Sudan Interim Regime Says It Has Thwarted a Military Coup

September 22, 2021 

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Reprinted from Fighting Words Sudan Interim Regime Says It Has Thwarted a Military Coup – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

People in the Republic of Sudan and across the world awoke on September 21 to an announcement by Interim Prime Minister Abdulla Hamdok that the security forces had prevented a coup by elements within and outside the military.

Hamdok claims that those involved in the purported putsch were loyalists of the former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir who was ousted in a military seizure of power in April of 2019.

Further details on the incident allege that the center of the attempted coup was in the twin city of the capital of Khartoum, which is Omdurman, located in the area where the Blue and White Nile Rivers converge. The interim administration says that 21 people have been arrested in connection with the conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Although Hamdok proclaimed that the oil-rich African state would move forward and not backwards in regard to the policies of the ousted al-Bashir administration, there is much discontent within the country as the overall social conditions have not improved since the Transitional Military Council (TMC) took power two-and-a-half years ago. The Transitional Sovereign Council (TSC) represents a coalition governance structure encompassing military officers, political parties, professional groupings, civil society organizations and technocrats, such as Hamdok, an economist with close ties to international finance capital.

The statement by the Sovereign Council administration also cited the recent unrest in the Eastern Sudan region where demonstrations had occurred for several days in September demanding reforms. Opposition groups say they want a future government which is inclusive and committed to transforming the unequal development impacting the people of the provincial states in the East.

Port Sudan located in the eastern region on the Red Sea is an important asset for the country in regard to international trade. Sudan, since the partition of the country in 2011, has been weakened by the advent of the breakaway Republic of South Sudan where oil resources formerly controlled by Khartoum are now under the authority of the government in Juba.

Protesters in Eastern Sudan blocked highways, streets and the port preventing normal activities in several major cities. The Hamdok interim administration under the chairmanship of General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan had traveled to the region during 2020 to sign an agreement with opposition groups aimed at settling long standing political and economic grievances. Nonetheless, some opposition political leaders say that the agreements have not been implemented by the TSC.

Soon after the reports that the military coup had been subverted, Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Hamza Baloul, said on Sudan Television that:

“Today, Tuesday, September 21, 2021, a failed coup attempt was brought under control by a group of armed forces officers from the remnants of the former regime. We assure the Sudanese people that the situation is under complete control as the leaders of the military and civilian coup attempt were arrested and are being investigated now, after the last pockets of the coup were liquidated in the Shagara camp, and as the competent authorities continue to pursue the remnants of the defunct regime involved in the failed attempt. We call on all the forces of the revolution, including resistance committees, political and civil forces, peace parties, professional and trade union bodies, and all sectors of the Sudanese people to be vigilant and pay attention to the repeated attempts that seek to abort the glorious December revolution.”

Nonetheless, the “Glorious December Revolution” referred to by Minister Baloul has been undermined by the dominance of the military and technocrats within the TSC. A popular uprising which began in December of 2018 in Sudan sprang up from the deteriorating economic conditions impacting the working people, farmers and youth.

Transformation Process Stalled by the TSC

The takeover by the military in Sudan was prompted by the mass demonstrations which grew during the period between December 2018 and April 2019. Thousands of people representing various opposition groupings staged a sit-in outside the defense ministry in Khartoum demanding the resignation of al-Bashir and the installation of a new civilian government.

In order to avert a popular movement from taking power in April 2019, several high-ranking military officers took control of the state claiming they were in support of the people. However, the mass demonstrations did not subside with the occupation of the capital continuing until the first week of June.

On June 3, 2019, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), opened fire on thousands of demonstrators in Khartoum. The massacre of civilians resulted in the 128 officially reported deaths with many more seriously injured. Consequently, the country was facing a profound crisis which threatened all sectors of the society.

With the intervention of the African Union (AU) and other regional structures, a negotiated settlement mandated the formation of the TSC. Although it may have appeared to be an advancement and even a breakthrough politically, in actuality the transitional council was established as an interim structure dominated by the military leadership.

The chair and vice chair of the TSC are Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemetti) respectively. These military officials were slated to remain in their positions for 21 months, which has already passed since August 2019. The tenure of the TSC is 39 months which will expire at the end of 2022. Members of the TSC, both civilian and military, are ostensibly forbidden from running for political office after the expiration of the interim administration.

Yet one of the main concerns of the political forces in Sudan is the absence of any legislative authority within the TSC. The failure to ensure multi-party elections and the establishment of a civilian government has caused divisions within the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), the coalition which brought together the various professional associations, trade unions, opposition political parties and civil society organizations during the mass demonstrations of 2019. Some FFC members are condemning other elements for their close cooperation with the military.

The TSC has undertaken negotiations with the armed opposition groups with mixed results. The Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), which includes various political and armed organizations from the restive Darfur region along with the border areas with the Republic of South Sudan, has largely adopted in principle the need to enter the proposed political process.

A Juba Peace Agreement was signed in January with the SRF and many of its affiliates. There are plans to integrate the 12,000 rebel troops with the SAF in order to fill the security vacuum left by the departure of the AU and United Nations peacekeeping forces in the Darfur region of the country in December 2020. Minni Minawi, the leader of the breakaway Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-MM), emphasized his desire to place the rebels on an equal level with the conventional military forces.

Democratic Transition and Sudanese Foreign Policy

Sudan had been the largest geographic nation-state on the African continent prior to the partition of 2011 and the independence of the Republic of South Sudan. The vast petroleum resources and other natural resources were propelling rapid economic growth since the early 2000s.

With the division of the country into two separate states, many issues related to the drilling and transport of oil became a major impediment to the development of both Khartoum and Juba. Border disputes in the Kordofan regions and the Blue Nile between the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan still remain unresolved. Therefore, considering the border issues and internal problems within Sudan and South Sudan, neither government has benefited from the partition.

The U.S. and the State of Israel were main proponents for the division of the Republic of Sudan during the period of the armed conflict between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the SAF. Political and economic pressures from Washington during the administration of former President Donald Trump resulted in a commitment by the Interim Prime Minister Hamdok to “normalize” relations with Israel. The unilateral declaration of “normalization” represented a violation of the Israel Boycott Act of 1958 passed into law by the then parliament of the Republic of Sudan.

This shift in foreign policy has drawn opposition inside the country. Many organizations have objected to the maneuvers including the Sudanese Communist Party, National Umma Party, Sudanese Baath Party, the Popular Congress Party, among others.

After the decision to establish relations with Israel, other measures were required by Washington to have Sudan delisted as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” The interim government was forced to pay restitution to U.S. citizens killed in various attacks attributed to groups such as al-Qaeda. With the interim regime’s acquiescence to Washington and Tel Aviv, Sudan would then be eligible for loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other western based financial institutions. These loans, which have been given to many African states since the 1960s, have done more to maintain the economic and consequent political dependency of the continent on the imperialist center of power.

A movement for a complete revolutionary transformation of the Republic of Sudan will have to be based upon the political and organizational capacity of the majority of people within the society. Genuine independence and national development cannot be directed from the western states, it must emerge from the efforts of the people in alliance with anti-imperialist forces on an international scale.

Guinea Coup Deepens Crisis of Governance in West Africa

RESOURCE RICH NATION BEHOLDEN TO MINERAL CONGLOMERATES LEAVING A MAJORITY OF PEOPLE EXPLOITED AND IMPOVERISHED

September 15, 2021

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Reprinted from Fighting Words Guinea Coup Deepens Crisis of Governance in West Africa – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

Members of the Special Forces in the West African state of Guinea-Conakry seized power from the government of President Alpha Conde, 83, on September 5.

There were reports of heavy gunfire surrounding the president’s residence several hours prior to the interruption of regular television programming for an announcement from the apparent new leadership of the country.

The leader of the coup is Lt. Col. Mamady Doumbouya, 41, who is the Commander of Special Forces and a former member of the French Foreign Legion. Doumbouya has a long career of involvement in various imperialist military endeavors including the United States and NATO intervention and occupation of the Central Asian state of Afghanistan.

The coup leader has previously been photographed outside the United States Embassy in Conakry surrounded by military personnel from Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) during the annual armed forces joint exercises with West African states known as Operation Flintlock. AFRICOM, formed under the then U.S. administration of President George W. Bush, Jr. in 2008, has extended its presence and influence across the continent with several thousand troops. AFRICOM and the French Operation Barkhane are ostensibly stationed in Africa to prevent the spread of “jihadist terrorism.” Yet, both Washington and Paris have extensive economic interests in West Africa surrounding the oil, bauxite, uranium and other important areas of the world mining and agricultural commodities sectors.

Doumbouya announced over Guinea Television that he had established a National Committee for Reconciliation and Development (CNRD) which would rule the country pending the creation of a new regime. Just two days later on September 7, Doumbouya said that he would form a new inclusive government committed to ending corruption and bad governance. There was no indication of a timetable for the reestablishment of civilian rule in Guinea.

At the time of the consolidation of the coup, Doumbouya’s appearance over Guinea TV was marked by his person being wrapped in the national flag. The coup leader articulated a list of grievances purportedly justifying the coup, saying that the new ruling military committee would create a government of the people not beholden to one man.

This autocratic move by the Special Forces has been condemned by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a 15-nation regional membership organization. Following the same pattern, the African Union (AU), the 55-member federation of all states on the continent, called as well for the restoration of President Conde to office.

The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres rejected the military assumption of power and called for the immediate release of President Conde, who was shown in detention by the coup leaders over Guinea TV by the unelected leadership. Guterres says he is closely following the situation in Guinea.

In addition, the European Union (EU) has condemned the coup and detention of ousted President Conde. France, which dominated Guinea from the late 19th century to its national independence in 1958, is a leading member of the EU.

Doumbouya has close political, military and personal ties to Paris. He is married to a French woman, a member of the National Gendarmerie, one of two police forces. The Gendarmerie is a branch of the armed forces of France falling under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior with some responsibilities to the Ministry of the Armed Forces. In France, the National Gendarmerie is responsible for policing smaller towns along with suburban and rural areas. There are more than 100,000 members of the security division.

The CNRD summoned former cabinet members to a meeting on September 7, demanding that they appear or otherwise be considered as being in rebellion against the military regime. The government officials were ordered to turn over their assigned vehicles and other property belonging to the state.

During the September 5 statement aired over Guinea TV, Doumbouya proclaimed that:

“Our action is not a coup d’etat. It only reflects the legitimate aspiration of people to want to live in an environment where basic human needs can be met.” He continued with a list of complaints regarding the Conde administration, accusing the former president of “the trampling of citizens’ rights, the disrespect for democratic principles, the outrageous politicization of public administration, financial mismanagement, poverty and endemic corruption.”

There were widespread demonstrations against Conde during 2019-2020 after the national constitution was altered to provide for the president to run for a third term of office. Some opposition parties and civil society organizations have welcomed the coup largely as a result of the repressive apparatus installed by Conde who won the 2020 elections amid charges of voter suppression and electoral fraud.

The Political Economy of Mineral Extraction

Guinea has the world largest deposits of bauxite, an important mineral used in the production of aluminum. Iron ore, another strategic mineral located in the country, is to be found in abundance in the country. Surveys indicate that the iron ore deposits found in Guinea surpass all other sources internationally.

In the immediate aftermath of the military takeover, bauxite prices escalated sharply on the global markets. On September 7, the CNRD announced that production would not be hampered by the coup.

The Financial Times said in an article published in response to the ascendancy of the CNRD that:

“Guinea has some of the world’s best bauxite and iron ore deposits but its 13 million people remain largely impoverished. It generates most of its revenues from mining exports, which have helped power the economy to more than 6 per cent growth annually over the past five years, following a severe drop after the West African Ebola outbreak that killed 2,500 Guineans. Russia’s Rusal and U.S. company Alcoa are big investors in the bauxite sector, while Anglo-Australian mining group Rio Tinto, Chinalco and the China-backed consortium SMB Winning own parts of Simandou, one of the world’s most important iron ore deposits, in south-eastern Guinea.”

Under the Conde administration greater access has been provided to the mining firms to Guinean deposits of minerals. It is notable that after the suspension of the Guinean constitution, parliament and cabinet, the CNRD wanted to assure the international financial interests that the country was still open for business.

Imperialist Militarism and Neo-Colonial Rule in West Africa

The events in Guinea represent the fourth intervention by the military in political governance structures in the region. During 2020, the Malian military overthrew an elected government using the broad discontent with the failure of the administration to adequately address economic and security concerns in the country.

Mali has been battling an insurgency in the northern and central areas of its territory since the Pentagon-NATO coordinated counter-revolution in neighboring Libya during 2011. The Malian state has also participated in AFRICOM projects where the leaders of all of the military coups since 2012 have been trained within defense colleges in the U.S.

Chad’s longtime President and former military leader, Idriss Deby Itno, was reportedly killed in April during an engagement with rebels fighting to overthrow this resource rich nation which is a gateway to North, Central and West Africa. The son of the assassinated leader, Maj. Gen. Mahamat Deby, was installed in power by a “military transitional council” while the constitution and parliament were suspended. Deby and his soldiers had been a major source for military operations coordinated by the U.S. and France.

Niger as well in the West Africa region, foiled an attempted putsch in late March when a military unit threatened the inauguration of then President-elect Mohamed Bazoum. The election results had been disputed by his opponent Mahamane Ousmane, perhaps triggering an opportunistic maneuver aimed at taking over the state by the military.

With specific reference to Guinea, many western corporate and government-controlled media agencies have repeatedly stated that the coming to power by Alpha Conde was the first democratic transfer of power in its post-independence history. Nonetheless, in actuality, the mobilization and organization of the Guinean people by the Democratic Party (PDG) headed by the late President Ahmed Sekou Toure, was indeed a profound democratic process since it rejected the neo-colonial schemes of France which sought to extend its imperialist rule throughout its colonies in West Africa.

France, after the 1958 popular vote by the Guinean people, sought to stifle the national development of the country by withdrawing all technical assistance and infrastructure from the new PDG government. Ghana’s then Prime Minister Dr. Kwame Nkrumah stepped in to provide a $US25 million loan to Guinea which assisted in closing the vast vacuum left by Paris. Guinea and Ghana signed a union agreement in 1958 to foster greater cooperation.

Later in 1960, after the independence of other French colonies, Mali, then headed by anti-imperialist and Pan-Africanist leader President Modibo Keita, signed another treaty creating the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union. Yet, all of these revolutionary leaders were undermined by pro-imperialist elements within their military structures.

Nkrumah was overthrown in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engineered military and police coup in 1966 while he was out of Ghana on a peace mission to North Vietnam. Modibo Keita was removed by the military in Mali in 1968. Toure died in April 1984 from what was said to have been a massive heart attack. The day following his funeral, the PDG government was toppled by lower-ranking military officers. The coup leader, Lansana Conte, later took off his military uniform to run for president. Conte ruled until his death in 2008 when another military coup was carried out.

Until the AU member-states break economic, political and consequently military ties with the imperialist countries, the instability of the continent will continue. The recrudescence of military coups in the ECOWAS region is a clear manifestation of the heightened levels of neo-colonial intrigue emanating the western capitals of Washington, London and Paris.

Implications of the Electoral Defeat of the Detroit People’s Charter

RULING CLASS INTERESTS ILLUSTRATED THE CLEAR DICTATORSHIP OF CAPITAL IN ONE OF THE MOST OPPRESSED URBAN CENTERS IN THE UNITED STATES.

September 13, 2021

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Reprinted from Fighting Words Implications of the Electoral Defeat of the Detroit People’s Charter – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

A grassroots initiative to rewrite the municipal charter of the City of Detroit, Proposal P or the People’s Charter, was drowned out by a multi-million dollar propaganda and psychological warfare campaign aimed at maintaining the status quo.

In 2018, a citywide election was held for candidates to serve for three years on a Charter Commission assigned to develop a new guide for the municipality.

The outcome of the 2018 Charter Commission elections startled the ruling class and its agents within city government including the corporate-imposed Mayor Mike Duggan and the majority compliant City Council. Several of the Commissioners elected in 2018 were committed to making sweeping changes in how the city has operated for many years.

Of course, there were sharp differences between members of the Charter Commission after the officials took office. Meetings during the early phase of the process were marked by intense debate and discussions.

Detroit police officers were called into Charter Commission meetings which were held at various community centers. Such a repressive atmosphere was designed to squash the process of developing a new governance document which was slipping beyond the control of the local ruling elites beholden to the multinational corporations, banks and the federal government.

To coincide with the actual work of the Charter Commission, numerous task forces were established across Detroit to discuss revisions in the guidelines regulating public safety, water rights, affordable housing, disability rights, immigrant rights and the division of power within the administrative and legislative structures. Meetings for the focus groups were open to the public where people from various neighborhoods, social backgrounds, nationalities and genders participated.

The process under which the revisions were drafted represented the most democratic exercise that the city has undergone in decades. A 145-page document was eventually published encompassing the desires and interests of the majority African Americans, People of Color, immigrants and working-class peoples as a whole.

In previous years during the charter revision process, the City of Detroit through the City Council would provide funding to publicize the proposed charter among the electorate. The funds would be utilized for literature, media ads and other methods of encouraging eligible voters to either support or reject the revisions. These funds desperately needed by the Charter Commission were restricted, hampering the ability of the elected body to educate the voters about the importance of the document.

However, the political and social character of the document drafted by community activists outraged the existing corporate-allied officials. A “Committee to Protect Detroit’s Future” was formed on May 19 to launch a campaign of legal challenges and disinformation.

The Committee to Protect Detroit’s Future was funded and endorsed by the leading capitalist entities in the city. The Chamber of Commerce, the Restaurant Owners Association, DTE Energy and Blue Cross-Blue Shield were leading firms and associations propping up the anti-charter grouping.

Local compromised ministers, police officials and supporters of the Duggan administration were recruited to appear in television ads and on billboards to spread outright distortions and lies to turn people away from voting yes on the revised charter during the primary elections on August 3. Perhaps the most insidious falsehood was that the Charter would bankrupt the City of Detroit once again. Yet, no discussion was forthcoming on what interests engineered the Financial Stability Agreement (FSA), Emergency Management and the illegally imposed bankruptcy, the largest in the history of the United States. These events took place between 2012-2014.

In fact, it was the banks through predatory lending within the housing sector and municipal finance which drove the City of Detroit to the crisis which occurred beginning in the years between 2005-2009. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans and working-class people were driven out of the city during the census period of 2000-2010. Job losses, home foreclosures, utility and water shut-offs, insurance red lining, police brutality, inferior education and environmental degradation were all caused by the racist and super-exploitative character of governance which prevailed within the city.

The People’s Charter advocates did receive support from two major labor unions, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), which organizes in the construction industry. These two endorsements were important. However, they were no match financially for the total hostile opposition of the banks, the criminal justice establishment and the comprador operatives within the community that are promoted by the ruling class.

Housing Crisis Escalates in Detroit

The Moratorium NOW! Coalition in alliance with several housing and social justice groups including Detroit Action, Detroit Eviction Defense, Charlevoix Village Association and Detroit Will Breathe have mounted a political struggle for the immediate release of the COVID Emergency Relief Assistance (CERA) funds provided through the legislative bills designed to provide a lifeline to people severely impacted by the pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis. A press conference was held on September 1 outside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center (CAYMAC) located in the heart of downtown. The press conference was given extensive coverage in the local television market as well as some newspapers such as the Metro Times and MLIVE.com.

During the September 1 action, the demands were clear: a moratorium on evictions until the CERA funds are completely dispersed; that the U.S. Congress pass legislation to remedy the legal dilemma created by the Supreme Court decision during late August essentially outlawing the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moratoriums declared as a measure aimed at stemming the new wave of infections taking place throughout the country; and that Chief Judge of 36th District Court, William C. McConico, reimpose a moratorium on eviction proceedings until a methodology is created to address the burgeoning threats of evictions.

The question of quality housing availability and access to supplemental rental funds are inextricably linked to the ruling class war waged against the People’s Charter. Municipal policy under the administration of Mike Duggan seems to be designed to force as many Black, Brown, working class and impoverished people out of the city.

After the mortgage foreclosures of the 2000s involving tens of thousands of homes in the city, by 2015, due to the over assessments of property taxes, there were the imminent seizures of tens of thousands of other homes for delinquencies in taxes for the City of Detroit and Wayne County. Moratorium NOW! Coalition and other community organizations from across the city were able to mobilize public opinion to force the Wayne County Treasurer to allow people to make arrangements on illegally assessed tax bills, therefore, in effect halting yet another exodus from Detroit. A compounding problem to the property tax debacle was the placement of liens on homes by the County for unpaid water bills. A wave of water shut offs in the tens of thousands were implemented during the bankruptcy in the summer of 2014.

Clauses within the People’s Charter viewed water and housing issues as fundamental human rights. A water affordability plan to prevent shut offs would have been embedded in the document governing the city’s operations. In addition, the municipal government would have been compelled to respect the rights of immigrants and people living with disabilities.

The Need for a People’s Movement Remains

Although the People’s Charter was targeted and derailed by the ruling class led by Dan Gilbert, the Ilitch Holdings firms, Chase Bank, DTE Energy, among others, the process of democratic discussions and popular actions around the fundamental needs of the working majority continues to be paramount. In reality, there is no real alternative to the continued mobilization and organization of the communities in Detroit based upon their own interests. The failure to not pursue this course of thinking and political work will only result in the rapid decline in population and the consequent political power for the people.

The impact of climate change has been starkly evident. A series of floods since June have damaged untold numbers of homes, apartment buildings and small businesses. A class action lawsuit against the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD) and the post-bankruptcy Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) portends much for the fiscal stability of the city and the region. The failure of pumping stations, antiquated equipment and the systematic downsizing of the workforce employed in water services, has resulted in the current situation.

The most recent Census data for Detroit indicates a further decline in population. Among the African American people, the numbers within this majority community have declined by 16% since 2010.

Corruption which is rife within municipal government has been further exposed with the federal investigations and FBI raids against several City Council members. All of the people convicted or presently under scrutiny by U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District are staunch puppets of the Duggan administration who routinely vote in favor of capital.

These issues will create the conditions for an eventual social explosion in Detroit and other major cities across the U.S. The task of organizers is to be prepared for this inevitability in order to assist in directing the struggle toward victory.

Unnatural Disasters: Hurricane Ida, Western Wildfires and Carnegie’s Johnstown Flood, PART 1

September 19, 2021

Johnstown, PA flood of 1889. | Photo: vintage.es

By Chris Fry

Reprinted from Fighting Words Unnatural Disasters: Hurricane Ida, Western Wildfires and Carnegie’s Johnstown Flood – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

1889 was a long time ago, 132 years to be precise, spanning many generations. Yet the terrible Johnstown Pennsylvania flood of that year and the climate-change spawned firestorms in the West and the deadly hurricanes this year, particularly Hurricane Ida, link these disasters to a common source. All of these can be traced to the utter contempt that the “captains of industry”, the “wizards of high finance”, then and now,  have for the producers of all their wealth, the workers and oppressed.

Johnstown, Pennsylvania lies in a deep river gorge, deepest in the eastern U.S., in the Allegheny Mountain range. It is where the Stony Creek and Little Conemaugh rivers meet to form the Conemaugh River. During the U.S. industrial revolution, starting in the 1850’s, it became the site of the largest steel-making operations in the country, bigger than Pittsburgh or Cleveland.

Some of the steel plants in the area were owned and managed by super-wealthy Andrew Carnegie and his fellow parasite, Henry Clay Frick. These multi-millionaires (billionaires in today’s money) were the Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Tesla’s Elon Musk of their day – using every corrupt method to create monopolies and being extremely anti-union.

Carnegie and Frick, along with their big business partners, decided to convert an old reservoir that lay above the town of Johnstown into a luxury fishing and hunting resort for themselves and their rich buddies. This reservoir was behind an earthen dam. They had a fishing net placed over the spillway which was originally designed to let off excess water after heavy rains, and they shaved off three feet from the top of the dam to create a road for their carriages to cross the dam. They even removed drain pipes at the bottom of the dam and sold the metal for scrap.

On May 30, 1889, extremely heavy rains, from 6 to 10 inches, hit the region. Trees and telegraph lines were torn from the mountain sides into the reservoir, which, blocked by the fish net, stopped the water from going into the spillway. Resort workers tried to add dirt to the top of the dam to no avail.

At 2:55 PM the dam breached. Here is how the history.com website described it:

As the dam burst, a 30- to-40-foot-high wave rushed the 14 miles toward Johnstown. The flood was as wide as the Mississippi River and three times more powerful than Niagara Falls. As it hit Johnstown, all hell broke loose. Locomotives weighing 170,000 pounds were wrenched from railroad tracks and swept thousands of feet. Debris piled up 40 feet high; some caught fire as it hit bridges and buildings. People were sucked from buildings and tossed into a raging torrent.

“It was like the Day of Judgment I have since seen pictured in books,” Gertrude Quinn Slattery later recalled. “Pandemonium had broken loose, screams, cries and people were running.” Pets and people struggled to escape the rushing waters, but when the wall of water arrived, they were helpless. It was “a moving mass black with houses, trees, boulders, logs, and rafters coming down like an avalanche,” she wrote.

The flood then hit the Gautier Wire Works factory, causing miles of barbed wire to be tangled into the debris. Many were trapped by the wire and carried away.

In all, 2209 people died in the flood, including nearly 400 children. Many of the victims were immigrants working at the iron and steel factories in the town. Some of the bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati. Ohio. 700 victims were never identified and were buried in a mass grave.

Some of the survivors filed a suit against the resort owners who caused the flood, citing the changes made to the dam, particularly the reduction at the top, the fish net covering the spillway and the lack of maintenance. But the pro-capitalist courts declared the flood an “Act of God” and Carnegie and his friend were never held liable.

Three years later Frick hired 300 armed Pinkerton agents to attack striking steelworkers at the Carnegie-owned Homestead Steel plant in Pennsylvania. At least 12 were killed, and the strike was broken.

Hurricane Ida: The Monster Storm

On August 26 this year, Hurricane Ida roared ashore on the Louisiana coast, packing 150 mile an hour winds, with gusts of 172 miles an hour, torrents of rain and a towering storm surge. This storm had already killed 20 people in Venezuela. The storm then passed directly over Cuba, but because Cuba has a genuine socialist state, mass evacuations moved tens of thousands out of danger. Though the storm tore down trees, destroyed many homes and shut power in many areas, nobody was hurt or killed.

Once Ida, which regained tremendous strength as it passed over the Gulf Coast, hit the U.S., the devastation was widespread. In Louisiana, 26 people perished, and not just from the wind and the rain. The storm knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people, and when it passed, the heat became unbearable and deadly. As CBS News reported on Sept. 9:

At least seven nursing home residents died after being moved to a warehouse facility in Tangipahoa Parish, where more than 800 residents from seven nursing facilities were housed as Ida tore through the state. Images of the warehouse show patients in squalid conditions and packed closely together on mattresses.

The storm moved north, then east. By the time the storm hit the Northeast, it found the ground already saturated by two tropical storms that preceded it shortly before. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York all suffered torrential rain. Johnstown, Pennsylvania evacuated 2,000 people over the threat of a dam failure. Rain fell at a rate of over 3 inches an hour in New York City, a record. Flash floods erupted all over the city, particularly in Queens. Subways were flooded, with riders forced to stand on their seats to escape the rising water.

Eighteen people died in New York. With the high rent costs in New York and New Jersey, many were trapped in so-called “illegal” basement apartments, including a family of three that were killed in Woodside.

In all, Ida killed at least 96 people, with at least $50 billion in damages across the country. And more storms appear to be on the way.

Wildfires in the West

Meanwhile, the western portion of the country is again breaking annual records for wildfire area devastation and damage. In California alone, some 15,000 firefighters, including hundreds of prisoners earning $2 to $5 a day.  Wyoming, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Montana, and Nevada have all seen massive wildfires this year.  The immediate cause of these wildfires is not difficult to find, as a NY Times Sept. 9 report describes:

The period from June through August this year was the hottest on record in the United States, exceeding even the Dust Bowl summer of 1936, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday.

Climate scientists agree that global warming is causing a sharp increase in deadly heatwaves and drought in some regions, and increasingly powerful and deadly storms in others. As a 2019 Reuters report states:

A jump in climate-related disasters this century, along with the global coronavirus pandemic, show political and business leaders are failing to stop the planet turning into “an uninhabitable hell” for millions, the United Nations said on Monday. 

Unnatural Disasters: Hurricane Ida, Western Wildfires and Carnegie’s Johnstown Flood

September 22, 2021

September 18. 2021 satellite photo of the KNP wildfire in northern California. | Photo: Copernicus Sentinel-2 Satellite, European Union

By Chris Fry

Reprinted from Fighting Words Unnatural Disasters: Hurricane Ida, Western Wildfires and Carnegie’s Johnstown Flood – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

Part 1 described how rich capitalists like Andrew Carnegie successfully managed to deflect blame in the corrupt courts for the Johnstown flood of 1889, which they said was caused by an “act of God”. It goes on to link this to today’s capitalist class’s role in creating global warming, which greatly increases the intensity of storms like Hurricane Ida, as well as sparking a massive increase in the size and number of wildfires.

An October 19, 2020, Reuters article stated:

A jump in climate-related disasters this century, along with the global coronavirus pandemic, show political and business leaders are failing to stop the planet turning into “an uninhabitable hell” for millions, the United Nations said on Monday.

The last two decades saw the number of disasters caused by extreme weather nearly double to 6,681, up from 3,656 between 1980 and 1999, according to a report issued ahead of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on Oct. 13.

And on Sept. 17, the Washington Post reported that:

The United Nations warned Friday that based on the most recent action plans submitted by 191 countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is on track to warm by more than 2.7 degrees Celsius [4.9 degrees Fahrenheit] by the end of the century — far above what world leaders have said is the acceptable upper limit of global warming.

Even a lower increase would mean millions of people losing their homes to rising seas, vast sections of permafrost lost and extinction for scores of animal species.

These dire reports have not caught the capitalist class unaware of how they, particularly the “energy” sector, the oil, gas, and coal companies, who have vastly increased the carbon-dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, warming the climate and the oceans. As a matter of fact, they have spent decades not only hiding this, but also spreading disinformation to prevent the public from learning about it.

Most, but not all, of these corporate bigshots and their politician puppets now admit that global warming is “human caused”, but of course none will say that it is because of their insatiable drive for more and more profits for their capitalist class.

This has prompted the House Oversight Committee to demand that oil and gas company executives testify, with their “invitation” letter to Exxon executives stating:

“We are deeply concerned that the fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits for decades while contributing to climate change that is devastating American communities, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and ravaging the natural world,” read the letter to Darren Woods, the Exxon chief executive.

“We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change,” the letter said.

But one would be naïve to expect that these minions of big business will actually do much about this. An article in the Daily Poster points out that even while Biden has been touring hurricane and wildfire-ravaged parts of the county, declaring global warming a “code red” emergency of the planet, his White House announced plans that they will go ahead and lease 78 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil drilling. They are overriding their own climate panel to do this:

In fact, Biden’s officials have instead used that power to officially declare that the warnings in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report “does not present sufficient cause” to reevaluate the drilling plan.

Of course, environmental groups are up in arms about this decision:

“We’ve been very patient with his administration,” says Hallie Templeton, deputy legal director for Friends of the Earth, one of the environmental groups involved in the litigation. “The honeymoon’s over. It’s now September, they’ve been in office for eight months. It’s time for them to show that they have priorities and are meaningfully going to move in the right direction.”

So, if big business and its government will not make changes in its production of energy necessary to stop and even reverse this destructive global warming, what is the answer?

Capitalist distribution linked to Capitalist production

Climate activists, particularly academics and research workers, have brought forward many well-thought-out proposals to vastly reduce the usage of fossil fuels. They promise that effecting these proposals would create millions of new jobs, which is true. Many of these plans are contained in the so-called “Green New Deal”, along with other much-needed reforms.

The original Great Depression era New Deal proposed reforms came from popular mass movements, where millions of people demanded changes in the failing capitalist system that threatened their existence and, more importantly to Wall Street, the existence of the capitalist system itself. With the current movement, it also demands planet-saving reforms to stem the devastating effect of global warming.

With the onset of the Covid Pandemic, demands for emergency measures such as rent moratoriums, additional unemployment benefits and so much more have reached such a crescendo that the capitalist government has had to make temporary concessions to these righteous demands. Now these concessions are being eroded even while a new Covid surge is sickening and killing thousands, with millions still out of work and tenants being evicted, thrown out onto the streets. But it is not surprising that there is no real momentum among the bankers, corporate heads, or their well-heeled political servants from both parties to do anything meaningful to change their production process to slash carbon emissions.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s global warming “solution”, for example, is to create a colony on Mars, bringing along a million unpaid “indentured servants” to answer to his every need. And of course the capitalist class prefers the taxpayer purchases of extremely lucrative weapons contracts as the Pentagon prepares for a new war against China versus spending on alleviating the terrible effects of these global-warming-induced storms, droughts and wildfires on the workers and oppressed, here and around the world.

Marxism and global warming 

In 1875, Karl Marx wrote a letter to his friends called “A Critique of the Gotha Programme”. He spent much of the letter criticizing the vague and inadequate reform proposals by a group forming the German Social Democratic Party. But he also expressed a message that today’s activists must study:

Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers [property owners] in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?

Marx is saying that to effect permanent and meaningful changes to the distribution of goods and services for the workers and oppressed, they must make the means of production, the factories, the refineries, the oil wells, the pipelines, the banks, all of this the “cooperative property of the workers themselves.”

Global warming makes this goal more urgent than ever, since the massive profits from the existing production processes, which are at the core of the climate problem, prevent the capitalist class from even considering the radical changes necessary to make the planet continue to be habitable. Only the oppressed and the workers, who are not anchored to fossil fuel energy sources, can, with the ownership and control of the means of production, reverse these terrible consequences of global warming.

Afghanistan and the Texas Fanatics

September 9, 2021

Reprinted from Fighting Words Afghanistan and the Texas Fanatics – Fighting Words (fighting-words.net)

Women will continue the decades long fight to protect their rights. | Photo: YouTube

By David Sole

The United States government suffered a humiliating defeat as it finally withdrew from Afghanistan on August 31, 2021. For over 20 years, 1979 to 2001 the CIA and State Department financed and armed Islamic fundamentalists to overthrow the socialist revolution that had taken power in Afghanistan and then tried to create a stable puppet government in Kabul, but to no avail. From 2001 to 2021 U.S. and allied troops fought on the ground to defeat the Taliban – an outgrowth of the earlier U.S. efforts.

President Joseph Biden, following the steps taken by former President Donald Trump, ordered the final evacuation from that country. Now begins a drawn out campaign to demand to know “who lost Afghanistan?”  It appears that most of the corporate media, conservative as well as liberal, are chiming in. One can ignore the attacks on Biden by top Republican Party officials who had defended Trump’s actions along the same line. That is just pure partisan politics.

The unified front across most media indicates that the entire U.S. ruling class is upset with this outcome. But the question shouldn’t be “who lost Afghanistan?” Poor and working people in this country ought to be asking “why were we in there in the first place?”

For many years we were told that this intervention and invasion was part of the “war on terror.” The U.S., the story went, was nation building to provide Afghans with democracy. U.S. bayonets were going to protect women’s rights from reactionary, theocratic fundamentalists.

The real reason for all the death and destruction at the cost of perhaps a trillion dollar price tag may be found in, of all places, an article published online by Sharon Simpson in Scientific American (September 29, 2011). The article is titled “Afghanistan holds enormous bounty of rare earths, minerals.” It is enlightening to quote from this piece:

Recent exploration of rare volcanic rocks in the rugged, dangerous desert of southern Afghanistan has identified world-class concentrations of rare earth elements, the prized group of raw materials that are essential in the manufacture of many modern technologies, from electric cars to solar panels….

That’s enough to supply the world’s rare earth needs for up to 10 years…points out Robert Tucker, the U.S. Geological Survey scientist…

Afghanistan could provide an alternative source of rare earth elements for industrial countries concerned that China currently controls 97 percent of the world’s supply….

This new science, funded by the Pentagon’s Task Force on Business and Stability Operations, also characterizes 24 areas of economic interest, half a dozen of which are world-class mineral deposits in the norther two thirds of the country…

Vast deposits of copper and iron in the northeast near the nation’s capital, Kabul, are together worth hundreds of billions of dollars….

Wall Street bankers and corporate bosses are furious that they have “lost” the opportunity to loot Afghanistan and reap perhaps hundreds of billions in profits. The ordinary people of the U.S., however, have no stake in war and occupation by the imperialists and the weapons manufacturers.

If securing Afghan the right to vote and protecting the women of Afghanistan were truly of concern to the U.S. ruling elite, then why are they going along with voter suppression and the attacks on women’s rights in Texas?

On August 31 the Texas legislature sent to Governor Greg Abbott for his approval a bill aimed to suppress voting rights. The governor is expected to sign it into law. The bill had been held up when over 50 Democratic members of the House and Senate left the state for many weeks to keep the Republicans from having a quorum.

On September 1 a harsh anti-abortion law passed by Texas was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority in a 5 to 4 vote. The bill outlaws almost all abortions and makes no exception for pregnancy due to rape or incest. Any individual who suspects a person is having an abortion or is assisting in any way for a person to obtain an abortion, can bring suit in court. This is reminiscent of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that required all persons to assist slave catchers in all states in apprehending alleged runaway slaves.

These actions by the Texas fanatics have not drawn the condemnation one would expect for such reactionary policies when one looks at the broad national media. The explanation must take into account the interests of the same ruling class that pursues profits around the world no matter what the suffering it brings.

The one thing that makes it possible for the tiny capitalist class to hold onto power amidst a sea of hundreds of millions of exploited workers and oppressed people here at home is their perfection of “divide and conquer” tactics. They desperately need racism, bigotry and anti-woman prejudice to keep the profits flowing.

It would be a mistake to confuse the temporary successes of the Texas fanatics and the reactionaries in many other states with real strength. Just look at the Women’s March on Washington on January 18, 2017, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. It is estimated that at least 470,000 women and their supporters packed the District of Columbia that day while up to 5 million more demonstrated in other cities.

Following the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 demonstrations broke out across the U.S. of a size and duration never before seen in this country. The makeup of these Black Lives Matter protests also terrified the ruling class because they were thoroughly diverse, having all races and ages participating.

It will not be the courts, certainly not the U.S. Supreme Court that ends the wave of reaction around the country. Congress itself is too beholden to the big money interests to protect the rights of the people. No doubt the Democratic Party will continue to make promises to their base while at the same time tailoring their actions to please Wall Street and the Pentagon.

It is only the mass struggle in the streets and the workplaces that ever won any of the things now being threatened. Union rights, voting rights, environmental protection, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights all were the result of intense struggle.

Texas women cannot and should not be expected to defeat this assault on their own. A national fund must be established to pay the travel expenses of any woman in Texas so that she can get to another state where abortions are legal. Poor women might need additional assistance to make arrangements to be away from home. The medical profession ought to volunteer to provide medical abortion services for free as a “Texas exception.”

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man and was arrested, the Montgomery, AL bus boycott began. It lasted from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. It was an intense and hard fought year long battle. It continued even after the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on June 5, 1956 that Alabama segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. It continued even after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that decision on November 13, 1956,

Just as the Civil Rights Movement often traces its roots to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a strong, national mobilization to defeat the Texas fanatics could easily become the beginning of a movement that could roll back reaction in all its forms and, perhaps, go on to confront and defeat the entire capitalist system.

C.L.R. James (aka, J.R. Johnson): What India Means to the American Working Class--A Socialist India Is the Only Genuine Solution, 11 January 1943

From Labor Action, Vol. 7 No. 2, 11 January 1943, p. 3.

Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

Continued from last week

Let us now sum up our conclusions so far:

British imperialism and American imperialism are carrying on an inside struggle over who is to reap the profits of exploitation in India.

The Indian Congress, representing the landlords and capitalists, like all the native ruling groups in the Far East, runs from one imperialist group to another. At the present moment the Congress is seeking frantically to negotiate with Britain, hoping to use Roosevelt and American pressure to force concessions from Britain.

The central fact of the Indian struggle is the backwardness of the economy, whose agricultural production has been destroyed without the substitute of modernized industry. This gives drive to the nationalist movement but it is on the very backwardness of the country that Indian landlords, money lenders and capitalists thrive. They are therefore incapable of unleashing the only force which can throw the British out, because to do so would destroy their own position.

The most important political development of the war so far is the awakening: of the Oriental peoples. India is today the center. What the Indian workers and peasants do next may well be the final push which will unloose a revolutionary struggle in the Far East embracing nearly a billion people. All the ruling groups, in the Far East and out of it,. are acutely aware of this and all statements, silences, etc., must be closely watched and analyzed in relation to the particular interests of the parties involved.

The present leaders of the Congress hope to use the Japanese threat and the revolutionary ferment to force concessions out of Britain. Roosevelt and Willkie hope to pacify the Far Eastern masses and save face in Europe by backing sections of the Indian Congress as rulers of India. Churchill knows that this will throw the Congress right into the hands of the United States and gives notice, “We mean to hold our own.”

What India Needs

Isn’t it clear that the only way out of this mess for the poverty-stricken Indian peasants and workers is to realize that the emancipation Of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves? Whom can they trust? Every imperialist power, Axis or anti-Axis, every native ruling group, have but one purpose – to exploit India or use the Indian struggle for their own ends.

India needs the wiping out of the princes, landlords and money-lending parasites who suck the peasantry dry; it needs the development of industry to raise the productive capacity of the country, and to reorganize agricultural production on a higher technical level.

We must bear this constantly in mind, for if we do not we lose sight of the fact that merely driving out the British will not solve the Indian problem. True, the British are the main problem today; they loot and plunder India mercilessly. But if it were possible (and it is by no means absolutely impossible), that some Indian government was cooked up and placed in power, it would mean only that another imperialism would loot and plunder, and the country as a whole would continue on its road to ruin.

The proper reorganization of the Indian economy can be accomplished only by the destruction of ALL the exploiters, i.e., by a socialist India. This may seem remote. It is not so at all. When an Indian peasant or worker says: “The British must go. But I cannot trust Gandhi or Nehru any longer. What we have to do, we workers and peasants must do ourselves,” then he is a revolutionary socialist, whether he knows it or not. He will learn this, not from books, but in the experiences which history is crowding upon him and all. of as so rapidly today. It will mean years of civil war, complicated by the war and imperialist rivalries.

But none of those who are shouting so loudly in the newspapers and in council halls and congresses have anything to offer the starving millions and sooner or later these millions will find that out. The same holds good for the masses in China, the Dutch East Indies and the Malay States.

The American workers have to realize that they cannot stand aside and be merely interested spectators of the Indian struggle or “well wishers” of India. They must know, first, that it is the very poverty, backwardness and defenselessness of India and China that helped cause the imperialist war. As long as British (or Japanese) capitalists can make 20 per cent profit in India or China where they can make only two per cent at home, these wars will go on.

We have chosen to stress here the rivalry between British and American imperialism over India. For this shows us as clearly as anything else that the war will change nothing for India. Furthermore, this rivalry may have grave consequences for the length and conduct of the war. A successful revolution in India will light up the Far East, drive Japan out of China and Burma, loosen every joint in the unstable, economy of Japan, put an end to imperialism in the Far East and shake the whole of Western civilization.

Clearly and simply the word should go from American workers’ organizations to Indian workers and peasants; complete independence of India; all power to the organizations of workers and peasants in the struggle for their demands; for the international solidarity of labor. If some powerful union in the United States were to say that, the effect in India would be electrifying, and Roosevelt and Willkie would soon find the whole Indian question even hotter to handle than it is for them at present.

But there is still a deeper reason why the American working class cannot stand aside and let Roosevelt and Willkie speak on India in the name of America. It may have struck some of us as strange that organized labor in Britain – much closer to India than the American workers – has had nothing to say about India. Instead they have voted with Churchill and supported his plain statements; “We mean to hold our own.”

C.L.R. James (aka, J.R. Johnson): What India Means to the American Working Class--A Socialist India Is the Only Genuine Solution, 18 January 1943

From Labor Action, Vol. 7 No. 3, 18 January 1943, p. 3.

Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

Concluded from last issue

The British labor leaders, Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson of old, and Attlee, Bevin, Stafford Cripps and the others of today, know quite well that if Britain were to lose India tomorrow, nothing but socialism could save Britain from catastrophe and ruin. If you read their statements on India during the last twenty years, you will see that they have not one serious word of encouragement for the mass struggle of the workers and peasants of India. From India come the huge profits which enable these bureaucrats and the better-paid aristocrats of labor to get a little of the benefits of the British imperialist exploitation. They know, and that is why they shut their mouths.

But millions of workers in Britain, by far the vast majority, have no interest in the empire at all and when Gandhi visited Lancashire in 1931 many unemployed cotton workers, who were starving as a result of the Indian boycott, wished him the best of luck.

Today, among the rank and file, sentiment for Indian freedom is very strong. But already in the British labor press it is being said that Britain does not wish to “free” India only to see it fall into the hands of Wall Street. Neither Churchill nor the British labor leaders have the slightest doubt as to the game that Roosevelt and Willkie are playing.

Labor’s International Bond

Murray, Green and John L. Lewis (yes, Lewis too) are as closely tied up with Roosevelt on this matter as Attlee and Bevin are tied up with Churchill. The statement about Wall Street, repeated above, appeared in the Tribune, the paper of Sir Stafford Cripps. That is Cripps’ alibi. All the more reason, therefore, for American workers to make it clear not only to the Indian masses but to the British people where they stand.

We must at all costs repudiate the sort of “freedom” Roosevelt and Willkie are planning for India, it is this way that the basis for the international solidarity of labor is established.

The rulers have their own foreign and colonial policy. We have seen what it is. The workers have their own foreign policy and must make it known, at the same time exposing pitilessly the policy of the rulers.

International solidarity in the struggle for socialism will come to the American masses in the same way as the Indian worker will learn to be a socialist – by constant experience with the unstable treachery of loud-mouthed leaders.

Many may believe that workers on opposite sides of the Pacific, so far separated from each other by distance, race, religion and language, without international organization, are many years away from the international solidarity which the struggle for socialism demands. We shall remind these doubters of a few facts:

Karl Marx, the greatest of all socialists, at whose name alone every imperialist jumps as if shot, founded the First International in 1864. It collapsed a few years later, but after its collapse Marx wrote confidently: “The international action of the working class does not by any means depend on the existence of the International Workingmen’s Association.” Some forty years later Lenin declared that the Russian Revolution would be saved by the working class of the world, though at that time no international organization existed. How this came true is another story, but this much can be said:

In 1914 the British workers were the most insular, the most narrow-minded, the most chauvinistic in the world. Six years later, when Winston Churchill (this very Churchill) had spent half a billion dollars to crush revolutionary Russia, the British working class gave him notice that if he didn’t leave Russia alone there would be a revolution in Britain. Seamen loaded a vessel with munitions in such a way that it could not sail. To save his skin Churchill had to capitulate.

The world today is a far tighter unit than it was in 1820. The chaos of imperialist war will teach American workers their duty to India. Meanwhile the first necessity of conscious workers is to see India not as a land over there, in the Pacific, far, far away, but to see it as Roosevelt, Willkie and Churchill see it – as a land whose future is vitally bound with ours.

Win India for Labor!

They seek to win India for capital, that is, for imperialism. We can fight this only by seeking to win India for labor, that is, for socialism. They see it and fight for it as a subject of their perpetual exploitation. We must see it as a means of oar immediate emancipation. They plan for a global war and a global imperialist peace. We must plan for as workers’ global peace, which can only be socialism.

We must see the world as broadly as the imperialists see it. In their way India is for them a vital question. We must recognize that they will win unless we in our way see that for us too India is a vital question. It is to contribute to this realization that these articles have been written.

C.L.R. James (aka, J.R. Johnson): What India Means to the American Working Class--The Role of the Indian Capitalist Class, 4 January 1943

From Labor Action, Vol. 7 No. 1, 4 January 1943, p. 3.

Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

Continued from last issue

It is this increasing bankruptcy of the Indian peasant eepnomy which is the real drive of the nationalist movement. The unrest, the growing revolutionary feelings of the masses of peasants, the conditions of the proletariat, all this gives enormous power to the movement to throw out the British who are mainly responsible for what is essentially an economic question.

The leaders of this movement, however, are none other than the representatives, associates, friends, sometimes themselves members, of the Indian landlord and capitalist class. For these people to throw out the British they need the assistance of the Indian peasant and the Indian workers because intellectuals, landlords, politicians, writers cannot throw anybody out of anything. For that you need force. That force they do not have.

Force exists either in an organized army or in organised masses. They have no army, Britain sees to that. But if they organize the masses for the purpose of throwing the British out their sources of revenue, their control of labor, the very ground on which they walk, will be broken up under them. It is for this reason that Gandhi and Nehru and all those who support them are continually vacillating between playing at revolution on the one hand, and running to negotiate with the British on the other. They see the misery of the country. They see the economic mess that it is in. They realize quite clearly that something has got to be done. But they can do nothing except play see-saw between the masses on the one side and the British on the other.

Now Churchill and the British government have watched these Indian nationalists carry on in this way for the last twenty to twenty-five years. They are not afraid of them. We do not deny that there are different types of nationalists; on one hand, landlords and money-lenders, who are very satisfied with the British government; on the other, Indian capitalists, who wish to get more opportunity for Indian capital and who are more or less hostile to British capital, and students, intellectuals, etc., who cannot get work to do. We are dealing obviously with a situation that has many more aspects than can even be touched upon in an article of this kind. The basic question, however, is, as we have explained it, the economic situation of the peasantry, on which the whole Indian economy rests.

What is the solution? If you have correctly diagnosed a disease, you are half way on the road to cure. The solution is the destruction of all the burdens that rest upon the peasants. And, with this, the creation of conditions which, will give the Indian proletariat an opportunity to form trade unions and develop itself freely in a nation-wide association of workers who will work and develop themselves in accordance with the possibilities of modern production. But British imperialism in the town as in the country is in a united front with the Indian exploiters to keep the workers down.

If the Indian disease is an economic disease, then the ideas around which the appeal to the peasants and workers should be made must have an economic character. The peasants should be told that their struggle would mean the abolition of debt, the abolition of the landlords and the money-lenders, and the reorganization of agriculture by means of modern technology. The workers must have the eight-hour day, workers’ control of production and the freest democracy.

But only a fool will expect the All-India Congress to agitate on such a basis. The Indian congressmen talk always about nationalism in the abstract and the necessity of throwing out the British but never, never, never do they ever raise on a national scale such slogans or ideas which would mobilize the masses around the things that are really pressing them. If the Indian Congress could do that, or had wanted to do that at any time during the last twenty years, the British would have been out of India already.

Willkie’s Hypocrisy

In the article which will follow this, some attempt will be made to show the possibilities of and the methods by which the economic situation in India can and will be changed. We want here, however, to link the economic situation we have described with the noisy “anti-imperialism” of Willkie.

At the present moment it is an undoubted fact that a substantial proportion of the miserable Indian production goes to Britain as profit and as payment of debts. Some of these debts are absurd to the last degree because every time Britain fought a war to add to the British Empire in India, they put the debt on the Indian budget. Once they entertained a sultan of Turkey or Egypt or somebody like that in London, said that it was for the benefit of India, and added the expenses to the Indian budget.

The British army in India eats up, some people say, 30 per cent of the Indian budget – others say 60 per cent. It is difficult to tell, because Indian investigators say that many expenditures that go for roads, railways, etc., have no relation whatever to the Indian economy or the Indian people, but are built for the sake of the British army and the British administration. These, however, are not placed under military expenditures so as to fool the people. Now, it is certain that if the Indian nationalists could get into power, Britain’s chance of getting interest on these debts would be very, very small. An Indian government would refuse to pay.

But what will happen? The Indian nationalists will make some loans from the United States. But it is impossible for any loans to make any serious change in the Indian economy as long as that basic situation which we have described exists. The result of any such transformation will simply be that what was going to Britain will now go to the U.S. That is all. When Churchill says: “We’ll hold our own,” all he is saying is that if any loot is going to come from India, he will see to it that it goes to London and not to Wall Street.

The basic economic situation will not be solved. Moreover, while there might be a growth in industrialization for a period and to a small degree, the misery of the peasant millions will be intensified to an extraordinary degree.

The only way out of this, and its close connection with the American working class, will be the subject of the next and concluding article in this series.

C.L.R. James (aka, J.R. Johnson): What India Means to the American Working Class--A Brief Outline of Indian Economy, 28 December 1942

From Labor Action, Vol. 6 No. 52, 28 December 1942, p. 3.

Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

Continued from the issue of Dec. 7

It is easy to say that the great majority of the people of India live in poverty and misery. It is easy to say that Gandhi, Nehru and the Indian nationalists whom they represent are treacherous and ready to betray the Cause at any moment. The question is: Why?

Early Indian Economy

Here it is necessary, even though in barest outline, to restate the historical development of capitalist society. Three or four hundred years ago production all over the world was overwhelmingly agricultural. This took various forms. There was serfdom, in which the agricultural producer had certain rights on the land but was compelled to hand over the surplus produce to the landlord, or work for him for nothing. There was peasant production in which the peasant owned the land but paid rent in money. There was also the agricultural commune in which the agricultural producers owned the land in common and divided it up periodically among themselves, but paid taxes in money or in kind to the state or an individual overlord. There was a vast variety and intermingling of these forms – but the basic feature of production was production of AGRICULTURAL products.

Such industrial products as he used, the agricultural producer often made himself. In other areas, the Indian village, for example, one villager would be a smith, another a goldsmith and another a cobbler, all producing for the village as a whole. In a few big towns, production of industrial goods was carried on, but these for the most part occupied a small share of the total economy. The general level of production was very low.

Native Industry Destroyed

Now the distinguishing feature of capitalist production is a tremendous development of machine-made industry, which has grown continually until, today, in advanced countries, people use far more industrial products than they use the direct products of agriculture. This has revolutionized the lives of the large majority of the people. Generation after generation the peasants have been turned from the land and compelled by one means or another to work as wage laborers in factories. As agriculture declined in relation to industry the worker gained a rough compensation for the loss of his capacity to live on the land by the possibility of earning a living in a factory. Furthermore, the development of industrial production meant an increasing number of the products circulating in the community as a whole and, for long periods, a general increase in the possibilities of acquiring more and more of the elements of existence.

The whole secret of India is that only half of this process has taken place, and the worse half. The British went into India. They destroyed Indian industries by the export of British goods. They brought India into the circle of modern countries, which result in enormous taxation upon the country as a whole both for modern armies, modern administration, modern transportation (railways, etc.) and for interest on British loans. These huge expenses in an industrialized country could be paid because of the tremendous development of industrial production. But India, without industrial production, has been compelled to carry these burdens on the basis of a production which is mainly agricultural, and a very backward agriculture at that.

Increased Misery of Masses

Without industry, agriculture is no longer able even to give the peasant a respectable living. His condition gets worse and worse because, as the population grows, the land is less and less able to satisfy even the needs of the peasant’s own subsistence, far less the enormous burden which modern India requires of him. In a short article like this we can only give outstanding examples.

In a village in Poona in 1771, the average holding of the peasant was forty acres. In 1818 it was 17½ acres. In 1915 it was seven acres. Yet modern India needs more from the seven-acre peasant than India in 1771 required from the forty-acre peasant. In Bengal the average holding is about two acres. Between 1921 and 1931 the number of landless laborers increased from 291 per thousand to 407 per thousand. The debts owed by the peasants in 1921 amounted to roughly two billion dollars. By 1931 it was three billion dollars. That is the economic movement in India. Nothing that Churchill, Roosevelt, Gandhi or Nehru can do will stop it.

On. the basis of this misery, this INCREASING poverty, there must develop a small group of land-owners and money-lenders who fatten upon the increasing difficulties of the peasants.

Commenting on this, Engels, Marx’s great collaborator, wrote as follows: “When the time approaches for the taxes to fall due, the usurer appears, the kulak – frequently a rich peasant of the same village – and offers his ready cash. The peasant must have the money at all costs and must accept the conditions of the usurer without demur. In that way he gets into difficulty, needs more and more ready cash. At harvest the grain dealer arrives; the need for money forces the peasant to sell a part of the grain he and his family require for food.”

A process essentially the same takes place in India. It must. On this account there flourishes a substantial number of landlords and rich peasants who not only draw rent but, directly or indirectly, act as money-lenders. These are Indians. They, as well as the British, depend upon the exploitation of the Indian peasant.

In the United Provinces, in one village, out of 27,000 rupees paid in rent and taxes, 17,000 goes to the landlord and 10,000 to the government. It would be, easy to give an overwhelming mass of figures, all showing this relation between the surplus produced by the peasant and division between the Indian landlord, the Indian moneylender and the British government. When the peasant revolts, it is the British government which suppresses him and guarantees the revenue to the Indian exploiters.

Such a situation in the countryside is not only catastrophic in itself but has drastic effects on the industrial development of India. India has undoubtedly, especially within the last few years, been developing industrially. But with such a tremendous reserve army of labor in the countryside to draw from, the Indian capitalist has some of the cheapest labor in the world. A favorite phrase of economists and investigators of Indian capitalism is “the mobility of Indian labor.” All that this means is that the workers work in the factories for a period and when they can’t take it any more they wander back to the country.

One investigator states that the number of people who are unable to earn a livelihood in the villages and can find no employment in the cities is over 100 million! Under these conditions many Indian capitalists find that they do not need to employ the most advanced machinery simply because labor is so cheap that they can still make a profit while using old-fashioned technical methods. In addition they lack a market for goods. Thus the lack of a compensating industry does not only crucify the peasant millions. It is in a thousand ways a drag upon such industry as does exist.

(To be continued next week)

C.L.R. James (aka, J.R. Johnson): What India Means to the American Working Class-- On the Role of the Indian Ruling Class, 14 December 1942

From Labor Action, Vol. 6 No. 50, 14 December 1942, p. 3.

Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

If we want to see how absolutely bound, either to one imperialism or another, a colonial ruling class is, let us first look at Burma:

The administration of U. Saw, the former Burmese Premier, came into office during the days when Britain seemed about to collapse. U. Saw gave splendid support to Britain. But U. Saw naturally wanted as much power as he could get for himself and for those who supported him. Furthermore, the masses of the peasants and workers in Burma, as all over the Far East, have been so exploited by foreign imperialisms that no government could hope to get any sustained effort from them without, at least, promising some sort of independence, some new status after the war. That is the least, but, as India has shown, there are times when a promise will not suffice.

U. Saw went to Churchill and asked only for a promise of Dominion status after the war. U. Saw was willing to cooperate. But Churchill’s reply was, to quote one account, “very blunt.” He told U. Saw to get out. It was only then that U. Saw went to the Japanese, whereupon Churchill put him in jail and everybody called poor U. Saw a fifth columnist. U. Saw’s chief assistant, U. Tin Tut, who was imprisoned with him, has since been released and, it is said, has joined the British Burmese administration in India. Sir Paw Tun, who succeeded U. Saw, praised his work and said that serious unrest had broken out in Burma after U. Saw’s arrest. Yet, when the Japanese came, Sir Paw Tun crossed over into India with the British rulers.

In U. Saw playing see-saw between British imperialism and Japanese imperialism, and the suspicious masses looking hostilely on, you have the perfect picture of the general behavior of any colonial or semi-colonial ruling class. Now that France’s imperial power is broken, you see Darlan, for instance, doing the same between American and German imperialism, keeping a watchful eye on the French workers.

U. Saw See-Saw in India

The Indian ruling groups are in the same situation as the Burmese, but every contradiction and conflict in India is a hundred times as sharp as in Burma.

First, the British have been in Burma less than seventy-five years. They have been robbing India for three hundred. There is no powerful working class in Burma. The Indian proletariat has organized great trade unions and has repeatedly shaken India with great strikes, both economic and political. Burma has only a small history of struggle for independence. The last twenty years in India has been one long struggle of India to free itself from British imperialism. The situation in India is at the breaking point, and has been for years. We must get this very clearly in mind or we shall make mistakes.

We have noted that there is a Prime Minister in Burma. There is a Prime Minister in Egypt and a King and Parliament. There is even an Egyptian army. Some years ago the French government was able to come to some sort of pseudo-independence arrangement with the ruling groups in Syria. But the situation in India is such that the British cannot afford to do even that. They have tried for years to construct some sort of formula for Indian government whereby they would retain the power while giving titles, position and a little more share in the exploitation of the masses to the Indian ruling class. But India has gone far beyond that stage.

Some years ago, during the long and tiresome negotiations over a new constitution for India, the Manchester Guardian gave a perfect picture of the Indian deadlock. This paper, famous for its liberalism, said that what was required was a policy which would look like control in Britain and like freedom in India.

It is this impossible situation which explains the farcical offer of Cripps to the All-India Congress. What Cripps offered in essence was this: control by an Indian defense department of public relations, demobilization and post-war reconstruction; a petroleum officer to calculate petroleum for army, navy and air force; control of amenities for welfare of troops (an Indian USO); control of all canteen organizations, technical educational institutions, stationery, printing of forms for the army; reception and accommodation, and social arrangements (dances presumably) for all foreign missions, etc. This was the first installment of the self-government to come after the war. It reads like a joke. It was not. What else could the British offer at that time?

Such is the tension in India, such has it been for twenty years, that if an Indian government took charge of India today, during a war, after a few months it would have the British government at its mercy. War administration means power over taxation, over prices; it means power over industry, huge contracts, building new factories; it means control over propaganda, recruiting of Hindu regiments, appointment of Hindu officers, all sorts of emergency powers over property and people.

Gandhi and Nehru are weak, but they are not fools. Such power, which always grows in a war, would give them just that force which they need to make them a real factor in India. In any dispute they would lean back on Roosevelt, the dominant power in the United Nations. This was suitable to Roosevelt and American imperialism. At the end of the war, if victory was won, an Indian government would be firmly in the saddle. American imperialism would act as its god-father; it would have great prestige for having “won” independence. And Britain would have won the war and lost everything.

In fact, it is not too much to say that British imperialism might have offered a little more if it were not for the fact that anything like a reasonable offer was playing into the hands of American imperialism. These imperialists understand one another very well.

It was under those conditions that the Indian capitalists, bitterly disappointed, played their last card. They declared for civil disobedience. That this was meant only as a threat is shown by the fact that they organized nothing, had no economic demands which would appeal to the masses, and are begging to negotiate today. But the masses went much farther than they expected. Their disobedience was uncivil to the last degree. They rioted continuously. They showed what they might do tomorrow. It is this new force on the scene, what it has done, and what it might do, which has shown up the situation in the Far East for the dynamite that it is.

Roosevelt got seriously alarmed. So did Chiang Kai-shek. But Prime Minister Churchill has grown stiffer and stiffer. If more proof were needed of the pressure that is being brought to bear on him, it can be seen in his latest manifesto at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, flung in the teeth of everybody:

“Let me, however, make this clear, in case there should be any mistake about it in any quarter. [Note that “in any quarter.”] We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside at the liquidation of the British Empire. For that task, if ever it were prescribed, someone else would have to be found and under a democracy I suppose the nation would have to be consulted.”

What this means is clear: he will resign first. He will call for a general election. As far as he and the Conservative Party are concerned, they will subordinate the national unity and the unity of the United Nations to this question. The workers should remember this when they are called upon to sacrifice everything for the war.

Of course, Churchill MAY do something. It will be boosted in the press. The Indian politicians may decide to make the best of it. Weak as they are they can only beg and threaten. But, from Churchill, the one thing they will not get is POWER. And yet, to give them some sort of power to hold the Indian masses in check is an imperative necessity in the Far East today.

Future in the Far East

The future in the Far East is, first, a military question. In a war, it is what armies do that counts. But it is far more than that. If there is anything that this war, a supreme crisis of capitalist society, has taught us so far, it is to avoid routine thinking. Of the dangers of this, the recent history of France is a notable example. In such a crisis as the present one, it is the apparently unexpected, the gigantic unpredictable, that becomes the normal, and increasingly so as the war goes on and the strains tighten. It is in these times that the writing and predictions and analyses of the great Marxists, which seem so far-fetched in normal times, become of great importance for us, not to repeat them, but to study and apply them.

The greatest in our time was Lenin, who studied the Far East closely. Just before he ceased work in 1923 he summed up his views. Soviet Russia, he said, was weak and poor and could not last long without help. That help would most likely come by means of a tremendous revolution in the Far East, embracing hundreds of millions of people, who with the Russians formed the majority of the world’s population. He meant, it would seem, that the general situation of the masses in the Far East was so bad, their exploitation was increasing at such a rate, that this revolution was imminent. If it succeeded in one place it would spread. And this would cripple and ruin the more powerful Western capitalist states to such a degree as to throw them into disorder and precipitate the world-wide downfall of imperialism.

Note that Lenin, however, was not mainly concerned with people like Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and Chiang Kai-shek. He wrote of the MASS REVOLUTION, of workers and peasants.

Twenty years have passed. Russia, instead of helping the revolution in tie Far East, is today a counter-revolutionary force. A great revolution in China fifteen years ago was defeated. Yet in the view of this writer, the outstanding political feature of the war so far has been the way the masses in the Far East have pushed themselves forward to the very center of the political stage:

As the imperialist armies shock one another and the warring powers exhaust and demoralize the peoples of the world, the initiative will pass to these hundreds of millions. The full power may be delayed until after the war. We cannot predict how, when, or where. But today every calculation as to what may come out of this war must give their Far Eastern revolution a high rating.

Roosevelt, Willkie, Chiang Kai-shek, Gandhi, Nehru, the leaders of the former Dutch Empire, are all acutely aware of what is brewing, and the blows the Japanese armies have administered are made ten times worse by the obvious determination of the Axis leaders to use this enormous revolutionary power if they can.

It is this which gives importance to the Indian Congress. What Roosevelt hopes to do is to use the Indian ruling class to check this pent-up torrent. Chiang too wants exactly that solution. He cares nothing about Britain, but much for his own hide. There is already a pro-Japanese puppet administration in China under Wang Chin-Wei. There are pro-Japanese elements im Chiang’s “Free” China. As British “obstinacy” continues to imperil the whole United Nations cause in the Far East, these pro-Japanese elements obviously are strengthened in their view that it would be better to cooperate with Japan. If there is any catastrophe, military or political, Chiang and his supporters, wife, sisters and all, face extinction because the Japanese would not want to come to terms with Chiang. Nehru and the rest will probably be thrown out also as the Japanese already have their “Free” India government.

All groups are aware of the misery of the Chinese and Indian peasants and workers, they know the terrible strain of the war, they know their own economic weakness which makes them dependent either on the economic and political power of United Nations imperialism or the power of the Axis. Yet Britain offers nothing.

Churchill’s defiant speeches frighten Roosevelt, Gandhi and Chiang. They know that one powerful blow by the Japanese armies, or one powerful blow by the Indian masses, or a combination of both, may well set pro-Japanese and pro-American ruling groups fighting with each other in India and bring onto the stage the revolutionary masses, thus precipitating a bloody chaos of which no man can foresee the end. And these colonial countries in the Far East are infinitely more unstable today than was Czarist Russia in 1914.

The thing for the imperialists to do is to use the Indian capitalists to keep India quiet. Even when America is ready for Japan, it will be far easier and cheaper to control India by means of the Indian capitalists. Roosevelt and Willkie are striving with might and main to keep the name of American imperialism “right” with the Oriental masses. A British newspaper reports that it was Roosevelt who forced the unwilling British to join with him in giving up that monstrous system of privileges in China known as extra-territorial rights. Roosevelt (and all the American press behind him) is working hard to force Britain to some sort of accommodation with the Indian capitalists. The Chinese press clamors for it. But Churchill knows that every such step means more and more power to America in India. He says: “I will resign first!”

There, for the moment, the situation rests. It is huge, complicated with all sorts of unknown factors. In addition, the politicians and their press lie so much and are so skillful in confusing the workers, that unless one has a firm grasp of fundamental principles, one is likely to get lost in the mass of day-to-day detail.

And yet the American workers must watch and analyze and think. The war may last years longer and millions of workers will die, as a result of these tricks and maneuvers of the imperialist powers. Least of all must we pay too much attention to those miserable puppets, the leaders of the India Congress, and all these high-sounding speeches. Far more than Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang, they, powerless as they are, live in mortal terror of the mass movement. The only power they will ever have is what the imperialists push into their hands or what the revolting workers force on them. Why this is so we shall see in the next two articles.