Can Marxist-Leninists and Leninist-Trotskyists be real democratic socialists?

 

[Self-disclosure:  As a young socialist radical in the 1960s and a member of SDS. I was enamored with the “far left,” particularly Leninism-Trotskyism.  During the fierce faction fight within SDS that began in earnest in 1968 between the Maoist/Stalinist Progressive Labor Party (PL) and the SDS National Office (N.O.), I reluctantly aligned myself with PL’s Worker-Student Alliance (WSA), as I considered them actually pro-working class and serious Marxists, in contradistinction to the SDS N.O., which I viewed as a bunch of hippies.  After the collapse of SDS and disillusionment with PL borne out by a summer of working with it and WSA in Chicago, I joined the youth group of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), from which I was expelled—twice!  The late, great Peter Camejo congratulated me sincerely on this, telling me that as he got deeper into the SWP, he realized just how Stalinist it was internally also.  From 2001-2010 I was an at-large member of Solidarity, attended the 2006 Solidarity Summer School and Convention, and was an active writer for both Against the Current and the Solidarity internal discussion bulletin, until I too was expelled from Solidarity in October 2010 on “discipline” charges at a hearing before the National Committee,  which my defense witness called a “kangaroo court.”  Today, I wear all three expulsions as a—badge of honor!  In 2015 I became an enthusiastic supporter of the Presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, and even wrote an article supporting his candidacy that was published that year on the website of the Third Camp socialist magazine New Politics.  I’ve also “moved politically” from the Third Camp “far left” to Third Camp democratic socialism because I enthusiastically embrace Michael Harington’s idea of socialist politics as achieving the “left wing of the feasible” (emphasis added), am a signatory to the DSA North Star Statement of Principles, and a member of Central Indiana DSA, which has adopted a pragmatic approach free of doctrine and jargon as its operating political philosophy—GF] 

Can Marxist-Leninists and Leninist-Trotskyists be good, real, democratic socialists?  I want to answer that in the negative.  Marxist-Leninists and Leninist-Trotskyists cannot be good, real, democratic socialists—and it’s not because democratic socialism is merely “social-democratic” in its politics, proposals and orientation; or insufficiently “anti-imperialist;” or “beholden to the Democratic Party and against the independent mobilization of the working class.”  No, it’s because democratic socialism is resolutely anti-authoritarian; values concrete results in the here-and-now, not off in some distant but “inevitable” future which no one can seriously predict; believes strongly in civil rights and civil liberties for all, even for those deemed “bourgeois” or “incorrect;” distinguishes between “incorrect” thoughts and writings and terroristic, violent, or discriminatory deeds, and while supporting appropriate criminal punishment for the latter, leaves the former alone—to be dealt with by open, democratic criticism and counterproposal, not by punitive sanction; and because democratic socialism respects the autonomy of the individual, and relies on his/her own personal political consciousness and ethical conscience instead of authoritarian, robotic, “discipline” imposed from above. 

Contrast that to Marxism-Leninism and Leninism-Trotskyism, which closes off discussion and criticism once a decision has been made by the “proper” higher-ups;  imposes an inviolable  “party line” on its members and adherents, and requires them to uphold that line affirmatively in all situations, even requiring them to vote robotically as a bloc at meetings and assemblies; and acts like an infiltrating sect in broader groups, assemblies and movements, where the goal of the sect is to impose its (and overwhelmingly, only its) “correct” line, proposals and programs upon others, whether they agree with them or not.  Be it with the CPUSA, Maoist groups, or Trotskyist groups such as the SWP/YSA, ISO, or Solidarity, historically that is precisely what has happened, and why so much of left history, notably in the US, is that of acrimony, sectarianism, accusations of bad faith, and other movement- and organization-dividing charges and countercharges, which has enervated the process of building a genuinely mass movement of the left.  Even at those times when there were mass movements of the left, notably here in the US, everyone politically aware knew that there were leading individuals and groups one did not cross or too strongly criticize.  That was true in the Popular Front era of the CP, within SDS, and, I fear, will become the new norm within DSA.  DSA has responded in the past with its principled ban on democratic centralism (the organizational hallmark of Marxism-Leninism and Leninism-Trotskyism, even of the “soft” Leninism-Trotskyism of Solidarity), but since DSA’s explosive expansion, that ban seems to be going by the wayside, so to speak; while not formally rescinded as of yet, it is becoming a dead letter in practice with the influx of Marxist-Leninist and Leninist-Trotskyist individuals and caucuses within DSA.  Which, I am convinced, will be the downfall of DSA as a viable democratic socialist organization, and cause it to be but another Solidarity, ISO, Maoist sect, other authoritarian grouping of the left, or all of the above, a gaggle of competing rivalries—and lead to its collapse, same as the influx of competing Marxism-Leninisms and Leninism-Trotskyisms into SDS in the 1960s led to its downfall.

The only solution, I assert, is for DSA to affirm its principled ban on democratic centralism within DSA, both in principle and in practice; while I certainly don’t want, or support, a wholesale expulsion of Marxism-Leninism- or Leninism-Trotskyism-sympathetic individuals, groupings or caucuses from DSA, I do steadfastly support a ban on their acting as such; let them, the supposed “far left,” participate openly within DSA and advocate for their policies and proposals, yet demand of them that they not practice any form of democratic centralism—which means a ban on robotic voting blocs held together by “discipline” instead of autonomous fealty to certain positions by individuals and groups of individuals.  Every individual and caucus member within DSA must to be free to dissent from and abstain from voting on caucus and group proposals, even as members of those caucuses or groups.  Individual autonomy, trust by comrades in the good consciousness and conscience of other DSA comrades, must become the sine qua non across the board—be they groupings and caucuses of Solidarity, as but one example, or of their “social-democratic” opposition, such as North Star!  “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend” within a truly “big tent” DSA where a “disciplined” voting bloc does not determine the DSA “line” due to organizational maneuvering, but only through truly free, democratic and open debate involving all DSAers, or chapter delegates, who wish to participate, in truly free, democratic and open DSA meetings.  Otherwise, I fear, the inevitable takeover of DSA by some “disciplined” democratic centralist clique, caucus, or organization is inevitable.  If not in the foreseeable future, then eventually, as it did in SDS—to the complete disarray and unviability of SDS!  Which went from a mass organization of the mostly-student left of 100,000 members to poof! overnight.  (Already we are seeing the ill effects of this within DSA itself, which has seen its membership drop 20%, from 94,000 to 74,000; and while those numbers may seem large, remember, the whole of DSA membership in either case could fit within the confines of the average pro football stadium, which should give the reader a sense of just how small, in a country of 330 million, the organized left really is—GF)

Already we are seeing it within DSA in proposals, programs and resolutions of a “far left” cast being rammed through as supposedly the consensus thinking of the whole of DSA.  Further, from such as support for BDS to the “rank-and-file” strategy, and for several others, these DSA “proposals” are not only causing havoc and consternation within DSA itself, but also, in how DSA relates to other organizations of a progressive and leftist bent.  And may well be leading to DSA members dropping out in significant numbers, by not renewing their dues, for example, or not attending DSA meetings.  That surely is not what we in DSA want, but it is what all too easily could happen; and then DSA becomes but a shell of itself, just as the various Marxist-Leninist and Leninist-Trotskyist sects were but shells, sects little noticed or paid attention to in the outside world until their members and sympathizers (formally or informally) joined DSA and thus organizationally amplified their voices.  Such a DSA is not the DSA we of the democratic left, such as a caucus whose approach I generally support, but am not a member of, North Star, want, but it may become the DSA we are saddled with—as long as democratic centralism is given its new lease on life within DSA itself, as it has since 2016, with the explosive influx of new members.  That is why the principled ban on democratic centralism within DSA must be reaffirmed and upheld, both in principle and in practice:  not to squelch the voices within DSA that are “far left” (as will inevitably be charged), but to save DSA as a “big tent” organization itself, one where both socialism (in its many varieties and advocacies) and meaningful democracy can prevail.

While the “far left” may decry this as “bad faith” or even “anticommunism,” they would completely miss the point, which is—not to silence their proposal of ideas and policies, but to prevent them from being implemented by a mere voting bloc of robotic adherents acting under “discipline,” despite what others may think or wish.  Marxist-Leninists and Leninist-Trotskyists defend democratic socialist organizational norms as needed to create a “fighting army of the proletariat,” conveniently forgetting that an army is but a body for fighting that lacks a head; and thus, in this all armies are but instruments that can be used for fighting for good, or for fighting for ill.  In this, both the organizations of the Red Army under Trotsky which successfully staved off the Whites and the foreign imperialist invading armies in the Russian Civil War, and the Japanese Imperial Army which ravaged East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, were exactly the same.  Also, the reactionary Guomindang (Kuomintang), which massacred thousands of Communists and workers, was a democratic centralist organization! (Specifically reorganized as such under the aegis of Comintern agent Michael Borodin as the “leading force of the “national democratic revolution” in China in the 1920s, let us recall.)  Democratic centralism is but an instrument, and a blunt one at that, and historically, has always been far more centralist than democratic.  Trotsky, before he became enamored of it, spoke trenchantly in 1904 of what becomes of democratic centralist organizations:

The organization of the party will take the place of the party itself; the Central Committee will take the place of the organization; and finally, the dictator will take the place of the Central Committee.

This dreary prognosis has been exactly confirmed historically, not only from the ascendancy of Stalin in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), but also right up to the present, in the unquestioned and unopposable ascendancy not only of Mao and others,  and now Xi, in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but also of Jack Barnes in the SWP (which led to the demise of this venerable political voice of US Trotskyism) and Bob Avakian in the Maoist/Stalinist Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP).  Hardly models for a mass democratic socialist “big tent” organization such as DSA!

Democratic centralism can also be strongly criticized from the standpoint of “revolutionary socialism” itself, notably in the trenchant critique of it, solidly documented, by Rosa Luxemburg.  In The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg (London and New York: Verso, 2011), in an October 20, 1913 letter to the Editors of Social-Democraten, (pp. 325-328) she specifically excoriates Lenin (pp. 327-8) for organizational heavy-handedness and factionalism in attempting to split the Polish Social Democracy “in a planned and deliberate manner…as the one they [the Leninists—GF] pursue as their specialty in the Russian [Social-Democratic Workers’] Party [RSDRP]” (p. 327) .  The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961) consists of two notable essays by Luxemburg that criticize both democratic centralism and the undemocratic aspects of Bolshevism as found early on after the Russian Revolution of 1917.  “Leninism or Marxism?” was what her essay was titled in English; it was originally published in 1904 in Iskra, the newspaper of Russian Social-Democracy, in Russian, and in German in Neue Zeit, the newspaper of the German Social-Democracy, as “Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy;” and excoriates Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back as advocating Blanquism, undue centralization, and opportunism. (See especially pp. 84-91 in this volume.) Her unfinished 1919 “The Russian Revolution” is famous not only for its line, “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for members of one party—however numerous they may be—is no freedom at all.” (p. 69) But her following lines, a paean to individual freedom, are even downright “bourgeois liberal”! (In a positive sense, of course.)  She writes (ibid.) “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.  Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”  In footnote 579 in Letters of Rosa Luxemburg (p. 330), it is noted, “On August 4, 1914, the SPD [German Socialist Party, Germany’s mass socialist party headed by Kautsky] parliamentary group—with group discipline applied against the minority (emphasis added—GF)—voted in favor of the war-credits motion of the imperial government.  The decision to approve money for war was made on August 3, after a heated debate within the SPD parliamentary group, by a vote of 78-14.  The support given by the majority to the war meant that an open split in the SPD was inevitable.”  “Group discipline” was also applied in the CPUSA in silencing and later expelling the Trotskyists, the followers of Earl Browder, and others, as well as causing splits within Leninist-Trotskyist groups to become especially acrimonious.   

Further, as Hal Draper, perhaps the leading ideological interpreter of Third Camp revolutionary socialism, notes in his The “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” from Marx to Lenin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987), Lenin and the Bolsheviks in power too easily made it into a “dictatorship over the proletariat” enforced by “party discipline.” (See especially pp. 101-105) Last, Trotskyism-sympathetic scholar Tom Smith, “Beyond Hero Worship: A Marxist Critique of Bolshevik Terror and Its Indebtedness to Jacobinism,” Socialism and Democracy 20, Vol. 10, No. 1, Summer 1996, writing at length that (p. 48)

Bolshevism has failed to be effective after 1917, or to inspire the masses of the world to revolution, or to prevent the Stalinist degeneration within its own process of development.  I would argue that one important reason for these failures (though by no means the primary or exclusive reason) is the following assumption on the part of the Bolsheviks:  that popular fear of arbitrary violence and of minority rule is actually irrational, a fear that the masses need to and should “get over.”  I also believe that such nonsense is a big factor in the tendency of Leninist groups to degenerate quickly into cults, with practically no effect upon the real world whatsoever. (Emphasis in original)

Later, (p. 75) Smith critiques Lenin’s “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” for arguing that 240,000 Bolsheviks could be “a permanent, collective, one-party ‘Lawgiver’….In other words, the soviets would become the means of whipping up support for the Bolsheviks’ policies—but not so much, for significantly challenging those policies.”  Or in other words, the Bolshevik Party would become the tail that wags the soviet, working-class, dog!  But such authoritarianism, that such “popular fear” of “minority rule” is “actually irrational,” is, as the critiques of Luxemburg, Draper and Smith show, a built-in feature of democratic centralism!  In fact, as Draper’s book so well shows, and as Smith’s essay also demonstrates, the “social democratic” rejection of democratic centralism, i.e., the organizational feature of Marxism-Leninism and Leninism-Trotskyism, is integral to Marx’s and Engel’s own conception of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  But not only that:  democratic centralism not only embraces and enhances myriad evils, but rejection of democratic centralism is far closer to what Marx and Engels themselves envisioned as constituting socialism and socialist organization.  Marx’s famous long essay on the Paris Commune, The Civil War in France, makes this abundantly clear, as does Engels’s remark that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” looks exactly like the Paris Commune—where the Marxists were actually a minority, and had to compete for influence with Prodhonists, Blanquists, and others. 

All this makes a strong, even overwhelming, case that democratic centralism has no place within DSA, and that its principled rejection by DSA must not only be upheld, but also deepened and enforced!

So let our “far leftists” within DSA eschew any practice of democratic centralism, not force through resolutions and policies based on robotic “discipline,” and trust the political instincts and consciousness of DSA members themselves to come to the “right” conclusions, and I would gladly say to all of them—“Welcome, comrades!  While we may disagree, we will, above all, agree to disagree, and agree wholeheartedly that dissenting comrades are not automatically class enemies.  We will win over by persuasion, not by the robotic force of ‘disciplined’ voting blocs.”

Our comrades in the British Leninist-Trotskyist organization Alliance for Workers Liberty (though some will call them only erstwhile comrades, or not comrades at all) strike a good balance between party discipline and individual autonomy with the following stipulation to its members that they must first present the Alliance’s position on an issue; then, if they disagree, they are fully allowed to present their dissent from that position without fear of discipline or expulsion.  Thus, striking a most acceptable balance between upholding the group’s position and individual autonomy within the organization as a trusted, principled member.  That is the way it must be within the organized caucuses within DSA:  the right to affirm the caucus’s position, the right to dissent from the caucus’s position, and the right to abstain—even when it comes to voting.  Sadly, that is not the way Marxist-Leninist and Leninist-Trotskyist organizations or caucuses work:  it’s either uphold the “line” or risk expulsion.  Which is unacceptable within a “big tent” democratic socialist organization such as DSA, or really, anywhere!  Also, there is nothing more cringeworthy than the way “freewheeling” Marxist-Leninists or Leninist-Trotskyists will fold in terror and fear when faced with threats from the organizational “disciplinary committee”!  Right now, this tolerance of democratic centralism (for that is what Marxist-Leninist and Leninist-Trotskyist organizational philosophy is, what it invokes is) has made DSA essentially inoperative except as a sounding board for outrageous ultraleft, often Stalinist, political positions, as each disciplined caucus tries to outdo the others in displays of “how left we really are.”  Such a political approach, however, will doom DSA to the 100+-year irrelevancy that has politically characterized Marxism-Leninism and Leninism-Trotskyism in the US, and from which the growth of DSA was as a beautiful flower emerging through the concrete cracks in the pavement.

My autobiographical note at the end of my manuscript is also of high relevance:

George Fish is a Central Indiana DSA member living in Indianapolis, Indiana, and a North Star Statement of Principles signatory.  A socialist writer and poet, he is a regular contributor to New Politics and other left periodicals and websites.

While left ideals are excellent, and left theory overall is pretty good…

 

Yes, while left ideals are excellent, and left theory overall is pretty good, left practice leaves much, very much, to be desired.  Our left political practice is not good enough for our left movement, to put it bluntly.  We of the left lack not only political understanding and sophistication, but our tactical and strategic acumen is woefully inadequate.  As a result, all we can appeal to is our ideals, which we ofttimes simply can’t put into practice, make realizable.  That is why, while the left ofttimes punches above its weight (to borrow a phrase from fellow critical leftist Barry Finger, my closest political comrade), we leftists normally remain a minority, and an often beleaguered and marginalized minority at that.  While we incessantly talk of galvanizing the masses, typically we don’t galvanize them; they ignore us, or express hostility to us.  And that is our great tragedy as leftists.  Try as we may to be effective, ofttimes we fail at that.

This abstractly expressed argument above was made concrete for me recently, as I read a book about how Jeremy Corbyn became British Labour Party head in 2015, staved off a challenge to is leadership in 2016 (where the book ended), only to go down to ignominious defeat in the British elections of 2019, where Labour was trounced, suffering its greatest defeat since 1935.  Corbyn, who in 2015 was a little-known left backbencher Labour MP (Member of Parliament) from a safe district near London with no previous leadership experienced, galvanized many Labour Party members, it is true; he was especially strong among the young (under 39) and with women, but garnered only a plurality among trade unionist Labour members, had the open hostility of many fellow Labour MPs and the Labour bureaucracy, and his stunning win in 2015, coupled with his stunning reduction to ignominy in 2019, proved decisively that it takes more than a surprise insurgent candidacy to transform a party hierarchy that is strongly in place.  He came out of the antiwar and Palestinian movements, and many of his political views can be described as naïve at best.  Personally a nice, if somewhat colorless, person, he was drafted reluctantly as the left Labour leadership candidate, and while probably not anti-Semitic himself, had a real blind spot to left anti-Semitism, which rendered him open to attack on that front; also, his campaigning in support remaining in the EU, both in 2016 and in 2019, was tepid at best also.  He also had a campaign team that was enthusiastic and earnest, but inexperienced.  His seeming strengths overshadowed his glaring weaknesses.

There were similarities, of course, between Corbyn’s insurgency and the insurgent Democratic Presidential campaign of 2016 by Bernie Sanders, which also started in 2015.  But there were important differences.  For one thing, Sanders was a much more adept and eloquent politician than Corbyn, who, coming from a safe Labour seat of little importance for decades, where he was just another backbencher, had never been tested as a leader.  Also, Sanders was much more discriminating in who he publicly allied with and supported than was Corbyn, whose past uncritical and campist solidarities came back to haunt him not only throughout his campaign for Labour leadership, but also his time serving in office.  (Chief among these was his seeming support for “left” antisemitism, to which he was notably blind.)  Further, although British English is notably drier and more formal than American English, Corbyn’s spoken English in speeches (of which this writer has only seen snippets in print; but revealing snippets) was far more colorless and lackluster than was Sanders’s, who could be notably aggressive and forceful in making points—which he did with cogency and alacrity!  In short, Sanders was much more a natural-born leader than was Corbyn; and he had demonstrated that successfully not only while in legislative (and executive—he began his political career as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont) office, but during his campaign for the Presidential nomination.  Notably in this regard was the way Sanders responded on Sunday-morning TV to journalist George Stephanopoulos’s redbaiting objection that calling himself a “democratic socialist” would only hurt him, Sanders snapped back, “What’s wrong with that?” and proceeded to briefly but effectively explain what democratic socialism was. 

Both Corbyn and Sanders galvanized youth support for their candidacies, and turned out the youth vote.  Corbyn won the Labour Party leadership by strong support among new Labour members (62%), women (63%), those 25-39 (67%) and newly affiliated trade unionists (57.6%), but among overall Labour members who voted, only won a plurality (49.6%), not an absolute majority.  (Data taken from Alex Nunn, The Candidate [New York and London: OR Books, 2016], the book I read referred to above, pp. 301-302.)  Bernie Sanders, though arguably his base of support was larger and more diversified, was also only a minority candidate—he won 47% of the Democratic primary votes in 2016, and before he aborted his Presidential campaign in 2020, 40% of the vote.  Which indicates that, in both cases, while support for the left is strong, it does not constitute an absolute majority.  In forming his shadow cabinet after winning, Jeremy Corbyn reached out to his opponents and non-supporters in Parliament, only to have them turn against him in the summer of 2016 (ironically, among his most vocal opponents was Hilary Benn, a right-wing Labourite, and son of noted left-wing Labour leader Tony Benn!); while Corbyn won that battle, and under his leadership in the elections of 2017, led Labour to an admirable showing (though not enough to form a government), Labour with him at the helm was massacred in the election of 2019, ousting him not only from power, but making him very vulnerable to his Labour enemies.  (2019 was Labour’s worst showing since 1935, as mentioned above.)  Truth be told, Corbyn had important baggage he carried, and it was very noticeable in 2019:  although possibly (no one is really sure) not personally an antisemite, he had a serious antisemitism problem due to his uncritical pro-Third Worldism, notably in support of the Palestinians against Israel, no matter what; he was also a tepid supporter of Britain remaining in the European Union, and his call for a second Brexit referendum, after three years of Brexit, Brexit, Brexit! turned many past Labour voters against him.  As for the ambitions Labour Party manifesto of 2019, exit polls indicated that a large number of voters thought it unrealistic, and doubted it Labour could fulfill it.  This in sharp contrast to Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cry on long-regurgitated and talked-about Brexit, “Get it done!” 

There was also a clear class divide between the young who supported the Labour left, and the older, more socially conservative and traditionalist, working class and trade unionists who had formerly voted Labour—just as there is such a divide here in the U.S., although the left doesn’t want to admit it, or even talk about it.  The young are often college-educated, in contrast to the older, and come from backgrounds of privilege that enable them to go to college.  They are often better employed than older workers, and despite the rise of the precariat among the young, have better prospects for the future.  This is especially noticeable in the U.S. in the death rate for white males 55 and older, many of whom have lost their once-secure blue-collar and ordinary white-collar jobs—and now die prematurely of opioid addiction, alcoholism, and suicide, while other demographic groups see their lifespans increase.  Today’s left, both in Europe and in the U.S., is focused on social issues rather than economic ones because, truth be told, youth are more beneficiaries of neoliberalism than have been older workers.  Deindustrialization and globalism have brought layoffs and job disappearance to the traditional working class, or else severe drops in income and status as workers are forced to trade higher-income employment (often in manufacturing) for lower-income employment (often in services).  While youth doesn’t have it that great anymore either, they have employment options in NGOs and in professional employment lacking for the non-college educated.  For the youth, economic precarity is not a compelling issue, despite neoliberalism making it more prevalent.  Hence the turn of youth to social issues away from economic ones, and of course, the rise of neoliberal, pro-capitalist modes of supposedly radical “isms” such as feminism and anti-racism.  But as many a worker will tell you, in the end, there’s no difference, except perhaps stylistically, between a woman boss and a man boss, a boss of color and a boss who’s white!  As The Who sang tellingly, “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.”  Bernie Sanders grasped that.  I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn ever did.  Among other left leaders in the U.S. besides Bernie, only AOC seems to grasp what is really going on—and she often gets accused of “selling out” by certain persons on the U.S. left!

The Sanders, Corbyn, struggles for leadership encapsulate many of the failings of the contemporary left.  We are long past the golden days of Marxism and Marxist leaders of the first part of the 20^th Century such as Trotsky, Max Shachtman, Rosa Luxemburg, her nemesis Eduard Bernstein, Gramsci, even Lenin and Kautsky, not to mention Marx and Engels themselves, who lived and died entirely within the 19^th Century; and we are sorely missing later leaders such as Michael Harrington.  In my opinion, our current left “leadership,” as represented by such figures as Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad, and Medea Benjamin, are really not suitable leaders at all; hence our left descent into mediocrity, obsessive focus on cultural and social issues, including identity politics to the detriment of real class analysis and focus on economics and economic reality.  Today’s left, as it has been since the 1960s, is overwhelmingly college-educated, but not any smarter because of it.  We of the left are not terribly good at talking to average workers; we are far “better” talking (or rather, lecturing, hectoring) at them!  That is especially noticeable in the rise of “cancel culture,” the left equivalent of irredeemable Original Sin.  If we of today’s left were truly honest, we would read to everyone we talk to or about this version of their Miranda Rights:  “Not only will anything and everything you ever said or wrote be held against you, it will mark you forever, even at the expense of losing your reputation and employment.”  While leftists may protest, “But we have good intentions!” such intentions are never enough; politics, especially left politics, is not a morality play; it is a push to achieve power to effect substantive change.  It is not, decidedly not, about forming consensus-agreeing affinity groups, it is about forming coalitions, often diverse and even on some issues, contradictory coalitions, where not everyone agrees on every single issue.  It is also about using tact, sophistication, and nuance in organizing, and having a healthy skepticism of what we advocate, what we are for, so that we of the left are able to say to ourselves, “While I think I’m right in this, I will also admit I could be wrong.  I do not think so at present, because I have thought this over thoroughly.  But I may have overlooked something.”  Let us recall as leftists, many of us as Marxists, the dialectic, and how the dialectic means change, transformation, over time, so that what is so certain today may be substantially not so in the future.  That is what we of the left must do today—come to that understanding.

 

"Christians, Have Mercy!"--a Poem on Christian Love and "Immoral" Atheism

This poem was also formally rejected, but as with "Rubicon," I believe it too good not to be published.  I think it is quite effective as a poem, notably with its use of change of voice, and the ironic humor.  Also, as an atheist and ex-Catholic, the subject matter is indeed close to my heart--GF

CHRISTIANS, HAVE MERCY!

by

George Fish

 

Show a little of that

vaunted Christian love,

that “love thy neighbor

as thyself” feeling—

especially toward us

“immoral” atheists!

Please realize just how

hard we “immoral”

atheists have it:

after a hard day of

raping, robbing,

pillaging and murdering,

the only way we atheists

can relax in the evening

is through wild drug and

sex orgies, until we finally

get some sleep by passing

out in a drug-and-alcohol-

induced stupor!  Damn it,

we’re so busy in the daytime

raping, robbing, pillaging

and murdering we barely

have time for lunch—all we

can do is grab a baby to eat

while on the run!  Please!

It just ain’t that easy being

sleazy!  And besides, surely

you Christians yourselves

know something about

moral sleaze—after all,

you’ve practiced it regularly

for two millennia to date,

and still counting!  You’re

the ones who burnt people

alive for allegedly being

witches, heretics, or homosexuals,

you’re the ones responsible for the

ecclesiastical murder of Giordano

Bruno and the persecution of Galileo,

not to mention the infamous

Magdalene laundries in Ireland,

or the mass graves of Indigenous

children in Canadian schools

run “for” them by the

Catholic Church, which even

Pope Francis couldn’t bring

himself to fully apologize for!

You’re also the ones who gave us

Catholic priest-pedophilia and its

deliberate cover-up by bishops and

cardinals, “Prosperity Gospel”

hucksters like Joel Osteen and

Creflo Dollar, venomous hate

preachers such as Pat Robertson

and Jerry Falwell, and the

Christian Nationalist zealots who

rally around “I’m proud to be a

Christian” Donald Trump, with his

three wives and two divorces, his

“grab ‘em by the pussy” rhetoric,

and his notably—Stormy—relationships

with women!  And the list goes on

and on—and on!  Yet, you Christians accuse

us, the atheists, of being the “immoral”

ones!  Have you tried looking in the mirror

sometimes, Christians?   Try it.  That’s

where you’ll find the “immorality” you

think is everywhere under the Goddamn sun,

lurking under each and every secular bed,

hiding in each promiscuously tolerant

nook and cranny! 

"Rubicon"--a Poem on the 2016 Presidential Election

 Although Blue Collar Review, "Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature," declined to publish "Rubicon," it did send me a very nice, most appreciative, rejection notice from the editor, who spent a whole substantive paragraph explaining the basis for the rejection, and hoping to see more of my poems.  I think the problem with "Rubicon" for "progressive" journals is that, while certainly left in content and intent, it's just too oblique for self-styled "progressive' publications, literary journals or not.  It's been refused by others as well, but I feel it's certainly good enough for publication, which is why I'm posting on "Politically Incorrect Leftist."  Here in Indiana, I knew people who enthusiastically voted for Bernie Sanders in the May 2016 Democratic primary, but when November came around, held their noses and voted for Trump, because they couldn't abide Hillary Clinton.  For my part, I couldn't abide voting for Clinton either, so I voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein--which made no difference, of course, in Deep Red Indiana, which went overwhelmingly for Trump--GF 

RUBICON

by

George Fish

 

He had never voted

Republican in his

life, and had voted

eagerly for

Bernie Sanders in

Indiana’s 2016 primary

last May; but now it

was November, and

he could not bring

himself to vote for

Hillary Clinton.

He stared pensively

at the Presidential

section of the ballot

before him, muttered

to himself, “Hope this

doesn’t go wrong,”

and filled in the circle

beside the name of

Donald J. Trump.

He’d now been

unemployed for the

past several months,

ever since the town’s

last factory had shuttered.

He stared piercingly

at the circle he’d filled in

on the Presidential section

of the ballot for several

very long seconds, then

moved swiftly to fill in all

the other circles on the ballot,

filling in each one beside the

Democratic candidate listed.

Gorbachev’s Passing, and the Socialism That Might Have Been

 

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Premier of what was then the Soviet Union, died August 30, 2022, at age ninety-one.  He was a Promethean yet tragic figure, brought down by the very dragons of “glasnost” (transparency) and “perestroika” (restructuring) he’d unleashed—ironically, to save the Soviet system, not collapse it.  But things had just gone too far when Gorbachev came to power in 1985:  the repressive regime that had been in power since 1917, ruled for sixty-eight years, was too far gone, too rigid and unyielding, for his reforms to take hold.  The Russians and other nationalities that made up the Soviet public, for nearly three generations, had never known freedom or democracy, nor had the generations before it, under the Czars; fragile, newborn democracy in Russia and the other Czarist-held territories was definitely a fragile, newborn thing, existing substantively only from February 1917 to October 1917, by the old Russian calendar—only from the overthrow of the last Czar until the coming of the Bolshevik Revolution; and during this time the Russian government was weak, inept, and saddled with participation in the unsustainable World War it had inherited from the very Czar it overthrew.  Freedom and democracy in such a Russia took on the dimensions of a Greek tragedy:  where the very Fate the protagonists do not understand, and had no role in deliberately creating, are yet undermined by, and driven to destruction, by it.  Such was the fate of Gorbachev’s “glasnost” and “perestroika”—the newly-found freedom and democracy they created became a centrifugal, dividing, force, not a unifying, constructive one.

Gorbachev was born March 2, 1931, in a small village in southern Russia, which of course, was later collectivized under Stalin.  Gorbachev’s father, a Communist Party member, became manager of the collective farm.  His two grandfathers, however, became victims of the Gulag, but, unusually, survived and returned home to their villages.  Gorbachev entered Moscow State University, the Soviet Union’s most prestigious, and joined the Communist Party in 1952.  Much an orthodox Soviet Communist, his eyes began opening under his experience at the University, and later, by Khrushchev’s famous speech on Stalin, which Gorbachev called “courageous.”  While at Moscow State, he befriended a young Czech student, who became both his lifelong friend and a leader in the Prague Spring of 1968.  As a rising Communist, Gorbachev visited France, Italy, Canada, and West Germany, and was struck by how much higher the standard of living was in those countries as compared to the Soviet Union, even though the Soviet Union was also a developed country.  He also visited Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring, and became a supporter of it.  A member of the Central Committee, and later the Politburo, Gorbachev acceded to power in 1985 at the youngish age of fifty-four, after not only the death of septuagenarian Brezhnev, but also the death of near-septuagenarian (69) Yuri Andropov, who succeeded Brezhnev only to die a short while later; and then octogenarian Chernenko, who also died shortly thereafter.  Now Premier and head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev embarked on his course of reform, in which he met heavy opposition from both Party hard-liners and from vested interests, notably the collective farm and military-industrial complex lobbies.  Gorbachev also had the misfortune to accede to power during the tenure of Ronald Reagan as President of the U.S., an inveterate (invertebrate??) Cold Warrior and far-rightist who spurned Gorbachev’s peace and arms reduction proposals with harsh “evil empire” rhetoric directed as the Soviet Union and the regimes of Eastern Europe.  So, despite high initial promises and expectations, Gorbachev’s ambitious agenda of “glasnost” and “perestroika” sputtered, and he found himself isolated until, finally, his former ally, now nemesis, Yeltsin, walked into Gorbachev’s office on Christmas Day, 1991, and bluntly told Gorbachev the Soviet Union was over, and that he was out of a job. 

When in power, Gorbachev realized just how much the military defense was draining the Soviet economy, now that he had access to statistics denied even to high-ranking Central Committee and Politburo members—and was shocked to find out that the Soviet military-industrial complex absorbed 40% of state spending, an unsustainable reality for his plans for a better society, in which ordinary citizens would also gain to benefit.  He did succeed in arms reduction deals with his U.S. counterpart, Reagan, despite the latter’s Cold Warrior intransigence.  But his dreams or “glasnost” and “perestroika” never really took off:  what Gorbachev planned as a unifying course of action turned out to be a disintegrating one, as long pent-up individual, societal, and ethnic people’s animosity, now unleashed, became centrifugal forces that tore apart, rather than rebuilt, the Soviet Union.  (The whole of this struggle on the part of Gorbachev is told very well, and in much more detail, by a young scholar, Chris Miller, in his 2016 book, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press].)  Thus did Gorbachev see his visions of “glasnost” and “perestroika” not galvanize Soviet society and public opinion, but instead, pent-up demands by non-Russian peoples for independence dismantled the Soviet state; U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs’s notion of economic “shock therapy,” i.e., overnight transformation of the economy from a state-owned collectivist one to a neoliberal capitalist one, carried out under Yeltsin, who succeeded Gorbachev in power in the Russian state, completed the death sentence of Soviet-style “socialism.” 

Gorbachev was also a critic of strongman Putin’s dictatorial ways.  Today, Russia has reverted to what it was in Soviet times, a one-party dictatorship under one “maximum leader,” Putin, who carries out only sham elections and imprisons, and even kills, his opponents—same as was done under Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev!  (Only a capitalist one, of course.)  Further, while the Soviet Union had been a superpower, second only to the United States in many areas, now it is a much-diminished economy and society, with a GDP today only about the size of Texas. 

Gorbachev, the last “Leninist” in power in the Soviet Union due to his heading the Communist Party, was as innovative as had been Lenin—in ways antithetical to Lenin, of course, and in an attempt to further, not truncate, socialist democracy.  His was a failure, but to this author, a glorious failure.  We of a socialist bent would be better to hope for more Gorbachevs, and fewer Lenins.  More socialist democracy, and less authoritarian collectivism dominated by the state, and the one-party clique that controls the state:  which made Soviet-style “socialism” more akin to a company town, where the controllers of the state are both monopolists, selling “their” workers the goods and services they need and want, and monopsonists, the sole purchaser of labor power.  The only exceptions are those specifically carved out by the state:  exceptions to the rule that are officially allowed; with the only other course being the black market.  Such is hardly an inspiring “socialism” that would attract millions of toiling masses in capitalist societies—and indeed, such a “socialism” has failed to do so.  Let us of a socialist bent be honest about this, and admit it.

After removal from power, Gorbachev became a has-been in the new Russia, ignored when not despised for allegedly “destroying” the Soviet Union.  His “communism” was more social democracy than Leninism, and he himself admitted admiration for the German Social Democratic Party, and chaired the small Social Democratic Party in Russia until 2004.  If he was a nearly forgotten has-been in his native Russia, he won accolades and awards in the West.  And yes, his vision of socialism through “glasnost” and “perestroika” is compelling, and a far cry from what we and generations of leftists before us have come to regard as “socialist.”  But imagine:  a socialism without Gulags, or the dreaded 3:00 A.M. knock on the door.  A socialism where everyone has the right of free speech and speaking their minds, reading a free press, writing what they wish to write, without fear of censorship, or feeling the “necessity” of self-censorship.  A socialism that is governed by a free and fair democratic electoral system, with multiple candidates vying for office, and multiple parties running candidates.  As socialism that enshrines the “bourgeois freedoms” as enshrined in, say, the Bill of Rights, where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” can be taken for granted.  And, of course, a socialism where not everything is controlled by the state, and is allowed only under state aegis, but where the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” to quote from the Communist Manifesto.  In short, a socialism where the individual, as well as the collective, matter, and where the individual finds his and her self-determination naturally, “with liberty and justice for all.”  Such is the socialism that might have been, had Gorbachev succeeded, and for the lack of which we as socialists will continue to pay for—through the nose, if history is any guide.      

 

More NAMI Papers

 I will have more to say on NAMI, mental health issues, later, but now, with the arrival of more pressing current events, I must say "Adieu" to this topic for a while.  Needless to say, NAMI will not publish my NAMI Papers--they're too adult, too literate, lack the facile breeziness, of typical NAMI writings, which are written at a 6th-to-8th-grade level.  A pandering to the lowest common denominator, a level I refuse to stoop to!  NAMI also has important other faults, which I hope to bring up--its lack of serious programs and support for mental health consumers themselves; its incessant fund-raising, with nothing to show for all the money raised; its built-in classism, pandering to those who are "caregivers," i.e., who can afford to support a "mentally ill" adult child without income or very little income, and who has no job or only a part-time one, and support such a child not merely in his/her 20s, but also 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond; the eagerness with it takes money from state Departments of Mental Health, the Psychiatric Establishment, and Big Pharma, all of them leading culprits in the mediocrity and crisis in psychiatry we see today; and NAMI's generally facile and saccharine outlook, so exemplified by the condescending behaviors and non-responses of NAMI officials themselves, from the national office all the way down to the Executive Directors of Indianapolis and Indiana NAMI chapters themselves. 

Rectify!

This poem was originally published in the Circle City Clubhouse newsletter.  I believe it lays out a good plan for what we really must do with out lives, i our lives--GF 

Rectify!

Rectify!

Rectify!

If you can’t rectify—

please die!

 

That’s so good,

so telling, and

so true

it bears repeating:

 

Rectify!

Rectify!

Rectify!

If you can’t rectify—

please die!

 

Remember,

just because you

are alive

does not mean

your living is worthwhile.

You may be alive

only as a parasite

on the better forms

of humanity.

You may be alive

not as a human,

but only as a

deceptively human-appearing

species of ignorant, obnoxious

australopithecine.

 

That’s especially true

if you don’t rectify,

if you don’t devote

your life

to rectifying.

 

Rectify!

Rectify!

Rectify!

That is Moses

and the prophets…

 

 

 

 

Tithe?

 My first activity as a new member of the Circle City Clubhouse, helping staff the snack bar back in February 2016 in this alleged "recovery space" for mental health consumers, I had to endure another member, Nathan, a fundamentalist Christian, going on a ten-minute rant on how he wished he could afford to tithe to his church.  Something that really irritated me immensely as an avowed atheist, though I wisely said nothing to him.  When I got home, I wrote this poem about him and his rant, prefacing it with these words:  "[I]nspired by an evangelical Christian who went off, totally out of the blue, on an irritating 'Praise the Lord' Godsmack rant that also expressed his eagerness to tithe; so irritating was he with his rant I felt compelled to retort to him with this poem."  Truly, I can't think of anything more untoward than poor people somehow feeling they have to give 10% of their income to some church, where all it will do is line the pockets of the church's pastor and provide them, the tithing poor, with nothing useful of or material substance.  A bigger waste of money and energy is truly hard to imagine!--GF

Tithe?

Why the hell

would you

do that?

To give back

to God

for what he

has given you?

(Though it is

indeed debatable,

to say the least,

if he’s given you

anything at all!)

But of course,

your own

religious

understanding

of God

means that,

to you, God

is infinite,

all-knowing,

all-powerful,

unbounded and

complete in himself

without anything

coming from you—

so, by your

own faith,

the last thing God

needs from you,

if anything,

is the lousy

ten percent of your income

that you, a poor person,

can’t afford to give

in the first place!

But it isn’t God

at all

who “needs”

your tithing—

it’s the ministers

and pastors

who befuddle you

on this

in order to

line their own pockets;

to use you,

to manipulate you

through guilt,

to “give” them

the lifestyle

to which

they wish to

become accustomed!

That’s really what

you get from tithing—

played for

a chump,

and absolutely

nothing more.

Keep your

ten percent, then;

you need it

a hell of a

lot more

than either

God or your

pastor needs it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Don’t commit suicide!”

 At the end of March 2001, I was hospitalized for deep depression and suicidality, and released about two weeks later, coming out of the psych ward of the local hospital in Indianapolis to face homelessness and no job.  That afternoon I took refuge in a fundamentalist Christian "rescue mission," which was my home for the next four months, until I became eligible for SSDI, or disability income.  In September 2001 I became successfully employed, by the end of 2004 had shed off my curse of massive recurring depression, and now, over 21 years since my last psychiatric hospitalization, am in absolutely no danger of being re-hospitalized for psychiatric reasons again.  Below is a poetic fictional description of my discharge, with the cheery psychiatrist wishing me on with well wishes and good speed as I went out into the world facing emptiness, poverty, and despair.  Though the account of my departure from the hospital is fictional, the circumstances limned were all too real, and so, this is definitely a poem based on real life as I had lived it then--GF 

“Don’t commit suicide!”

So said the psychiatrist

as I was about to be released

from the hospital,

the one-size-fits-all pleasantness

of the stiff smile plastered

on his face

appearing as though

it had been painted

on an otherwise lifeless

mannequin.

“Go out and face the challenges of life

boldly and positively,

now with your new, healthy attitude.”

 

He forgot to add,

“Go out and face positively

the crummy, low-paying,

dead-end job you have,

the one that doesn’t pay you enough

to live on. (If you still have a job,

as your job is so low-skill

and you so obviously ‘overqualified’

for it with your college degree

you could be replaced

by a chimpanzee,

if a chimpanzee

could be trained

to punch a time clock.)

 

“Go out and return

to your apartment

and pack your belongings,

as you’ve been evicted

and have to get your stuff

out of there by mid-afternoon.

 

“Go forth and accept

boldly and realistically

your homelessness,

or perhaps staving

off that absolute

homelessness

by scrounging up

a bed in the local mission,

where you will be subjected

to mandatory fundamentalist

God-preaching,

despite your atheism.”

 

“Go out and meet those challenges,”

the psychiatrist

admonished,

just as the therapist before,

the one who’d

personally denigrated me

said to do those few years ago,

when he said that

personally degrading

and insulting me

was designed to

help me “meet the challenge

of living on $7.00 an hour.”

 

“Go out and positively

meet and greet

the challenges of your

worthless,

poverty-ridden

life,

that life

bereft of hope,

possibility of change,

friendship,

support

and love.

 

“By all means,

don’t commit suicide!

You have so much to live for,

can’t you see?”

 

No irony in the

psychiatrist’s voice

at all,

just the same

one-size-fits-all pleasantness

as though the mannequin

had a recording

embedded in it

that played automatically.

 

“By the way,

one last thing,”

the psychiatrist added.

“Before you leave,

be sure to

check in with

the receptionist

and sign the papers

for indigent relief

so that we all get paid.”