and the struggle is now well developed. It is developing because the people are becoming more and more involved. But although it may appear that the war in Tete is more developed than in the other two provinces, this is not the case. What is happening is that Tete is being given more publicity because of economic interests there. They are the interests of capitalists and international imperialism; for them Tete is like the camel’s hump where their strengths and reserves are concentrated. And our struggle is affecting these interests. You know about Cahora Bassa. The great powers are involved there. Them there are the trucks which transport goods on the road through Tete from Malawi to Rhodesia. We attack the roads, trains and trucks, mainly because it is through them that the enemy circulates and distributes its forces. Cahora Bassa is not our main target. Our plan as it was defined when we started the war is to spread the struggle throughout the entire country, and since Cahora Bassa is inside our country and in a province where there is fighting, it necessarily falls within this plan. We do not concentrate our action in Tete or Cahora Bassa, but of course there are circumstances that make it a very important target for us, namely the extent of imperialist involvement and the implications for our struggle if the scheme were to be carried out. Interviewer: I know you have schools, hospitals and so on in the northern part of Tete, but do you have these things south of the Zambezi yet? Samora Machel: Yes. The struggle has developed quickly here because this is an area where Portuguese oppression made itself felt more strongly than in other places. And there are the people who live the border with Rhodesia. They suffered double the oppression. They were recruited to work in the banana and sugar plantations in Mozambique and when they finished they were sold to Rhodesia to work in the tobacco plantations. When they finished they came back and were recruited by the Portuguese again. So the people there felt oppression more than anywhere else. Men could never live with their families. It was something like slavery. The result is that the people are aware that the armed struggle is the only solution to their problems. That’s why there are so many cases of boys and girls of 15 and 16 joining us. One of the reasons is that they themselves saw their parents being oppressed, exploited and even killed by the Portuguese colonialists. But in spite of these atrocities we do not retaliate in their brutal manner. Interviewer: What about captured Portuguese soldiers? What is your attitude towards them and towards white civilians in Mozambique? Samora Machel: When we capture Portuguese soldiers we do not kill or mistreat them. Our people know that these men are participating in the war because they were forced to. They are not defending their own interests or the interests of the Portuguese people, but the interests of Portuguese capitalists and international imperialism. Then there are the Portuguese soldiers who desert to us. These we consider our allies. Their desertion is an act of support to our struggle. And there are whites born in Mozambique who want to join our ranks. We do not consider these as foreigners who support us. Such a man is one of us and it is his duty, just as it is my duty, to liberate Mozambique. Our policy regarding civilians is clear. We do not fight the Portuguese who are in our country because they are Portuguese. We fight the forces of colonial occupation. This policy is not new. Since the beginning we have said our struggle is not against the Portuguese people but against Portuguese colonialism. And now in Tete one begins to feel this more strongly.
And now in Tete one begins to feel this more strongly. There are more concrete cases there because the Portuguese population is much larger in Tete than in the other two provinces where we are fighting. They have shops there and plantations. There are traders. We don’t harm them. We attack the colonial war machine of repression. Of course if those people cooperate with the colonial authorities against us we have to take action against them. We do the same with Mozambicans. Sometimes civilians get killed when we attack a convoy. But we attack these convoys because in them are troops and arms, and these aren’t carried only in military vehicles. Civilian cars are used for this purpose too, so it is impossible to differentiate, to know which is military car and which is not. That is why civilians sometimes get killed. But it is not our policy to kill civilians. Our targets are military or with a military relevance. Interviewer: The Portuguese have been putting hard surfaces on roads in Tete to prevent you from laying mines. They even brought in a new governor general who is an expert on road building to help. Have they succeeded in surfacing the roads and, if so, have you devised a way around this problem? Samora Machel: The former governor was also an engineer. He was brought especially for Cahora Bassa, because he was one of its planners. And one of his first statements when he arrived was that the north was calling them, because the north was not developed, had no communications, roads. The plan of opening roads stems from as far back as 1969. They had already been allocated thousands of pounds just for building roads from Lourenco Marques up to the Rovuma river, and from Beira to the Zambian border, to enable them to distribute their forces to attack our zones. We don’t control the air and that is not our concern. We do control the ground and we are concentrating on continuing to control it. The Portuguese have created a myth that road building is the key to their security. The last governor failed in this task and resigned. The new governor won’t succeed either because we are now in a better position than ever to wreck the plan. Today it is not only our soldiers who destroy the roads, the villagers themselves go out and rip up the surfaces almost as soon as they are laid. Interviewer: You have often said that the Mozambican struggle is essentially political and that this must be realized in order to understand the development of FRELIMO’s military operations. Does this mean that you attribute military success to having the correct political line? Samora Machel: Yes. For FRELIMO it is fundamental to have a national consciousness and to develop it into a revolutionary consciousness that allows for an understanding of the objectives of our struggle, the reasons for our revolution, and an awareness of who we are fighting, who are the enemies. This is the primary concern of every leader, of every militant and of the people in general. Our military situation is now better than ever. And we know that the reason the struggle is successful is that our political line is correct, the people are becoming more and more aware, mobilized and organized. That is what makes the struggle political. Big changes are taking place in our society now. Political power is being handed to the people themselves, the leadership in the liberated areas is being undertaken by the people of those areas. The Portuguese will never be able to destroy this new awareness. In some of those areas the people have not known oppression for seven years, they pay no taxes, they don’t have to carry the Portuguese boss on their shoulders ... when the colonialists went to the villages to collect taxes or to arrest people they were carried by the Mozambicans themselves. The people have developed their initiative. They discuss their problems and find solutions together. They discuss ways to combat the enemy. They participate in the struggle both in its planning and its implementation. They discuss the kind of life they want to live. So we no longer discuss if our struggle will continue, if the Portuguese will have successes or not. The struggle is an internal part of the people’s lives and what we discuss with the people now is how to make our struggle a real revolution. Interviewer: Can you define what you mean by a liberated area? The Portuguese sometimes takes journalists into areas which you describe as liberated, then say to them: “Look, there are no terrorists here.” Samora Machel: You could have visited pre independence Tanganyika and travelled for miles in the countryside, where the people lived, without seeing any sign of the administrative authorities, the British. This does not mean that Tanganyika was not dominated by the colonialists: the structure which determined the lives of the people and to which they were subjected was a colonialist structure. The form of administration and the form of production were colonialist. Arresting people for work, for example. The form of teaching in the schools, when and where there was a school somewhere in the countryside, was a colonialist form. The curriculum was British, about the history of Britain, the heroism of the British people. So although the British were not physically present everywhere, the structure of oppresion made itself felt throughout the country. Now, in Mozambique, these attestations of colonialism, the methods of work under the colonialists, have been removed from large areas of the country. These we call liberated zones. The way of production is a popular way, not the colonialist way, which is characterized by exploitation. The attitude which guides everybody’s life is now collective, not indivdualist. Problems are solved collectively and this is something new. These liberated zones, because of the new type of power, new kind of administration, new way of life, are the targets of the enemy. We do not deny that these zones are subject to attacks, but this happens even in Vietnam and nobody can deny that there are large liberated areas in Vietnam. And to further clarify the point, “liberated zones” does not mean the complete expulsion of the physical presence of the colonialists. There are still Portuguese there but they are isolated in a few small garrisons. The basic question is: who do the people follow? They follow whose watchword? Is the work they undertake clandestine or open? In our zones the work is open. The watchword comes from the organization. That means freedom from exploitation, from forced labor.
That means freedom from exploitation, from forced labor. That is a liberated zone. The Portuguese have taken journalists to Mozambique. We also take our friends. Each one sees for himself. We take people from many countries and last year journalists and students visited us from as far apart as Sweden and Kenya. Our visitors have been to Cabo Delegado, Niassa and Tete and have written about what they saw. They have balanced the picture. It was clear to them that FRELIMO controls these areas. Interviewer: Since the beginning of the revolution in Angola, the Portuguese have introduced “reforms” in all the colonies in an effort to persuade the people not to join the armed struggle. Has this caused any serious problems for you? Samora Machel: They do this and will continue to do it because it is the only weapon they have. Dividing the people in order to dominate them. What they have introduced is new methods of corruption, not methods of changing the structure of society. It’s not to better the lives of the people, it’s the introduction of corruption. They can’t change their political line because they can’t stop being colonialists. They can’t stop making the people do forced labor because they depend on forced labor. What they do is divide the people. They give some economic privileges to a few Mozambicans, those who have had some education and who are considered potentially active political leaders, to induce them to defend the colonial system in order to retain those privileges. They announce “important changes” like the new “State” of Mozambique to try to create the illusion (mainly among people in other countries) that the Portuguese are taking steps towards the independence of our country. They also try to discredit the liberation movement by attempting to make the people believe that we are terrorists. For example, they massacre people in a certain place, then bring people from another zone and say: “look, this is what FRELIMO does.” But to answer your question, these tactics do not cause any problem for us. The people are politically aware and conscious; they have lived under Portuguese colonialism since they were born; they have experienced the oppression, exploitation and humiliation in their own flesh; they can’t be cheated. A typical example is that of Domingos Arouca, the only black Mozambican lawyer. The Portuguese tried to win him over by offering him a high post in the colonial administration. He understood and refused to be part of the colonial machine. Today he is in jail. Maneuvers will never succeed. Interviewer: Recently the West German Government has been making moves which suggest that Chancellor Willy Brandt is trying to stop German weapons going to Portugal for the African wars. Do you think that Mr. Brandt is making an honest effort? Samora Machel: We can’t see how this can be considered other than as a manoeuvre. The West German Government is linked with the Portuguese so much that it can’t stop its support. The West Germans have advisers, they have officers, they manufacture weapons in Portugal. It is easier to make weapons there than to transport them from West Germany. A few weeks ago the West German Ambassador in Malawi flew to Mozambique to “visit” Cahora Bassa. Do you think this adds up to an honest effort? Interviewer: What kind of political structure is being built in liberated Mozambique? What kind of society can we expect to see when the entire country is free, and would you like to compare it to any other country’s system? Samora Machel: We are fighting against a specific structure which exists in Mozambique. It is an unpopular structure, where there is a privileged class, there is an embryonic intermediate class and there are those who are really miserable; a structure which ensures that the riches of our country do not serve the people. The people who are fighting, making sacrifices, dying in the war, destroying the enemy, are doing so to win real freedom. The people will create a structure that benefits them, not one that satisfies the selfish aims of an exploiting minority. There is no need to draw comparisons with other countries. Interviewer: How much time do you spend in Mozambique, how much outside in your various diplomatic activities? Samora Machel: The rule is to spend most of the time inside because our external policy is determined by the situation inside. The leadership must stay inside, following the development of the situation so as to be able to formulate the watchword corresponding to the situation at any given moment. The exterior plays an important part in our struggle and this is why we have to go outside from time to time, to inform our friends in Africa, in the socialist countries, the progressive forces in the West, about the development of the struggle. But it is not a decisive part and we go abroad only when necessary. It is fundamental to our struggle that the leadership and the people participate together in the work inside and through this we know where to put more emphasis, where to concentrate more efforts at any specific time. This is a rule of organization but it is not because it is a rule that our leadership undertakes it duties inside. They understand that it is necessary to know the temperature inside and that the people are the thermometer. Interviewer: Are you able to operate politically in the south of your country, where the armed struggle has not begun? Samora Machel: Yes. We have political cadres over the whole country. That is why there is a growing awareness among the people that enables them to understand the maneuvers of the enemy. For example, during Banda’s trip, there was a movement of discontent that expressed itself in our protests. The colonialists made mass arrests in the whole southern region. The same happened in June, 1970. This is because of our presence everywhere. In the central committee there are members from all provinces. In all the different sectors of activity there are people from all provinces. This is the political structure. Fighters come from all provinces, too, and if we do not yet operate militarily in some provinces it is mainly due to geographical problems. But we will cover the whole country. Of this we are certain. Samora Machel Archive
Speech by Samora Machel 1973 Solidarity is Mutual Aid between Forces Fighting for the Same Objectives Written: 1973; First Published: 1974; Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Italy, pp. 7-15; Transcription: Liz Blasczak. Speech at the First National Solidarity Conference for the Freedom and Independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau, at Reggio Emilia, Italy, on 25 March 1973. Comrade Chairman of the Conference, Comrade Leaders and Militants of the Italian Democratic forces, Comrades of the MPLA and the PAIGC, Comrade Delegates and Observers, this demonstration of solidarity is a festival of friendship between people’s, a reaffirmation of the principal that all people who love freedom, justice, progress and peace, and that these are indivisible. This magnificent celebration is taking place in the region of Emilia Romagna, where at every turn we come across concrete expressions of hatred for fascism and exploitation, examples of the people’s determination to defend their rights. Here the fight for Italian independence and unity reached great heights. One of the main centres of the fight against fascism and Hitlerism was established on this martyred and heroic land. Today Emilia Romagna is one of the Italian regions where people’s democratic power has been established, thereby defending the gains of the Italian resistance. Correctly interpreting the interests of the people and keeping alive the deep feelings of the Italian resistance, the people of Emilia Romagna have turned their region into a front of Italian solidarity with the struggles of other peoples. Here in Reggio Emilia there is the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, which is linked to the Zambezia Hospital by a friendship pact. In the Emilia Romagna too, there is the municipality of Bologna, also linked by a pact of friendship to our Education Centre in Tunduru. It is this and the countless other demonstrations of solidarity, affection and friendship of the Italian people which we should like solemnly to hail today and to thank you for, on behalf of the Mozambican people and FRELIMO. Apart from the tangible support that it represents, your solidarity is also a political act which helps us to educate our people. Colonialism and imperialism made our people know the brutal face of aggression, exploitation, and oppression. The land of the renaissance of European culture, of the freedom epic of Garibaldi, of the tenacious struggle against fascism, the land of the great Italian people, was unknown to us. The image we had of you was only of the FIAT G-91’s which sow death; of the Bologna food industries which exploit our peasants and workers in their cashew-nut shelling plants in Mozambique. Only the liberation war, which broke the isolation to which we were subjected, enabled us to come into contact with the Italian people and to discover their true character. Your solidarity, in this context, makes our people understand concretely that there are no enemy races or people’s; that the enemy of our people is that of all people’s; colonialism which has no race, imperialism which has no country. The visits made by your delegations to the Tunduru Educational Centre, to the Dr. Americo Boavida Hospital and to the liberated regions of Mozambique, were political lessons for our people. Comrade Chairman of the Conference, dear Comrades, our conference is taking place at a time of great progress in our struggle. In Mozambique we are in our ninth year of armed struggle. Profound qualitative and quantitative changes are taking place in our country. The armed struggle has spread to the nerve centres of the economic system of colonial domination. It has reached the major centres of vital strategic and economic interests both of the Portuguese colonialism and of imperialism. Furthermore, this advance of our struggle is affecting both enemy interests in Mozambique and their system of domination of the whole of Southern Africa. Mozambique’s 3,000km of coastline on the Indian ocean, with its excellent harbours such as Louren�o Marques, Beira and Nacala makes our country a natural outlet to the sea for a vast hinterland rich in mining and industry, with prosperous agriculture and flourishing international trade. Mozambique’s geographical position makes our country a centre for the control of shipping around Africa, both between Asia and the Middle East, and between Europe and America. The cold war mentality which persists in militarist and reactionary circles makes Western powers see our country as an essential factor in the control of the so called Cape route. As the frontier of the white empire in Southern Africa, Mozambique is regarded as a buffer state by the racist regimes in Pretoria and Salisbury. A country with the population of over 9 million, which makes it the second most populous country in Southern Africa, Mozambique is the main supplier of labour to the whole of Southern Africa. In the mines of South Africa and Rhodesia, on the plantations and in the industries of the racist empire, nearly one million Mozambicans sold by the Portuguese government are subjected to the new slavery for the benefit of the lords of the mines and the land. The vast reserves of hydro-electric power and coal, the deposits of oil, gas, uranium, iron, copper, bauxite, gold and diamonds, and the fertility of our soil, have all attracted the interest of the big multinational companies. It is this combination of economic and strategic interests which, by identifying with Portuguese colonialism, has enabled colonialism to survive to this day. It is against them that our struggle is directed, it is they who are being destroyed by our struggle. Between late October 1971 and the beginning of November 1972, the FRELIMO armed forces undertook more than 800 operations against the colonial army, in the course of which 107 enemy military bases and camps were totally or partially destroyed, more than 3,000 Portuguese soldiers killed, and 344 military vehicles of all types destroyed. During this same period we shot down or destroyed on the ground 55 aeroplanes and helicopters (including a Rhodesian bomber and helicopter), and we sank 15 boats on the Zambezi River.
Dozens of kilometres of railway line were destroyed, as well as 20 trains and 20 bridges. But more important than combat statistics are the changes brought about in the political field and in national reconstruction. Cabo Delagado was a province subjected to the exploitation of the cotton companies. Tens of thousands of African families were forced by the colonial administration to devote their efforts to cotton production only to be paid starvation prices for their crops. The oppression of the companies was so brutal under colonial rule that hundreds of thousands of people preferred to cross the Rovuma river and work on the sisal plantations in what was Tanganyika. Today the cotton companies have almost disappeared from Cabo Delagado. The aim of the present activity of our fighters is to wipe out the few surviving enemy bases isolated in our areas, and to assure that the population is better protected against bombing raids. Thus, on 18 September, 1972 we launched a simultaneous offensive against seven enemy military bases, including the strategic land and air base at Mueda, the centre for Portuguese military operations in the middle of the province. At Mueda 18 planes and helicopters, including two FIAT G-91’s were blown up on the tarmac. In addition, a number of military installations were destroyed or damaged, namely arsenals, living quarters, fuel deposits and runways. The offensive is still going on now and we have already destroyed several bases, the most recent were Quinhantati, Nacatar, Nangade, Ula, and Pundanhar. The brutal oppression of the colonialists in Niassa the occupation of the most fertile land by settlers, the selling of labor to the mines and plantations in Rhodesia and South Africa, the cotton system and the lack of medical care for the people all served to decimate the population. Covering an area of more than 120,000 square kilometers with fertile soil and a moderate climate, Niassa had a population of 250,000 people when the war started. Colonialism incited tribal and religious divisions among that scant population. The despotic and feudal rule of the chiefs (regulos) stifled the people’s initiative. Such was Niassa. Today not only have the cotton companies and the sale of the workers ceased to exist, but the process of establishing new settlers has also been curtailed. The linguistic and religious groups are discovering the Mozambican identity, finding the fraternity which unites the oppressed. The democratically appointed people’s committees of power have replaced the feudal and despotic rule of the former chiefs. As in Cabo Delagado, the enemy is isolated, for the roads and railways are blocked. Here too our activity mainly involves the destruction of enemy bases. In the last few months we attacked and totally or partially destroyed Macaloge, Lunho, Massangulo and Valadim, and concentration camps such as Maua, were destroyed and hundreds of people freed. Tete province supplied workers who were sold to the mines, tobacco plantations and farms of Rhodesia and to the Moatize coal mines. The colonialists used our men as beasts of burden to transport the settler and his goods. Men were taken to the Beira docks and to the settler plantations. The province, which borders on Rhodesia and Malawi, was center for international communication lines. The deposits of coal, iron, uranium, copper, bauxite and gold attracted the interests and ambitions of the big companies. But it was above all the gigantic Cahora Bassa scheme with profound implications for Southern Africa, which made the big monopolies focus their attention to our country. Cahora Bassa, intended to supply cheap electric energy to South Africa and to Southern Africa, would be the starting point for the setting up of a common market which would subject our entire zone to the tutelage of Pretoria. In the Zambezi valley, which is to be irrigated by the dam waters, colonialism has plans to establish one million European settlers, who would constitute a kind of human buffer against the advance of the liberation struggle. But profound changes have taken place in Tete in the past five years. Although the enemy have considerably increased their strength in men and material, and are being further reinforced by the military intervention of Salisbury and Pretoria, the rapid expansion of the armed struggle to the whole province and its advance into Manica e Sofala have destroyed the enemy’s strategic and tactical plans, preventing them from exploiting their material superiority. The practical effects of colonialist military defeat are the very great extent to which ground communication lines, including international ones, have been paralyzed, gradually bringing to a halt foreign economic activity in the fields of agriculture, trade, transport, and mineral prospecting, increasing the isolation of Cahora Bassa and the coal mining centre at Moatize, and breaking through the blockade of the Zambezi. Our people are no longer beasts of burden and are no longer sold to foreign countries. Forced labor has ceased, the brutality and humiliations meted out by the settlers and administrators are gradually being relegated to the past. Here too, Portuguese colonialism no longer exists as a system of administration and economic domination, and so assumes only its other features, those of an aggressor and criminal. To mark the new stage of this process, while the struggle was raging in Manica e Sofala and 120 kilometers of railway line were destroyed, our forces launched a strategic offensive against the strongest enemy bases. On 9 November the offensive began against the provincial capital and the Chingozi air base in the vicinity of Tete. Military, administrative and commercial buildings in the city center were badly hit, and at the same time, in Chingozi 17 planes and helicopters (including several Fiats) were blown up on the tarmac, as well as barracks, hangars, etc. The offensive launched on 9 November is continuing to this day. The Fingoe and Furancungo bases, each with forces greater than battalion strength, have been destroyed. On 1 march, the strategic base at Malewara was completely destroyed, despite frantic help from the Portuguese and Rhodesian air forces.
The expansion of the struggle into Manica e Sofala on 25 July denotes a new phase in our struggle. There are entrenched imperialist interests in Manica e Sofala regarded as vital in the context of both our country and all of Southern Africa. Big sugar companies like British Sena Sugar are established there. There are textile, cement, and engineering industries linked to foreign monopolies in this province. American, French, West German, and South African companies have been granted vast concessions for oil and gas prospecting, both on-shore and on the continental shelf. The province dominates the routes linking the north and the south of the country. Several neighboring countries, especially Rhodesia, are supplied from the provincial capital, the port of Beira. The headquarters of the Portuguese military command is in Manica e Sofala. It is from there that enemy troops are deployed elsewhere. This explains the alarm caused in Portuguese, South African, and Rhodesian economic and military circles when the struggle was launched in that province. The rapid spread of the people’s war of liberation has forced the Portuguese colonialists and their allies to continually review the distribution of their forces. The insoluble contradictions in which the enemy’s strategic and tactical thinking is floundering leading them to defeat after defeat. The military victories achieved by our forces are creating the conditions for further developing and consolidating the process of establishing the structure of people’s power and making the situation more favourable for national reconstruction. Thus the dividing line between the liberated areas and the enemy zone is becoming irreversible. The masses who are directly experiencing freedom are prepared to defend that freedom against any attempt at enemy reoccupation. The fact of liberated areas does not mean the total disappearance of the physical presence of the enemy. Enemy bases, though isolated, still remain there. The air force maintains constant activity. Enemy troops launch incursions. The basic feature of the liberated areas is that the masses follow watchwords, are mobilized and publicly organized by us, and openly follow our line in their daily activities. This is how liberation from exploitation, the elimination of tribalism, and the birth of a nation are brought about, together with the practical establishment of people’s power in political, economic, and social structures. This is what the liberated areas are, and hence their fundamental importance as centers of far-reaching change, as bases where, in the details of everyday life, the new balances of force in favor of the oppressed masses takes on material form. In short, the liberated zones are centers for the diffusion of our ideology, of the new life we are creating. In the zones still occupied by the colonialists, increasingly large sectors of the population are joining our ranks. Although, according to their own statements, the colonialists have already interned over a million people in about a thousand concentration camps, called aldeias de proteccao (protective hamlets), they are unable to quell the masses desire for liberation. The concentration camps become new combat centers and the puppet militiamen, politicized through our mobilization, become anti colonialist combat detachments. The waves of arrests and murders unleashed in the rural and urban areas affect all strata in the population: priests, office workers, students, workers, and peasants. Colonialist terror sharpens the colonialist contradictions with the masses, making the people more committed to the cause of liberation. The just policies of FRELIMO, its respect for human dignity and freedom, its policy of clemency towards the Portuguese prisoners of war, the clear and correct definition of the enemy and of the objectives of the struggle, are leading towards growing sections of the European population to dissociate with Portuguese colonialism, to denounce and condemn its crimes, and in more and more cases already, to support our struggle. Because of this, the colonialist repressive machinery is now reaching large sectors of the European population. The students union at the university of Louren�o Marques has been dissolved and its leaders arrested and deported. Several bishops have complained about harassment by the political police. Portuguese and foreign priests have been arrested, sentenced and expelled from the country. The military defeats and the growing political isolation of the colonialists in Mozambique are being accompanied by similar developments in Angola and Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, thus reducing the enemy’s room for maneuver. The recent assassination of our comrade Amilcar Cabral, secretary general of the PAIGC, like the previous assassination in 1969 of president Eduardo Mondlane, had the same purpose of trying to paralyze the struggle by assassinating our leaders. It has been proved that these actions are criminal and futile. In Portugal a fourth fighting front has been opened against fascism and the colonial war. For the first time in the history of colonial wars, citizens of the colonial power have launched armed action in their country against the colonial war machine, as part of the strategy in the fight against the regime. Besides encouraging our people, these actions weaken the enemy, forcing them to fight on more fronts. The countries bordering on the Portuguese colonies, such as Tanzania, Zambia, Congo, the Republic of Guinea, and others, are standing firm and true to the duty of solidarity, often shedding their blood too, in the fight for the same cause. The historic assembly of African heads of state in Rabat, which renewed and deepened Africa’s commitment to its liberation, together with our liberating action, created a new situation internationally. Internationally, Portugal’s isolation has become so great that its closest allies feel obliged to condemn it, as shown by the recent security council meeting on the Portuguese colonial question. The UN has recognized the representativity of FRELIMO, and our representatives have observer status in the fourth commission. In the Socialist world, our just struggle meets with the greatest moral, political, diplomatic, and material support. In Western countries there is the development of the popular movement of solidarity and support for our cause, and condemnation of the alliance of governments and monopolies with the Portuguese colonialists.
In Western countries there is the development of the popular movement of solidarity and support for our cause, and condemnation of the alliance of governments and monopolies with the Portuguese colonialists. Several governments of NATO countries, like Norway, Denmark, and Holland, have publicly shown the desire to dissociate the Atlantic alliance from Portuguese colonial adventures. In Italy we are happy to see, as proved by this magnificent conference, that the solidarity movement is reaching all social strata and all political forces which prize the freedom and dignity of man. Prominent religious and political figures from the world of science and the arts are joining the solidarity movement alongside workers and students, white-collar workers and peasants. The vast popular front of solidarity with our struggle established in Italy, besides being an example, proves above all that the cause of anti colonialist struggle can win over all honest people. Comrade Chairman of the Conference, dear Comrades, it seems to us that solidarity activities should be seen with this overall perspective. Solidarity activities must be imbued with political context, so as to be able to plan a concrete line of action and methods. The Mozambican people’s liberation struggle is a struggle against Portuguese colonial fascist domination, against imperialism, a struggle to establish a new social order in our country with a popular and democratic content. Portuguese colonialism and fascism are aberrations in our era. Colonial war encourages the lowest and most horrible crimes which appall the human conscience. Ever more courageous voices are being raised the world over to denounce and expose the horrors of Portuguese colonialism and its colonial war. The honest voices of priests and bishops in the last two years, are forcing growing sectors of world opinion to become aware of existing realities. The fight against Portuguese colonialism and fascism is not different in essence from the fight against fascism and Nazism which took place in Europe. The European peoples who lost millions of dead in the holocaust to dreams of the domination of “superior” races, completely understand our struggle against this cancer in our country. The destruction of the domination of the big imperialist companies in Mozambique and the shrinking of the buffer zones of the racist empires of Rhodesia and South Africa, concern all forces in the world which see the need to fight against imperialist plunder and the policy of aggression. This is the fight of the Mozambican people and of all peoples. Also to be seen as a common fight is our struggle to establish a new popular social order in our country, which liberates man from the misery of exploitation, introduces justice in society and releases the creative initiative of the masses. In this context, solidarity is not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective. Liquidating the Portuguese colonial fascist system means destroying one of the main bastions of contemporary fascism, which is stimulating the growth of the fascist forces in Europe, including Italy. In the present phase it is important that the solidarity movement set itself a certain number of objectives and methods of work. In the first place the cause of struggle against Portuguese colonialism and fascism, as your experience shows, is a cause which concerns and mobilizes all honest people, regardless of their social origins and party-political or religious affiliations. In this context, we believe that a united solidarity movement must be developed, so as to reach the numerous sectors which are not yet involved. Popularizing the solidarity movement means organizing and mobilizing the various sectors in factories, schools, universities, offices, hospitals, and churches. It means publicizing the horrors of colonialism and the nature and successes of our struggle. In this respect, it seems to us that it would also be useful for the conference to study ways of making the circulation of information between our liberation movements and the Italian people more rapid and efficient. Mobilizing and organizing also means defining the tasks of the solidarity movement, mapping out lines of action. There are two main types of tasks today: political tasks and material support. Politically our main concern is to isolate Portuguese colonialism from its sources of moral, political, diplomatic, economic and military support; and at the same time to make the international community recognize the political realities of our country, that the Mozambican people are regaining their sovereignty and exercising it through FRELIMO, which leads and represents them. This twofold concern gives rise to different lines of action. Political parties, trade unions and other mass organizations are called upon for action involving vigilance, denunciation and pressure. Vigilance in detecting the activities of government and financial consortiums on behalf of Portuguese colonialism; denunciation of such activities; and pressure to put an end to them and make governmental institutions recognize Mozambican political realities. Obviously this type of action must be developed at all levels: in the press, in parliament, in petitions and popular demonstrations. At the last session of the United Nations, FRELIMO’s representativity was recognized in the Fourth Commission and we were granted observer status. Nevertheless, the opposition from western countries, including Italy, prevented the UN general assembly from drawing all the conclusions contained in the Fourth Commission’s decision. The UN general assembly must recognize that in Mozambique FRELIMO is the only power which legitimately represents Mozambique. Portugal’s status is that of an aggressor which must unconditionally put an end to its aggression, and evacuate its forces of repression. Recognition of the situation in Mozambique also implies material support to consolidate and promote national reconstruction. This action can take place at various levels. In African countries, Socialist countries, and various Asian and Scandinavian countries, governments (either directly or through governmental agencies) make an important material contribution to national reconstruction. Italy should also be involved in such action, as happens in Emilia Romagna, where regional and local institutions of people’s power give material support to our medical care and agricultural development programs. This type of action, if it is widespread, can contribute immensely to the success of our work. Mass organizations and political, trade union, cultural, and religious bodies can also contribute material support.
Mass organizations and political, trade union, cultural, and religious bodies can also contribute material support. Fields in which material solidarity can be shown are as wide ranging as are our needs: health, education, child care centers, production. All sectors of work are in need of assistance. Comrade Chairman of the Conference, Comrade Delegates, the tenacious struggle of brother people for freedom, independence, justice and peace is also solidarity with us. We warmly and affectionately hail the victories of our comrades in arms in the MPLA and PAIGC who are fighting Portuguese colonialism with us. Their victories are our victories and, like ours, they are made of sacrifices and bloodshed. All of us here today feel the absence of our brother and comrade Amilcar Cabral, Secretary General of the PAIGC, assassinated by agents of Portuguese colonialism and imperialism. His friendly presence, his talent, his cultured mind, his dedication as a militant and fighter and his vision as a leader are no longer with us. But the struggle continues, just as FRELIMO continued after the assassination of Eduardo Mondlane, its first president. Amilcar’s great merit was that he was able to embody national unity and make it operative, using it as a weapon to destroy colonialism; he was able to establish a policy and structures making it possible for the struggle to survive the individual and draw new strength from his sacrifice. We reaffirm our solidarity with the struggle of the peoples of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia who, with us, are confronting imperialism in the trenches of Southern Africa. We hail the victories of the African people in the struggle to consolidate the independence and unity of our continent. Their victories are ours, and they are creating the conditions for the development of our struggle. We also hail with respect, friendship and solidarity the peoples, parties and leaders of Tanzania, Zambia, the Congo, Guinea, and other sister countries which, under the difficult conditions of bordering on the war zones of Portuguese colonialism, are continuing to support our cause. We welcome the successes of the Portuguese people in their struggle against the colonial war and fascism. The armed action of Portuguese patriots against the colonial fascist war machine encourage us and strengthen the friendship and solidarity between our peoples. We support the just cause of the Arab and Palestinian peoples against Zionist aggression, for the recovery of occupied territories and for the national rights of the Palestinian people. We all join the progressive forces in the world in welcoming and rejoicing at the victory achieved by the comrades in Vietnam and Laos. Our comrades, like the people of Cambodia, are proving that imperialism can’t survive in the face of people’s struggle, even when it is defended by the mightiest and most criminal power of all, the United States. We congratulate the Socialist countries for the victories they have achieved in building a new society, and for their high sense of international duty. We hail the struggles of the peoples and workers of the world, and especially of Italy, for their defense of national independence against imperialism, for their fight for democratic freedom and the workers interests. That fight strengthens ours. Your solidarity represents a high peak of human fraternity, the affirmation that no people stand alone, that their suffering and struggle are shared by all peoples. We shall take back with us and convey to our people the warmth, affection, friendship, fraternity and solidarity we are experiencing here, amid the Italian people. We shall tell them that far away in Europe, a people who have also shed their blood for freedom are today making sacrifices in our support. We shall explain your struggle, your difficulties, your spirit of solidarity, so that our people learn from your example and increase their steadfastness and solidarity in their revolutionary struggle. We should also like to assure you that the Mozambican people will always respect the sacrifices made for them and solidarity shown for them. We will carry on our struggle until final victory, thereby performing our national and international duty. Long live the National Solidarity Conference for the Freedom and Independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau. Long live friendship and solidarity between the peoples of Mozambique and Italy. Down with Portuguese colonialism and imperialism. Long live the united struggle of the peoples of the entire world for freedom, justice, progress and peace. United we shall win. The struggle continues. Independence or death. We shall win. Samora Machel Archive
FRELIMO and Samora Machel Written: 1974; First Published: 1974; Source: Introduction to Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, by John Saul, Toronto, pp. 3-5; Transcription: Liz Blasczak. The biographical material in this introduction is drawn from an interview with Samora Machel carried out within FRELIMO in 1974. In Mozambique, the drive to attain national independence has given birth to a revolution. Elsewhere, in much of now-independent Africa, the colonialisms of Britain and France began quite early to hedge their bets, moving to co-opt and tame nationalist leaderships and lay the groundwork for neo-colonialism. But Portuguese colonialism could permit no such smooth transition to political independence. As a result, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) was forced to launch an armed struggle in 1964. And once such a struggle had begun, it set in train a whole series of developments which slowly but surely transformed the very nature of Mozambican nationalism. Most important, the need arose to involve the people the essential base for successful guerrilla warfare in the struggle in a new and more vital manner than had been the case with earlier expressions of nationalism on the continent. This, in turn, demanded that the movement exemplify, in the nationalist phase itself, the promise of a new kind of life – one in which the leadership was seen to avoid the easy paths of elitism and pursuit of entrepreneurial advantage, and one in which the people saw themselves to be gaining fresh and meaningful control over their own lives, through popularly-based institutions in the liberated areas. Such a struggle also dictated a deepening of ideological awareness at all levels: an understanding of imperialism, an eschewing of exploitation, a critique of racism and a redefinition of nationalism. Eduardo Mondlane, first President of FRELIMO, was only half joking when he said, shortly before his assassination by the Portuguese in 1969, that it would almost be a pity if Mozambicans were to win their war too soon, because “we are learning so much"! Within FRELIMO the triumph of this revolutionary emphasis was not achieved easily or automatically. Basil Davidson has remarked that “there is a general rule by which all movements of resistance produce and deepen conflicts within themselves as the reformists draw back from the revolutionaries, and, in drawing back, fall victim to the game of the enemy regime.” The conflicts over the direction of FRELIMO’s development which racked the movement in 1968-9 can be understood precisely in these terms. The crucial role of Samora Machel, who then emerged as President of FRELIMO, also can be understood only within the context of these events. For Samora Machel represented, in his person, all those within the organization who were prepared to learn the broader lessons of the liberation struggle, and to move to a new level of consciousness and of commitment to the cause of the Mozambican people. Even more important, he has been able to codify these lessons and present them to his colleagues as components of their political education and as guidelines for their future work. Herein lies one of his greatest contributions to FRELIMO, and also the strength of his contribution to revolutionary theory. The speeches collected here provide some of the best evidence of this kind of contribution. Samora Machel, born in Gaza province in southern Mozambique in 1933, learnt the lessons of colonial oppression early. His own grandfather had been wounded in earlier resistance to the Portuguese occupation. The day-to-day realities of economic exploitation were felt in the fertile Gaza region, where the Portuguese administration made the time-consuming cultivation of cotton compulsory for African families, and bought the crop at fixed, minimal prices. Moreover, for generations men have been forced to go to work in the South African gold mines. While some come home often maimed or blind or tubercular others, like Machel’s eldest brother, do not return at all. In Gaza, too, a dramatic example of colonial oppression occurred in 1950 when land in the Limpopo valley was seized to make way for a fresh wave of settlers and the Africans removed to infertile areas, their villages destroyed, without compensation. Samora Machel began his education at a mission school but, like so many others, found the path to further studies effectively blocked. Only when he started work was he able to proceed with his secondary education, paying the fees out of his wages. But in employment, too, Africans suffer differential treatment racial discrimination in pay, in promotion, as also in social life. In the late 1950s, as other African countries moved towards independence, the possibility of renewed resistance became apparent. In 1962 Machel left Mozambique, with others, to join FRELIMO in Tanzania. Convinced, correctly, that the Portuguese would not yield, would not open a real dialogue with the Mozambican people, without a fight, he immediately opted for military training, and was in the army when fighting began in 1964. He had risen to become the commander of this people’s army when he became President of FRELIMO five years later. By this time, the struggle for independence had developed into a revolutionary one; it has become, as Machel says in the interview reprinted here, “an integral part of the people’s lives ... What we discuss with the people now is how to make our struggle a real revolution.” The speeches collected here therefore present the theory and practice of consolidating a people’s struggle under Mozambican conditions. They deal with such themes as the methods of political work most likely to advance the revolutionary process, the dynamics of co-operative agricultural production, the emancipation of women, the nature of genuinely innovative educational and health facilities, and the imperatives of international solidarity. Readers will discover such themes for themselves in the following pages; there is no need to rehearse them further here. However, two points are worth emphasis. One is that no distinction is made between the task of destroying colonialism and the task of building a new Mozambique: they are two sides of the same coin. Thus, in Machel’s formulations and in FRELIMO’s practice, the collective spirit which sustains successful military activity becomes the essence of the new social and economic institutions. And the active involvement of the people which has premised military success becomes the guarantee of future progress without false decolonization or any subsequent trend towards authoritarianism. Second, there is the balance struck between theory and practice in Machel’s speeches – between the specificity of day-to-day revolutionary activity on the one hand and the broader principles and strategies which give shape to such activity on the other. Some successful revolutionaries have come to revolution with theoretical preoccupations and have gradually tempered and refined these in the heat of action. In Machel’s case the development has been somewhat different: practice is now being theorized and thus forged into an ever more effective instrument of progress. Yet one should not make too much of this distinction; in both cases a learning process is involved. The result, when a revolution is being successfully sustained, is an exciting blend of theory and practice. This is precisely what one finds in today’s Mozambique and this excitement is fully captured in these pages. Toronto, April, 1974 John Saul Samora Machel Archive
Samora Machel 1972 Leadership is Collective, Responsibility is Collective Written: 1972; First Published: 1972; Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 16-20; Transcription: Liz Blasczak. Summary of the President’s Recommendations made at a Joint Meeting with instructors and other cadres at a FRELIMO Centre for Political and Military Training, on 2 February, 1972. 1. The work of the CPPM (Center for Political and Military Training) is not to produce “killers,” but to train true revolutionary fighters, authentic FRELIMO soldiers. What characterizes the FRELIMO soldier is his political consciousness. We train fighters whose essential task is to build a new society, and because it can only be built in a territory free from enemy occupation, the fighter has to be trained to eliminate the enemy physically. A fighter is therefore a conscious and active agent in the transformation of society. The CPPM is the laboratory where we create this agent of change, the new man. 2. Our watchword is: production, study and combat. This watchword synthesizes our political line. Our fighter combines these three factors. Production supplies the material needs of war, political study gives us our identity, while scientific study enables us to develop production and improve our combat techniques. The fight against the physical enemy provides us with the land where production and the renewal of society takes place and frees the population from which new fighters come from. The fight against the enemy in our own minds the capitalist ideology imposed by colonialism and the feudal ideology inherited from tradition consolidates our physical victory, lays the foundations for the new society, and makes our progress irreversible. Our watchword must be applied in our methods of training fighters. 3. The fight against the enemy that lives in the mind is the toughest. Our whole upbringing, our tradition, our whole life until the time we joined FRELIMO makes us see and cultivate as virtues what our new society rejects as defects. The CPPM, in its way of life, demands a radical change in values, attitudes and behavior. Newly arrived comrades are introduced to a life which they have never conceived of, which they never thought possible. So it is quite a shock. 4. We must never think of men as automatons who must receive and carry out orders irrespective of whether they understand them or have assimilated them. Leaders must fight against the harmful tendency of solving political problems through administrative decisions. This tendency leads to a bureaucratic dictatorship and creates sharp contradictions with the rank and file. Our life and our discipline can be based only on conscious and voluntary involvement. Therefore when new trainees arrive at the CPPM, the camp leadership must discuss with them and explain the life in the camp, and its basic values. 5. The trainees must be led to progressively adopt our values. The first battle is to instill national consciousness and the importance of unity and of wiping out tribalism. Class consciousness must be made more acute and deeply felt, together with the need for close unity between peasants and workers to win power. Closely related to the battle for unity is the struggle to wipe out the spirit of individualism and to foster a collective spirit. To steal is a selfish act, an act of disregard for the interests of one’s comrades. The thief deliberately harms his comrades in order to satisfy his personal petty interests. Stealing his comrades shirt will not solve the problem of nakedness. Fighters should be taught to return even a needle they find. Unthriftiness and waste reflects indifference towards the party’s property and very incorrect understanding of what it means. At home nobody abandons a hoe or throws away food, because when a person has to work to acquire such things, he knows their value. Everyone needs to be fully aware that everything FRELIMO possesses has been paid for with the blood of our comrades and the sweat of our friends, and that the blood and sweat are part of the object or food we acquire. At this point we must draw comrades attention to the fact that they must not go about in tatters. Indeed, this not only prevents military smartness, but the main thing is that a small hole or tear which is not repaired in time soon becomes a gaping hole, a large tear, so that the clothes may be written off. In order to help our comrades understand the necessity of this, we should, as far as possible, distribute needles and thread. 6. Releasing the masses sense of creative initiative is an essential precondition for our victory and one of the chief purposes of our struggle. If the masses are to exercise the power the power so dearly won, they must display initiative. Colonial oppression, tradition, ignorance and superstition create a sense of passivity in man which stifles initiative. To create a sense of initiative is also to create a sense of responsibility and to make the militant feel directly concerned by everything related to the revolution, to our life. He must feel that he is FRELIMO, that FRELIMO’s fate depends on his behavior. 7. If fighters are to be able to accomplish their task, it is essential that they understand the correct definition of who is the enemy, and can clearly distinguish friend from foe, even if the latter is concealed under the same color, language, family ties or tribal markings as their own, even if he raises the flag with us. The struggle against tribalism, racism, false religious and family loyalty, and so on, is essential if the barrel of our gun is always to be trained on the correct target. 8. The emancipation of women is one of FRELIMO’s central tasks, which is undertaken mainly by the Women’s Detachment. We must ensure that all militants and cadres are committed to respecting the Women’s Detachment and seeing its members as their mothers, sisters and wives.
We must ensure that all militants and cadres are committed to respecting the Women’s Detachment and seeing its members as their mothers, sisters and wives. Our women comrades must assume their duties and correctly understand their mission as mothers of the revolution, as educators of the future generation which will continue the revolution. They must also learn to respect their own bodies. There is also a need to fight reactionary prejudices among both men and women about women’s abilities and their role in the revolution, in society and in the home. 9. International solidarity plays an important role in our revolution. We could not have reached the present stage of development in our struggle without the aid we receive from the progressive forces of the world. The struggle of the peoples and workers of the whole world against the exploitation of man and to build a new society is a decisive factor in creating favorable conditions for the victory of our struggle in the present era. The internationalist spirit is an essential characteristic of revolutionary forces; hard work is therefore required to make our militants realize who are our friends and allies at the international level, and to acquire an internationalist spirit. 10. Study combined with practice is a fundamental weapon with which to heighten our political consciousness and gain the knowledge required to mobilize nature and its laws on our behalf. It also gives us ammunition for wiping out superstition. A program of constant political education must therefore operate at every level: cadres, instructors, leading cadres, rank and file and the Women’s Detachment. There must be regular and frequent meetings with the units, whether by company or whole battalion. It is negative to only hold meetings when they are called by the president, the National Political Commissar or other top leaders. Scientific and literary education is a requirement of our armed struggle, of our fight against ignorance and superstition, and of our endeavors in economic and social development. It is inadmissible that we should have cadres, especially instructors, who are illiterate and can’t speak Portuguese. Therefore, priority must be given to the struggle against illiteracy and lack of knowledge of Portuguese among instructors and cadres, and in the second phase the struggle must be broadened to include the Women’s Detachment and the whole camp. Instructors and cadres who can read and write and speak Portuguese must draw up continuous and constant programs for improving scientific and literacy knowledge. Programs should include the history and geography of Mozambique, the Portuguese language, arithmetic and geometry, rudiments of physics, chemistry, and the natural sciences. Such a program should include regular lectures and discussions on new techniques and methods of production, particularly in the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry. Acquiring good habits of hygiene, both personal and collective, is decisive to the prevention of many diseases. A soldiers basic training, therefore, should include a weekly program of hygiene classes and a basic knowledge of first aid. In the same way, but at a higher level, there should be weekly courses on hygiene and first aid for instructors and cadres. The importance of culture must also be given due emphasis, since it expresses the characteristic features of our national identity. There should be regular programs of songs, plays, poetry reading, and so on, with the companies, instructors and cadres. 11. Production is essential for us. Without it not only could the war not advance, but it would be impossible to ensure the people’s survival, let alone meet the growing needs of the masses. In the final analysis, the principle contradiction lies in whether it is to be a handful of exploiters, old or new, or the masses who are to control the means of production, for greater well being in society and increased economic and social progress. Thus production in our army is a school of independence. In our centers the practical side of production is satisfactory; what is now needed is to relate it more closely to theory, so that experiences can be exchanged, understood and internalized. Fortunately we are beginning to have an increasing number of young people recently trained in fields directly related to production. We must try to spread their scientific and theoretical knowledge among our instructors and cadres through talks and short courses. This will enable us to improve our production techniques and achieve greater diversification. 12. The chief feature of our CPPMs is the teaching of military techniques, training men to wipe out the enemy physically and this is what distinguishes them from such other FRELIMO centers as schools, hospitals, cooperatives etc. Each group, depending on its basic knowledge and experience, should receive specific training. When training a group of fighters we must consider the tasks they will be called upon to carry out, so that their training corresponds to genuine requirements. We must get the fighters used to the real conditions of struggle. During training fighters should never abandon their weapons, packs or blankets. We need to increase the number of long marches with small rations and short rest periods. We should insist on night marches. The fighters must get used to making individual and group shelters, trenches, tunnels and underground caches. 13. Good or bad habits are acquired by units during training. If our teaching is to be worthwhile, our behavior must conform to what we say, to our political line. Leading cadres, instructors and cadres must be guiding lights of the new way of behaving. For the units, it is we who personify FRELIMO’s political line. Whatever our behavior, our unity or disunity, our discipline or indiscipline, our hardworkingness or laziness, our collective spirit or selfishness, our revolutionary dedication or corruption, this is what will be followed by the units, because it will be interpreted as the reality of FRELIMO’s line. With the exception of the strictly military programs, political, educational and cultural programs in the CPPMs have not been as successful as was hoped due principally to lack of continuity. We begin things, then interrupt them, and they die. The usual excuse is that the person in charge of the program was busy, absent, sent on s new mission, etc. This makes no sense and it must stop. One of the reasons why many national level cadres are appointed to the leadership of CPPM is to ensure regular and unbroken continuity of all programs. The great responsibility of the appointed cadres requires that they have sufficient flexibility and ability to pursue the program of a colleague who may for some reason be unable to continue it himself.
14. Leadership is collective and although each member of the leadership has a specific task, there are no hard and fast compartments. The duty of every member is to be concerned with all the work, see that it is carried out and to put forward ideas and criticism. Leadership is collective and responsibility is collective. Samora Machel Archive
Samora Machel 1971 Our Health Service’s Role in the Revolution Written:1 971; First Published: 1971; Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 46-55; Transcription: Liz Blasczak; Speech at the beginning of a course for health cadres, in November 1971. Comrades, Today we are starting a new course for training nurses. In 1968 we were forced to suspend such courses and they were stopped for three years. For three years our struggle and our people were deprived of new health cadres. In the past three years fighters have died for lack of medical care, members of the population have died, children have died, because we were not in a position to provide even a minimum of medical aid. In many of the liberated areas, and for many of the people, these past three years were not years of struggle against disease. Our people were forgotten, as in the colonial period, during those three years. Three years ago we engaged in the battle to train health cadres. We lost the battle at that time. There is no war in which there are only victories for us and defeat for the enemy. We lost the battle because the political awareness of our nursing students was not such as to permit a true grasp of the meaning and importance of the battle that was being fought, and they thus allowed the enemy to come in their midst. In 1968, our armed struggle made big advances. We were shelling enemy bases and taking them by assault. We were taking Portuguese prisoners of war and capturing tons of arms. We reopened the fighting front in Tete. The essential struggle for the clarity of our political line and for the development of our ideology made the popular objectives of the revolutionary forces quite clear to all of us. This struggle involved the health workers. It was also a struggle between two lines in the field of health. It was a struggle in the defense of the people’s interests in that field. What is a FRELIMO hospital and what are its tasks? It might at first seem absurd to talk about a political line, a struggle between two lines in the field of health. It might at first be thought that FRELIMO wishes to politicize something as apparently neutral as health. In the final analysis, those who believe in apolitical health would say, penicillin and chloroquine have the same effect whether administered by a revolutionary or not, whether given in a FRELIMO hospital or in a colonial hospital. Yet all our actions, our whole life, are utterly and radically different from the actions and life in the enemy areas. In the enemy zone, in the colonialist zone, in the capitalist zone, everything is intended to maintain domination over the people, to maintain the exploitation of the people and to provide profits for the capitalists. In the capitalist zone, in the colonialist zone, the roads serve the rapid transportation of the army and police who seize you and take you off to forced labor. Roads are fast routes for coming to collect your taxes. Roads are used to transport the cotton which you produced but which belongs to the company. They are used by the trader who comes to sell back to you at fantastic prices, goods which you and your class brothers produced, and for which the colonialists pay starvation prices. In the enemy zone, schools are for the children of the rich, even though it is your taxes that finance them. If, by some miracle, a poor man’s son sometimes goes to school, it is not in order to learn how to serve his people. He will be brainwashed by the school until he is ashamed of his origins, and turned into an instrument of the rich for the further exploitation of the workers. Everything has a content determined by the zone in which it is, by the kind of power that prevails in that zone. In the capitalist and colonialist zone, schools, fields, roads, courts, shops, technology, laws and education – everything serves to oppress and exploit us. In our zone, because we have power, because it is the peasants, the workers, the working masses who plan and lead, everything is directed towards liberating man, serving the people. This is what happens with the hospitals, the health services. In the capitalist and colonialist zone, hospitals are among the centers of exploitation. Because what is at stake is a person’s life, the lives of one’s nearest and dearest, this is where the greed of the capitalist world shows itself most clearly and shamelessly. One can’t enter and be treated in a capitalist hospital in accordance with one’s needs. If one is poor and without power of influence, it is difficult to get a hospital bed, even if cancer is devouring your flesh, tuberculosis eating away your lungs, or fever burning your body. The rich man, the gentleman, the boss, has not the slightest difficulty in getting a room, in finding place for himself and those who accompany him. Eminent doctors and university professors are brought in to treat the capitalist’s cold, to cure the judge’s constipation, while nearby children are dying, people are dying, because they did not have the money to call a doctor. In a capitalist hospital they do not examine patients, they examine wealth. Medicine is sold for its weight in gold. Only those who can pay are treated. Food, special diet, fruit, milk, salad, meat and fine fish restore the convalescent’s strength. But they are given only to those who can pay, not to those who need them. Even the ambulance sent off in an emergency to fetch someone who is dying often comes back empty because the dying man’s family can’t guarantee to pay the bill. In the enemy zone, the rich man’s dog gets more in the way of vaccinations, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man’s wealth is built. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the enemy zone to be a doctor means to be rich, and to be a nurse means very high salary. To be a doctor is to enjoy a position of social prominence as an exploiter, to be a nurse means to enjoy many privileges. In the Mozambique of the colonialists and capitalists there are hospitals only where there are settlers.
In the Mozambique of the colonialists and capitalists there are hospitals only where there are settlers. There are only doctors and nurses where people who can pay live. In Louren�o Marques there are more hospital beds, more doctors, more nurses and more laboratories than in all the rest of Mozambique. Does this mean that Louren�o Marques is the only place where people get sick? In the mines where we work, on the company plantations that we cultivate, on the roads that we build, in the factories, in the fields, in the villages, there are millions of Mozambicans who have never seen a doctor, who have never seen a nurse, who have never had any medical care when they are ill. Our hospital is different. It is not surgical instruments, or medicines that make a hospital. These are of course important, but the main thing, the decisive fact, is the human factor. That is why today, for the first time, the people in Cabo Delegado, Niassa and Tete are receiving medical care and vaccinations, and hygiene is being taught in the villages. Yet we have still very little medicine, very few surgical instruments, and our buildings are so modest that from outside one can barely distinguish them from ordinary grass huts. Our hospitals belong to the people. They are a fruit of the revolution. Our hospitals are far more than centers for dispensing medicines and cures. A FRELIMO hospital is a center where our political line – that of serving the masses – is put into practice. It is a center where our principle that the revolution frees the people becomes a reality. Our hospitals are intended to free the people from disease, to make our fighters, militants and workers physically fit so that they can fulfill the revolutionary tasks in which they are engaged. We cure people through the confidence we inspire, through the high morale we instill in them. Health workers, patients and medicines all combine to free the people from disease. Our hospitals are centers of the revolution, they exist because of the revolution, and are closely associated with the revolution. Whereas the capitalist hospitals have links with the exploiters, the settlers, because that is whom they serve, our hospitals have links with the people, because they are there to serve them. Thus our hospital is a center of national unity, a center of class unity, a center of clarification of ideas, a center of revolutionary and organizational propaganda, a combat unit, Medical staff, students, orderlies, patients and society as a whole are all closely united. In a FRELIMO hospital there are no tribes, no regions, no races, no religious beliefs – there is nothing to divide us. The hospital is accomplishing a revolutionary task. Medical staff, students and hospital orderlies are carrying out the essential tasks entrusted to them by the people. The whole people, from the Rovuma to the Maputo, through their sacrifices and bloodshed, built this hospital to serve them, to free them from disease. No one is sent to work in a hospital by any tribe or region. As the patients feel the unity of those working in the hospital, from doctors to orderlies, they will unite with the medical and non-medical staff, and they will all combine their efforts to wipe out disease. If there is disunity, there will be distrust; the patient will refuse medicines for fear that the treatment he is being given will make his condition worse. We are all united in the fulfillment of our tasks. There are no menial or unimportant tasks for us, just because I might be an orderly and someone else a nurse or a doctor. All of our tasks are essential, even though our responsibilities may be different. Feeling any inferiority complex in the carrying out of our tasks and worrying about whether we are being given big or small jobs means a lack of class consciousness. We all come from the working people and we are serving the working people. Our task is therefore a great one. Any other attitude merely reflects elitism, privilege-seeking, the loss of class consciousness and the adoption of bourgeois ideas. Just as we disinfect ourselves on entering an operating theatre, so must we cleanse ourselves of incorrect ideas and complexes which could contaminate our hospital. Just as we put on masks and smocks, so we must always be armed with our unity and class consciousness, so as to serve the people in a revolutionary way. In this way, our hospital will really be a center of revolutionary and organizational propaganda, a concrete example of the correctness of our political line – a true FRELIMO area. Thus, a hospital performs our tasks fighting disease, molding people and producing. Production can’t be separated from our health work. A hospital needs food. Often the local population and FRELIMO are unable to supply the hospital because we are at war, because the enemy is attacking us, because our production is one of the enemy’s targets. A hospital must therefore try to rely on its own resources, to be as self-sufficient in food as possible. On the other hand, we must not forget the importance of an adequate diet in the proper treatment of disease. Patients need to eat properly in order to get well again. Fruit, salads, green vegetables, meat, eggs, fish and milk are the foods containing the vitamins, salts, minerals and proteins that strengthen the body in the fight against disease. Since a hospital is a center of production, it is also a center for the education of patients. We must not neglect any opportunity of heightening our people’s political consciousness and knowledge. In our hospitals there should be no inactivity, no laziness. Moreover, experience has shown that involving patients and especially convalescents in activities, boosts their morale and is an important contribution to their recovery. This said, we should like to suggest that our hospitals should constantly endeavor to widen their range of activities in cooperation with the Political Commissariat and the Department of Education and Culture. We must teach patients and convalescents to read and write, teach them Portuguese, and make sure that they know, understand and regard as their own the cultural wealth of our entire country. We must organize short courses on hygiene for patients, so that they acquire good hygienic habits, which prevent many diseases.
We want all those who come to our hospitals for treatment to become active disseminators of methods of hygiene when they leave. We must also remember that in many regions of our country people have very bad eating habits. It is important that the people acquire new eating habits; therefore we should hold short courses for patients in the hospitals, especially for mothers, explaining to them the nutritional value of various foods and even how to prepare them. We can never neglect political work, since this task always has first priority. A patient’s stay in hospital should serve to heighten his awareness of national unity, his determination to fight and his hatred of the exploiting enemy. It will now be seen why we define a FRELIMO hospital as one of our fighting detachments, a front line. Our nurses, our medical staff, besides having their specific tasks, are also instructors, teachers, political commissars. The activity of our revolutionary medical staff not only cures the body but also frees and forms the mind. The enemy understands this very well – so much so that they have made our hospitals one of the main targets of their bombing raids and of their criminal troops. The Hospital – A Front Line In starting this course we are opening up a new fighting front. In starting this course we are creating conditions to open new hospitals, more centers in which FRELIMO’s political line is put into practice. New hospitals are new front lines. When we open a new front, we can say that the struggle has grown; but we have also enlarged the target, we have given the enemy another target. In 1968, as we said, we were forced to retreat, we were forced to suspend the course. We lost a battle. Today we are re-launching the battle, backed by the experience gained through our successes and failures. When we launch a battle, if we are to succeed it is essential we know the enemy, define our methods and know where our strength lies. In our struggle, we face three enemies: the direct enemy the indirect enemy the enemy hidden in our midst. The Portuguese colonialists are our direct enemy. They attack us openly, physically. They come in their planes and bomb our hospitals, they attack us from their helicopters, they send in their troops to murder our patients, to destroy our equipment and to prevent medicines from reaching their destination. Colonialism is the most easily identifiable enemy, because it is open and attacks with weapons of war. More dangerous, because they are more easily believed than the colonialists, are our indirect enemies, Portugal’s allies, those who fight us under cover, behind the Portuguese troops. They fight us with newspaper articles, rumors, slander. Today they will say that we are selling medicine, and tomorrow they will say one or another region is looked down upon in our hospitals. One day they will write that we are incompetent, and the next that the people don’t trust our hospitals. And the campaign will continue, to divide us, undermine our confidence and subtly force us to surrender. Every error, every mistake we make will be used by them as irrefutable proof that everything they say is true. But above all, in order to defeat us, in order to deprive our people of medical care again, the enemy, whether direct or indirect, relies on the work of its forces in our midst. The decisive force that can defeat us is the hidden enemy in our midst, he who holds high the banner of FRELIMO with us in order to destroy FRELIMO more easily. This has been our experience, this was our main reason for defeat in 1968, the reason for the suspension of the courses. Having infiltrated its spies among us, the enemy fostered tribalism, racism, selfishness, ambition, elitism, ignorance, superstition, religious fanaticism and corruption. Each of these is an enemy detachment in our midst. Tribalism divided the students, made them counter-revolutionary and caused them to fight against the FRELIMO leadership, against FRELIMO and against the people. Each saw himself as representing the interests of this or that region, meticulously seeking to assess whether another linguistic group had more students on the course than his, spreading mistrust and disunity amongst us. Racism led to the disunity between students and teachers. Claiming to be very revolutionary, students who had yet to show proof of true revolutionary commitment fought against teachers who had already given ample proof of their dedication to the people’s cause, solely because the teachers were white. Combing selfishness and ambition, the students rejected a program of studies planned to meet the immediate and urgent needs of the struggle and demanded programs that would give them diplomas and privileges so that they could exploit the people in the future. They wanted to become an elite of parasites, acquiring wealth and social prominence at the expense of the people’s suffering. Ignorance, superstition and religious fanaticism also caused the students to believe in non-existen supernatural forces, in amulets and stones, scorning science and rejecting the lessons of the teachers, which were founded on the laws of nature, on objective reality. It was in this climate that indiscipline, anarchy, corruption and chaos were fostered. The battle had been lost. The indirect enemy published articles in their newspapers on the “revolt of the revolutionary students against the leadership of FRELIMO.” The colonialists were delighted and intensified the campaign to reinforce the enemy in our midst: old ideas and the habits of the old society. Our people were for a long time crushed under the dead weight of obsolete and reactionary traditions and colonialist and capitalist ideas. Many students, cadres, medical workers and leading cadres have still not shaken off the burden of a corrupt past. There are those who envisage a Mozambique reduced to the tiny scale of one linguistic group or region. No matter how important it may be, no organ can live outside the body. An arm or a leg rots if it is no longer supplied with the body’s blood, if it is separated from its unity with the body. Through the unity we create among ourselves, by the revolutionary way in which hospitals serve the people, we give the masses a concrete demonstration of the need to make the nation live and to ensure the death of tribalism.
Just as we kill germs and harmful bacteria to protect the patient, a hospital must be a living example of the extermination of the contagious microbe which is tribalism, so that the nation may live. Others seek the answers to concrete problems in the supernatural, which is born of ignorance. They can’t yet see that the answer to all problems depends absolutely on the combination of intelligence and energy with the objective laws that govern natural and social phenomena. They seek answers in the heavens when answers can be found on earth. Because the people see science at work, because the people see the results of science, because we continually explain to the patients and people the origins of disease and ways of fighting it, our hospitals can become bases of struggle against obscurantism. The more we believe in mankind, the more superstition among the people will be destroyed. The more our work demonstrates the value of science, the more supernatural obscurantism will be made to retreat. Some regard themselves as irreplaceable, as being all things in themselves. Full or arrogance, they refuse to learn from others or to share their knowledge, rejoicing at the failures of their comrades. By acting in this manner, they are trying to create conditions which will allow them to establish themselves as a privileged class, to exploit the masses and have their own wretched whims prevail. To consolidate their position, they both accept and spread rumors and intrigues, selfishly confining themselves to their own petty interests. Individualism, selfishness, ambition and arrogance are germs carrying division, incubators of the old ideas of the exploiting society. Because we have come a long way, because everyone is joining the struggle, we sometimes find in our midst people who used to be accustomed to banditry. These people often introduce their vices into the new society. Some of them may steal medicines, sheets or food. Others betraying the confidence of patients, may use delicate secrets they know to satisfy their taste for intrigue and their ambition. There may also be those who use their position to try to corrupt the youth, contaminating the new generation with their low instincts. This kind of behavior has to be fought. A nurse who destroyed bottles of plasma in a hospital would be regarded as a criminal. A nurse who poisoned patients would be regarded as a criminal. Our revolutionary mortality, our principles, are our plasma, and the new society we are building is our life. Our fight is against our enemy, against those who want to destroy our plasma, our blood, those who want to take our life. Our methods of struggle On the health front it is our medical personnel who are our operational forces. They are vanguard forces in our movement, in our revolution. The medical staff represent our political line of serving the masses in the hospital. A strong bond of trust and hope is established between the patient and the nurse or doctor who is treating him. The patient associates the alleviation of pain and the curing of disease with the work of the nurse or doctor. This confidence of the patient and of his family and friends is an extraordinary political asset which we must use to advance the revolution. On the basis of the confidence that is established, we must help the patient to take the road of national unity, to increase his class consciousness and to learn more about hygiene, science and culture. In short, treatment of the body should be accompanied by corresponding treatment of the mind, in order that the new mentality may triumph. One needs a vocation, a natural enthusiasm for this type of work. This vocation is closely related to and guided by consciousness and the requirements of the struggle. Whereas in the capitalist zone, a vocation combined with the desire for profits and privilege is corrupted and stranded, in our zone, since one’s vocation is combined with sound political consciousness, it becomes a powerful incentive in our work. Precisely because we regard man as the decisive factor, in training our medical personnel, priority must be given to political education, to political consciousness. The experience of seven years of struggle has amply proved that despite their low technical level and lack of medicines our medical personnel have been able to do very much more for the people than the colonialist health services with all their technology and means. With two doctors we did more work than the colonialist health services which have dozens and even hundreds of doctors. These results are evidence of the vital importance of the political line pursued by us. Political education means above all cultivating political consciousness in the students and medical and hospital staff, developing the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist spirit, increasing understanding of oppression and making class consciousness and feeling more deep-rooted. Members of the hospital staff are in constant contact with the human suffering caused by exploitation and ignorance. This involvement with suffering should serve to sharpen political consciousness, increase the knowledge of the medical staff, and strengthen their determination to fight the enemy, to fight disease and to fight ignorance. The medical staff’s professional consciousness must be based on heightened political consciousness. A nurse does not have working hours and rest hours. His work usually starts at a certain time – and he must be punctual – but he has no set time at which to finish. Disease, suffering and war can’t be subject to bureaucratic decisions. A hospital functions 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Wherever there are patients, wherever there is suffering, there the doctor must be, regardless of the time. This is the only way to serve the people. A war is not fought with rest hours, and neither can disease be fought with rest hours for the medical staff. If nursing students are to get used to this exacting pace, their program of studies must include at least ten hours of activity a day. In the course of duty, medical workers are forced to come into close contact with all kinds of human weakness and misery. Even if they want to, patients can’t conceal their ailments and their causes. Scientific analysis is revealing. It is therefore essential that the medical staff understand the concept of professional secrecy. Their knowledge of weaknesses and miseries must not be the subject of general conversation or worse still, an instrument of ambition or revenge. The patient is sacred to the hospital. A nurse, hospital worker or doctor is not involved with revenge in the course of duty. For the medical staff there are no races, colors, creeds or even nationalities.
For the medical staff there are no races, colors, creeds or even nationalities. To them there are only patients. A wounded or sick Portuguese soldier is treated like one of us in our hospital. We do this because we have a revolutionary morality, a higher morality, radically opposed to the baseness of fascism and colonialism. We have already said that the hospital embodies our political line, that the medical workers must actively embody our ideology. For this, our words and deeds must correspond rigorously to our line. This is the main thing. If despite our technical and material shortcomings we have already achieved better results in the field of health than the colonialists, this is due solely to the correctness and superiority of our line. Waging an internal struggle to make our words and actions comply with our line is to create the conditions for the success of our work. Our hospitals must be the daily source of a thousand good examples to the masses of our principles. Technical knowledge takes second place. It is important nevertheless. Only the knowledge of the laws of nature and their use for our purposes will enable us to eradicate disease. There can be no limits to study. No on knows everything, or even enough. So long as there are diseases, so long as people are dying, we must study, we must learn. If we are to be of greater service, we must study a great deal. We must study everything. Naturally we must first study medical science, acquiring the theoretical knowledge that synthesizes and rationalizes practical teaching. But we must also study and learn from practice – we must study and learn from the people. We must study society. We must know the traditions, history, culture and specific features of each region, and constantly relate them to the national context. We must study people, get to know them. Illness does not exist in the abstract, but in actual people, each with his own psychological make-up and specific abilities. Knowing a man is the best way of helping him to summon his energy against the illness attacking him, and also the best way of guiding our actions to bring about the revolutionary transformation of his mind. Through knowledge we achieve understanding, and only after understanding can we act. But the most important thing is to constantly study the policy of our movement, because only this can give us an overall view and provide the clear perspective ensuring the proper orientation of our work. For us the aim of study is not to gain the means of exploiting people better or to acquire privileged positions as in the capitalist zone. We are not interested in one person getting good grades, in imparting a lot of knowledge to one individual. However knowledgeable he might be, one person would not be able to run all the hospitals we need or attend to all the patients. We study collectively and our progress goes in waves, everyone advancing together. This requires a spirit of mutual aid among the students and medical staff, the falling behind of one being regarded as a step backward for the movement, a step backward in serving the people. This collective spirit should govern our entire lives. Without national unity, we will be defeated by the colonialists. Without unity, our worker and peasant class will be dominated by the exploiters. Without unity, our health work will fail. The collective spirit makes us face each problem, each situation, each shortcoming as if it were our own. There is no problem to which we are indifferent. Power belongs to us and therefore we can’t sit with folded arms when faced with a situation, however small, which hampers our progress. A minor cut may open the way for tetanus, which destroys the whole organism. In the case of the body, a cut on our little toe can kill if it is not treated. We must not disregard a problem just because it does not affect us personally: this problem is part of the body to which we too belong. Our hospitals exist because sacrifices have been made. Our hospitals represent all the blood that has been shed. The surgical instruments, drugs and equipment are a result of the sacrifices made by the people, the sacrifices made by our friends. Because blood is flowing in Mozambique, a powerful tide of solidarity has built up in many countries to help us. People voluntarily deprive themselves to help us. Having a well developed sense of how to fight waste, indicates that we respect the sacrifices made by our friends – it shows the collective spirit. Comrades often die in our hospitals for lack of medicines. Very often there is not even peroxide to treat a patient. Saving medicines and equipment is to save the lives of the people that these medicines and equipment can cure. This course is being started at the Americo Boavida hospital. This is a symbolic coincidence. Comrade Boavida, an Angolan doctor, sacrificed his life for the people. He could have been doing medical research, but he died serving the people, fighting against sickness and exploitation. A further example and encouragement to us should be the internationalist spirit of the foreign comrades who, out of revolutionary solidarity, have left their own countries and the comfort created through their labor to come and work with us. Our responsibility is great.
Our responsibility is great. Our struggle is not only to liberate our people but also to support brother peoples, the working class of the whole world. In our work united under the leadership of FRELIMO and guided by our ideology, let us apply the watchword: serve the people. We will thus perform our national and international duty. THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN. Samora Machel Archive
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman John L. Lewis: His Stand on War, His Role in the Unions (6 September 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 36, 6 September 1941, p. 3. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The new united front of the Stalinists and Hillmanites against John L. Lewis confronts, every militant worker in the labor movement with the necessity of having a clear and precise attitude toward the Lewis group in the CIO. This involves an understanding not only of the position taken by Lewis on the war, but also of the role Lewis is playing in the union movement today. The Hillman-Stalinist forces are concentrating their fire on Lewis’ action last month in signing his name to a statement on the war together with 14 leading Republican isolationists. Let us begin, therefore, by examining that “anti-war” statement. It is an out-and-out isolationist document. It opposes “naval action” and the seizing of bases outside the Western Hemisphere, although not opposing seizures inside. It declares against military action outside the Western Hemisphere but maintains “that American lives should be sacrificed” for “independence” or to keep control of the Western Hemisphere. This “isolationist” statement is, in short, one calculated to serve the interests of those imperialists who are satisfied for the time being to dominate the Americas. It is no accident that reactionaries like Hoover and Landon could sign their name to it. In addition, the statement comes out against governmental aid to the Soviet Union as “unauthorized” and because the Soviet Union is not a democracy. This statement, it should be recalled, is signed by people who are not opposed to and as a matter of fact support the sending of aid to British imperialism. Lewis Policy on the War No class-conscious worker can support this so-called “anti-war” statement that Lewis signed, for it is neither anti-war nor pro-labor in character. The fundamental fallacies in it are: 1. It is no more progressive to support “Western Hemisphere” imperialism than it is to support the imperialists who seek world domination. 2. It is incorrect to support government aid to British imperialism in the war as a means of fighting against war. Such support will lead inevitably to involving the United States in the war. If the aid is to get there, it means seeing that the aid is not sunk, it means sending convoys to prevent the Nazis from sinking the aid. Sending convoys means entering on the road of direct and open “shooting” conflict with Hitler, it means “incidents” which can easily be used by the warmongers for the purpose of beginning the war. One step leads to the next, and those who advocate aid to Britain today must logically call for war tomorrow. Those who really want to fight against United States entry into the war will also refuse to support aid to British imperialism today. The Question of Aid to the USSR 3. No militant worker can consistently oppose aid to the Soviet Union. Of course, we cannot adopt for our own, the slogan of government aid to the Soviet Union, Those who would accept responsibility for such a slogan must accept the responsibility for convoys, etc. There is no doubt that Roosevelt is glad to use aid to the Soviet Union as a means of gathering support for his war program from those sections of the working class which opposed the lend-lease bill for Britain, but want to give aid to the Soviet Union. But the workers cannot follow Lewis in his opposition to aid to the Soviet Union. Instead they must concentrate on the only real program of aid to the USSR, workers’ independent action against he bosses and their war and for the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government that will be a true ally of the Soviet masses. It is clear that the policies on the war which Lewis follows in no way resemble a militant, working class opposition to imperialist war. Between his policies and the policies of the Stalinist-Hilllnanite nited front on the war there is no real choice for the workers. Differences on Building the Unions The Stalinists and the Hillmanites do more, however, than attack the very vulnerable position of Lewis on the war. They follow this by attacking his entire role in the union movement. We refuse to support either the Lewis position on war or the war-mongering policies of the CP-Hillman coalition; but we must recognize that there is an important difference between them on the question of building the CIO. While the Stalinists-Hillmanites are willing to subordinate everything in the labor movement to support of Roosevelt’s: war program, Lewis stands for the building of the CIO in spite of the war and in spite of the government. When it comes to this dispute between the two groups, which is one of the key questions for labor in time of war, militant workers cannot stand with folded arms, indifferent to the, outcome. Militants must intervene when two groups are fighting over questions that will determine the future of the CIO, the independence of the labor movement, the preservation of the gains of industrial unionism. When Lewis condemns the use of troops to break strikes, as at the North American plant, while Hillman condones it; when Lewis attacks the anti-labor functions of the National Defense Mediation Board, while Hillman collaborates with it; when Lewis leads the attack on Congressional and administration anti-labor legislation, while Hillman behind the scenes tries to make that legislation a little more palatable; when Lewis encourages the affiliation of the militant drivers movement to the CIO, while Hillman’s associates pass resolutions against it in the local bodies they control; when in short Lewis seeks to build and spread the CIO, while Hillman tries to shackle it to the Roosevelt war machine and weaken it in the struggle against the reactionary craft-unionists headed by the AFL Executive Council, then progressive trade unionists must support Lewis against the Hillman-Stalinist bloc. By their policy for both the unions and on the war, the Hillman-Stalinist forces occupy a wholly reactionary position. Lewis’s position on the war is wrong and misleading from beginning to end, and will have to be fought by those who understand that the isolationists are incapable of leading successful opposition to the war in the workers’ interests. But this must not blind militants to the equally undeniable fact that the Lewis forces tend to resist the government moves to hogtie the CIO and destroy its character as the progressive organizational movement of the workers in the mass industries. Those who want: to fight against the war as well as those who want to protect and extend labor’s gains – for both of which tasks a strong independent industrial union movement is required – will unhesitatingly take their side on questions of building the unions, against the Hillman-Stalinist united front. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 25 May 2016
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker Repeating Our Warning (14 February 1977) From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 7, 14 February 1949, p. 4. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The filibuster system is a serious obstacle to the passage of civil rights legislation, and so it is natural that most attention is devoted at present to the maneuvers of both parties to dodge responsibility for maintaining the filibuster. Nevertheless, there is another move on foot by the enemies of civil rights which is just as important even though it hasn’t received much notice. In a careful speech made in the House of Representatives on Feb. 2, Rep. Brooks Hays, Arkansas poll-tax Democrat, asked for a “compromise” on civil rights. He admitted that the Southern democrats had been “inaccurate” in their tirades against Truman; that “on the question of segregation views sometimes attributed to the President are not contained in his message at all” (unlike the report of his famous committee which came out against segregation). Southerners may be willing to go along with Truman’s civil rights program, he stated, if a “compromise” is made. And these were the conditions he laid down: “If we could agree ... that no legislation should be adopted on the subject of segregation, it would be the first step in a proper compromise.” In return, the Southern Democrats could accept an anti-poll tax bill if it was adopted as a constitutional amendment, requiring approval by ¾ of the states. They could accept a federal anti-lynching bill if the federal government would have jurisdiction only in states where state officials “willfully” failed or refused to prosecute lynchers. They could even accept an FEPC bill if it did not provide “legal sanctions” for enforcement. In short, they would accept civil rights bills if all the teeth were extracted from them – if Negroes, could still be barred from the ballot by other means than the poll tax, if the federal government could not intervene in lynchings so long as state officals put on an act of trying to punish lynchers, if no employer was forced to stop racial discrimination in employment. After Hays finished speaking, he was congratulated by several other Representatives. Not a single one got up to denounce his arrogance in offering a “compromise” that would give the Jim Crow artists everything they want. But most important is the fact that, according to the N.Y. Times, the speech “had been weeks in preparation with the knowledge, at least, of Speaker Sam Rayburn.” Translated, that means it had the approval of Rayburn, which in turn means that it was a feeler put out by the White House itself. Ever since Nov. 2 The Militant has been warning against just such a trick. It would enable Truman to say, “See, I kept all my promises to the Negro people.” It would enable the liberals like Humphrey to go around saying: “See, the Democratic Party is the only party for the Negroes.” It would enable the white supremacists to be happy too. The Negroes – well, the Negroes would still be second-class citizens. Every fighter for civil rights should be aware of the dirty deal being worked out behind the scenes, and should spread the word far and wide. It is better to have no civil rights bills at all than to have ones that don’t mean anything. The capitalist parties are not going to grant equality to the Negro people. Equality will be won only by fighting for it – and that means a fight against the Trumanite fakers as well as the Dixiecrats. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 3 March 2024
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle (14 March 1942) From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 11, 14 March 1942, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). An Associated Negro Press dispatch from Washington, D.C., reports that the people of the Virgin Islands, United States possessions west of Puerto Rico, have been “excused” from the draft. The islands are in the vicinity of recent enemy submarine action in the West Indies area, they have a total area of 133 square miles, and a population of 25,000, of whom 95% are Negroes. The A.N.P. report declares that the official policy is: “We don’t want colored natives armed and able to shoot.” The Black Dispatch, Negro paper published in Oklahoma City by Roscoe Dunjee, leading Negro Democrat, has a headline over the story which says Army Doesn’t Want Colored Natives Armed Because They May Turn Guns Around. This should settle once and for all the idea that there is some fundamental difference between the attitude of the British Empire toward its colonial subjects, and the attitude of the American government toward its colonial subjects. * From the Workers Defense League Press Service: “Governor Colgate Darden of Virginia reports that he is receiving 50 to 75 letters a day requesting a stay of execution for Odell Waller, condemned Negro sharecropper, whose case is being appealed to the Ú. S. Supreme Court by the Workers Defense League.” Among the unions which have asked the Governor to grant a stay of execution for Waller so that his case may be heard by the Supreme Court, and which have contributed to the Waller defense fund are locals and joint boards of the International Ladies Garment Workers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Marine and Shipbuilding Workers, Hosiery Workers, American Federation of Teachers, Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, etc. Waller is scheduled to die March 20 because he defended himself against his white landlord in a dispute over his landlord’s refusal to give Waller’s family their share of the crop. This does not give the defense movement enough time to properly prepare its case for presentation to the Supreme Court. If you belong to a union or any other kind of organization, bring the Waller case up this week and have them pass a resolution asking Governor Darden, Roanoke, Va., to postpone the date of execution. If you want to read more about the Waller case, ask the W.D.L., 112 E. 19th St., New York, to send you a copy of its pamphlet, All for Mr. Davis. * One of the things pretty much overlooked about the Detroit housing “riot” is the responsibility of the federal government itself. True, the city administration was partly to blame; the police force was partly to blame; the federal housing authorities, by their vacillation and their willingness to co-operate with the Jim Crow landlords and the Ku Klux Klan, were partly to blame. But don’t forget that what was behind this “riot” was the idea dear to the hearts of Jim Crow and Judge Lynch that Negroes must be segregated from whites. The official policy of the federal government as expressed in most of its departments is to uphold this system of segregation. For example, the government won’t let Negro soldiers serve in the same regiment as white soldiers, it won’t let Negro sailors, segregated to the kitchen, sleep in the same room with white sailors, etc. And so far as housing goes, in most cases even in the north, it won’t let Negroes live in the same federal housing project as whites; it follows the policy of setting up lily-white and all-Negro projects. Is there anyone who doubts that the Ku Kluxers and their followers are encouraged by such policies? * for a bill, he fights for it, he tells his congressional spokesmen he wants that bill passed, he puts pressure on congressional committees, he issues statements to the press, he delivers fireside chats. That’s how he used to act before the war when he wanted a war measure or appropriation passed. Then on the other hand when he is not interested, Roosevelt can be as silent as the Sphinx — as for example,. when it comes to an antilynching bill. * The Pepper bill is supposed to come before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, scheduled to begin March 12. Hundreds of trade unions and Negro organizations are letting the Committee know by telegram and resolution that they want the bill brought to the floor of Congress and passed. Roosevelt will show by his action — or his silence — this week how truthful was his statement last month. * The U. S. Navy is still as strong as ever ... in its determination not to use Negroes in any department but the kitchen. Only last week the Navy Department let a reporter know that it has not retreated an inch ... on this question. Evidently the Navy brass hats will fight to the bitter end ... against equality and democratic treatment for Negroes on ships. * The new Negro paper, The People’s Voice, published in Harlem by City Councilman A. Clayton Powell, Jr. and Charles P. Buchanan, is a hard-hitting addition to the ranks of Negro journalism. It takes a forthright position on the trade union movement, and declares that “This is a working class paper.” If promises, “We cannot be bought, we will not be sold.” We reserve fuller discussion of The People’s Voice for a future issue of The Militant. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 11 April 2022
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx. (10 May 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 19, 10 May 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The Supreme Court Decision It was extremely dissappointing to read the comment of the Negro press on the recent decision of the Supreme Court on the Mitchell case. Most of the press went overboard for it hook, line and sinker, hailing it as one of the most important decisions since the Civil War. The Pittsburgh Courier went even further than most, spilling the pictures of the eight judges clear across the top of the front page and labeling it “Eight Real Americans ... They Rendered Most Momentous Decision Affecting The Race since 1857.” Are the Courier editors kidding themselves or do they believe it? The most that could be said for the decision, so far as the great mass of the Negro people goes, was that it was a thin moral victory insofar as the position of the 10 Southern Attorneys-General was rejected. The decision did not wipe out segregation in transportation, just as the court’s decision on the Gaines case a few years ago did not wipe out segregation in education. That is what is fundamental, and that is just what the court refused to act on. The Negro press does not do a service to the job of clarifying the struggle for full equality when it prints such twaddle as it did on this case. Indeed, it sounds almost as ridiculous as did Mitchell himself, when he crowed after the announcement of the decision that he wants the world to know that he fought, the case single-handed and deserves “the full credit.” The only difference is that the Negro press ballyhoos the Jim-Crow Court as the protector of Negro rights, while Mitchell ballyhoos only himself. Pickens Defends British Jim Crow William Pickens has written another article in an endeavor to swing more Negroes to support of the war to defend British imperialism. His latest article is directed against George Padmore who is now in England. Padmore’s article in the March issue of The Crisis, Hitler Makes British Drop Color Bar, has aroused Picken’s ire. We do not comment on it in order to defend Padmore, because Padmore can ably defend himself, but in order to defend the American Negro, people against the sly distortions of Pickens. Pickens’ theme, this time, is that in England you will find far less evidence of Jim Crowism than you will find anywhere else except, maybe Honolulu, Hawaii; and that therefore Negroes should throw all their support behind the government’s steps to aid England. Once Pickens had made more than 60 lectures all over England, and he claims that “for the Negro, the worst place in England is better than the best place in the United States ...” The trick Pickens employs here is to separate the British Isles from the British Empire and to pick out one isolated, very minor aspect of the first to justify all-out, uncritical defense of the second. We are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the truth of Pickens’ observations about racial discrimination in England (although current reports about separate Jim Crow bomb shelters do not jibe with his pretty picture). But is that the decisive question, as Pickens tries to make it appear? Ask Churchill, and the other imperialists, and they’ll answer only too quickly that it is not. Churchill and his class are not fighting to preserve Negro rights in the British Isles, they are fighting to preserve the British EMPIRE, which means the continued exploitation and oppression of hundreds of millions of colored workers and peasants in Africa and India and the West Indies. Pickens is happy that two years ago in London he “could roam through the whole town, and stop and step into any public place, and eat and drink, and without receiving any discourtesy, could crowd shoulder to shoulder with the thronging English people, without a ripple of displeasure.” But when he tries to imply that this is what the British ruling class is fighting for, he knows that he is deceiving his public. Padmore described how the progress of the war has compelled the British ruling class to temporarily lower some of the color bars against Negroes. The reason was not that they believe in equal rights for Negroes, but that they want to strengthen the imperialist system that keeps the great bulk of Negroes in subjection. Because for every Negro who might be able to go freely in England, there were and are a thousand Negroes in Africa who can’t go where they want, or work where they want, or vote, or belong to a union, or a party, or even an African form of the NAACP. NAACP Picket Lines The NAACP picket lines scheduled to be held throughout the country on April 26 were far from the successful demonstrations against Jim Crowism that they easily could have been. They were poorly organized, and consequently, not well attended. This must be a lesson to, the leaders of the NAACP, or all their other efforts will also be unavailing. They must pay more attention to involving the Negro masses in the struggle against discrimination. It is necessary and correct to take care of court action, to prepare briefs for Congress, to file telegrams of protest. But unless these actions are backed up by the great hulk of the Negro people (and everyone knows they are more aroused by present day developments than ever before), nothing will come of them. For more demonstrations involving the masses! For real preparation and organization of such demonstrations to show the real strength of the Negroes! Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 November 2015
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Separate but Equal” Facilities (19 January 1948) From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 3, 19 January 1948, p. 4. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Members of the U.S. Supreme Court come and go, but the Court itself never changes in its undying opposition to equality for the Negro people. This came out once again on Jan. 12 when the Court said segregation is OK. Two years ago Miss Ada Lois Sipuel applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School, the only school of its kind in that state. She was turned down solely because she is a Negro and Oklahoma segregates Negroes in education as well as other fields. The state courts ruled against her, and so she went to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking two things – that she be admitted to the school, and that the Court outlaw segregation of students as unconstitutional. By unanimous vote, the Court did neither. It ordered Oklahoma to provide a legal education for Miss Sipuel – either at the existing school, from which Negroes have been banned, or by setting up a new school for Negroes only. And it refused to take any action at all on the constitutionality of segregation. Of the two questions, the second is, of course, far more important because it affects all aspects of Negro life in the 20 states and the District of Columbia where local laws specifically require segregation. By upholding these laws in the Sipuel case, the Court is acting consistently with its own long anti-Negro history and traditions. In fact, this body bears greater responsibility for the pattern of the present Jim Crow system than any other single institution in the country. After the Civil War Congress passed several laws to protect the civil rights of the newly freed Negroes. But the Supreme Court threw most of them out, ruling that authority over the protection of civil rights belongs to the states, and not to the federal government. This was just what the Southern states wanted, and they quickly passed Jim Crow laws to deprive Negroes of their rights. The Supreme Court said discrimination was illegal, but it nullified the effect of that decision by declaring segregation is not discrimination if “separate but equal” facilities are provided for those segregated. “Examples of how the rule works are readily at hand,” says William R. Ming, Jr., in the chapter he wrote for the NAACP’c recent appeal to the United Nations. “Contrast the crowded, dirty, freezing in winter, and sweltering in summer, ‘Jim Crow’ cars of the southern railroads with the accommodations afforded white persons paying no more than equal fares. Or, consider the one-room schools, often unheated, poorly furnished and frequently equally poorly taught, to which most rural Negroes go for their education as another illustration ... Or, wait with a Negro soldier on a three day pass while successive busses admit only a few Negroes at a time as his leave runs out. The fact is that the law permits facilities to be separate but it does not succeed in making them equal.” You can say that again. And while you’re saying it, remember what it means: To win equality for the Negro people it is necessary to change not only the laws, but the whole system which makes such laws possible and inevitable. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 October 2020
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman Our Military Policy – And the FBI’s False Version The Lessons of Two World Wars Dictate Our Party’s Program for Military Training, Government-Financed, Union-Controlled (26 July 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 34, 23 August 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The key charges in the indictments handed down against the Socialist Workers Party last week revolve around our party’s anti-war stand and the concretization of our anti-war stand in our proletarian military policy. It would not serve the purpose of Roosevelt’s Department of Justice to present our real military policy, as it was actually adopted at our national conference last September and as it has been presented, countless times in our press, in our public meetings and in the election platforms of our candidates for office. For the truth would completely discredit and disprove the Roosevelt Administration’s charges. An examination of these charges in the indictment, numbered 7, 8 and 9, – supposed to describe our military policy – clearly demonstrates the purpose of the prosecutions. Because what they accuse us of is not the policy we really advocate, but a falsified and distorted version, cooked up for the purposes of a frameup. Number 7 of the indictment charges that: “The defendants and their co-conspirators would endeavor by any means at their disposal to procure members of the military and naval forces of the United States to become undisciplined, to complain about food, living conditions, and missions to which they would be assigned, to create dissension, dissatisfaction and insubordination among the armed forces, to impair the loyalty and morale thereof, and FINALLY TO SEEK TO GAIN CONTROL OF SAID NAVAL AND MILITARY FORCES so that the enlisted personnel thereof would revolt against its officers, thereby enabling said defendants to overcome and put down by force and arms the constitutional government of the United States.” Paragraph 9 makes substantially the same charge. Our military policy has nothing in common with the police-mind version fabricated by the Department of Justice. Here is what we advocate: We recognize in this period of universal militarism and the deadly advances of fascism, the need for military training of the workers. We never succumbed for a minute to the fatal ideas of pacifism. On the contrary we pointed out that workers could overcome fascism only by fighting it, and that pacifism would only disarm the workers. But the experiences of both the first and second World Wars have taught us that the best interests of the workers cannot be entrusted to the bosses or their agents on the military field any more than in the factories. The downfall of France, we have pointed out, contained a great lesson for American workers. There the government had built a great army in the name of a war against fascism. But instead of carrying this war through, the army bureaucrats capitulated and delivered the French workers to Hitler. The way the U.S. Army is constituted, we said, offers us no assurances that the same thing that happened in France will not happen here. The Anti-Labor Military Hierarchy The army is run by a hardened bureaucratic caste that is distinguished, as a result of its background, training and traditions, by the following characteristics: It is anti-labor and anti-democratic. It is composed almost exclusively of men drawn from that part ot society that is most alien to and separated from the needs and interests of the working class. It bases itself on a harsh barracks discipline that tends to destroy the independent thought and initiative of the worker-soldiers. It is conservative in its military thinking and strategy. No informed person would dispute these characterizations. As a matter of fact, they are openly admitted by many “liberal” supporters of Roosevelt’s war, and program, and even by some of the more observant sections of the army bureaucracy itself, who are trying to effect some reforms in order to make the army regime more satisfactory for their own purposes and more acceptable in the eyes of the masses. There is no question, either, but that the workers look with suspicion and distrust on this military caste. Nor is there any question about the existence of a wide spread dissatisfaction with it among American workers. The war mongers may attempt through this frameup of the Socialist Workers Party to attribute this dissatisfaction to our activities. But everyone knows that we are not responsible for these conditions. We did not “create” them we only discuss them. They were created by Roosevelt and his class. Our Program for Militant Training We told the workers: If we are forced to depend on such a set-up what may result, in spite of all the workers’ sacrifices, is the definitive victory of fascism and the establishment of an American Vichy regime by the very forces that today tell us there is no other way to fight fascism than by joining the army and supporting the Roosevelt war program and everything that goes with it But there is another way. It is briefly expressed in the slogan raised by our party: “Military training of workers, financed by the government, but under control of the trade unions. Special officers’ training camps, financed by the government but controlled by the trade unions, to train workers to become officers.” Our program of military training under trade union control is to be achieved, not by gaining control of the existing governmental armed forces, but as a result of independent pressure on the government for appropriations to be used to train the workers and to train worker-officers in special camps, to be set up for this express purpose and to be operated by the trade unions. We recognize very well that only a disciplined armed force can successfully fight off fascist attacks.
We recognize very well that only a disciplined armed force can successfully fight off fascist attacks. But lack of discipline does not arise from “agitation” or “propaganda”. It arises, in the armed forces as in industry and everywhere else, only as a result of rotten conditions and the lack of machinery for correcting them. It is precisely the fact that the nature of the present military regime prohibits correction that ends weight to our argument for the establishment of a system of military training, which by its nature will be democratically operated, will permit the handling and satisfaction of legitimate grievances, and will thus automatically build and create the kind of discipline which no fascist army, itself chock full of barracks discipline and dissatisfaction, could possibly withstand. What We Do When We Are Conscripted Paragraph 8 of the indictments charges that: “When the Selective Service Act was passed, the members of said Socialist Workers Party would be urged to willingly accept service, but after being inducted into the army of the United States, to do everything in their power to disrupt, hinder, and impair the efficient functioning thereof, and when the appropriate time came to turn their weapons against their officers.” The indictment does not err in stating that we advised class-conscious workers not to seek an individual solution of their problem by refusing to go when drafted. But it falsifies from beginning to end what we advise workers to do after they were drafted. One quotation from many in the record will prove this. In our official Resolution on Proletarian Military Policy, we said: “Under conditions of mass militarization the revolutionary worker cannot evade military exploitation any more than he can evade exploitation in the factory. He does not seek a personal solution of the problem of war by evading military service. That is nothing but a desertion of class duty. The proletarian revolutionist goes with the masses. He becomes a soldier when they become soldiers, and goes to war when they go to war. The proletarian revolutionist strives to become the most skilled among the worker-soldiers, and demonstrates in action that he is most concerned for the general welfare and protection of his comrades. Only in this way, as in the factory, can the proletarian revolutionist gain the confidence of his comrades in arms and become an influential leader among them.” Obviously, far from urging the class conscious worker to follow a policy of “disrupting, hindering and impairing” – a policy which could only place his fellow soldiers as well as himself in the greatest danger, especially in time of combat – we urged him to become “the most skilled” among the soldiers. We tell the workers to learn the military arts because they have to learn them if they do not want to be crushed by fascism, of either the foreign or domestic variety. We tell them to demand training under trusted leadership so that not only will they be able to defeat foreign fascism, but also to prevent an American capitulation and the establishment of fascism from within. In other words, we are serious about this business of fighting fascism. Thus, we see, the government is preparing to suppress us on charges that we are trying to impede and interfere with a war against fascism, when actually it is preparing to suppress the only party with a program that will really guarantee the defeat of fascism of all kinds! Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 24 May 2016
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx. (8 February 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 6, 8 February 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Fight Against Byrne’s Appointment Shortly after the announcement that McReynolds was retiring from the United States Supreme Court, word came that Roosevelt had already chosen the man he was going to nominate to fill the vacancy, although he did not intend to make the name known for several weeks. However, at the same time, “authoritative sources” disclosed that the man Roosevelt was referring to was Senator James Byrnes of South Carolina, one of his chief aides in pushing the “Lend-Lease” War Powers Bill. Immediately, protest action was called for by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which said it would conduct a fight against the selection of Byrnes because he “has been absolutely consistent in opposing any and every effort to give to Negro citizens the protection of the United States Constitution.” ’The NAACP also pointed out that the three senators who most strongly favor Byrne’s appointment, Carter Glass of Virginia, Pat Harrison of Mississippi, and Alben Bartley of Kentucky, are all opponents of any kind of federal anti-lynching legislation. The Pittsburgh Courier went back to the record and dug out the following information: While Byrnes was in the House of Representatives, he tried to obstruct and voted against appropriations for Howard University. He spoke and voted against the Dyer anti-lynching bill. He voted against the resolution providing a loan of five million dollars to Liberia. He placed the blame for the 1919 “race riots” in Chicago and Washington on “would-be leaders of the (Negro) race.” instead of on the boss-inspired anti-union campaigns, and said: “If the two races are to live together in this country, it may as well be understood that the war has in no way changed the attitude of the white man toward the social and political equality of the Negro. “If, as a result of his experience in the war, he does not earn to live in this land without political and social equality, then he can depart for any country he wishes and his departure will be facilitated by the white people of this country who desire no disturbing factor in their midst.” The Courier, asks: “Can the man who made the above statement and has the above record mete out equal justice to all citizens of the United States? “If you think so, read until you’re sleepy and go on to bed. “If you don’t think so, prepare to act.” New Deal Testimony Against Byrnes! But not even the Courier has told the whole story about Byrnes, as can be seen by a reading of Dixie Demagogues by two New Dealers, A. Michie and P. Ryhlick, who will be embarrassed, after they exposed Byrne’s record and his opposition to the more liberal legislation of the earlier New Deal, to see how closely Roosevelt is working with him today. For Byrnes is every bit as much anti-labor as he is anti-Negro. And his nomination must be opposed not only by fighters for equality for the Negro people, but by organized labor as well. In 1937 Byrnes was among the first to rush forward with a denunciation of the sit-down strike, and he introduced an amendment to the Guffey Coat Bill to bar sit-downs, one of labor’s strongest weapons. He opposed the Wage-Hour Bill in the Senate, and attempted to use his influence in the House to prevent its passage. He thinks that the thousands of textile workers and sharecroppers of South Carolina are getting along well enough in their present starving, highly exploited condition. He was one of the leaders in Congress of the relief-slashing bloc that has cut WPA to ribbons, always favoring the lowest figure offered for WPA appropriations, always in favor of the move to turn relief over to the states’ control. An example of his die-hard opposition to the anti-lynching bill, was his reply to the question asked him in 1938 as to what likelihood there was of ending the filibuster against the anti-lynch bill: “Not until the year 2038, unless the bill is withdrawn before then!” The fact that Roosevelt even considers such a man for appointment to the Supreme Court should serve to disillusion many colored and white workers who have supported Roosevelt because “he’s a little better than the Republicans.” Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 3 October 2015
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker Another Negro Lynched; More Soldiers in ‘Riot’ (21 March 1942) From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 12, 21 March 1942, pp. 1 & 3. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). In this war, as in 1917, the Negro people have been promised that their reward for fighting and dying will be equal treatment – after the war. The Negroes had to wait until the first war was over to find out what a lie this was, to find that their “reward” was more lynchings, “race riots”, segregation, discrimination and insult than they had received before the war. The chief difference between World War II and World War I, so far as the Negro people in this country are concerned, is that they don’t have to wait until after the war is over to find out what lies they have been told by the capitalist press and their own misleaders – they can see what lies they are already! You don’t have to go back even a year ago to prove that Negroes are still considered second-class citizens. You don’t have to remember that Negroes are discriminated against in the army, segregated in the navy and air corps, barred completely from the marines. You don’t have to remember that one Negro soldier in a southern camp was lynched on an army reservation, and that another was shot dead for protecting himself from a vicious M.P. attack. You don’t have to remember the “riot” of Alexandria, Louisiana. You don’t have to remember the lynching of Cleo Wright in Sikeston, Missouri. You don’t even have to remember the housing fight in Detroit, which took place less than a month ago. Even if you forgot all those things, you would still know that Negroes are Jim Crowed, because these are not isolated, accidental cases – they are going on all the time. The Negro press for just the last two weeks tells the same story all over again: another Negro lynched; some more whitewash by government officials; another army “riot”; another dramatic example of navy Jim Crow; some more attempts to keep Negroes from living in homes on the basis of equality with whites; some more police brutality against Negroes; some more evidence showing what the government is doing about these cases. Another Lynching The Kansas City Call, Mar. 13, reveals some of the facts in the “secret lynching” in Brookshire, Texas, of Howard Wilpitz, “which never reached publication in the daily newspapers.” Wilpitz was ordered out of Brookshire, which is 35 miles from Houston, by a local constable. In the argument that followed, the constable hit Wilpitz over the head with his pistol and shot him in the leg when he tried to run away. Wilpitz shot back, and knocked the constable’s gun out of his hand. An armed lynch mob was quickly formed, surrounded Wilpitz in the toilet behind a Negro lodge building, and riddled it with bullets until the victim fell out. They then stood over him and shot him till he was dead. The Negroes in the town were threatened into silence. The body was held for a week and then buried secretly. Wilpitz’s wife never even saw the body. The lynching took place on Feb. 21. No word of it was printed until the Call learned the story last week. How many other such cases there are which are hushed up, we do not know. But we have no doubt that there are many of them; In the same issue of the Call is the report of the action by the Scott County, Missouri, Grand Jury on the lynching of Cleo Wright in Sikeston. Although everyone in Sikeston knows the names of the people who led and participated in the Wright lynching, the Grand Jury, meeting for less than two days, found no one to blame, and announced it had insufficient evidence to return a true bill. The jury was composed almost exclusively of merchants, bankers and “retired” farmers. The judge, J.C. McDowell, accepted the report without comment. Apparently he was satisfied that they had obeyed his warning, given just before they opened their hearings, not to pay any attention to “outside agitation” and “radical talk.” Everybody knows who lynched Cleo Wright; the guilty parties are walking the streets of that town free and easy. Everybody knows that if anybody talks, he’ll join Cleo Wright, and nothing will happen to the men who murder him either. The people who lynched Cleo Wright are all-out supporters of the “second war for democracy ...” New Army “Riot” The California Eagle, Mar. 5, reports another army “riot” in Merced, Calif., on Mar. 2.
2. It all began when the Negro soldiers were refused service at a tavern on the fair ground’s on which they are Camped. The report says: “Negro soldiers attacked the discriminatory tavern twice. Both times they were ‘calmed’ by Military Police. “Colored troops were armed only with sticks and clubs. “Military police are still patrolling the business section, whether to prevent riots or prevent Negro patronage is not clear.” Navy Jim Crow The name of the Negro sailor who was hailed as hero on the U.S.S. Arizona has finally been revealed. He is Dorie Miller, 22 year old Texan. At Pearl Harbor he seized a machine gun – although he had never handled one before – and manned it under enemy fire until his ammunition ran out and the ship was sinking. The Negro press is singing his praises this week – but he is still in the mess kitchen somewhere, not permitted by Navy Jim Crow rules from doing anything but serve food and wash dishes. Housing In Rhode Island, “home of Roger Williams and tolerance”, there is a housing project at Newport at which it was decided that some Negro as well as white families could live. Among the whites assigned to the project it was felt equality for the Negro people was a threat to “the maintenance of the morale and prestige of the white race”, so they sent a petition to their Senator in Washington asking him to have the Negroes barred. This is pretty much, the way the Detroit “riot” began; so far Washington has refused to do anything about the situation, but the Detroit experience showed that when Jim Crow forces put on a little pressure, they are only too willing to give in – against equality for the Negroes. And that housing Jim Crowism is not an evil peculiar to Detroit or Rhode Island is shown in last week’s People’s Voice, the front page of which shows a large picture of a Washington Heights, New York, Negro man and woman, standing by a window, the pane of which was shattered by a milk bottle thrown by hoodlums who don’t want Negroes living on the same block as whites. Police Brutality New York is supposed to be the most “liberal” city in the country, but as City Councilman Adam Glayton Powell points out in a People’s Voice editorial: “... during the past few days, one man was horribly beaten, teeth knocked out, leg broken and then arrested, although he first came to the police station to make a complaint. Another severe beating was administered to a 15-year-old school boy by a special subway officer and three strong courageous police protectors of the peace,” etc. What Government Is Doing And what about the government while all this is going on? What are the government officials doing about lynchings and riots and brutality? The answer is: They are out investigating the Negro newspaper editors and publishers who print the truth about conditions and have the courage to protest against them! The Pittsburgh Courier, Mar. 14, in an editorial, Cowing the Negro Press, reports that “the Negro press is being closely watched and investigated by government agents. “Offices of at least two of the largest Negro newspapers have been visited by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since Pearl Harbor. “Mrs. Charlotte A. Bass, editor and publisher of the militant California Eagle, states that FBI agents have visited her office and interrogated her about possible receipt of Japanese or German funds because her paper courageously condemned color discrimination and segregation in National Defense. “This sort of thing is an obvious effort to cow the Negro press into soft-pedaling its criticism and ending its forthright exposure of the outrageous discriminations to which Negroes have been subjected ...” In other words, instead of going after the enemies of the Negro people, the government is going after the defenders of equality for the Negroes. This is the typical “police mind” reaction to complaints against injustice: if somebody complains, shut him up and expect him to keep quiet even though the cause of his complaint goes untouched. It does not take a prophet to predict that the Negro people, dissatisfied today, are going to become increasingly dissatisfied as the war goes on and conditions become worse. The government may try to cow the press into silence, it may try to explain Negro dissatisfaction as the work of “agitators” – but it will never be able to convince the Negro masses that this is a “war for democracy” as long as it is fought by a Jim Crow Army and Navy, as long as Negroes are lynched and their lynchers white-washed, as long as cops beat up Negroes and protect the fascists, – as long, in short, as the Jim Crow ruling class continues to run things in this country. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 22 August 2021
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx (27 September 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 39, 27 September 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). North or South? Even before the latest series of attacks on Negro soldiers stationed in southern camps, the demand was raised by various groups that all Negro soldiers be transferred to northern camps. But after the murder of Private Ned Turman at Fort Bragg, N.C., and the mass desertions from Arkansas by Negro troops who had been assaulted by white mobs for marching on the highways and denied ammunition by their officers for self-protection, it became a leading slogan of many papers and writers. On September 6 the Chicago Defender printed a front page editorial which declared that “removing Negro troops from the South because of unprovoked attacks by prejudiced civilians as advocated by one of our contemporaries is far from being an adequate, honest solution of the problem. Besides being an unwarranted, indefensible concession, such a step would be equivalent to an official condoning of the inexcusable barbarities that have been committed against Negro soldiers.” The Defender asserts that Negro troops “should be kept in the south or in any other section of the country where it is necessary and convenient to train them,” that the “government ought to be prepared to defend its defenders at all costs,” that the soldiers should be equipped to defend themselves. Schuyler’s Answer The following week George Schuyler, Pittsburgh Courier columnist, stated his disagreements with the Defender: “Any step that removes these soldiers from insult, persecution and brutality because of their color is an adequate step.” He points out that the administration is “not going to MAKE the South accept these Negro soldiers as anything but outcasts” and that it is not going to permit Negro soldiers to defend themselves from unjustifiable attacks. He reminds the Defender also that Negro roops are not being attacked by civilians alone for the “cold, hard fact is that most of their mistreatment has been at the hands of the Army’s military police.” “Since the question of honesty has been raised,” he continues, “why not be ENTIRELY honest, and urge that all separate Negro units be abolished and Negro recruits and selectees sent to the same units as white men? Why not be TRULY honest and admit that segregation and discrimination are inseparable, and that fair and equal treatment is impossible of attainment in a segregated setup?” And Schuyler concludes his defense of the slogan demanding transfer of Negro soldiers to northern camps by declaring: “Keeping the present Negro soldier in the South will neither halt the outrageous treatment they are experiencing nor cause the Administration to end it. Hence the best solution is to not station these young men in the South.” Schuyler finds it comparatively easy to discredit the proposal of the Defender editorial because it is based on a false premise: namely, that Negroes have reason to believe that the Jim Crow government might be interested in doing anything about persecution and brutality against Negroes. The government has shown that the only concessions it “cannot afford to make” are concessions that might weaken the whole system of Jim Crowism in the south. Today especially it does not dare to do anything to offend the southern ruling class because most of the administration’s support for the imperialist war comes from the poll tax south. Dependence on the government or its War Department is nothing short of blindness. And that is the chief weakness of the Defender’s criticism of the proposal to move Negro troops north. Both Viewpoints Are Wrong But the fact that the Defender editorial presented a poor case, does not make Schuyler’s case any stronger. For his own arguments are full of holes, and Schuyler himself sows illusions that are as dangerous and misleading as the Defender’s. While the Defender fools itself with the idea that “our” government will help fight Jim Crowism, Schuyler fools himself with the idea that Negro soldiers are removed from Jim Crowism in the government’s northern camps. Of course, “any step that removes these soldiers from insult, persecution and brutality because of their color is an adequate step.” But who dares to say that Negro soldiers don’t face insult, persecution and brutality in northern camps? Schuyler reminds the Defender that it’s not only civilians but Army MP’s as well that mistreat the Negroes. Does he realize that this is an argument as much against himself as against the Defender? Or does he contend that northern MP’s love Negroes, while southern MP’s don’t? Schuyler asked the Defender an interesting question. “Why not be TRULY honest and admit that segregation and discrimination are inseparable, and that fair and equal treatment is impossible of attainment in a segregated setup” (which exists just as much in the north as in the south)? But we’d like to have him answer it himself, and then justify his proposal as “an adequate step.” But Schuyler’s argument can be punctured without referring to the obvious contradictions in his article. All we need do is refer to an incident that took place, a few days after his article was written, in the north, at Fort Ontario, New York, to be exact. For at this camp there occurred the same kind of attack on Negro soldiers by white soldiers that occurs in the south, Negro soldiers were attacked, beaten and driven out of the hospital. What does Schuyler propose for them? To go further north, perhaps? To Canada or Alaska? Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 25 May 2016
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker William Pickens, NAACP Leader, Gets Federal Job (24 May 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 21, 24 May 1941, p. 3. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). William Pickens has a new job. It is with the federal government, in the Treasury Department. He has left his job as branch director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This is not surprising to those who have been watching his development in recent years. After all, he was spending more time and energy supporting the war than “advancing” the colored people. For every word he wrote about the conditions of the Negroes in the United States this last year, he wrote ten about how much tougher it would be for them under Hitler. It is fitting for Pickens to do what he has done. Pickens should be paid by his real masters, the powers whom he really serves. There has been a lot of sound and fury about the appointment. The Negro Democrats who supported Roosevelt last year feel bitter because none of them got the job, which pays a reported $6,000 salary. They feel that Roosevelt should never have appointed a man like Pickens, who was an ardent supporter of Willkie last November. They don’t seem to understand what is involved. Pickens didn’t get the job because of his position in the presidential elections. He got the job because of his position on something far more important: the war. Roosevelt picked him because he supports his war plans, and certainly Pickens stands out head and shoulders above all the other Negro misleaders when it comes to war-mongering. He can show the others, both Democrats and Republicans, a lot of tricks at this game. But while the job pays well, the work will be hard. For it is Pickens’ job to sell “defense bonds” to the Negroes. This won’t be much easier than selling refrigerators to the Eskimos. For he has two large obstacles to overcome. First, the Negro people (this does not apply to the so-called leaders) do not see any good reason for supporting a war conducted under Jim Crow conditions to preserve a “democracy” that does not include them. And before you can get anyone to shell out money for a cause, you’re got to “sell” the cause to him. Second, of all the groups in this country, the Negroes have less money to buy bonds than anyone else. The reason for this is, of course, that the Negroes have been Jim Crowed out of all, the better-paying jobs in expanding industry, and relegated to the hard, low-paid menial jobs or to the relief and WPA rolls, by the same capitalists who will profit from the war Pickens is supporting. Thus, even if they were in some way to be suddenly aroused, they would find it virtually impossible to buy bonds an to be able to feed and house themselves at the same time. Yes, Pickens will have to sweat to earn the salary, that his Jim Crow masters will pay him. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 November 2015
Revolutionary Principles and Working-Class Democracy \| Main Document Index \| ETOL Home Page \| Cannon Index I The Cannon Tradition: “Don’t Strangle the Party!” The entirety of this portion of the book was published as a pamphlet by the Fourth Internationalist Tendency in 1986, entitled Don’t Strangle the Party! The introduction by George Breitman makes unnecessary any further comment on the specific items. 1. DON’T TRY TO ENFORCE A NONEXISTENT LAW 2. REASONS FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE SWP AND FOR ITS NEW VITALITY IN THE 1960s 3. A TREND IN THE WRONG DIRECTION 4. THE SWP’S GREAT TRADITION Introduction by George Breitman On April 8, 1983, a membership meeting of the Bay Area District of the Socialist Workers Party (from branches in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose) was held in San Jose to hear a report on the latest three in a series of expulsions being engineered by the SWP “central leadership team” headed by Jack Barnes. During the discussion period, Asher Harer, a veteran party member from San Francisco, made some comments about the newly announced “organizational norm” prohibiting SWP members from communicating with members of other branches under pain of expulsion. Harer said that if James P. Cannon, the principal founder of the SWP, were alive today, he could not exist in the SWP. Cannon often communicated directly with members in other branches, on all sorts of questions, and Harer said he had a file of Cannon letters to prove it. Harer was answered by Clifton DeBerry, a member of the national Control Commission, a former member of the National Committee, and a former presidential candidate, who said: “If James P Cannon wrote such letters today, he would be expelled.” DeBerry added that the SWP is a “more disciplined” party today than in Cannon’s time. Some NC members who supported the new norms were also present, but none differentiated themselves from what DeBerry had said. DeBerry’s remarks were not repeated in written form, then or later, but they were very revealing. For more than a year the SWP leadership had been accusing oppositionists in the NC of violating the party’s organizational principles (“norms”), which the leadership allegedly was trying to maintain and defend. And now DeBerry had blurted out the truth: Even the founder of the party would have been ousted as “undisciplined” if he had lived to 1983 and tried to function in accord with the organizational norms that prevailed in the party from its founding in 1938 to his death in 1974. Since these norms had never been changed in Cannon’s time, or later, they were being violated all right - not by the oppositionists but by the leadership itself, which was reinterpreting them and giving them a new content without ever formally discussing or formally changing them. In the following year the SWP leadership expelled all known or suspected oppositionists, dissidents, or critics. The real reason they were expelled was that they had political differences with or doubts about the leadership’s new orientation toward Castroism and away from Trotskyism, and that the leadership was afraid to debate this orientation with them in front of the SWP membership. The ostensible reason given by the leadership was that the expelled members had in various ways violated the party’s traditional organizational principles, especially the 1965 resolution on “The Organizational Character of the Socialist Workers Party.” The present pamphlet consists of three letters and the text of a talk by Cannon in 1966 and 1967, which prove conclusively that Cannon did not share the current SWP leadership’s interpretation of the 1965 resolution. The real tradition of the SWP on democratic centralism is different than the present leadership makes it out to be. Like Trotsky, Cannon is a witness against the revisionist political and organizational policies of the Barnes group. Cannon was 75 years old and living in Los Angeles in 1965. He was national chairman of the party but no longer responsible for its day-to-day activity, which was handled by the Political Committee and national secretary Farrell Dobbs from the party center in New York. When the PC decided to submit a resolution on organizational principles to the 1965 convention, it chose a committee of Dobbs, George Novack, and Cannon to prepare a draft. Dobbs wrote it and Novack edited it. A copy was sent to Cannon, who sent it back without comment. He thought the draft was poorly written and too ambiguous on certain key points, but did not undertake to amend or redraft it. He did not attend the 1965 convention, which adopted the resolution by a vote of 51 to 8. In 1968 Cannon discontinued direct correspondence with the party center in New York. But before that happened, he wrote and said some things in 1966 and 1967 which showed that he disagreed with PC members who were interpreting the 1965 resolution as a signal to “tighten” or “centralize” the party, which he believed could only damage it, perhaps fatally. 1. Don’t Try to Enforce a Nonexistent Law Cannon’s letter of February 8, 1966, had the following background: Arne Swabeck, a party founder and NC member, had been trying for seven years to convert the SWP from Trotskyism to Maoism. Despite repeated efforts before and during SWP national conventions in 1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965, his small group made little headway among the members. Increasingly he and his group began to ignore the normal channels for discussion in the party, and to communicate their ideas to selected members by mail. This led to demands by Larry Trainor, an NC member in Boston, for disciplinary action against Swabeck and his ally in the NC, Richard Fraser. Through a circular letter for the PC Tom Kerry announced that the matter would be taken up at a plenum of the NC to be held at the end of February.
Cannon’s letter was addressed to the supporters of the NC majority tendency (which excluded the supporters of the Swabeck and Fraser-Clara Kaye tendencies, etc.). Cannon tried to convince the majority that political discussion and education were the answer to the minority tendencies, not disciplinary action. “There is absolutely no party law or precedent for such action,” he said, “and we will run into all kinds of trouble in the party ranks, and the International, if we try this kind of experiment for the first time.... It would be too bad if the SWP suddenly decided to get tougher than the Communist Party [of the 1920s] and try to enforce a nonexistent law — which can’t be enforced without creating all kinds of discontent and disruption.” (Emphasis added) This was written five months after the adoption of the 1965 resolution. It demonstrates that Cannon saw nothing in that resolution that could be cited as “party law or precedent” for the kind of disciplinary action taken by the Barnes leadership in the 1980s. The February 1966 meeting of the NC found Cannon’s arguments convincing. They did not want to conduct, for “the first time” in the party’s history, the experiment of trying to enforce “a nonexistent law.” So the whole question was dropped - until after Cannon’s death. 2. Reasons for the Survival of the SWP and for Its New Vitality in the 1960s Cannon’s September 6, 1966, talk was one of “my last speeches before I fell into retirement, so to speak,” he said shortly before his death. It was given to a Labor Day weekend educational conference at a camp near San Francisco, and it was obviously intended primarily for members of the SWP and YSA, rather than for the general public. The form of this talk was that of a discussion about the history of the SWP and the FI, which Cannon used to express his thinking about the problems facing the SWP in 1966, its strengths and weaknesses, the pressures it was feeling, and the lessons from the past that it could learn for the present and the future. Although the talk was couched mainly in historical terms, experienced listeners understood that Cannon was saying, “I think we have some serious problems now and we’d better think about how to handle them.” The SWP leadership never printed this talk (which was transcribed from a taped recording and edited by Evelyn Sell eighteen years later, after her expulsion from the SWP as an oppositionist, and was printed in the Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, No. 14, December 1984). Cannon’s main concern here was that some SWP and YSA leaders were not sufficiently resisting and opposing the harmful influences of the “New Left” to which they were subjected in the antiwar and student movements. Some “younger comrades,” he said quite openly, gave him the impression that they had not fully assimilated the cardinal principle of internationalism. His stress on the SWP as “revolutionary continuators” was directed not only against the New Left but against those in the SWP and YSA who disregarded this factor or thought it insignificant. His demand for polemics with opponent tendencies (“the mark of a revolutionary party”) stemmed from his conviction that there was a reluctance among SWP and YSA leaders to openly explain their differences with the New Left. Similarly with most of the talk - it was not just a criticism of the New Left but of party and YSA members who he thought were defaulting on the theoretical and educational struggle against New Leftism. But Cannon did not fail also to raise the questions about party democracy that had been on his mind during the previous two or more years. He began by touching on the “flexible democracy” that had enabled the party to survive historically: “We never tried to settle differences of opinion by suppression. Free discussion - not every day in the week but at stated regular times, with full guarantees for the minority - is a necessary condition for the health and strength of an organization such as ours.” It never occurred to him to add that any of this had been superseded by the 1965 resolution. Continuing, he noted that factionalism can get out of hand or become unprincipled. “But on the other hand,” he said, “if a party can live year after year without any factional disturbances, it may not be a sign of health — it may be a sign that the party’s asleep; that it’s not a real live party. In a live party you have differences, differences of appraisal, and so on. But that’s a sign of life.” The present SWP leaders hardly ever say things like that any more; and even when they do, they mean something different than Cannon meant. 3. A Trend in the Wrong Direction In 1966 some SWP members raised the question of codifying parts of the 1965 resolution through amendments to the party’s constitution at the next national convention. A PC-appointed constitution committee (Reba Hansen, Harry Ring, Jean Simon [Tussey]) began, in consultation with national organization secretary Ed Shaw, to consider proposed changes for the constitution, including one to alter the way the national Control Commission was elected and functioned. In his response (reprinted from Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, No. 8, June 1984), Cannon was quite disturbed by this proposal, especially because he saw it as part of a dangerous trend: “As far as I can see all the new moves and proposals to monkey with the Constitution which has served the party so well in the past, with the aim of ‘tightening’ centralization, represent a trend in the wrong direction at the present time. The party (and the YSA) is too ‘tight’ already, and if we go much further along this line we can run the risk of strangling the party to death.” Most of Cannon’s letter was an explanation of why the party would be better off if the Control Commission remained an “independent” or “separate” body elected by the national convention as a whole than it would be as a mere subcommittee of the NC. But he also seized the opportunity to assert the necessity to “practice what we preach” about existing constitutional provisions “to protect every party member against possible abuse of authority by the National Committee.” There was nothing ambiguous about his position: “In the present political climate and with the present changing composition of the party, democratic centralism must be applied flexibly.
At least ninety percent of the emphasis should be placed on the democratic side and not on any crackpot schemes to ’streamline’ the party to the point where questions are unwelcomed and criticism and discussion stifled. That is a prescription to kill the party....” Cannon clearly did not feel that the 1965 resolution justified or authorized the kind of undemocratic changes that the “centralizing” Barnes leadership made in the name of the 1965 document in the 1970s and 1980s. Cannon’s letter was effective - none of the proposals he warned against were recommended by the constitution committee or adopted at the 1967 convention. 4. The SWP’s Great Tradition The Arne Swabeck case came up again in 1967, when both an SWP national convention and an FI world congress were scheduled. By then Swabeck had lost all hope in the SWP and the FI. Instead of trying once more to convince their members, he publicly attacked the SWP’s policies in a letter to a hostile political group in England (the Healyites). For this deliberate violation of discipline, the PC asked the NC to suspend him from membership pending the coming convention. Cannon had no sympathy whatever for Swabeck’s politics or organizational practices, but he felt it would be “awkward” to begin the preconvention and pre-world congress discussions by suspending the one articulate critic of the party’s positions and actions. He therefore urged that Swabeck’s provocation be handled by publishing Swabeck’s letters together with a comprehensive political answer to them. This “subordination of disciplinary measures to the bigger aims of political education” - which he called a continuation of the party’s great tradition - had always served the party well in the past, he argued, and in the Swabeck case would “better serve the education of the new generation of the party and the consolidation of party opinion” than would the proposed suspension. Most members of the NC disagreed with Cannon. They felt Swabeck’s violation of discipline was too flagrant to be ignored, and they felt that he already had been answered politically over and over again, so that disciplinary action in this case would not represent any rupture with the SWP’s great tradition. The NC suspended Swabeck, who continued to attack the SWP publicly, and soon after he was expelled. The differences in this case between the NC majority and Cannon were tactical, and it is possible to see the logic and merits in both their positions. But perhaps Cannon was looking a little farther ahead than most of the NC members. Swabeck had so discredited himself, Cannon told the PC, that the immediate effect of the party’s reaction to the new provocation would not be very great whether he was suspended or not. “But the long-range effect on the political education of the party, and its preparation to cope with old problems in new forms, can be very great indeed.” It is clear from this that Cannon was concerned with something bigger than the fate of Swabeck; that he was trying to alert the party to dangers that transcended the issue of whether or not to suspend Swabeck prior to the convention; that he feared mistakes on this issue could have damaging long-range effects on the party, its political education, and its ability to fulfill its revolutionary mission. The Swabeck case was soon forgotten, but the dangers that worried Cannon are worth recalling today, after the SWP leadership, in a brutal break with the party’s tradition of subordinating disciplinary measures to political discussion and clarification, expelled and in other ways drove out any and all members who were suspected of having oppositional views (whether they were articulate or not). The SWP leadership “justified” this purge by accusing the expellees of being disrupters and splitters who, “like Swabeck,” were outside the party only because of their own indiscipline and disloyalty. But everybody in the SWP knows that most of the expellees fought to remain in the party, unlike Swabeck, and are still fighting to be reinstated, also unlike Swabeck. Most members of the FI know this, too, because at their world congress in February 1985, they voted overwhelmingly to demand the reinstatement of the purged members. The fight for the SWP’s tradition continues, but the SWP leadership is fighting on the other side. In May 1983, a month after the Harer-DeBerry exchange in San Jose, the NC held a plenum in New York where oppositionists contrasted Cannon’s positions on democratic centralism with those of the Barnes group. Barnes finally took the floor and said, “It looks as though we are going to have to rescue Cannon from these people the same way we rescued Trotsky from the sectarians.” Barnes had “rescued” Trotsky at a YSA convention on December 31, 1982, in a talk entitled “Their Trotsky and Ours” (New International Fall 1983). It was rather a unique kind of rescue since in this talk Barnes tried to demolish Trotsky and most of his work as sectarian and harmful. A similar “rescue” of Cannon would mean a wholesale reevaluation of his work and his place in the history of the SWP and the FI. Even as Barnes uttered this promise or threat, a dossier was being compiled that would “prove” Cannon had been a “Stalinophobe” in the 1930s and 1940s, etc. Whether or not such material will be published, it stands to reason that the Barnes group will have to differentiate itself from Cannon and Cannonism more and more as it proceeds further away from them politically and organizationally. The antidote includes an objective reading of Cannon’s writings, of which there are fortunately many in print. May 1985 Don’t Try to Enforce a Nonexistent Law February 8, 1966 For NC Majority Only To the Secretariat Dear Comrades: I feel rather uneasy about the circular letter from Tom [Kerry] dated Jan. 28, enclosing a copy of Larry T[rainor]’s letter of Jan.
15 and Arne [Swabeck]’s letter of January 7 addressed to Larry and his letter of Dec. 14 addressed to Rosemary and Doug [Gordon], and also the circular of Al A. announcing his decision to join the PLP [Progressive Labor Party] (which I had already seen locally). The Swabeck letter and the [Clara] Kaye document, which I had previously received, make serious criticisms of the party and youth actions at the Washington Thanksgiving Conference,[1] and make a number of other serious, and even fundamental, criticisms of party policy and action in general. The problem, as I see it, is how to deal effectively with these challenges and how to aid the education of the party and the youth in the process - in the light of our tradition and experience over a period of more than thirty-seven years since the Left Opposition in this country began its work under the guidance of Trotsky. One might well include the first ten years of American communism before that, from which I, at least, learned and remember a lot from doing things the wrong way. Larry’s letter of Jan. 15 suggesting disciplinary action, and Tom’s letter of Jan. 28 informing us that the Political Committee has put the question of discipline on the plenum agenda, are, in my opinion, the wrong way. Probably the hardest lesson I had to learn from Trotsky, after ten years of bad schooling through the Communist Party faction fights, was to let organizational questions wait until the political questions at issue were fully clarified, not only in the National Committee but also in the ranks of the party. It is no exaggeration, but the full and final truth, that our party owes its very existence today to the fact that some of us learned this hard lesson and learned also how to apply it in practice. From that point of view, in my opinion, the impending plenum should be conceived of as a school for the education and clarification of the party on the political issues involved in the new disputes, most of which grew out of earlier disputes with some new trimmings and absurdities. This aim will be best served if the attacks and criticisms are answered point by point in an atmosphere free from poisonous personal recriminations and venomous threats of organization discipline. Our young comrades need above all to learn; and this is the best, in fact the only way, for them to learn what they need to know about the new disputes. They don’t know it all yet. The fact that some of them probably think they already know everything, only makes it more advisable to turn the plenum sessions into a school with questions and answers freely and patiently passed back and forth. The classic example for all time, in this matter of conducting political disputes for the education of the cadres, is set forth in the two books which grew out of the fundamental conflict with the petty-bourgeois opposition in 1939-40.[2] I think these books, twenty-six years after, are still fresh and alive because they attempt to answer and clarify all important questions involved in the dispute, and leave discipline and organizational measures aside for later consideration. Compared to the systematic, organized violation of normal disciplinary regulations and procedures committed by the petty-bourgeois opposition in that fight, the irregularities of Kirk [Richard Fraser] and Swabeck resemble juvenile pranks. Nevertheless, Trotsky insisted from the beginning that all proposals, or even talk or threats, of disciplinary action be left aside until the political disputes were clarified and settled. The party was reborn and reeducated in that historic struggle, and equipped to stand up in the hard days that were to follow, precisely because that policy was followed. As for disciplinary action suggested in Larry’s letter, and at least intimated in the action of the Political Committee in putting this matter on the agenda of the plenum - I don’t even think we have much of a case in the present instance. Are we going to discipline two members of the National Committee for circulating their criticisms outside the committee itself? There is absolutely no party law or precedent for such action, and we will run into all kinds of trouble in the party ranks, and the International, if we try this kind of experiment for the first time. We have always thought proper and responsible procedure required that party leaders confine their differences and criticisms within the National Committee until a full discussion could be had at a plenum, and a discussion in the party formally authorized. But it never worked with irresponsible people and it never will; and this kind of trouble can’t be cured by discipline. In the first five years of the Left Opposition, Shachtman and Abern took every dispute in the committee, large or small, into the New York Branch - with unlimited discussion and denunciation of the committee majority by an assorted collection of articulate screwballs who would make the present critics of the party policy, from one end of the country to the other, appear in comparison as well mannered pupils in a Sunday School. There was nothing to do about it but fight it out. Any kind of disciplinary action would have provoked a split which couldn’t be explained and justified before the radical public. To my recollection, there has never been a time in our thirty-seven-year history when a critical opposition waited very long to circulate their ideas outside the committee ranks, despite our explanation that such conduct was improper and irresponsible. We educated and hardened our cadre over the years and decades by meeting all critics and opponents politically and educating those who were educable. I will add to the previously cited examples of the fight with the petty-bourgeois opposition two minor examples. 1. Right after our trial in Minneapolis in 1941 the well-known [Grandizo] Munis blasted our conduct at the trial as lacking in “proud valor,” capitulating to legalism, and all other crimes and dirty tricks. I answered Munis by taking up his criticisms point by point and answering them without equivocation or evasion. Munis’s letter and my answer, some of you will remember, was published in a pamphlet on “Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial,” so that all party members and others who might be interested could hear both sides and judge for themselves. That pamphlet was published twenty-four years ago, and I personally have never since heard a peep out of anybody in criticism of our conduct at the trial.
On the contrary, my testimony “Socialism On Trial” has been printed and reprinted a number of times in a number of editions and, as I understand it, has always been the most popular pamphlet of the party.[3] 2. I notice that the YSA has just recently published, in an internal discussion bulletin, my two speeches at the 1948 plenum on the Wallace Progressive Party and our 1948 election campaign.[4] The circumstances surrounding these speeches have pertinence to the impending plenum. No sooner had the Wallace candidacy been announced on a Progressive Party ticket than Swabeck in Chicago, consulting with himself, decided that this was the long-awaited labor party and that we had to jump into it with both feet. Without waiting for the plenum, or even for the Political Committee, to discuss the question and formulate a position, he hastily lined up [Mike] Bartell and Manny Trbovitch and the local executive committee and from that, quick as a wink, the entire Chicago Branch to support the candidacy of Wallace and get into the Progressive Party on the ground floor. There was also strong sympathy for this policy in Los Angeles, Buffalo, Youngstown, and other branches of the party. The discussion at the plenum should be studied in light of these circumstances. My two speeches were devoted, from beginning to end, to a political analysis of the problem and a point by point answer to every objection raised by Swabeck and other critics. It is worth noting, by those who are willing to learn from past experiences, that Swabeck’s irresponsible action and violation of what Larry refers to as “committee discipline” were not mentioned once. There was a reason for the omission, although such conduct was just as much an irritation then as now. The reason for the omission was that we wanted to devote all attention at the plenum to the fundamental political problems involved and the political lessons to be learned from the dispute. My speeches, as well as remarks of other comrades at the plenum, had the result of convincing the great majority present and even shaking the confidence of the opponents in their own position. By the time we got to the national convention a few months later, the party was solidly united and convinced that the nomination of our own ticket in 1948 was the correct thing to do. Committee “discipline” follows from conviction and a sense of responsibility; it cannot be imposed by party law or threats. I have said before that in more than thirty-seven years of our independent history we have never tried to enforce such discipline. There was such a law, however, or at least a mutual understanding to this effect, in the Communist Party during the period of my incubation there. But what was the result in practice? Formally, all discussion and happenings in the Political Committee and in the plenum were secrets sealed with seven seals. In practice before any meeting was twenty-four hours old the partisans of the different factions had full reports on secret “onion skin” paper circulated throughout the party. Even the ultra-discipline of the Communist Party never disciplined anybody for these surreptitious operations. It would be too bad if the SWP suddenly decided to get tougher than the Communist Party and try to enforce a nonexistent law - which can’t be enforced without creating all kinds of discontent and disruption, to say nothing of blurring the serious political disputes which have to be discussed and clarified for the education of the party ranks. I would like copies of this letter to be made available to National Committee members who received Tom’s letter of Jan. 28. Fraternally, James P Cannon Reasons for the Survival of the SWP and for Its New Vitality in the 1960s The party that we represent here had its origin thirty-eight years ago next month when I and Martin Abern and Max Shachtman, all members of the National Committee of the Communist Party, were expelled because we insisted upon supporting Trotsky and the Russian Opposition in the international discussion. It seems remarkable, in view of the death rate of organizations that we have noted over the years, that this party still shows signs of youth. That is the hallmark of a living movement: its capacity to attract the young. Many attempts at creating different kinds of radical organizations have foundered, withered away, over that problem. The old-timers stuck around but new blood didn’t come in. The organizations, one by one, either died or just withered away on the vine (which is probably a worse fate than death). In my opinion, there are certain reasons for the survival of our movement and for the indications of a new surge of vitality in it. I’ll enumerate some of the more important reasons which account for this. Internationalism and the SWP First of all, and above all, we recognized thirty-eight years ago that in the modern world it is impossible to organize a revolutionary party in one country. All the problems of the different nations of the world are so intertwined today that they cannot be solved with a national policy alone. The latest to experience the truth of that dictum is Lyndon B. Johnson. He’s trying to solve the problems of American foreign policy with Texas-style arm-twisting politics. It does not work. We decided we would be internationalists first, last, and all the time, and that we would not try to build a purely American party with American ideas - because American ideas are very scarce in the realm of creative politics. By becoming part of an international movement, and thereby participating in international collaboration, and getting the benefit of the ideas and experiences of others in other countries - as well as contributing our ideas to them - that we would have a better chance to create a viable revolutionary movement in this country. I think that holds true today more than ever. A party that is not internationalist is out of date very sadly and is doomed utterly.
A party that is not internationalist is out of date very sadly and is doomed utterly. I don’t know if our younger comrades have fully assimilated that basic, fundamental first idea or not. I have the impression at times that they understand it rather perfunctorily, take it for granted, rather than understand it in its essence: that internationalism means, above all, international collaboration. The affairs, the difficulties, the disputes of every party in the Fourth International must be our concern - as our problems must be their concern. It’s not only our right but our duty to participate in all the discussions that arise throughout the International, as well as it is their right and their duty to take part in our discussions and disputes. Our Revolutionary Continuity The second reason that I would give for the durability of this party of ours is the fact that we did not pretend to have a new revelation. We were not these “men from nowhere” whom you see running around the campuses and other places today saying, “We’ve got to start from scratch. Everything that happened in the past is out the window.” On the contrary, we solemnly based ourselves on the continuity of the revolutionary movement. On being expelled from the Communist Party, we did not become anticommunist. On the contrary, we said we are the true representatives of the best traditions of the Communist Party. If you read current literature, you’ll see that we are the only ones who defend the first ten years of American communism. The official leaders of the Communist Party don’t want to talk about it at all. Yet those were ten rich and fruitful years which we had behind us when we started the Trotskyist movement in this country. Before that, some of us had about ten years of experience in the IWW and Socialist Party, and in various class struggle activities around the country. We said that we were the heirs of the IWW and the Socialist Party - all that was good and valid and revolutionary in them. We honor the Knights of Labor and the Haymarket martyrs. We’re not Johnny-come-latelys at all. We’re continuators. We even go back further than that. We go back to the “Communist Manifesto” of 1848, and to Marx and Engels, the authors of that document, and their other writings. We go back to the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. We go back to Lenin and Trotsky, and to the struggle of the Left Opposition in the Russian Soviet party and in the Comintern. We said, “We are the continuators.” And we really were. We were in dead earnest about it and we were very active from the very beginning. This is one of the marks of a group, however, small, that has confidence in itself. We engaged in polemics against all other pretenders to leadership of the American working class: first of all the Stalinists, and the reformist Social Democrats, and the labor skates, and anybody else who had some quack medicine to cure the troubles of working people. Polemics are the mark of a revolutionary party. A party that is “too nice” to engage in what some call “bickering,” “criticizing,” is too damn nice to live very long in the whirlpool of politics. Politics is even worse than baseball, in that respect. Leo Durocher, who had a bad reputation but who carried the New York Giants to a championship of the National League and then to the world championship over the Cleveland Indians, explained this fact in the title of an article he wrote, “Nice Guys Finish Last.” That’s true in politics as well as in baseball. If we disagree with other people, we have to say so! We have to make it clear why we disagree so that inquiring young people, looking for an organization to represent their aspirations and ideals, will know the difference between one party and another. Nothing is worse than muddying up differences when they concern fundamental questions. Working-Class Orientation Another reason for the survival of our movement through the early hard period was our orientation. Being Marxists, our orientation was always toward the working class and to the working-class organizations. It never entered our minds in those days to think you could overthrow capitalism over the head of the working class. Marxism had taught us that the great service capitalism has rendered to humanity has been to increase the productivity of society and, at the same time, to create a working class which would have the interest and the power to overthrow capitalism. In creating this million-headed wage-working class, Marx said: capitalism has created its own gravediggers. We saw it as the task of revolutionists to orient our activity, our agitation, and our propaganda to the working class of this country. Putting Theory into Action Another reason for our exceptional durability was that we did not merely study the books and learn the formulas. Many people have done that - and that’s all they’ve done, and they might as well have stayed home.
Many people have done that - and that’s all they’ve done, and they might as well have stayed home. Trotsky remarked more than once, in the early days, about some people who play with ideas in our international movement. He said: they have understood all the formulas and they can repeat them by rote, but they haven’t got them in their flesh and blood, so it doesn’t count. When you get the formulas of Marxism in your flesh and blood that means you have an irresistible impulse and drive to put theory into action. As Engels said to the sectarian socialists in the United States in the nineteenth century: our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action. One who studies the theory of Marxism and doesn’t do anything to try to put it into action among the working class might as well have stayed in bed. We were not that type. We came out of the experiences of the past, but we were activists as well as students of Marxism. The Capacity to Learn One more reason for our survival: one factor working in our favor was our modesty. Modesty is the precondition for learning. If you know it all to start with, you can’t learn any more. We were brought to the painful realization in 1928 that there were a lot of things we didn’t know - after all of our experiences and study. New problems and new complications which had arisen in the Soviet Union and in the international movement required that we go to school again. And to go to school with the best teachers: the leaders of the Russian Revolution. After twenty years of experience in the American movement and in the Comintern we put ourselves to school and tried to learn from the great leaders who had made the only successful revolution in the history of the working class. We had to learn, also, how to think - and to take time to think. We believed in a party of disciplined action but disciplined activity alone does not characterize only the revolutionist. Other groups, such as the fascists, have that quality. The Stalinists have disciplined action. Disciplined action directed by clear thinking distinguishes the revolutionary Marxist party. Thinking is a form of action. In the early days of our movement we had a great deal of discussion - not all of it pleasant to hear, but out of which came some clarification. We had to learn to be patient and listen and, out of the discussion, to formulate our policy and our program. Those were the qualities of our movement in the first years of our almost total isolation that enabled us to survive. We had confidence in the American working class and we oriented toward it. When the American working class began to move in the mid-thirties, we had formulated our program of action, and we were in the midst of the class, and we began to grow - in some years, we grew rather rapidly. Internal Democracy Within the SWP Not the least of our reasons for remaining alive for thirty-eight years, and growing a little, and now being in a position to capitalize on new opportunities, was the flexible democracy of our party. We never tried to settle differences of opinion by suppression. Free discussion - not every day in the week but at stated regular times, with full guarantees for the minority - is a necessary condition for the health and strength of an organization such as ours. There’s no guarantee that factionalism won’t get out of hand. I don’t want to be an advocate of factionalism - unless anybody picks on me and runs the party the wrong way and doesn’t want to give me a chance to protest about it! The general experience of the international movement has shown that excesses of factionalism can be very dangerous and destructive to a party. In my book, The First Ten Years of American Communism,[5] I put all the necessary emphasis on the negative side of the factional struggles which became unprincipled. But on the other hand, if a party can live year after year without any factional disturbances, it may not be a sign of health - it may be a sign that the party’s asleep; that it’s not a real live party. In a live party, you have differences, differences of appraisal, and so on. But that’s a sign of life. The New Left of the 1960s You have now a new phenomenon in the American radical movement which I hear is called “The New Left.” This is a broad title given to an assemblage of people who state they don’t like the situation the way it is and something ought to be done about it -but we mustn’t take anything from the experiences of the past; nothing from the “Old Left” or any of its ideas or traditions are any good. What’s the future going to be? “Well, that’s not so clear either.
“Well, that’s not so clear either. Let’s think about that.” What do you do now? “I don’t know. Something ought to be done.” That’s a fair description of this amorphous New Left which is written about so much and with which we have to contend. We know where we come from. We intend to maintain our continuity. We know that we are part of the world, and that we have to belong to an international movement and get the benefits of association and discussion with cothinkers throughout the world. We have a definite orientation whereas the New Left says the working class is dead. The working class was crossed off by the wiseacres in the twenties. There was a long boom in the 1920s. The workers not only didn’t gain any victories, they lost ground. The trade unions actually declined in number. In all the basic industries, where you now see great flourishing industrial unions - the auto workers, aircraft, steel, rubber, electrical, transportation, maritime - the unions did not exist, just a scattering here and there. There were company unions in all these big basic industries, run by the bosses’ stooges. The workers were entitled to belong to these company unions as long as they did what the stooges told them to do. It took a semi-revolutionary uprising in the mid-thirties to break that up and install real unions. There were a lot of wiseacres who crossed off the American working class and said, “That’s Marx’s fundamental mistake. He thinks the working class can make a revolution and emancipate itself. And he’s dead wrong! Just look at them !” They didn’t say who would make the revolution if the workers didn’t do it - just like the New Leftists today don’t give us any precise description of what power will transform society. People who said such things in the 1920s were proved to be wrong, and those who say the same things about the working class today will be proved to be wrong. We will maintain our orientation toward the working class and to its organized section in particular. I hope that our party and our youth movement will not only continue but will intensify and develop its capacity for polemics against all pretenders to leadership of the coming radicalization of the American workers. Above all, I hope our party and our youth movement will continue to learn and to grow. That’s the condition for survival as a revolutionary party. I don’t merely get impatient with Johnny-come-latelys who just arrived from nowhere and announce that they know it all, I get impatient even with old-timers who think they have nothing more to learn. The world is changing. New problems arise, new complexities, new complications confront the revolutionary movement at every step. The condition for effective political leadership is that the leaders themselves continue to learn and to grow. That means: not to lose their modesty altogether. The Importance of the Individual I’d like to add one more point. The question is raised very often, “What can one person do?” The urgency of the situation in the world is pretty widely recognized outside of our ranks. The urgency of the whole social problem has been magnified a million times by the development of nuclear weapons, and by the capacity of these inventions and discoveries to destroy all life on earth. Not merely a single city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but capable of destroying all life on earth. And it’s in the hands of reckless and irresponsible people. It’s got to be taken away from them, and it cannot be done otherwise except by revolution. What can one single person do in this terribly urgent situation? I heard a program on television a short while ago: an interview with Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, former pacifist, fighter against nuclear war. He’s not a revolutionary Marxist but is an absolutely dedicated opponent of nuclear war and a prophet of the calamity such a war will bring. He was asked, “What are the chances, in your opinion, of preventing a nuclear war that might destroy all life on earth?” He said, “The odds are four-to-six against us.” He was then asked, “How would you raise the odds of being able to prevent a nuclear war?” He answered, “I don’t know anything to do except keep on fighting to try to change the odds.” Now suppose as a result of all the protests and the activity of ourselves and other people, we change the odds to fifty-fifty. Then you have a scale, evenly balanced, where just a feather can tip it one way or another.
Then you have a scale, evenly balanced, where just a feather can tip it one way or another. If a situation such as that exists - which, in my opinion, is just about the state of affairs in the world today - one person’s activity in the revolutionary movement might make the difference. A Trend in the Wrong Direction November 12, 1966 Copies to: Ed Shaw, New York Jean Simon, Cleveland Reba Hansen New York, N.Y Dear Reba: This answers your letter of November 2 with which you enclosed a copy of Jean Simon’s letter of October 12. I was surprised and concerned by Jean’s proposals to change the constitutional provisions providing for an independent Control Commission elected by the convention, and making it a mere subcommittee of the NC, which would mean in effect a subcommittee of the PC. This would be the de facto liquidation of the Control Commission as it was originally conceived. As far as I can see all the new moves and proposals to monkey with the Constitution which has served the party so well in the past, with the aim of “tightening” centralization, represent a trend in the wrong direction at the present time. The party (and the YSA) is too “tight” already, and if we go much further along this line we can run the risk of strangling the party to death. As I recall it, the proposal to establish a Control Commission, separately elected by the convention, originated at the Plenum and Active Workers’ Conference in the fall of 1940, following the assassination of the Old Man. The assassin, as you will recall, gained access to the household in Coyoacan through his relations with a party member.[6] The Political Committee was then, as it always will be if it functions properly, too busy with political and organizational problems to take time for investigations and security checks on individuals. It was agreed that we need a special body to take care of this work, to investigate rumors and charges and present its findings and recommendations to the National Committee. If party security was one side of the functions of the Control Commission, the other side - no less important - was to provide the maximum assurance that any individual party member, accused or rumored to be unworthy of party membership, could be assured of the fullest investigation and a fair hearing or trial. It was thought that this double purpose could best be served by a body separately elected by the convention, and composed of members of long standing, especially respected by the party for their fairness as well as their devotion. I can recall instances where the Control Commission served the party well in both aspects of this dual function. In one case a member of the seamen’s fraction was expelled by the Los Angeles Branch after charges were brought against him by two members of the National Committee of that time. The expelled member appealed to the National Committee and the case was turned over to the Control Commission for investigation. The Control Commission, on which as I recall Dobbs was then the PC representative, investigated the whole case, found that the charges lacked substantial proof and recommended the reinstatement of the expelled member. This was done. In another case, a rumor circulated by the Shachtmanites and others outside the party against the integrity of a National Office secretarial worker was thoroughly investigated by the Control Commission which, after taking stenographic testimony from all available sources, declared the rumors unfounded and cleared the accused party member to continue her work. There were other cases in which charges were found after investigation to be substantiated and appropriate action recommended. All these experiences speak convincingly of the need for a separate Control Commission of highly respected comrades to make thorough investigations of every case, without being influenced by personal or partisan prejudice, or pressure from any source, and whose sole function is to examine each case from all sides fairly and justly and report its findings and recommendations. This is the best way, not only to protect the security of the party, but also to respect the rights of the accused in every case. As far as I know, the only criticism that can properly be made of the Control Commission in recent times is that it has not always functioned in this way with all its members participating, either by presence or correspondence, in all proceedings - and convincing the party that its investigation was thorough and that its findings and recommendations were fair and just. * * * It should be pointed out also that the idea of a Control Commission separately constituted by the convention didn’t really originate with us. Like almost everything else we know about the party organizational principles and functions, it came from the Russian Bolsheviks. The Russian party had a separate Control Commission. It might also be pointed out that after the revolution the new government established courts. It provided also for independent trade unions which, as Lenin pointed out in one of the controversies, had the duty even to defend the rights of its members against the government. Of course, all that was changed later when all power was concentrated in the party secretariat, and all the presumably independent institutions were converted into rubber stamps. But we don’t want to move in that direction. The forms and methods of the Lenin-Trotsky time are a better guide for us. * * * I am particularly concerned about any possible proposal to weaken the constitutional provision about the absolute right of suspended or expelled members to appeal to the convention. That is clearly and plainly a provision to protect every party member against possible abuse of authority by the National Committee. It should not be abrogated or diluted just to show that we are so damn revolutionary that we make no concessions to “bourgeois concepts of checks and balances.” The well-known Bill of Rights is a check and balance which I hope will be incorporated, in large part at least, in the Constitution of the Workers Republic in this country. Our constitutional provision for the right of appeal is also a “check and balance.” It can help to recommend our party to revolutionary workers as a genuinely democratic organization which guarantees rights as well as imposing responsibilities, and thus make it more appealing to them. I believe that these considerations have more weight now than ever before in the thirty-eight-year history of our party. In the present political climate and with the present changing composition of the party, democratic centralism must be applied flexibly. At least ninety percent of the emphasis should be placed on the democratic side and not on any crackpot schemes to “streamline” the party to the point where questions are unwelcomed and criticism and discussion stifled.
That is a prescription to kill the party before it gets a chance to show how it can handle and assimilate an expanding membership of new young people, who don’t know it all to start with, but have to learn and grow in the course of explication and discussion in a free, democratic atmosphere. Trotsky once remarked in a polemic against Stalinism that even in the period of the Civil War discussion in the party was “boiling like a spring.” Those words and others like it written by Trotsky, in his first attack against Stalinism in The New Course, ought to be explained now once again to the new young recruits in our party. And the best way to explain such decisive things is to practice what we preach. Yours fraternally, James P. Cannon The SWP’s Great Tradition June 27, 1967 To the Political Committee, New York, New York Dear Comrades: I am opposed to the motion adopted by the Political Committee recommending the immediate suspension of Comrade Swabeck. As you have been previously informed, I favor a different approach to the problem raised by Swabeck’s letter to [Gerry] Healy. I explained my views to Art Sharon during his brief visit here, and I presume that he communicated it to you. Also, Joel [Britton] showed me a copy of his letter to the National Office in which he reported the discussion which took place at a meeting of the NC members here. I consider it rather unfortunate that these divergent views were not incorporated in the PC minutes of the meeting which decided to recommend the suspension of Swabeck - so that the other members of the National Committee would have a chance to consider and discuss them before casting their vote on the ballot sent to them together with the PC minutes. My approach to the problem can be briefly summarized as follows: 1. Since Swabeck’s letter to Healy deals with two questions of great world importance - Chinese developments and our policy and tactics in the struggle against the Vietnam war - which are now properly up for discussion in the international movement as well as in our party, any action of a disciplinary nature which we may propose should be closely coordinated with international comrades, particularly the comrades in England, and carried out in agreement with them. 2. Since we are just now opening up our preconvention discussion, where the questions raised by Swabeck will properly have their place on the agenda, it would be rather awkward to begin the discussion by suspending the one articulate critic of the party’s positions and actions. A more effective procedure, in my opinion, should be simply to publish Swabeck’s letters (to Healy and Dobbs) with comprehensive and detailed answers. If past experience is any guide, the education of the new generations of the party and the consolidation of party opinion would be better served by this procedure. Examples in favor of this subordination of disciplinary measures to the bigger aims of political education have been richly documented in the published records of the fight against the petty-bourgeois opposition in 1939-40, and in the internal discussion bulletins dealing with the Goldman-Morrow affair in 1944-56.[7] 3. In the course of discussion, during a number of years of opposition to party policy, Swabeck has managed to isolate himself to the point where the immediate effect of the party’s reaction to this new provocation will not be very great one way or the other. But the long-range effect on the political education of the party, and its preparation to cope with old problems in new forms, can be very great indeed. It is most important that our party members, and the international movement, see the leadership once again in continuation of its great tradition - acting with cool deliberation to serve our larger political aims without personal favoritism or hostility. Fraternally, James P. Cannon Notes 1. An antiwar convention and demonstration at the White House were held in Washington, D.C., Nov. 25-28, 1965, under the sponsorship of the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam. The convention was marked by heated controversy between radical and liberal forces, which led to disputes over antiwar policy inside the SWP. Cannon’s views about the conference, given in a December 1965 speech in Los Angeles, were published in International Socialist Review, October 1974, and reprinted in the Education for Socialists Bulletin, “Revolutionary Strategy in the Antiwar Movement,” April 1975, pp. 12-17. 2. In Defense of Marxism by Leon Trotsky and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party by Cannon (Pathfinder Press, 1973 and 1972) answer the positions of the minority group in the SWP, led by Max Shachtman, Martin Abern, and James Burnham, which split away in 1940 after a bitter factional struggle. 3. Pathfinder Press’s 1973 edition of Socialism on Trial, Cannon’s testimony at the 1941 Minneapolis trial, also contains “Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial” as an appendix. 4. Cannon’s two speeches at the SWP NC plenum in February 1948, analyzing the new Progressive Party led by Henry Wallace and proposing that the SWP run its first presidential campaign that year, are reprinted in the Education for Socialists Bulletin, “Aspects of Socialist Election Policy,” March 1971, pp. 21-34. 5. Reprinted by Pathfinder Press, 1973. 6. Leon Trotsky, “the Old Man,” was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by an agent of the Soviet secret police who pretended to be a sympathizer of the Fourth International. 7. Cannon’s letters and speeches about the oppositional group in the SWP led by Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman are printed in his books Letters from Prison and The Struggle for Socialism in the “American Century” (Pathfinder Press, 1973 and 1977). Revolutionary Principles and Working-Class Democracy \| Main Document Index \| ETOL Home Page \| Cannon Index
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman U.S. Army Courts-Martial System Flayed in Sweeping Denunciation (4 May 1946) From The Militant, Vol. X No. 18, 4 May 1946, pp. 1 & 7. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). A sweeping indictment of American “military justice” in World War II was made last week in a report by a sub-committee of the House Military Affairs Committee, the full contents of which have not yet been made public as a result of pressure from the War Department. The report, drawn up after a six-month investigation, in effect charged the Army with conducting courts-martial in order to maintain the officers’ concept of “discipline” rather than to dispense justice: “The court-martial system is regarded by most professional officers as a means of enforcing discipline ... (but) discipline must not be named as a cloak to cover arbitrariness and injustice.” (Recently Major General Thomas H. Green, Judge Advocate General, in a defense of the court-martial system before the American Bar Association in Cincinnati, declared: “The court-martial system is, of course, primarily designed to help our armies win our wars. The sanctions of military justice constitute an instrument of command. They form the strong right arm of the military commander in the maintenance of order and discipline within his ranks.”) Compliant Courts “There is a widespread belief among intelligent soldiers that not so much a qualified as a weak and compliant court has been the objective,” the House committee report continued. A weak and compliant court is naturally more apt to obey the wishes of the senior officer who appointed its members and who can make life miserable for them after the trial. “There have been many excessive sentences ... the most tragic, of course, are the death sentences not commuted (142 in number), about which it is so difficult to obtain information ... Army courts in Europe adjudged two sentences of life imprisonment for A.W.O.L. Hundreds, probably thousands of bewildered boys with no really disloyal intentions were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for absence without leave ... It is the opinion of competent observers that Army sentences generally err on the side of severity.” In addition, it declared, the War Department does not provide “adequate review of their findings” since the record shows that sentences imposed were approved by a 99-to-one ratio by the Judge Advocate General’s office. As in all other spheres of Army life, officers get different and more favorable treatment than enlisted men facing the same charges. In Manila the Army issued orders to arrest all speed law violators. Enlisted men were fined on the first offense, it said, but officers were not punished until the third offense – and then got off with a reprimand in place of a fine. ”An enlisted man has the right, to bring charges against a commissioned officer,” the report observed. “This is largely a paper provision. An officer of long experience has said that when it did happen the enlisted man always found himself court-martialed or transferred.” Officers Select Court But, as every soldier knows, an officer not only can bring charges against an enlisted man, but he can often also select the members of the court-martial. Of course his testimony bears ten times more weight with the court than the enlisted man’s. In addition to its general observations, the sub-committee presented 16 specific recommendations. But the adoption of these recommendations – which is not likely, since the War Department is preparing its own list of proposed “reforms” – will do little to change the situation fundamentally. The sub-committee calls for amendments to some of the present Articles of War, when the need is for the complete abolition of this barbarous military code and the adoption of a code which will – recognize the democratic rights of members of the armed forces. It asks for an independent tribunal that will more thoroughly review the harshest courts-martial sentences, but is willing to leave the courts-martial themselves in the hands of the officer caste. It seeks to give enlisted men on trial the right to have one-third of the court composed of enlisted men. This would be a change from the present system where only officers sit on juries, but would still be a far cry from the right of trial by a jury of one’s peers, which enlisted men asked for again and again in their letters to army newspapers during the recent war. Recommendations Useless The value of the sub-committee’s report lies in what it reports, and not in what it recommends. After all, Congress does not come into this matter with clean hands. After the first world war a similar report was made by a Congressional committee, and nothing came of it but a few face-saving amendments to the Articles of War. And Congress has the right to replace the Articles of War with a whole new code. Basically, as the record shows, all Congress wants to do is prevent scandals, not interfere with the power of the officer caste. In spite of this. Undersecretary of War Royall challenged the report as “grossly unfair both to the Army and the system of military justice.” To defend the War Department he pointed out it had appointed an advisory board on military justice, with its members selected by the American Bar Association, to review the entire court-martial procedure. (This was done after the House sub-committee had begun its investigation. Furthermore, American Bar Association members helped the War Department whitewash the Articles of War after World War I.) Royall also called attention to the fact that a clemency board had been set up last summer “to review every individual general court-martial case.” But as the House report said: “Neither clemency nor pardon are remedies for miscarriages of justice.” Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 12 February 2020
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker Glenn Martin Still Says He Won’t Hire Negroes (19 July 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 29, 19 July 1941, p. 6. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Since the Negro March on Washington was called off, the government has done nothing to implement Roosevelt’s executive order which was supposed to do so much to end racial discrimination in the war industries. Yet most of the Negro “leaders” and papers have continued to shout themselves hoarse about the great significance of that executive order. The reaction of neither the government nor the Negro leaders is half so significant, however, as the reaction of the big business men and industrialists who have up until now continued to refuse Negroes employment in their factories. Sam Lacy in the Afro-American last week reported on a hearing on housing problems held in Baltimore after the issuance of Roosevelt’s order, in the course of which Glenn L. Martin, president of the big aircraft corporation bearing his name, was asked some very direct questions regarding the problem of employing Negroes, something his company has refused to do up to the present time. For some reason Congressman Osmers of New Jersey, who was conducting the question, sought to get a statement from Martin with regard to the effects of the president’s order. Osmers began by asking Martin, to his great embarrassment, what the employment policy of his company was, whether it used Negro labor. Martin replied that it did not, and when asked why, explained as follows: “Because we have not been able to find a sufficient number of colored men skilled or being trained in the work in which they might be used. And because wherever vocational courses are being conducted in Baltimore there are not enough colored persons taking the courses to justify our consideration of them as likely prospects.” (Lacy points out that the Martin plant has several thousand people taking training courses on the grounds and that the company refuses to admit Negroes to these courses as well as employment). Osmers asked Martin if lack of trained colored men was the only reason, and Martin replied: “Well, there are some other factors perhaps. I, personally, have nothing against the colored race, but if I hired them I would be forced to segregate them.” Pressed for an explanation of this, he said: “Because I’d be compelled to do so by policy. It is the policy of the State of Maryland to segregate colored people. They go to different theaters, different churches and different schools. They’re segregated all over the State, therefore, I’d have no alternative.” But is was obvious that there was a real contradiction at this point. Even if Maryland practiced Jim Crowism, President Roosevelt had just issued an order which said there was to be no further discrimination in employment. Martin was trying to justify his vicious policies by pretending that he was only abiding by the laws of the state. But how could he justify that if the federal government had ordered that discrimination must be stopped? Was he “law-abiding” only so far as the state went? Could he justify disregard of a federal order by reiterating his desire to abide by the state’s laws? Alibi No. 2. Blames the Workers Osmers then rushed to Martin’s aid with a “leading question”: “Is it a fact that should you place colored help in your plant you will face an immediate stoppage of work?” Martin pounced on that excuse. “There would be an immediate stoppage of work. We know that. It couldn’t be avoided.” Here we see the pretext that will be used by Martin and all the other bosses to justify disregard of the president’s order. It is not they who want to keep Negro workers out of work, oh, no, it is the workers who are responsible! And much as the bosses dislike it, they can’t do anything because after all they are concerned only with “producing” for “national defense,” aren’t they? Negroes must not be deceived by maneuvers of this kind. They must continue their struggle against the bosses, the government and the Uncle Toms until they win full equality. White workers must see through Martin’s schemes too. By organizing militant unions that accept Negro workers as brothers and fight for their rights too, the white workers can defeat these attempts to fasten the blame for Jim Crowism on themselves, unite the ranks of the working class and go forward to better conditions for all of labor. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 23 May 2016
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman Wallace Fired in Drive to War Ouster Symbolizes Wall Street lntention to Hasten Atomic Bomb Attack on USSR (28 September 1946) From The Militant, Vol. X No. 39, 28 September 1946, p. 1. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The dismissal of Henry A. Wallace from the Truman Cabinet is of great political significance for every worker in this country. This act means: 1. That Wall Street and the government openly proclaim their undivided support of a tough policy toward the USSR that is, a program of war in the not-distant future. 2. That the Truman administration is preparing for tougher measures against the labor movement at home. Wallace’s personal fate is of little importance. His confused and misleading program differs only tactically from that of Byrnes. But he has served as a symbol for the ruling class of this country, and his ouster as a symbol throws light on the real perspectives of Wall Street and Washington. Wallace stood as a symbol for two things in the Cabinet: As the advocate of go-soft-with-Russia tactics, and as the last governmental spokesman of New Dealism, which was based on a policy of keeping the support of the labor bureaucrats through limited concessions. Like a number of businessmen, chiefly small businessmen, Wallace believes that it is easier to make a deal with Stalin through “soft” methods. This deal, he proposes, should include political collaboration with the Stalinist bureaucracy, economic aid, a substantial loan, etc. In return for these concessions Wallace thinks a truce could be reached with Stalin, recognizing his “sphere of influence” and leaving the rest of the world to the tender mercies of American imperialism and thus averting or postponing war. Such was the proposal put forward in Wallace’s Madison Square Garden speech and in his July 23 letter to Truman which was published after the first public flurry. Public Threat But the decisive section of the American ruling class and its servants in the White House and at the Peace Conference openly reject such a tactic. And they have kicked Wallace out to tell the whole world – and especially the European powers they are lining up against the Soviet Union – that now is not the time for half-measures or compromises. The removal of the advocate of “peace” with the Soviet Union is, under present conditions, equivalent to a public threat to resort to war. This becomes even clearer from a consideration of the circumstances surrounding Wallace’s ouster. Important elections will take place in just a few weeks. Wallace, wearing the New Deal mantle, was counted on to swing labor votes to the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, when Truman was placed in a position where he had to back up Wall Street’s get-tough tactic, he acted decisively, even if it meant yielding up an important section of the labor vote. The Truman administration places the interests of American capitalism as a whole above even the immediate needs of the Democratic Party. Better to take the risk of losing an election, Truman figured, than to jeopardize the war program. The break with Wallace has its own logic on the home front. A government which is planningwar has to prepare to crack down on the masses if it is to regiment them for the war machine. The administration has been moving cautiously to the right – but in stages, because of election needs. Having been driven to a break with Wallace and his faction in the ruling class sooner than anticipated, the Truman Administration’s course from now on will tend steadily and faster to the right. The Wallace dismissal is thus a warning to the labor movement that Wall Street’s war program is not a long-term program, but one that can plunge the country into war in short order. In the light of this grim reality, it is imperative for the organized labor movement to immediately launch the struggle against imperialist war and against the anti-labor measures that come with a war program. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 18 June 2021
The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party Index \| Main Document Index \| ETOL Home Page Letter on “Loyalty and Party Membership” by George Breitman To the National Committee Dear Comrades: At the May plenum I criticized certain aspects of the Control Commission report on the Houston investigation, which the NC members received when the plenum began, and I asked permission to withhold my vote until I could see the final draft of this report, as revised after the plenum discussion. In July, shortly before the final draft was published in Party Organizer (Vol. 4, No. 2, July 1980), when the minutes of the plenum also were being completed, I received a copy of the minor changes made in the Control Commission report. Simultaneously, Comrade Betsey Stone informed me that my vote was to be not on the Control Commission's Houston report, on which the plenum had not voted, but on the oral report, “Loyalty and Party Membership,” which she had given on May 27 and which the plenum had adopted, and on the three PC motions denying the appeals of three Houston ex-members. While she provided me with a copy of the revised Control Commission report, on which I was not supposed to vote, she did not provide me with a written version of her oral report, on which I was supposed to vote. (The latter was printed later in the same Party Organizer cited above.) Since I could not remember clearly what had been in the Stone oral report six or seven weeks before, and had no idea of how much of it had been revised in the final draft, I abstained on this motion. Since I think the Control Commission report contained some serious errors, I voted against the three motions to deny the appeals of the former Houston members. My votes are explained below. 1. The party's policy against the use of illegal drugs, which some comrades call “universal” or “absolute,” does not allow for exceptions. If the three Houston appellants had used such drugs, they should have been expelled, and there would be no basis for appeal. But they were not expelled for using drugs. They were expelled for not giving the party information about violations by other members of the drug policy and other security measures. Is our position on that also “universal” or “absolute”? Do we require automatic expulsion in all cases where comrades knowingly withhold information about other members' violations of the drug or other security measures? I don't think that we did before the Houston case, the Control Commission report and the Stone report adopted by the plenum. I think that the plenum's adoption of the Stone report means that we now have such an automatic expulsion policy for the withholding of information, but I think that before the Houston case there probably were many members who did not clearly understand what their duty was in regard to other members' violations of the drug policy and did not know that they would be expelled for not performing this duty. The Stone report itself differentiates between the educational aspects emphasized before the Houston case and those emphasized since the Houston case: “Most of the discussions we've had in the party up to now have focused primarily on why the use of illegal drugs by party members should be incompatible with membership. The Control Commission report and this one [“Loyalty and Party Membership”] focused on something different—what it means for an individual member to decide that he or she will not implement this collective decision of the membership” (p. 21). But since the Houston case occurred before the differently focused Control Commission and Stone reports, the appeals should not have been rejected on the basis of a position not presented or voted on until after the appeals had been lodged. One can argue that the new and differently focused position is implicit in the party's traditional practice, which I think is true. But it can't be denied that it is a new position in a formal sense, and members should not be subjected to the severest disciplinary measure at our command merely because they did not comply with a position that had not yet been adopted. 2. The Houston branch executive committee, in its report recommending the expulsion of four comrades, said (to use the Control Commission's wording) that “the four comrades had failed to contact the branch about the dangers to the party because they had functioned in the party as a clique which had in many instances refused to work through the democratically constituted branch bodies.” That was a very bad thing for the executive committee to do. Cliquism is a serious charge to make against comrades. Its introduction at this point could only tend to prejudice the members against the defendants and to taint the trial. If the executive committee did not raise this question in the “many instances” when the alleged cliquism was manifested, it should have refrained from raising it at this trial. I hope that on further reflection the members of the executive committee will realize this, too. Unfortunately, the Control Commission, instead of explaining to them and to all the other comrades reading this report that they had made a mistake, waffles back and forth, ending up with a weak endorsement: “it was not necessarily incorrect” (p. 17). 3. The final draft of the Control Commission report says: “Two of the comrades who appealed argued that their violation of party discipline should be excused because of problems and demoralization they felt had existed in the Houston branch for a long time. During the trial and in our interviews, several comrades raised similar arguments. The Control Commission did not see it as our job to evaluate the general political situation in the Houston branch, past or present. We did conclude that nothing was raised about the history of the branch that would excuse the disloyal behavior of the comrades. In fact, we felt such behavior should not be excused on any account. It is incompatible with membership in the revolutionary party” (p.
It is incompatible with membership in the revolutionary party” (p. 16). It seems to me that when “several comrades” (not just the two appellants) raise the argument that long-existing problems and demoralization in the branch were responsible to some degree for the violations of discipline, then it certainly is the “job” of the Control Commission to evaluate the truth or falsity of this claim, which of course would not “excuse” the violations but might shed light on the cause of the violations beyond the asserted disloyalty of the defendants and might influence the severity of the disciplinary measures taken against them. I do not argue at all that the Houston branch leadership was responsible in any way for the violations of discipline by the defendants, since I know nothing about the conditions claimed by them, least of all from the Control Commission report. It seems to me that the Control Commission was derelict on this point, and that its misconception about its “job” was linked to its moral indignation against the asserted disloyalty of the defendants. 4. I must admit that I feel disturbed about some of the atmosphere being created around these drug and drug-related trials. Some of the things being said and done reek of fanatical moralism, zealotry, sophistry, and crusading, and the sooner they are curbed the better off the party will be. Some comrades seem to regard our drug policy as the veritable key to the party's entire future—everything will come to total ruin unless we agree with the Houston leadership that expulsion and nothing but expulsion was the only conceivable punishment for the comrades who violated party discipline there. Others view it as some kind of test. One refrain at the May plenum was “Comrades, you are being tested.” I couldn't figure that out, since in a certain sense we are always being tested from the day we join the movement, and since I can't see anything special about the present situation so far as testing goes. But some comrades seem to see the drug policy as a test of their Bolshevikness, of their hardness as revolutionaries, and they don't want to be found wanting. In Houston I think there was a certain tendency to regard Debbie Leonard's revelations as a “dare,” and to act as though the comrades would be guilty of something if they did not respond to her dare—cowardice, I suppose, or political inadequacy. All this is compounded by an increasingly elastic and schematic use of the concepts of loyalty and disloyalty in recent years. Loyalty is something that comes from inside, as a result of rising political consciousness. It is not something that can be imposed or produced through motion, resolution, or administrative measure. When the SWP was founded, loyalty was not listed as one of the requirements for membership, although of course we always strive to deepen and strengthen the loyalty of new members and old. What we demanded, and what we still demand in our constitution, Article III, Section 1, is that people accept the program of the party and agree to submit to its discipline and engage actively in its work. If someone violates the discipline, he or she can be punished in various ways, from reprimand or censure up to expulsion. This is sufficient for dealing with drug cases and all other cases of deliberate violation of party policy; you don't need to muddle things up with an ever-widening interpretation of loyalty and disloyalty. When I came into the movement, and until recently, disloyalty was used in a narrow sense: a disloyal person was one who owed his or her allegiance and real loyalty to some group or agency or force hostile to the party. For example, a person who pretended to submit to our party's discipline but actually was operating under the discipline of a group outside of the party was manifestly disloyal. (The Oehlerites and Fieldites used to send such agents into the SWP in the 1930s, and others have done it since, as we know.) Where there was no other allegiance or actual loyalty to some other force, we would penalize members violating party discipline more or less severely, depending on the seriousness of the violations, but instead of branding them as disloyal we condemned them as undisciplined or irresponsible elements, whose undisciplined or irresponsible acts harmed the party and its revolutionary development. I think the drug and drug-related violations of discipline can best be handled in this way, rather than through an expanding use or misuse of the loyalty/disloyalty concept. 5. I abstained on the “Loyalty and Party Membership” report because I could not remember it well many weeks after the plenum and because I did not have a chance to see it in written form at the deadline for my withheld vote. But if I had had a chance to read it first, I certainly would have voted against it. I am not opposed to it for making clear that the party is serious about the drug policy and expects all members to cooperate in enforcing it from here on; I would have voted for it if that was all it did. But I strongly oppose the report because it also further stretches the concept of disloyalty to include new misdemeanors, sins, or crimes disapproved by zealots and schematists. “In fact,” this report says, “if a comrade disagrees with a position or policy adopted by the party it is disloyal not to express your opinion at the appropriate time and place so that the party can be assured the benefit of the thinking and experience of all comrades” (p. 20). I can't remember a more fatuous statement adopted by the NC in its entire history, and I resent having such stuff included in documents the NC is called to vote on. Most NC members, I believe, would repudiate such a statement in an atmosphere free of Apocalypse Next Thursday Unless the Houston Expulsions Are Sustained. I myself have expressed disagreements with positions adopted by the party, from its labor party position in 1938 to aspects of its policy on Cuba in 1979. But on some occasions I have not expressed my disagreement with one or another party position or policy. In such cases, I have withheld my opinion for various reasons—because while I disagreed with a position adopted, I was not sure about it and therefore tended to defer to the opinions of other comrades who knew more about the subject;
or because while I was sure the position adopted was wrong, I did not have or see any alternative to propose; or because I felt, rightly or wrongly, that at that point there was little or no chance of my point of view being understood or accepted; or for other reasons. As I said, I have done this in the past, without anyone ever posing questions about my loyalty, and I intend to go on doing it, despite the NC's adoption of this deplorable report on “Loyalty and Party Membership.” I hope that the comrades responsible for that report will bring me up on charges of disloyalty so that the question can get further clarification. August 19, 1980 The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party Index \| Main Document Index \| ETOL Home Page \| Marxists’ Internet Archive
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page John F. Petrone A Case of “Malicious Gossip” (5 January 1948) From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 1, 5 January 1948, p. 4. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). General Eisenhower is getting a bum deal, and all his friends are springing to his defense. Even those who don’t have much use for the general must concede, in the interests of fair play, that he is the victim of one of the worst frameups in political history. It’s tough enough for a man to be Chief of Staff while he is running for president. Other candidates whose hats are flying through the air but have not yet landed in the ring, can at least engage openly in politics, and get off as many political speeches as they have wind for. But a five-star general in the post of Chief of Staff can’t speak publicly on anything but the need to spend additional billions of dollars on the armed forces, universal military training and other projects that don’t go over too well with a public already bled white by taxes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the general’s rivals for the Republican nomination are trying to discredit him beyond repair by spreading what Life magazine calls “malicious gossip.” Rumor and slander have always played an important part in American presidential elections. Lincoln was said to be an atheist, Harding the father of a bastard, Al Smith an agent of the Pope, Roosevelt a Jew, etc. But that was in days gone by. The one about Eisenhower, a real product of the atomic age, dwarfs them all into insignificance. It seems that Eisenhower was a guest at a private Republican dinner in Washington, and that he let go with a few “off the record” remarks during an after-dinner discussion on inflation. And this, according to Fulton Lewis, Jr., is what he said: The government should call in. all the industrialists and have them agree to reduce prices for two or three years and to “eliminate all profits whatsoever”; and if they refused, Congress should tax all profits 100%! It is easy to understand the gasps of horror that arose in high circles when this story made the rounds. Why, Eisenhower was un-American; as bad as any Bolshevik; even Henry Wallace had never gone that far. A dirty lie! “Imputed to the general ... are words he never uttered and a supposed ‘program’ to deal with domestic problems which he never proposed,” cried Arthur Krock of the N.Y. Times, who had been present at the dinner. The truth is, said Life, that Eisenhower spoke only “on the need for combating inflation by holding both profits and wages at reasonable levels” – a view repeatedly endorsed by Roosevelt, Hoover, Wallace, Truman, Taft and every last member of the NAM. The Eisenhower boom is said to have sagged sadly since this incident. Wouldn’t it be ironic, and yet a fitting comment on the times, if he lost the nomination – not because he is a puppet of the sinister military bureaucrats who are out to regiment the youth and to prussianize the nation – but because he was falsely credited with advocating a damned good idea? Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 October 2020
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx. (29 March 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V. No. 13, 29 March 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The Fight Against Ford In his latest broadside against the CIO, D.J. Marshall, Negro personnel head of the Ford Motor Company (who will be fired by Ford, not by the union, if Ford is organized), hurls the following challenge at the United Auto Workers Union: “The proposition seems to resolve itself to this: The union tells colored people that, if they will join the union, they will get industrial freedom; the Negroes at the Ford, Motor Company tell the union that if they will give the colored workers this independence in the shops where the union is already established, then they might consider unionism.” To answer this challenge successfully would be to win the great majority of Negroes over to the union and to practically assure that the workers’ ranks would be united and indivisible against Ford, Bennett and Marshall. As The Militant has pointed out before, what is needed now is an aggressive policy, a program that takes the offensive against the bosses, on the question of Negro rights in industry. It is not enough to prove that the CIO has not been guilty of discrimination. It must be demonstrated that the CIO fights for Negro rights throughout the industry, which of course Ford will never do. And the CIO can demonstrate this. Negroes should say to Marshall: “The proposition is also this: You and Ford tell the Negro that he is better off in Ford’s open shop than elsewhere; the Negroes tell you that if you will call off your anti-union squads of thugs, and if you’ll raise wages 10¢ an hour so they’ll equal, wages in other auto plants, and if you’ll reduce the speedup, and if you’ll stop threatening to fire us all if we join the union, then we might believe you. But you won’t do these things, because those are the only ways you have been able to keep Ford workers from joining the union in previous years.” * * * Who Taught Hitler Greatly played up nowadays is the story of how badly Hitlerism treats and intends to treat the Negroes. The purpose of most of this hullabaloo is to work the American Negro, up to support the “democracies” in the imperialist war. The Crisis and the Pittsburgh Courier this month have both shown that, cold-blooded as is the policy on the Negro announced by the Nazis, it is really only a duplication of the policy on the Negro carried out in most parts of the United States since 1877. And. if there is anyone who doubts that the. Nazi policy on this question is stolen right out of the handbook of British colonial policy, he ought to read the following Associated Negro Press dispatch from Cape Town, South Africa, dated March 6: “Restrictions and segregation even more vicious than that of the Southland of the United States, are in vogue here and growing constantly worse. Recently, when a new railway station was planned for Huguenot, two separate entrances were provided, one for whites and one for non-whites. Waiting room accommodations for whites were arranged for in the main building but non-whites were given a waiting room in a separate building ... “It appeared that an important step forward had, been made when two months ago the Witwatersrand University agreed to allow non-Europeans (the local designation for any other than whites) to attend medical school at the university and to work for both medical and dental degrees. The number of non-European students was restricted to ten. The chief problem which the school authorities had to overcome was the matter of providing bodies for dissection during the student’s fourth year. It was finally solved by deciding that non-European students should be permitted to dissect only black bodies.” * * * A Washington dispatch from the same agency had this to report a week later: “No thought will be given to assigning colored doctors, dentists or nurses to centers where they might at any time be called upon to serve white soldiers, according to an official U.S. Army announcement. “This determination to confine colored professional personnel to troops of their own race was emphatically declared by Surgeon General McGhee, Friday, during a conference with members of a committee from the National Medical Association ... “The general professing to represent Northern sentiment, said that under no circumstances could he see colored and white doctors working together in the same hospital or as examiners of recruits. “Advised that colored physicians had served. white soldiers in recruiting stations during the World War, he said it was inconceivable to him that colored doctors could work on an examining team with white doctors, and that no attempt would be made to integrate them into white medical teams.” * * * Strange bedfellows have turned up around a bill to deport all American Negroes to Africa. Senator Bilbo of Mississippi, who stands for “white supremacy” and hates the Negroes, is the author of the bill. J.R. Stewart, successor to the late Marcus Garvey as president general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, in a speech in Chicago early this month, endorsed the bill of the enemy of the Negro people in the following words: “As a long range measure, though not through any heartfelt benevolence, Bilbo of Mississippi has a bill which would deport us to Africa (Liberia) ... I am not for Bilbo but I am for this bill and will fight to support it ...” In other words, the Garvey movement which once attracted the hopes of so many millions of Negroes is now acting as the tail to the kite of America’s outstanding exponent of “Negro inferiority.” Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 3 October 2015
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx (20 September 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 38, 20 September 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Fascist Ideas and Jim Crow In the course of a discussion held in Mexico on April 4, 1939, Leon Trotsky said: “Fascism in the United States will be directed against the Jews and the Negroes, but against the Negroes particularly, and in a most terrible manner, A ‘privileged’ condition will be created for the American white workers on the back of the Negroes.” In spite of the fact that this country is today preparing in every sphere for an all-out war, directed presumably “against fascism” abroad, the ideas of fascism right here at home in “the arsenal of the democracies” are gaining strength and new supporters with alarming speed. The speech of that advocate of white supremacy, Lindbergh, attacking the Jewish people last week, is an example of this growing trend. This speech – not yet repudiated by any of his colleagues on the America First Committee – has received much publicity, especially through the efforts of the interventionist war-mongers Who are only too pleased with an easy opportunity to win supporters for the war by the cheap expedient of denouncing the racial prejudices of an outstanding isolationist. But when it comes to Negro baiting and to Jim Crow practices developed in the school of propaganda-by-example, the interventionists have nothing or little to say. The reason is simple: in this field of racial division and the fostering of racial hatred, the warmongering administration takes first place and most of the responsibility. Only here and there do you read about it – in the workers’ and Negro press, and occasionally in a liberal magazine – but at present the Roosevelt administration is doing more by its Jim Crow segregation policies in the armed forces to foster fascist racial ideas among whites than any other agency in the country, including the South. The anti-labor bureaucratic caste in the army is not only teaching hundreds of thousands of white young men to hate organized labor and to receive an carry out orders given “from above” without thought and without question, but it is also teaching them – by separating Negro soldiers from them everywhere they eat, sleep, train, drill, get recreation, etc. – that they are better than Negroes. Thus the ideas of “white supremacy” and “Negro inferiority” are injected into the minds of young men, many of whom went to school beside Negroes when they were children and never had a trace of chauvinism. Not every white soldier accepts these ideas, of course. Those especially who have been in unions, worked alongside of Negroes and walked beside them on picket-lines, refuse to accept these ideas. The Negro press carries numerous expressions of sympathy and protest from white workers in southern camps who have been revolted and disgusted by the vicious Jim Crow policies and the MP brutalities practiced against Negroes. But let us [not] be lulled by these accounts. There has been no authoritative poll on this question, but there is no reason to believe that the racially tolerant white soldiers constitute a majority or much of a majority at best. For the pressure on the average soldier, all the things said and half-said by his superior officers, is continuous and powerful. In the end many white soldiers who never even thought about Negroes at home, tend to accept that distorted way of thinking which is so frequently encountered in the South: “My own lot is a miserable one, but at least I am better off than the Negroes” and “The Negro is responsible for my conditions.” To those who think this is an exaggeration or an isolated phenomenon, we recommend the reading of an article, Why The Army Gripes by Harold Lavine, in the August 30 issue of The Nation. The article is all the more significant because this magazine is an ardent supporter of Roosevelt and his war program. When they print this article, it is not because they are trying to spread anti-war propaganda, but because the situation is so acute that they would like to see it corrected or alleviated so that it will not interfere with the war plans. Lavine’s Report Mr. Lavine interviewed 352 soldiers on leave in New York City and tried to discover what their complaints were. Here is what he reported about the attitude of many of them toward the Negroes: “The inferiority complex which so many of the recruits have developed is reflected in their attitude toward Negroes. They haven’t just the normal anti-Negro prejudice which you find everywhere in the United States, in the North as well as the South. They HATE Negroes, and their hatred seems to be mounting to hysteria. They make sudden, irrelevant remarks: ‘Say, I read where Joe Louis is to join the Army. I hope they send him down my way. First dark night I’ll shoot the bastard.’ They occupy themselves with the problem of whether or not to salute Negro officers. ‘They say it’s the uniform you salute, not the man,’ I said. ‘The hell with that. I’d like to shoot them.’” This is a terrible danger signal to the Negro people and the whole labor movement. Whatever happens in the war, a lot of people are going to get out of the army with strong fascist anti-Negro ideas. Whether the United States wins the war or not, these forces will further divide the Negro and white workers and increase the Jim Crow terror against the Negro people. If there was no reason before for fighting the war program – and there were a hundred – here is a good one. If there was no reason before for fighting to take control of military training away from the bureaucratic officer caste and, struggling for military training under control of the trade unions and on the basis of equality for Negroes – and The Militant has been filled with such reasons – here is an undeniable one. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 25 May 2016
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx A Little History (11 October 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 41, 11 October 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Last week John McCormack of Newark, N.J., concluded a letter to the editor of The Militant with the question: “What good is the executive order that Roosevelt issued if it hasn’t got teeth to enforce it?” We suspect that McCormack knew very well the answer to his own question. But if there is any one else who isn’t aware of the fraud and hypocrisy being practiced by the Roosevelt administration toward the problem of jobs without discrimination for Negroes, we reprint the following parts of an article by George McCray, Negro labor commentator, from the Chicago Bee, Sept. 21, 1941: Many people have an almost childlike faith in the power of powerless government committees and commissions. During N.R.A., when we not only had a National Labor Board, but labor adjustment boards for various industries, organized labor learned that these boards of Mr. Roosevelt often wasted a lot of precious time but never got much accomplished. It seems as though Negroes are going to make a similar discovery. No Results Here is an enlightening series of events: July, 1940; the National Defense Advisory Commission stipulated that workers should not be discriminated against because of age, race, or color. No discernible change. April 12, 1941; Negro employment and training branch was established in the Office of Production Management to make pleas for the removal of “employment barriers erected against competent and available colored workers either by employers or labor organizations.” Some results achieved, but frankly hardly worth mentioning. The most strenuous efforts of such field workers for OPM as Poston and Weaver succeeded in placing a half dozen Negroes here and there. Most of the gains made in the building industry were due to a shortage of labor in many areas and to the bitter battles being fought between the AFL and the CIO to dominate the building industry. When the CIO went after Negro construction workers the AFL decided the time was ripe to change its policies and grant Negroes work permits, rarely union membership. No Change April 11, 1941; both Hillman and Knudsen sent letters to defense contractors urging them to drop discrimination. No change. No Change June 25, 1941; President Roosevelt, very much irritated by A.P. Randolph’s threatened march to Washington, took “strong” measures to prevent discrimination against Negroes. Government agencies were cautioned, a non-discrimination clause was to be placed in defense contracts; and another committee, this time one on Fair Employment Practices was to be created, to make investigations and to redress grievances. So far no change, but it should be remembered that the well-meaning, hard-working men on the committee really haven’t had time to tackle the problem. No Change August, 1941; Fair Employment Practices committee called on President, had their pictures taken, and recommended that he call on all government agencies to drop segregation and discrimination against Negroes. Seems like this was done once before. Another Letter August or September, 1941; President issues letter asking various department heads to review employment policies. Some Results September, 1941; Associated Negro Press carried story of five Negro stenographers who had been hired, in the United States war department over which Mr. Roosevelt himself is boss. The girls were “hidden away on the second floor in the sixth wing of the huge munitions building of the war department” with practically nothing to do. In short, to sum up the whole experience in October, 1941, all the letters, statements, orders, and “well-meaning” committeemen in the world are not going to be able to do anything basic about job Jim Crow. The Negro masses can depend only on their own organized strength to win concessions and to win full equality. * * * Hastie Can’t Answer Baldwin In a letter to the New York Times, Oct. 4, William H. Hastie, Negro Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War, attempted to answer some remarks in an article in the Sept. 30 Times written by that paper’s military commentator, Hanson W. Baldwin. In this article, devoted to a discussion of conclusions that could be drawn from the recently completed Army maneuvers, Baldwin stated that it was the “virtually unanimous belief of many officers that they (Negro soldiers) do not make good combat soldiers” and that “many officers say that the present tendency to increase the proportion of Negroes in the combat arms of the Army is dictated by political pressure and is dangerous to the efficiency of the Army.” Hastie undertook to argue the question. But he was unable – and afraid – to deal with the point in Baldwin’s article that is visible to everyone that wants to see it: namely, that although Negro soldiers by and large are functioning as well as any others in the Army, their officers, in the face of all the favorable evidence given by Baldwin, still belittle and underrate them. Hastie doesn’t mind showing Baldwin’s mistakes – but he has nothing to say about this attitude, fostered and tolerated by Hastie’s own superiors and covered up by him, that is the source of all the discrimination shown the Negro. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 21 March 2019
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman Newark’s Relief System Exposed After Driving Workers’ Organizations Out of Stations, City Slashed Relief Budgets (5 April 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 14, 5 April 1941, p. 3. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). NEWARK, N.J. – Two years ago this month the Newark relief administration succeeded in putting, through the plan it had been working on so long – the barring of unemployed organizations from the relief stations of the city. But with the passage of the ruling that “every relief client must speak for himself,” the Franklin-Malady relief administration began a series of cuts which have reduced the rolls to half the number, of two years ago, and wiped out every one of the gains won in the eight years previous to that. Relief Today The period of waiting after application for relief is now from three to four weeks, often more, where previously it was a week or so. The special “emergency check” is now a thing of the past. Special diets, which were granted on any doctor’s recommendation, thus providing more food for sick people, are granted in only 1% of the cases which had them previously. No longer is the recommendation of any doctor sufficient: only a city doctor’s word is good enough now. Where previously as much as a quart of milk was allowed for children below 12 years of age, today half-a-quart is considered quite sufficient by relief officials. Relief granted to strikers was always of great help to unions of newly organized workers with little finances to run their strikes. Today strikers are not allowed relief. Condemned to Freeze In 1939, the department began to issue coal for the winter season in October. In 1940, “money was saved” by not issuing the coal until the middle of December. During this period a wave of influenza and pneumonia cases reached almost the proportions of an epidemic in the workers’ neighborhoods. Previously, by exerting a lot of pressure a relief client could get an order for clothing that could be cashed in a clothing stored Now this has been done away with. Relief clients get only clothing made on the WPA projects, and extremely little of that. In 1940 less than 1c per day per person was spent by the city on clothing. The 1941 budget calls for about the same figure. But the best example of all of how Newark relief is conducted, now that the unemployed unions are locked out, is the recent ruling on rental allowances. In 1939 they were as follows: $15 a month for families of six or less, and up to $20 a month in certain cases of larger families. Gradually this was cut down so that single people received only $12 a month, and small families received even less than $15. Suddenly last month the following policy was announced in a newspaper announcement headed: “Relief Clients’ Landlords May Get Increased Rents”: Families of one or two were to receive a maximum of $9 a month, families of three and four to receive maximum of $10.50 and $13.50. But families of over five would receive more than $15. This was the “increase” talked about. The Way Out The key to the relief problem does not lie in the promises made by the politicians prior to elections. Franklin, self-proclaimed “champion of the underprivileged” will be able to do everything he wants, as long as the unemployed are not organized into unions that are recognized and have the right to bargain for their members. That is why in this election we say to the unemployed that what they must fight for is recognition of their committees. The present administration, in spite of its claims that it is “fair to labor,” has shown that it is not fair to unions of the unemployed. That is why we say that the workers need a City Commission controlled by and responsible to the workers, which will recognize this right and open up the way to an improvement in relief standards. LET LABOR CONTROL THE CITY COMMISSION! Build a labor party and elect a City Commission that is pledged, among other things, to recognition of the unemployed unions! Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 November 2015
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx. (19 October 1940) From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 42, 19 October 1940, p. 3. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). A Victory on Paper A couple of weeks ago, before the conscription bill was passed, two amendments were made, which were hailed by Senator Wagner of New York (and several unsuspecting and gullible Negro leaders) as “a signal victory for the forces of democracy in America life.” One amendment was supposed to prohibit discrimination in the armed forces because of color, so far as enlisted men were concerned, the other prohibited discrimination against drafted men. But actually, in spite of the statements coming from secretaries in the White House, nothing has changed. Jim Crow still wears his stripes. This was definitely shown in the attempts of a number of colored people to enlist in the service since the passage of the amended bill. They wanted to enlist so that they can choose the branch of the service they preferred, something that is not permitted for drafted men. In five cities, reporters of the Baltimore Afro-American attempted to join the U.S. Aviation Corp. In each case, these colored men were met with flat rejections. “And in each instance the reason given was always the same – no openings for colored men.” Another reporter of the same paper tried to enlist in the field artillery, a branch of the service that has been closed to the Negro people. “There are no vacancies for colored,” was the answer he got. Another applied for admission into the U.S. Navy this week in Washington, the capital of this great democracy. He was told that the only place open for Negroes was as mess-hands, that is, as kitchen slavies. He protested, saying, “I was of the impression that the conscription bill, either in fact or in spirit, had changed all this segregation.” “Well,” the officer declared, “I don’t know what can be done about it. We haven’t had any further orders. The conscription bill hasn’t changed the situation for us. As far as we’re concerned, it’s just as if nothing’s happened.” And so it goes, up and down the line of the different branches. The marine corps is still lily white. So is the tank corps, the air corps, the artillery, the coast guard, the engineers, the signal corps, etc. Only the infantry, the cavalry, the quartermaster corps, mess hands in the Navy, and to a very limited extent, the medical corps are open to colored people. The White House Is Unmasked After a White. House conference with Walter White, A. Philip Randolph and T. Arnold Hill, it became clear this week that only white officers will be called in to command colored draftees. Roosevelt was quoted as saying That so far as training colored men as commissioned officers or for the air corps went, plans had not yet been developed. Colored reserve officers will be called on active duty only to fill vacancies “in units now officered by colored personnel.” Since the only units now officered by colored men are the National Guard, this means that drafted men will be placed in separate units under white officers. “As to the Navy,” says the Afro-American, “Colonel Knox allegedly stated that while he was sympathetic, he felt that the problem there was almost insoluble since men have to live together on ships, and that ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ ships are impossible.” If Jim Crow still rules in the enlisted Army, in spite of the fine “anti-discrimination” amendment, how much more will it rule in the drafted army! It becomes clear now that the only reason these amendments were passed was to get the colored people to support the conscription bill, and make them feel things were going to change so far as they were concerned. ... It is now clearer than ever: The fight to end Jim Crowism in the armed forces, the fight to see that colored soldiers have the right to pick their own officers, can be won only as part of the general struggle for trade union control of military training. * * * The Army doesn’t want colored men to become officers. And it has an unwritten rule that those who do become officers shall not rise higher than the rank of Colonel. And few of those! The reason is that they don’t want colored men in the highest councils where they can see from the inside how the Negro ranks are discriminated against, how it is decided that they are to play mainly two roles: to do the dirty work in the labor battalions, and to be given the most dangerous assignments in active duty. In 1917, when officers were being promoted, General Jim Crow and his staff decided that Colonel Charles E. Young, highest ranking Negro West Point graduate, was suddenly retired “because he had high blood pressure.” The real reason for this move was that an officer who is retired does not have to be promoted, even if he is returned to active duty. Young rode on a horse all the way from Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, to show that he was physically fit – but he was not promoted as all the whites of his rank were. Later on, he was returned to active duty, but only as a colonel, because his “retirement” gave the general staff their necessary excuse not to advance him. History repeated itself last week. President Roosevelt, who tells how he loves democracy ... in Europe, appointed 100 white colonels to the grade of brigadier-general over the head of Col. Benjamin O. Davis, commanding officer of the 369th Infantry Regiment, N.Y. These appointments were made by the Commander-in-Chief on the recommendation of the Army. The only difference is that in 1917 they looked for an “excuse.” In 1940 they feel Jim Crow is permanent in the Army, as long as they’re in control, and they don’t even need excuses to cover it up. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 15 August 2020
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman Same Disastrous Policy to Be Followed – Stalin Anniversary Speeches Indicate Kremlin Will Not Adopt Program That Can Save USSR (15 November 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 46, 15 November 1941, pp. 1 & 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). In the two speeches he delivered on the occasion of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Stalin tried to calm the fears of the Soviet masses about the defeats suffered by the USSR in the war against German fascism. He tried to explain away the defeats, and to justify the course the Stalinist regime has followed. But what he succeeded in doing was to make it plain that the Stalinist bureaucracy has no plan or strategy for victory; that Stalinism is responsible for the terrible Soviet defeats; that in spite of the critical position the workers state occupies today, Stalin refuses to adopt the revolutionary policies which alone can save the Soviet Union in this war. Stalin admits that by itself the Soviet Union is unable to defeat Hitler, for he explains what he calls the “temporary reverses” by the fact that the Soviet Union is fighting Germany alone, without the military help of allies, without the aid of a “western front,” and by the fact that the Soviet Union does not have as many tanks and aircraft as Hitler who is able to draw on the resources and industries of most of Europe. Stalin tries to console the masses with the hope that the “democratic” imperialists will come to the aid of the Soviet Union by opening a “western front.” Aside from thus leaving the fate of the USSR in the hands of the imperialists, Stalin presents no program to save the USSR. He points to the undeniable instability and contradictions in Hitler’s position, and declares that eventually “in another few months, another half or one year perhaps, Hitlerite Germany must burst of its own weight of crimes.” He asserts that Hitler’s conquest of Europe has by no means destroyed the resistance and opposition of the European masses to Hitlerism, and declares that the “new order” is “a volcano ready to erupt at any moment and bury the Germany imperialistic house of cards,” and that the rear of Hitler’s army in Germany itself is ready to turn against him. Thus is indicated the policy which can make up for the shortcomings in Soviet production, and destroy the fascist regime in spite of its advantages in machinery and military experience: What is required for this is a revolutionary appeal to the German and the European working class to rise up against fascism: the assurance that they will not be alone or isolated in this struggle, but that they will be joined and supported by all the resources of the Red Army and the Soviet Union. What is necessary is a revolutionary appeal that will disintegrate Hitler’s rear, that will move the German masses into action against the system that oppresses them. Stalin Takes No Step But Stalin does not breathe even the suggestion of a revolutionary appeal to the German workers. If Hitler’s regime is to be toppled from behind, if Hitler’s doom is “inevitable”, in a few months or a half year or a year, Stalin proposes to wait for history to accomplish it Meanwhile, though the danger to the USSR increases, he himself refuses to take a single step to move the German workers into revolutionary action. For Stalin has placed his hopes in the hands of the “democratic” imperialists. For fear of alienating them, he will not even suggest, let alone try to aid, a workers’ revolution in Germany. Indeed, far from doing anything to arouse the German workers in this Way, Stalin’s policies only drive the German masses still closer to Hitler, and help to destroy every possibility of convincing them they must not aid Hitler in the destruction of the workers state. For Stalin completely identifies the war of the USSR with the imperialist war of Great Britain, and claims that England, the United States and the USSR are in a “single camp,” that “the Soviet Union’ and its allies are waging a war of liberation – a just war calculated for the liberation of the enslaved peoples of Europe and the USSR” and that armies of the USSR, Great Britain and the other allies as armies of liberation.” Hitler and Goebbels secure the support or at least the non-opposition of the German masses by warning them that although they have known suffering in the war, they will, if Germany loses the war, face even greater suffering in the form of a new Versailles Treaty to crush Germany and make its people pay for the costs of the war. The only way to deprive Hitler of this bludgeon held over the German masses is by showing them that they can escape this terrible prospect even if Hitler loses the war. But Stalin, by declaring that imperialist Britain wages a just war, and by declaring that the Soviet Union is in one camp with Britain, and by refusing to promise to fight against a new Versailles succeeds only in driving the German masses still closer to Hitler – thus alienating them further from the workers State. Stalin spoke on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. But he was careful to avoid all references to the true meaning and tradition of that revolution, which he has trampled on and betrayed. Trying to show that all was not lost in spite of the defeats suffered in this war under his leadership, Stalin turned back for a moment to the days of the Civil War and the intervention in 1918–20 when the young workers state was almost overthrown. “At that time almost three-fourths of our country was in the hands of foreign interventionists ... We had no allies, no Red Army – we had only just begun to create it – we experienced a shortage of bread, a shortage of arms, a shortage of clothing. At that time 14 states were pressing against our country, but we did not despair ...” In spite of its material disadvantages, the Soviet Union was saved. And today, according to Stalin, the Soviet Union is in a much stronger position, so: “Is it possible then to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the invaders?” But Stalin dared not tell the truth about the Civil War days. He dared not tell that the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky, never for a moment placed reliance on the imperialists, even when momentarily they were allied to them, that at all times they turned to the working class of the world, and particularly the workers in the armies and the countries of the enemy, and called on them to save the workers state. He does not dare admit that what saved the Soviet Union was this policy of revolutionary war, which neutralised the mechanical and numerical superiority of its enemies’ forces by setting the worker – and peasant-soldiers into action against their own imperialist rulers. It is not too late to save the Soviet Union, as the experiences of the Civil War days showed. But it can be saved only by the policy of revolutionary war which Stalinism fears and refuses to adopt. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 21 March 2019
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle “Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx. (12 July 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 28, 12 July 1941, p. 5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). How To Defend the Soviet Union Last week we explained that workers, Negro and white, have the job of defending the Soviet Union against its imperialist enemies, in spite of Stalin’s crimes against the world working class because the Soviet Union is a workers’ state and because its defeat by the imperialists would greatly strengthen the bosses in their exploitation and oppression of the workers everywhere. This week we want to discuss how workers, and especially Negro workers, can best defend the Soviet Union. By defense of the Soviet Union, it must be understood, first of all we Trotskyists do not mean the same thing at all that the Stalinists do. They don’t defend the same things we do, and they don’t defend them in the same way. What they defend in the Soviet Union first of all is Stalinism, the power and privileges and theories of the corrupt bureaucracy that has seized control of the state. What WE defend is the remains of the greatest revolution of all time, the nationalized property relations, the economic foundation which if extended will lead to socialism and a new kind of society. For example, a month ago, the Stalinists, feeling that the United States when it entered the war would probably be in an alliance directed against the Soviet Union, spent all their time denouncing the war preparations of the U.S. government and trying to keep it from entering the war with full military steps. As part of its propaganda, the Communist Party dealt with the Negro question and Jim Crowism, showed how false are Roosevelt’s slogans about “a war for democracy”. Then came the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. And now the policy of the Stalinists in this country is not to “get out and stay out of the war,” but to get into it as quickly as possible. As a result, almost every single correct argument the Stalinists used a month ago has today been thrown overboard. The Daily Worker no longer stresses the contradictions between a war for democracy abroad and Jim Crowism at home. It no longer criticizes Roosevelt except because he is so slow at getting into the war. It calls on the Negro people not to oppose the war, but to put pressure on Roosevelt to hasten American entry. In short, in order to get an alliance between Stalin and Roosevelt, the Stalinists are ready to drop everything else, including the struggle against Jim Crowism. The Stalinists and the Negro March A concrete example of the change in their approach to the Negro problem is the recently called-off Negro March On Washington. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Stalinists bitterly criticized the leaders of the March because they were tied to Roosevelt’s war machine, because their demands were inadequate, because they did not demand that the government support the anti-lynch and anti-poll tax bills, because they did not demand that the government stay out of war, etc. When the Roosevelt, administration began to put pressure on Randolph and White and the other leaders of the March, in an attempt to get it called off, the Daily Worker warned the Negroes to be careful that they did not submit to the pressure and call off the march. Then came the invasion and a few days later Randolph gave in to Roosevelt, and in return for a face saving executive order which granted very little, called off the March. If this had happened a week earlier, the Stalinists would have raised holy hell, attacking and condemning Randolph. But since the Stalinists now had a new line, they uttered not a single word of criticism that the March had been called off. True, they saw what they called a few “loopholes” in Roosevelt’s executive order, but their National Negro Congress called it “a great step forward.” We want to warn Negroes who watch the developments of the Stalinist line hot to expect a complete and open reversal overnight. If they did this, they would quickly lose all the influence among the militant Negroes which they now have. They will not drop their demand for the passage of an anti-lynch bill, for instance. After all, many “liberals” who also support the imperialist war, still think it would be good to pass such a bill. But the Stalinists will no longer make much of a point of it, and certainly will support Roosevelt’s war plans despite his refusal to back the anti-lynch bill. We Fight On Against Jim Crow As opposed to the Stalinist line, the Socialist Workers Party finds no contradiction between revolutionary defense of the Soviet Union and continuation of militant struggle for labor and Negro rights. As the Manifesto of the Socialist Workers Party says: “The method to defend the Soviet Union is to continue the class struggle against the imperialists. Defend workers’ rights against government strikebreaking! Build the power of the working class until it becomes the governmental power. That is the best service which the American workers can render to their brothers in the Soviet Union.” In other words, class conscious Negroes must continue their struggle against Jim Crowism. Together with their white brothers, they must help to substitute for the present system of exploitation and discrimination, a system of socialist brotherhood which will help to solve our problems here and to defend the Soviet Union at the same time. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 23 May 2016
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman CP Launches Public Attack on James Kutcher (7 March 1947) From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 10, 7 March 1949, pp. 1 & 2. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). After six months of criminal silence on the case of James Kutcher, the Stalinist press has launched a poisonous attack on the legless veteran and the supporters of his fight against the government’s “subversive” blacklist and witch-hunt purge of federal employees. Unwilling to support this struggle for civil liberties because it involves their firmest political opponents in the labor movement, and yet unable to maintain their silence because the case is winning ever-broader support, the Stalinists have been forced out into the open. The assignment to do a hatchet job on Kutcher was given to Adam Lapin, associate editor of the West Coast Stalinist paper, Daily People’s World, and he carried it out to the best of his ability in the Feb. 18 issue of that paper. Lapin begins by pretending to examine the question of why Kutcher has the active backing of many “right-wing CIO leaders who have long since abandoned any real fight to preserve civil liberties.” As proof of such abandonment he refers to the failure of non-Stalinist union leaders to support the case of Irving Potash, a CIO offficial among the 12 Stalinists on trial in New York, and of the 15 people jailed and persecuted in Los Angeles. Lapin Warms Up “But,” he says, “the case of James Kutcher is apparently in a separate and favored category. Indeed, it has received the same kind of favored treatment from liberal publications like The Nation and The New Republic which have treated gingerly, if at all, the intensive national witch-hunt against the Communists.” Here Lapin is just warming up for the bigger lies to come. He knows as well as we do that the Nation has run only one short editorial on Kutcher, that the New Republic has had a total of six lines on the case, and that both, in the usual liberal fashion, have protested the CP trials on many occasions. “Needless to say, Kutcher is not a Communist,” he continues. “He is rather a member of a group called the Socialist Workers Party which was aptly described by Carey McWilliams as ‘a sort of international conspiracy for the assassination of Joseph Stalin.’” This “quotation” is no more honest than the customary Stalinist brand. McWilliams is a member of the Kutcher Civil Rights Committee; everywhere, on his recent lecture tour, he protested against Kutcher’s dismissal. It is ridiculous to think he would lend his support to a member of what he considered an international assassination conspiracy. Nevertheless, it is true that in his speech in Seattle last month he employed an expression similar to the one quoted by Lapin. But it is also true – as Lapin knows and “aptly” conceals – that in the question and answer period McWilliams explicitly stated the remark had been facetious and did not represent his views. What he was trying to say, as many other civil libertarians have done, was that Kutcher could not be regarded as an “agent of a foreign power” because the Trotskyists are such bitter foes of Stalinism, and that this fact showed how’ far-reaching the current witch-hunt was. “An Oddity” The Trotskyist party, Lapin declares, “has not cavilled to cooperate with the most reactionary and anti-labor forces ... It has been praised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and has been useful to the FBI. As McWilliams indicated, it is an oddity that he should lose his job.” An oddity? It would be the eighth wonder of the world if the present administration, with the aid of the FBI, would fire a member of a party that cooperates with anti-labor forces, is praised by the Chamber of Commerce and is useful to the FBI! Wouldn’t such a man get promoted and rewarded instead of fired and stigmatized? In an effort to explain this contradiction, Lapin proves himself a real master of the poisonpen: “Perhaps Kutcher’s dismissal was a product of overenthusiasm or of sheer ignorance on the part of hard-working FBI officials. If those who espouse his case seek merely to get him his job back, a friendly hint to the Department of Justice that it committed a boner would no doubt be sufficient.” Lapin and his Stalinist masters know how foul this slander is, and so will everyone else who takes the care to examine the following facts: Kutcher was fired because the Attorney General placed the Socialist Workers Party on his “subversive” blacklist along with the Communist Party and other organizations. The over-enthusiastic, ignorant, hard-working FBI officials did not initiate the case; they executed the policy set down by Truman and Clark. The Department of Justice is not in need of a hint, gentle or otherwise, to learn the facts about the case. Clark has heard about them in far-from-gentle terms from scores of organizations. Kutcher himself met with Clark to protest both his dismissal and the entire blacklist system. Clark doesn’t think the case was a “boner.” Despite mounting criticism from unionists and liberals, he persists in upholding Kutcher’s dismissal; in keeping the SWP on his blacklist; and in refusing it a public hearing. In fact, long after all the facts in the case were printed in the press of all groups except the Stalinists, the Truman administration last December issued through its Loyalty Review Board the infamous Memorandum No. 32, which makes it mandatory to dismiss from government service all members of the SWP, CP and Workers Party, regardless of the circumstances surrounding individual cases.
32, which makes it mandatory to dismiss from government service all members of the SWP, CP and Workers Party, regardless of the circumstances surrounding individual cases. This was the administration’s direct answer to the Kutcher protest. What They Conceal As always, the facts not only refute the Stalinist slanders but bring to the surface the truths about their own record which they are trying to hide. For example: It was the Stalinists who cooperated with reactionary and anti-labor forces in policing the no-strike pledge and the speed-up during the war. The Trotskyists never have collaborated with these forces in war or peace. It was the Stalinists who held out the hand of comradeship to the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM during the war. The Trotskyists never did, and the Chamber of Commerce never in its entire history “praised” the Trotskyists. It was the Stalinists who collaborated with the Department of Justice in upholding the conviction of the 18 Trotskyists in the Minneapolis trial under the same Smith Act now used to persecute the Stalinists. The Trotskyists were inot only persecuted by the Department of Justice and the FBI during the war, but ever since, as the “subversive” list proves. “But in any event,” Lapin continues, “it [the Kutcher dismissal] was outside the mainstream of the current attack on civil liberties. And by the same token the defense of Kutcher is outside the mainstream of the defense of civil liberties.” Lapin would like people to believe that this is so, but Truman and his witch-hunters think differently. As Memorandum No. 32 shows, they recognize the Kutcher case to be the most direct as well as most dramatic assault on their blacklist system that has yet been made. They know a victory for Kutcher will discredit the whole purge set-up. That’s why they stubbornly refuse to listen to “hints” and insist on standing by their admittedly unpopular victimization of the legless veteran. The ones who are really “outside the mainstream of the defense of civil liberties” are those who openly approve the Kutcher dismissal – Truman and Co. – and those who seek to deny its significance or prevent the mobilization of mass support for Kutcher – notably, the Stalinists above all others. This isn’t the first time that the Stalinists have seen eye to eye with a reactionary capitalist government, nor will it be the last time that they give objective aid to the policies of such a government. Lapin then finishes his article by returning to his first point: “The best that can be said for some of his advocates is that they seek here a convenient escape from the battle, a safe eivil liberties case on which they can speak up without fear of being tagjged as Communists themselves. “But others of his backers have less innocent motives, and see in the case a possibility for diverting attention from the Los Angeles and New York cases, for disrupting the fight for civil liberties. “There can be no other explanation for the deliberate attempt of right-wing labor leaders and some liberal publications to play up the Kutcher case while ignoring or apologizing for the persecution of Communists whose defense is now the first line of defense of all civil liberties.” But how does support of Kutcher “disrupt” support of Stalinist victims of persecution? Everywhere that Kutcher himself speaks on the case, he urges support for the civil rights of the Stalinists as well, despite the unbridgeable political differences that separate them and despite their sabotage of his case. The Militant has also consistently tied the two together, and has printed as much on the CP trial since it began as it has on Kutcher. Why They’re Isolated Now there is one grain of truth to be found in Lapin’s final distortions – namely, that certain labor and liberal leaders, including some of Kutcher’s supporters, refuse to extend any aid to the Stalinists, despite our repeated warnings and appeals to them. One reason is that they are buckling under the pressure of the government’s “cold war.” But there is another reason: And that is the CP’s own attacks on the principles of labor solidarity and united labor defense against attacks on civil liberties! During the war the Stalinists worked themselves to the bone opposing support for the Minneapolis defendants on the ground that the Trotskyists were against supporting the war, the re-election of Roosevelt, etc. In short, the Stalinists preached that civil liberties should be denied to minority parties holding unpopular views. Many unionists and liberals today accept that argument – and use it against the Stalinists. This approach is as false and short-sighted today as when it was employed by the Stalinists during the war, and will have the same disastrous effects later on. But it is one of the explanations for the Stalinist isolation today. Another is the stand of the CP on the Kutcher case itself. If the Stalinists won’t support his case because they disagree with his politics, then why – many people ask – should we support the Stalinists when- we disagree with their politics? Lapin’s own article – allegedly designed to prevent diversion of support from the Stalinist defense – is actually the most powerful kind of blow that could be dealt to the CP’s defense. For every ounce of support it may detract from Kutcher’s support, it adds a ton of damage to the CP’s fight for its own civil rights. The rank-and-file members of the CP should now be approached with these questions: Wouldn’t they be far better off in mobilizing Support against the witchhunt if the CP would grant support. to Kutcher, even while differentiating itself from his political views, just as the labor leaders and liberals have done? Why doesn’t the CP leadership accept the SWP’s offer of united front action ont behalf of all victims of the witch-hunt? Why does it persist in its suicidal policy? Isn’t it the duty of rank-and-file CP members to reverse this dangerous course which is further isolating them from working class support?
Isn’t it the duty of rank-and-file CP members to reverse this dangerous course which is further isolating them from working class support? And non-Stalinists who hesitate to come to the CP’s defense should be acquainted with the CP’s line on Kutcher, as an object lesson of what the violation op disregard of labor solidarity leads to. There is a certain logic in these developments, and it should be driven home to everyone: If today you fail to defend the civil rights of a working class group because you don’t agree with its policies, the result tomorrow can be fatal to yourself as well as the general cause of civil liberties. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 3 March 2024
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman Newark Housing Crisis Deepened by the War Even the Few Housing Projects Will Now Be Turned Over to “Defense” Needs; Both City Hall Machines Are In on It ... (22 March 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V. No. 12, 22 March 1941, p. 2. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). During the last war workers moved to the Newark industrial area in such great nurnbers that a housing shortage arose “so acute that the City was forced to erect tent colonies to shelter hundreds of evicted families; that thousands of families were doubled up in living quarters, and rooming houses were forced to rent the same bed to as many as three lodgers in one day.” (From report of Newark’s World War I Mayor.) Conditions in the city today are rapidly approaching the same situation. There is a real shortage in homes, flats and apartments. As a result, rents are going up, families are moving in together, cellars and store fronts are being occupied, and when one family moves out of a house in a workers’ neighborhood, there are five to ten applicants for the place during the next two hours. And the trend, because of factory expansion, is toward greater migration into the area. The picture of Newark’s 44,451 housing structures was shown in the State Housing Authority’s 1934 report: Of every 100 structures, 80 were found to be of wood, the worst material, the quickest to deteriorate. Of every 100, 61 were bui1t before 1908, that is, they are more than a third of a century old, and were built on what are now old-fashioned standards. Out of every hundred, four were declared to be in “good condition,” 45 were in need of “minor repairs,” 46 were in need of “major repairs,” and 10 were found “unfit for use.” That is, half of Newark’s homes were either not fit to live in or badly in need of repairs, and only 4% were in “good” condition. Situation Not Changed The Newark Housing Authority reported a few months ago that, in the six years since 1934, the Building Department has granted less than 5,000 permits for alterations, additions and repairs. This would mean repair work on less than ¼ of the buildings needing major repairs or unfit for use, “It is to be noted that many of these permits were for commercial properties and structures in good conditions, thus further reducing the apparent number of sub-standard dwellings affected (by the repairs).” In this same period, about 1,900 housing units (not structures) were demolished, and 2,600 constructed. Private capital built less than 400 of these, the others being built by FHA and NHA. Since almost as many were demolished as built, the situation remains almost the same. “In Newark proper,” said the NHA last September, “there has been no house building to speak of, in the past 12 years. New construction has been negligible. Demolition has far outdistanced private new construction in Newark in recent years. Today the most reliable information, obtained shows that there is about a 3% housing vacancy in Newark. A great deal of the 3% vacancies is regarded substandard, much of it unlivable ...” What NHA Proposes What conclusions does the NHA, appointed by the present city Commission, draw from this terrible situation? “It is agreed by most of the interested government agencies, the Newark Housing Authority and the Real Estate Board and property owfrers generally, that whatever additional housing is needed in Newark should be created by private capital.” Private capital hasn’t built any homes in 12 years. The housing situation is getting more critical every day. Therefore? Therefore, says the NHA with the approval of City Hall and both machines (the Ellenstein-Franklin-Brady group and the Byrne-Clee group), let’s not construct any more federal housing projects. Let’s leave it to private capital! But this is only part of the picture. Not only does the NHA oppose building more low-cost homes, but it is preparing behind the scenes to “divert” a large or major part of the 2,435 units of federal housing already built or being built, “sell” them to the federal government for the use of “defense workers” on the grounds that poor housing for those workers will interfere with “national defense.” Very little has been said of this in public. Certainly few of the thousands of low paid workers and relief clients who have applied for admission to these projects know what is coming. But already a bill is being prepared in the State Legislature (this is happening in other states too) which will permit the Authority to solve its problem about the skilled workers flocking into this area at the expense of the thousands who have been waiting for over two years to get into the projects. That the NHA is already actively at work on this piece of skullduggery was shown in a statement of a member of the Newark Citizens’ Housing Council last week when he demanded reorganization of that body and complained, “I do not construe intelligent co-operation (with the NHA) as being yes-men to the diversion of low rent housing to the use of skilled defense workers ...” The NHA doesn’t want to build any new homes, but it does want to take away some of those already built and change their character as “low rent housing” for “the duration of the present crisis,” That is why the Socialist Workers Party in the present election campaign states that the housing crisis will be with us as long as the friends of the landlords and the representatives of big business sit in City Hall. That is why We say: LET LABOR CONTROL THE CITY COMMISSION! Build a labor party to take over City Hall, to prevent the “diversion” of low cost housing already constructed and to extend the housing program by building the homes necessary for the great majority of Newark’s workers! Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 3 October 2015
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page George Breitman Martin Widelin – Our Martyr Why the Gestapo Tracked Him Down (20 July 1946) From The Militant, Vol. X No. 29, 20 July 1946, p. 3. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Martin Widelin – member of the European Executive Committee of the Fourth International, assassinated by the French-German Gestapo in Paris two years ago on July 22 – was one of the great figures of the revolutionary movement of our time. A German himself, he was a lifelong foe of German capitalist reaction and fascism. He fought against the Nazis before they came to power and then afterward, both inside Germany and in the countries occupied by them. He was a living refutation of the foul slander that the German working class was responsible for Hitlerism. As such, he inspired both Belgian and French workers and German soldiers to struggle against Hitlerite oppression. Opposition to Nazism was not unusual in Europe. But the antifascism of Widelin and his comrades was something unique. For their opposition was conducted throughout in the spirit of internationalism. They did not unite with the agents of Allied capitalism around the nationalist slogan of “Death to the Boche!” – as the Stalinists and “Socialists” did. On the contrary, Widelin and his co-workers in all countries sought to unite the masses of the occupied countries with the German soldiers in the occupying armies in a joint struggle against their common oppressors. Fraternization was their method, for they knew that only through fraternization could the struggle against Hitlerism have a successful revolutionary outcome. As a consequence, the Gestapo placed a higher price on the head of Widelin than it did on many an Allied general. Widelin’s work was exceedingly dangerous. It was far easier to stick a knife between the ribs of a German soldier on a dark night than to meet that same German in the daytime, win his confidence and enlist him in the ranks of the revolutionary fighters against fascism. But difficult though this work was, Widelin carried it out with growing success until the day of his death. In close cooperation with French and Belgian Trotskyists, he helped to establish a network of Fourth Internationalist cells within the Wehrmacht. This work was so effective that the Gestapo dispatched a special commission to Paris to destroy the Trotskyists. In one German unit alone, more than 30 soldiers were executed as Trotskyists after a stoolpigeon had been introduced into their midst. Widelin’s greatest achievement was Arbeiter und Soldat (Worker and Soldier), illegal German paper which he founded and edited under the direction of the European Secretariat of the Fourth International. To be caught with a copy of this paper meant horrible torture and certain death. Yet it circulated from France where it was printed in the underground all the way back through Belgium into Germany itself. And – as the. British Trotskyist paper, Socialist Appeal, reported recently – copies made their way to the distant German garrisons in Italy. (Despite many raids, the Gestapo never discovered the press on which Arbeiter und Soldat was printed.) Among Widelin’s other contributions was the role he played in helping to prepare the historic European Conference of the Fourth International in February, 1944, to which he was a delegate and by which he was elected as a member of the European Executive Committee. Widelin’s murder was a great blow to the Fourth International and above all to its German section. If he were ALIVE today, we know that he would again be inside Germany, fighting to end the Allied oppression of that country. But not in any nationalist spirit! He would be passionately organizing the German workers for independent struggle, he would be actively working among the Allied soldiers trying to win their sympathy and support. His method would still be fraternization. His slogan and goal would still be the one for which he gave his life – the Socialist United States of Europe and the whole world. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 18 June 2021
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Albert Parker The Negro Struggle Wallace and the Negroes (5 January 1948) From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 1, 5 January 1948, p. 4. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The prestige of Henry Wallace among the Negro people is greater today than of any prominent politician in the country. If present indications mean anything, he will draw a very large Negro vote in 1948; perhaps even a majority of the Negro vote. The reason, of course, is that Wallace is the only capitalist politician who has taken a forthright position against Jim Crow and who has even staged some demonstrations against segregation at public meetings in the South. If Negroes vote for Wallace it will be because they conceive such a vote to be a protest against the system of race prejudice and all its evils. Nevertheless, we want to sound a warning to all militant Negroes: Be careful! Don’t accept any counterfeit! Look this piece of merchandise over very closely before you buy it! Remember this: Words are cheap, especially for capitalist politicians. Don’t judge a man or a party only by what they say, but also by what they do; and not merely by what they say and do today, but by what they said and did in the past. The first point to remember is that Wallace’s friendship for the Negro struggle is of very recent origin. In fact, most of it, suspiciously enough, dates from the time he decided to break with Truman in 1946 and began to eye the presidential nomination. But Wallace was in politics a long time before that. For something like 14 years before that he was one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, and he never had much to say against the Jim Crow system in those days; as a matter of fact, he and Roosevelt supported and got support from the rabidly Jim Crow Southern Democrats. As a Cabinet officer he never lifted a finger to end discrimination against Negro federal employees. As Secretary of Agriculture his politics favored the big landholders in the South and did nothing to help the poverty-stricken Negro and white sharecroppers. As Secretary of Commerce he never put up any kind of real fight for the FEPC or against job discrimination in industry. But the best example of the suspicious contrast between his past record and his present pronouncements is the stand he took during the war. Today, of course, he poses as an intrepid anti-war fighter, while a few years ago he was one of the biggest apologists and advocates of war. Now the questions we want to raise for consideration are these: Does any one remember Henry Wallace ever saying anything against Army Jim Crow and segregation during that whole war? Or doing anything against them? How much reliance can you place in a man who kept his mouth shut in time of war, when it counted the most and when the Negro people were engaged in bitter struggles to win equality in the armed forces? Just this brief look at the Wallace record is enough to show that you can’t properly judge a man by what he says when he is running for office. But there is another and equally important aspect to the Wallace problem – the question of his program on Jim Crow – and that we will discuss next week. Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 October 2020
Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page John F. Petrone To My Uncle in Italy (9 February 1948) From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 6, 9 February 1948, p. 4. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Dear Uncle: Thanks for your letter about the Italian strikes. I hope that by this time you have received the CARE package we sent. As soon as our budget allows, we will send another. But that is not the purpose of this letter, I am writing this at the suggestion of a man with considerable power in our government, the Honorable Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, a Republican member of the U.S. Senate who is noted for speeches extolling the quality of cheese produced in his state. Sometimes he discusses broader subjects in the Senate, as he. did when he said recently: “American citizens writing abroad should write about true conditions in America, stressing the many blessings that we enjoy in this land of freedom, the comforts, the conveniences, as well as stressing the aid that we have already extended abroad for the noblest of humanitarian purposes – both as individuals and as a nation.” This strikes me as a good idea. First, a word or two about that chief blessing, the high American standard of living. Of course, it is higher than the Italian standard, but it is nothing like what you sec in the Hollywood films. Money wages are much higher than ever before, but that is true in Italy too. isn’t it? Last week a New Jersey mechanic, told a Senate committee he earns $2,500 a year, but because of high prices he and his family do not have enough food or milk, or money for medical care. “We are just existing, not living,” he said. And in Cleveland, a post office worker earning $2,700 a year, declared he and his family had been better off during the depression when he worked in a steel mill for 60c an hour, or less than $1,300 a year. To be worse off than during the terrible depression my father used to write you about such blessings we can well do without. I think you have already had the chance to become familiar with some of the other blessings we enjoy in this land of freedom. For example, President Truman has for the last ear been carrying on a “loyalty” campaign to terrorize and drive out of the government all employees holding ideas which he labels as “subversive.” Mussolini, if I recall rightly, did the same. Congress has passed a savage anti-labor law to discourage strikes and. regiment the unions. You yourself have written us how the fascist government issued similar decrees. Truman broke a national strike to make the railroads run on time. Mussolini achieved some of his fame in a like manner. In Oklahoma a girt has been denied admission to the state law school solely because of the color of her skin. Mussolini’s fascist press also spouted “white supremacy” doctrines when, his planes dropped bombs and gas on the helpless Ethiopians. Generals and bankers are the undisputed lords and masters in Washington, even as they were in Italy after the First World War. One of their chief demands is peace-time conscription; evidently they were impressed by the successes it won for Mussolini and Hitler. The people groan under the burden of heavy taxes, extorted in the name of preserving peace through a vast war preparation program. I could continue indefinitely in this vein about the “true conditions” in this country. But I don’t want you to get a wrong impression. I am not saying that America today is like fascist Italy in every respect, but that the capitalist class in America is like the capitalist class in fascist Italy – only more powerful and therefore more dangerous. If they have their way, an American Duce will put us all on a castor oil diet. But we intend to see to it that they don’t have their way. When the American workers get done correcting things, we’ll take that atom bomb out of their hands and put them to work at useful labor. If they still want to make the railroads run on time, we’ll give them honest jobs as firemen or ticket-punchers. Your devoted nephew, John Top of page Breitman Archive \| Trotskyist Writers Index \| ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 October 2020

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