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Category Archives: History

American Assassination History: Fred Hampton (1948-1969)

04 Fri Dec 2020

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Civic Engagement (Activism), First Amendment (U.S. Constitution), Freedom of Speech, History, U.S. History: 20th Century

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Black Panther Party, COINTELPRO, Dr. Peter Dale Scott (b. 1929), Fred Hampton (1948-1969), Jacobin Magazine, racial residential segregation, yellow journalism, Zinn Education Project

Fred_Hampton.jpg (220×265)

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Today in U.S. assassination history…  If the exact date isn’t seared into your memory, December 4th, then perhaps the image of Fred Hampton’s bloodied mattress or his bloodied, lifeless body is. The TV news, radio, and newspapers of the day reported back in December of ’69 that Fred Hampton, the Chair of the Chicago Chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, was assassinated during a night raid by cops, in ‘an intense shootout’. 

One of the effects upon the American consciousness of the yellow journalism involving the assassination of Fred Hampton, specifically, and the Black Panther Party, generally, was to create a false image of the Panthers as a violent organization, when the historical record reveals, basically, a peaceful neighborhood watch group, which developed free breakfast programs for underserved communities among other social welfare policies.  The Black Panther Party (BPP) had been gaining national political traction when Fred Hampton was assassinated.  Most importantly, the BPP had dared to call out what they saw as bullshit in the plainest terms of any of their contemporaries.  And the BPP also dared to practice their Constitutional rights to observe, monitor, and document police and state practices in black, brown, and poor communities.  It is well-documented that those police practices, which the BPP insisted on monitoring and holding accountable, had been historically abusive toward black, brown, and poor people, especially by enforcing the de facto apartheid state in America’s major cities, such as Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and Kansas City. 

Racial residential segregation, racism in real estate policies, redlining, and other economic assaults against black and brown people were further enforced on the streets by police, for example, keeping blacks east of the so-called “Troost Wall”, east of Troost Avenue, in Kansas City, Missouri.  Similarly, in Los Angeles, blacks were confined primarily to South Central Los Angeles; and browns were confined primarily to East Los Angeles.  When people of color stepped out of line, for example, by daring to venture out into predominantly white neighborhoods, cops were ready to engage in fascist policing in order to put them back in their place.  Even anti-miscegenation laws served to enforce the de facto American apartheid state. 

This canary-in-the-gold-mine preview of American fascism experienced by indigenous Americans, by black and brown people, by non-white immigrants, is why people of color are often ahead of the curve in recognizing the failure of the American ship of state, as Chris Hedges (i.e., “Politics of Despair”), and others readily acknowledge today.  The people, who have experienced a state’s abuse of power first are also usually the first to recognize when they’re living in a failed state, or a failed democracy.

It was not the Black Panthers, who were violent.  They simply practiced their First and Second Amendment rights, among other rights, and taught many other Americans to do the same, at a time when our nation was filled with a repressed and/or oppressed citizenry, who had been quiet, but was now ready to speak out.  People, like Fred Hampton, were powerful symbols of that American passion to speak out about the antidemocratic and fascist forces lurking in the halls of justice with the Red Scares, McCarthyism, U.S. imperialism and war profiteering, Jim Crow, de facto apartheid segregation, police abuses, and other ongoing examples of state abuse of power.

Fred Hampton’s leadership of the Black Panther Party, as a charismatic American patriot, was precisely the type of voice America needed to defend democracy, but to which the state was mortally opposed.  Or, more precisely, it was the “American deep state”, what Dr. Peter Dale Scott describes as an ongoing political culture and confluence of corporatist, capitalist, and militarist interests, which are advanced and guarded by authoritarian, right-wing intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, and other elites manipulating government.  It was the police, the FBI, and the state, from the outset, who were hostile and violent towards the Black Panther Party, towards the series of protests later known as the Civil Rights Movement, and towards any political agency presented by people of color. 

The American state, with its intelligence apparatus, never wanted the Black Panther Party to gain electoral traction.  That’s why the state surveilled political groups, like the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.  The state was determined to undermine the Black Panther Party at any cost.  By the time, the Black Panther Party had earned national reach, with chapters across the nation, and Fred Hampton began to build the original Rainbow Coalition, which began to unite black, brown, and white people against racism and capitalism across the country, they were poised for meaningful electoral traction.  This evidently posed a threat to the state, as we learned from COINTELPRO documents and books, like The American Deep State by Dr. Peter Dale Scott, Giants: The Global Power Elite by Dr. Peter Phillips, and others.

The common narrative painted in the dominant media at the time suggested a violent, bloody shootout between Chicago cops and Black Panthers. The reality is closer to a premeditated massacre by cops of Black Panther Party members, working class activists resisting racism, police state authoritarianism, and capitalist economic oppression. It turns out, the Chicago Black Panther leaders were completely caught off guard during the predawn raid.  Fred Hampton and his fiancée Deborah Johnson were sleeping at the time.  And, of the nightwatchmen guarding the Hamptons, Black Panther Mark Clark fired only one shot in self-defense. And even that single gunshot blast was likely an accidental shot as Clark fell over after being fatally shot in the heart.

It turns out Fred Hampton didn’t have to die during the predawn raid, despite the nearly hundred shots fired by cops as they stormed the Black Panther Party’s Chicago home, according to attorney Jeffrey Haas, who spoke with Deborah Johnson, Hampton’s then-pregnant fiancée on the morning after the cops’ bloody raid. But, evidently, the state wanted Hampton dead, not alive. Miraculously, Johnson wasn’t shot during the cops’ barrage of bullets, as she lay in bed beside Hampton. When cops found both of them alive in the bedroom, they forced then-pregnant Deborah Johnson out of the bedroom. She then heard two gunshots. Those two gunshots, we now know, were gunshots to Fred Hampton’s head, execution style, as he lay unconscious on the bed, evidently drugged beforehand by a paid FBI informant.

On the evening of December 3, 1969, William O’Neal, who was employed by the FBI to infiltrate the BPP, slipped a powerful sleeping drug into Hampton’s drink then left.  Officers were dispatched to raid his apartment.

National Archives, African American Heritage, Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948-December 4, 1969)

Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, mounting evidence is painting an even grimmer picture than the official narratives usually cited. The killing of Fred Hampton was likely a cold-blooded execution, rather than an unfortunate outcome in a heated gun battle. In his book, An Act of State, attorney and personal friend of Dr. King, William Pepper described how Dr. King was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was still alive. A surgical nurse named Shelby was the last person to see Dr. King alive in his hospital room, before two men in suits entered the room. According to an actual quote from actual deposition statements, sworn under oath, one of the men said, “Stop working on that nigger! Get out and just let him die.” Pepper included deposition transcripts in his book. Granted, Dr. King may have died anyway from his gunshot wounds. But the fact that this evidence was suppressed should be of great concern to all Americans, who remember the assassination of Dr. King and commemorate his legacy.

Similarly, as we learn more about the assassination of Fred Hampton, we learn more about the dangerous and antidemocratic forces, which predominate the American state. One such antidemocratic force was the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO program, which had identified Fred Hampton, as a “radical threat” for effectively organizing black, brown, and white people against racism and capitalism.

In 1990, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed a resolution, introduced by then-Alderman Madeline Haithcock, commemorating December 4, 2004, as “Fred Hampton Day in Chicago”. The resolution read in part: “Fred Hampton, who was only 21 years old, made his mark in Chicago history not so much by his death as by the heroic efforts of his life and by his goals of empowering the most oppressed sector of Chicago’s Black community, bringing people into political life through participation in their own freedom fighting organization. We commemorate December 4, 2004 as “Fred Hampton Day in America”.

Messina

***

ZINN EDUCATION PROJECT—On the morning of December 4, 1969, lawyer Jeffrey Haas received a call from his partner at the People’s Law Office, informing him that early that morning Chicago police had raided the apartment of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago.

Tragically, Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark had both been shot dead, and four other Panthers in the apartment had critical gunshot wounds. Police were uninjured and had fired their guns 90-99 times. In sharp contrast, the Panthers had shot once, from the shotgun held by Mark Clark, which had most likely been fired after Clark had been fatally shot in the heart and was falling to the ground.

Haas went straight to the police station to speak with Hampton’s fiancée, Deborah Johnson, who was then eight months pregnant with Hampton’s son. She had been sleeping in bed next to Hampton when the police attacked and began shooting into the apartment and towards the bedroom where they were sleeping. Miraculously, Johnson had not been shot, but her account given to Haas was chilling. Throughout the assault Hampton had remained unconscious (strong evidence emerged later that a paid FBI informant had given Hampton a sedative that prevented him from waking up) and after police forced Johnson out of the bedroom, two officers entered the room where Hampton still lay unconscious. Johnson heard one officer ask, “Is he still alive?” After two gunshots were fired inside the room, the other officer said, “He’s good and dead now.”

Jeffrey Haas’ account of this conversation with Johnson jumps right out from the inside cover of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. In this excellent book, Haas gives his personal account of defending the Panther survivors of the December 4 police assault against the criminal charges that were later dropped, and of filing a civil rights lawsuit, Hampton v. Hanrahan, on behalf of the survivors and the families of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton.  [Description from full review by Hans Bennett on TowardsFreedom.com.]

This book of the assassination of a sleeping Fred Hampton by Chicago police working for a mad state’s attorney is more important NOW than it was THEN. It is a revelation of how the powerful of our city use power to keep truth distant. The hard truth is that this is a remarkable work. — Studs Terkel

ISBN: 9781569767092 | Published by Lawrence Hill Books.

Learn more at ZINN EDUCATION PROJECT.

***

film trailer: Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

***

https://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2009/12/4/the_assassination_of_fred_hampton_how/

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Democracy Now!, 4 DEC 2009, featured an interview with Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (2009).

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The Murder of Fred Hampton, posted to YouTube as “Fred Hampton (Documentary)” by TheBlackestPanther, circa 2016

***

THE NATION—[25 DEC 1976] Was Fred Hampton Executed? Seven years after the shootings of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by the Chicago police, a civil suit reveals the sordid details behind the assassination.

In the predawn hours of December 4, 1969, Chicago police, under the direction of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, raided the ramshackle headquarters of the local chapter of the Black Panther Party. When the smoke cleared, Chairman Fred Hampton and party member Mark Clark were dead; four others lay seriously wounded.

Today in Chicago, seven years after the raid, the facts are slowly emerging, as a civil trial crawls through its tenth month. The families of Hampton and Clark, along with the seven who survived the foray, have filed a $47.7 million damage suit. Edward Hanrahan, three former and present FBI agents, an ex-FBI informant, and twenty-six other police personnel stand accused of having conspired to violate the civil rights of the Panthers, and then of covering it up. In essence, the plaintiffs and their lawyers are out to prove that the FBI/police conspired to execute Fred Hampton.

At 17, Hampton was a black youth on the road to “making it” in white America. He was graduated from high school in Maywood, Ill, with academic honors, three varsity letters, and a Junior Achievement Award. Four years later he was dead.

— snip —

Learn more at THE NATION.

***

[4 DEC 2020]

[Last modified on 4 JAN 2021 at 08:55 PST]

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Risk (2016) directed by Laura Poitras

02 Mon Oct 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Fascism, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Totalitarianism, Anti-War, Civic Engagement (Activism), Digital Technology, Documentary Film, First Amendment (U.S. Constitution), Free Speech, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, History, Police State, Presidential Election 2016

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Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (b. Bradley Edward Manning 1987), Citizenfour (2014), Dr. Glenn Greenwald (b. 1967), Jeremy Scahill (b. 1974), Julian Assange (b. Julian Paul Hawkins 1971), Laura Poitras (b. 1964)

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—In order to make informed decisions about what positions to take, it is our civic duty as citizens to be informed about what’s going on in our world and its centers of power.  A new documentary film, Risk, directed and produced by award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras is somewhat helpful in that regard.  Poitras is most well-known for directing the 2014 film, Citizenfour, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

In Citizenfour, the whistleblower and protagonist, Edward Snowden was very methodical in his approach to avoiding the trappings, which go along with developing a cult of personality.  Snowden, the whistleblower, made it clear to Poitras, the filmmaker, that he did not want the story she documented to be about him.  Often, important messages are overshadowed by the messenger.  Snowden made it clear to Poitras that the story he was presenting concerned state domestic surveillance and other policies, which harm the interests and Constitutional rights of the American people.  So, not surprisingly, Snowden’s image in the film appeared heroic.  Laura Poitras’ documentary focus was kept on the crimes of state, not any potential moral crimes of the messenger.  His personal character never came under scrutiny.  And Edward Snowden’s heroic portrait was further reinforced by Oliver Stone‘s timely iteration, which featured an ensemble cast starring  Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the title character.

Risk, which is about the WikiLeaks organisation, or rather its founder Julian Assange, on the other hand, is another type of documentary film entirely.  Laura Poitras began filming Risk, initially titled Asylum, before filming Citizenfour.  It seems, perhaps, now that Poitras, having won an Academy Award for Citizenfour and earned a certain level of credibility, or even street cred, with having risked her personal safety and liberty with her involvement with whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations, she returned to her long-running work on her WikiLeaks documentary project with a different attitude.  Here we see Poitras abandon the wide-scope view of social context, which she employed in Citizenfour.  Instead of the wide-scope view to keep the focus on the sociopolitical message not the messenger, Poitras adopted a very narrow focus on Julian Assange, the messenger, rather than the message of the WikiLeaks organisation or its diverse members, or the important function of a publisher such as WikiLeaks.  Perhaps, Assange: A Moral Case Study, might be a more descriptive title for Poitras’ latest documentary film.

In contrast to Citizenfour, Risk tends to put the character of WikiLeaks’ male leaders on trial.  But then, Assange, with his less than charming facets, does seem to invite a form of attention, which Snowden has never done.  And Assange’s associate Jacob Appelbaum didn’t help the image of Assange’s WikiLeaks organisation when he made an inappropriate (or culturally insensitive) analogy between condoms breaking, safe sex, and safe computing at a digital workshop in Tunisia.  And, meanwhile Assange as a public figure and whistleblower is arguably facing much more difficult circumstances than Snowden.  Assange, of course, caught a case of sex crime allegations from two women in Sweden.  So, Assange sought and was granted asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, to avoid extradition to Sweden, which would almost certainly lead to a later extradition to the United States for his work in WikiLeaks.  It’s exceedingly obvious Julian Assange is one of the most wanted people by the USA, the world’s most powerful national government, essentially, for practicing good journalism, for engaging in the only profession protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Poitras was never quite explicit in the film, nor in succeeding interviews and discussions about the film, that Julian Assange is a sex offender.  But at some point in the documentary, Poitras shifts her attention away from WikiLeaks and the broader world of whistleblowers to a microscopic focus on Julian Assange’s personal character.  After a certain point, perhaps after Citizenfour, Poitras began to consistently insinuate and suggest allegations against Julian Assange, which appear to be subtle character assassination.  Or, at the very least, Poitras seems to have taken decisive steps to complete her WikiLeaks project after her success with Citizenfour, in a way, which preserved most of her journalistic integrity whilst distancing herself from Julian Assange, who is still considered an enemy of the U.S. government.  It’s almost as if Poitras simply decided her documentary film would no longer be about WikiLeaks and the broader important sociopolitical issues and, instead, be only about Julian Assange or some alleged culture of male sexual predation within WikiLeaks.  According to WikiLeaks’ attorneys, Poitras’ defied her agreements with Assange and the WikiLeaks organisation by filming people who were not supposed to be filmed and by taking footage out of context.  Also, according to Poitras herself, Poitras engages in gonzo journalism, or cinéma vérité, by becoming a part of the film.  Poitras has to admit in her film’s narration, that she engaged in a romantic affair with WikiLeaks’ Jacob Appelbaum during the filming of Risk.  At this point, the documentary film seems completely compromised by conflicts of interest.  Eventually, Poitras’ Risk is forced to document the fact that the sexual allegations against Julian Assange were dropped for lack of evidence.  Yet, the legal exoneration of Julian Assange doesn’t alter Poitras’ evident condemnation of him as some sort of male chauvinist, homophobic, anti-feminist pig, or from prioritising the gender issues within WikiLeaks over the larger sociopolitical issues of justice, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the First Amendment, and other human rights.

By 2015, it seemed Laura Poitras, Academy Award in hand, no longer needed WikiLeaks or Julian Assange to further her career as a filmmaker and industry luminary.  (Poitras seems very comfortable now producing less-subversive or less-controversial (or less-radical) short-form human interest story documentaries for Field of Vision, a First Look Media project.  First Look Media is the philanthropic journalism project founded in 2013 by billionaire e-Bay founder Pierre Omidyar with the expert legalistic and journalistic input of Dr. Glen Greenwald.  Omidyar’s First Look Media is “a collaboration with [Dr.] Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras with a promised $250 million in funding from Omidyar, also gave birth to The Intercept, a news organisation for “aggressive and independent adversarial journalism”.)  Apparently, Poitras’ decision (perhaps with collaborator Dr. Glen Greenwald) to publish the Snowden leaks through The Guardian (and later through The Intercept) instead of WikiLeaks, when Poitras had already begun working with Julian Assange on a documentary about WikiLeaks, was also a point of contention between Poitras and Assange.

The great public advocate and political leader Ralph Nader has famously argued that one shouldn’t have to be a saint to be a political leader or a political advocate.  And Ralph Nader has also admitted to avoiding being caught up in sexual allegations and scandals by being very careful about avoiding suspicious propositions from women.  This is why Nader never married; he has pointed out the great strain, which intense political activity can put on a spouse.  We know it’s a great sacrifice people like Ralph Nader make when they dedicate their lives to their careers in public service working to make society better because it often means such people must often live solitary lives.  We now know that famous leaders, such as MLK and JFK, were documented in their extramarital sins by their political opponents as means to undermine their political efforts.  So, if we’re going to charge Julian Assange harshly and call him a sexist or male chauvinist, we must be prepared to do the same for all such beloved leaders.  But, as Ralph Nader can attest, if one wishes to be an effective public advocate or political leader, and if one is male, one must be nothing less than a perfect gentleman at all times or risk being brought down by allegations of moral wrongdoing or scandal.  Shills and political sabotage abound.  If one gets caught slipping, right or wrong, it could mean the end of one’s credibility, political influence, or career.

Whether Risk depicts Julian Assange in a heroic light or in an unflattering light, it is undeniable that his contributions as well as those of the entire WikiLeaks organisation, like the contributions of Edward Snowden, working with filmmaker Laura Poitras and lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald, have benefited the world greatly. [1]  Risk premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.  And it is currently being screened on the Showtime cable television network and various online video streaming services.  Check it out at a friend’s place if, like me, you don’t have an expensive cable subscription.

Messina

 

Risk (2016) directed by Laura Poitras

Risk film-screening Q&A at an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, posted on YouTube on May 9, 2017.  Jeremy Scahill moderated Q&A with Laura Poitras.  [Video begins after about eight minutes of long blank silence, c. 8:00.]

***

“Director Laura Poitras’ falling out with Julian Assange” by Associated Press (AP), posted to YouTube on May 10, 2017.  This is a very brief news clip, 90 seconds long.  But it seems designed to discredit Julian Assange.  Poitras is first quoted saying that she disagrees with some of WikiLeaks’ publications not being “newsworthy” or not being redacted properly.  Then, she is forced to admit that WikiLeaks is a legitimate publisher, which has played a very important role in public understanding of domestic surveillance and its impacts upon freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.  Then, the AP editors cut to a clip from Risk, in which Poitras’ narration laments:  “This is not the film I thought I was making.  I thought I could ignore the contradictions.  I thought they were not part of the story.  I was wrong.  They are becoming the story.”  But Poitras is never explicit about what these “contradictions” are.  But, given the sexual allegations against Assange, Poitras’ insinuations are obvious.  Most of the film operates under this premise of mystery and scandal permeating Assanges’s sex life, even as she documents his legal exoneration.  The AP editors, then cut to Poitras admitting that Assange wanted her to “share some of the documents” with WikiLeaks; but she refused.  Presumably, this is a reference to Poitras deciding not to publish Edward Snowden’s historic disclosures through WikiLeaks.  And this caused a “bit of a falling out” between the two during the filming of Risk, initially titled Asylum.  AP doesn’t give us any more information than these cryptic remarks from Poitras strung together to paint Assange as some sort of villain.  But a closer examination of these events reveals that Poitras actually became a competitor with WikiLeaks, as she angled to promote her own news publication, The Intercept, on which she collaborated with journalists Jeremy Scahill and Dr. Glen Greenwald.

***

“Assange objects to new Wikileaks documentary” by RT UK, posted to YouTube on July 25, 2017.  An attorney for Julian Assange, Melinda Taylor, explained legal objections to Laura Poitras’ film Risk.

***

[1]  As others have pointed out, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, most readers will likely have already heard about the characters featured by documentarian Laura Poitras:  Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning, Edward Snowden, et al.  But if you haven’t, for background starting points, see here and here and here.

Instead of keeping the focus on the political issues, Poitras focused in on the personal contradictions of the embattled WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange.  It turns out, as with other admired historical figures in history, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy, Assange is likely a womanizer and a male chauvinist.  But, whereas admirers of MLK and JFK preferred to keep personal failings in the closet, today’s documentarians, such as Laura Poitras, feel compelled to make the story about the messenger, rather than the message, when they feel personally slighted or offended.

There are many useful film reviews at the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.  Tom Huddleston of Time Out summed up Laura Poitras’ Risk very well, calling it:  “A jaw-dropping profile of one man’s battle with world governments, common decency and his own out-of-control ego.”

***

[2 OCT 2017]

[Last modified at 12:32 PDT on 9 OCT 2017]

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Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International (2017) by Dr. Mark Leier

05 Wed Jul 2017

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Imperialism, Civic Engagement (Activism), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), History, History of Economic Theory, Political Economy, Political Science

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Against the Grain, C.S. Soong, Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International (2017), Dr. Karl Marx (1818-1883), Dr. Mark Leier, KPFA, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876), Pacifica Radio Network, Simon Fraser University (British Columbia), transcript

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—One of the biggest schisms on the left of the political spectrum has manifested itself over the last century or more between two broad groupings—namely, anarchists and socialists.  The anarchists see no validity (moral or otherwise) in the authority of the state form.  Conversely, the socialists have proven to be more optimistic about the possibilities for progressive or radical reforms within the state form.  Dr. Mark Leier, a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has just published a new pamphlet about this long-running division on the left, taking Dr. Karl Marx and Mr. Mikhail Bakunin as figureheads for these two political tendencies on the left.  Indeed, in their time (late 19th century), Marx and Bakunin were (as today) two of the most well-known figures on the left.  And this schism eventually shattered the First International (or the International Workingmen’s Association), the first international attempt to unite the left against capitalist exploitation of the world’s working classes.

On today’s edition of free speech radio’s Against the Grain, host C.S. Soong spoke with Dr. Leier about the new pamphlet entitled “Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International”.  This is a fascinating interview, which provides us with useful background on Marx, Bakunin, the First International, and one of the deepest and most enduring divisions on the left.  Dr. Leier compared and contrasted the two hugely influential leftists.  And, in so doing, Dr. Leier’s research seemed to suggest (reading pending) that the limitations of their respective temperaments definitely hindered their ability (and, by extension, the ability of their respective followings) to unite an effective and sustainable broad-based anti-capitalist left movement resistance.

Messina

***

[Transcript draft by Messina for Against the Grain and Lumpenproletariat.]

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 JUL 2017]  “Today on Against the Grain, the battle waged between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International was, according to historian Mark Leier, some of the nastiest sectarian fighting we have seen on the left.  I’m C.S.

“Mark Leier discusses the lives and ideas of Marx and Bakunin, and argues that the two men had more similarities than is commonly believed—coming right up.”

[Against the Grain theme music continues]

“And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.  I’m C.S. Soong.

“Two leading radicals—Karl Marx and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin—famously clashed in the 1860s.  They bickered and fought and heaped invective on each other.  And, as a consequence, the International Workingmen’s Association, known as the First International, split in two in 1872.  Hostility and tension between socialists and anarchists continue to this day.  And Mark Leier, for one, wonders whether it could have been different.  (c. 1:36)

“Leier a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University has compared the background and ideas of Marx and Bakunin and has found many similarities, similarities ignored by or unknown to many who’ve written about or analysed the momentous breakup of the First International.  Leier has also analysed the temperaments of these two men for clues into why they disliked and distrusted each other so much.  Leier, who wrote a biography called Bakunin: The Creative Passion, has come out with a new pamphlet about Marx and Bakunin.  The pamphlet’s title is ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International’.

“When Mark Leier joined me from British Columbia, I asked him what the First International was.”  (c. 2:23)

DR. MARK LEIER:  “The First International was an attempt of a number of left-wing and communist and working class and anarchist political groups to come together to create the organisation, that would help workers across the world build a new kind of solidarity.  It was started in 1864.  And its first meeting was in London.  And its first congress, although they had delegates mostly in Europe, it was helped a year later in Geneva.”

C.S. SOONG:  “And what were the roles of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International?”

DR. MARK LEIER:  “The two organisers and radicals represented different wings and different ideas about how the socialist revolution was going to come about.  I think the differences have really been overstated.

“But what we see in the First International is a deep feud between Bakunin and his followers ,and the Proudhon followers that were allied with him with a small group of Marxists in there.  (3:37)

“And they used—as anyone, who’s been at a co-op meeting or a left-wing meeting or a [] council meeting or a departmental meeting of some kind knows how these things can develop.  And they can become very nasty long after everyone has forgotten what the original battles were all about.

“So, one of the things, that happened was the two different sides used some small differences on small matters to become trigger points to engage in a kind of schismatic in-fighting.”  (c. 4:04)

C.S. SOONG:  “And this in-fighting climaxed with a final split between the two men, between their two factions at the Hague Congress of the First International in 1872.  Tell us what happened there.”

DR. MARK LEIER:  “Yeah.  You know; again, it was very typical of the kinds of things.  But, basically, two sides lined up and held various votes on matters.  And voting goes back and forth.  And, finally, however, Marx and his allies win a couple of crucial votes.  And they use that as a way to kick out Bakunin and the Bakuninists.

“And they, then, moved the International’s headquarters to New York City, so virtually nobody could get to the next congress.  And the whole thing pretty much wraps up by 1876.

“So, the bitter irony for the left is this attempt to forge a new solidarity, greater unity dissolves into factional fights, into fueding.  One side takes its marbles and goes home.

“The anarchists do create another International shortly after that, which continues for some years.  And, of course, in the 1880s there was a revival of something called the Second International, which was very much an International of the social democratic party.  It does not have the same broad range of left-wing members and ideas in it.”  (c. 5:37)

C.S. SOONG:  “So, in this pamphlet you have written for PM Press—it’s called ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the International’—you actually go back in time.  You look at the upbringings and the years of youth and young adulthood of, both, Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, Michael Bakunin.  And it’s very revealing.  And it tells me, at least, as one reader of the pamphlet, a lot about who these men were, where they came from, and how, in some ways, similar they were.  And that’s part of your point—isn’t it?—that these two men were more similar than one might think based on everything we’ve heard about the antagonism between them.  (c. 6:27)

“So, let’s start with Bakunin.  You write that Bakunin’s family was part of the Russian nobility.  Does that mean, Mark, that his family was rich, was part of the idle rich?”

DR. MARK LEIER:  “No, it doesn’t.  One of the things, that’s happened in this long feud between anarchists and Marxists between 1864 and the present is that both sides are quick to point out the other as being absolutely unrepresentative of any kind of working class or real left wing movement by saying, in this case, that Bakunin was not a worker, but was an aristocrat.  And it is true.  But his family was not in the circles of the czar.  His estate was pretty far from Moscow and from St. Petersburg.  And it did not mean what we tend to think of when we think of aristocrats.  You know; we think of Queen Victoria, when we think of the czar.  That’s not what life was like.

“The family did control the lives of about two thousand serfs.  But that did not confer huge wealth.  This was a family, that had more many than peasants—absolutely—but had to pay strict attention to housekeeping, had to pay strict attention to the books in order to keep going.  When you look at the letters from Bakunin’s father, it’s filled with—you know; we’re not sure if we’re gonna make it this month. We’re really having a difficult time making ends meet.  It did mean that they had the luxury of educating the children.  And, so, Michael and his sisters and his brothers got a very good education by tutors, that were brought into the home.  They were given the training appropriate for gentlemen and ladies.  But it was a training, that was very much instrumental in the sense that you prepare the men to step into careers in the army or as professionals or, perhaps, as people able to manage the estate and to provide the sisters of Michael Bakunin with the graces and skills and personal characteristics, that would allow them to make good marriages.  (c. 8:38)

“This is not a family rolling in wealth, although it was certainly enough to send Bakunin off to school where he went to a military academy and took up service in the czar’s army.  But he was not one of the idle rich in that sense.”  (c. 8:54)

C.S. SOONG:  “So, what about Karl Marx’s parents?  Obviously, he grew up in Germany, not in Russia.  Where did his parents fall within the ranks of German society?  And how important was education in Marx’s family, you know, when he was a kid?”

DR. MARK LEIER:  “Marx’s family was very similar to Bakunin’s.  They were not aristocrats.  But his father was a lawyer.  He had vineyards, that he ran.  So, he had enough wealth to educate the children, enough social status, that Marx’s father would meet with local politicians and had some interest and some political sway, as did Bakunin’s father, but not enough to guarantee careers, not enough to allow them to stop working and simply live off the income produced by workers.  That was not their situation at all.  (c. 9:49)

“What is interesting to me is that both sides have looked at the parents of Bakunin and of Marx to say: We can dismiss either of them, depending on your side, as being petit bourgeois elements.  That cuts both ways.  And it is easy for both sides to overestimate the class position of Bakunin and Marx.  So, I wanted to pay attention to that to say that they were not unlike rebels, that we see all over the place.  If you look at the make up, for example, of the Students for a Democratic Society [SDS], in their very title, they were students.  They had some access to education.  The Weather Underground, very similar.  It’s not true of all organisations, of course.  But it’s not a surprise that many people of the left had, at least, some exposure to education.  It’s pretty difficult to work all day and, then, go home and become an expert in all the arcane matters of the political economy, that we need to think about on the left.”  (c. 10:51)

C.S. SOONG:  “Mark Leier is his name.  He is a Professor in this History Department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.  And he’s author of ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International’.  And he’s also the author of a biography of Bakunin, Michael Bakunin.  I’m C.S. [Soong].  And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.

“So, Bakunin, like Marx, was the oldest of the male children in his family.  And you said that he was sent to a—or he went to a military academy.  So, I understand that demands were placed on young Michael.  But he would develop into some type of military officer.  How did he do in school at that academy?”

DR. MARK LEIER:  “Well, he was not a great student.  His passion for rebellion surfaced early, though not in episodes of organising resistance among his fellow cadets, but in that kind of passive-aggressive behaviour, that is often how people, who don’t have much power, respond.  He was, like many students, slow at turning in his assignments.  He didn’t do very well on many of his exams.  He was considered to be very bright.  And, if only he would apply himself, the theory went, he would do very well at that.

“The point of going to military academy was not just to become a soldier, but enlist in the army, with any luck, to have a good war, if such a thing is possible.  And it certainly was for officers; it meant escaping and acquitting yourself with some honour, so that you would be rewarded by the system for playing that important role in it.  (c. 12:40)

“So, the idea was not to become a career officer, but to be exposed to the circles of power through your service and in that way, actually, add to the family income.  But it didn’t work out.

“He did some military service, but finally just went AWOL.  He just left.  And his family, later, then, had to scramble and say: Well, he was sick. He wasn’t well. That’s why he’s here. He had something of a breakdown.  That wasn’t the case.  He was sick to death of the military life, sick to death of the discipline, the pettiness of it.  In that sense, we can look to some of his personality, leading to his ideas about anarchism, about freedom, and the lack of discipline imposed imposed from above.”

C.S. SOONG:  “And Marx, as I understand, he was expected, or at least his parents hoped that he would engage in the study of law.  He went to the University of Bonn in Germany, where he studied law.  How did that go?”  (c. 13:42)

DR. MARK LEIER:  “Not so well.  He was more interested in writing poetry and in drinking an in dueling.  You know?  It’s the 19th century equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.  And so was Bakunin, of course.

“Both of them—lots of their early correspondence, letters back home saying: Trying really hard. Working really hard. I could just do better if you send me more money.”

C.S. SOONG:  “[chuckles]”

DR. MARK LEIER:  “It didn’t fool anybody.  Both fathers respond: We sent you a pile of money. Most people could live for a year or two. You seem to have burned through it all for months. Maybe you should apply yourself more carefully.

“So, these are some of the parallels, at an early age, between the two men.  And I stress the parallels because our sense of them, based only on the feuds of the First International, is that they must have been so very different.  They must have been very different approaches to political and economic questions.  And they really don’t.  I think they have much more in common, which is not surprising, given they had similar backgrounds.

“And the similarities in their upbringings, in their educations, and in their early moves, first, into Hegelian philosophy, as a way to make sense of the world, and, then, into working class politics and left-wing politics—so very similar, that I had to stop and say: What exactly was the huge difference between them? Why couldn’t they get along? Why couldn’t they become—you know—the hottest duo in the pamphleteering world, ’til, say, Gilbert and Sullivan?”

C.S. SOONG:  “[chuckles]”

DR. MARK LEIER:  “Or some other famous team.  You know?  [chuckles]”

C.S. SOONG:  “G.W.F. Hegel, an immensely influential philosopher, who, as you began to suggest, influenced Bakunin and Marx and so many other people of their generation and subsequent generations.  Which ideas of Hegel’s most appealed to Marx and to Bakunin?”  (c. 15:49)

DR. MARK LEIER:  “Or some other famous team.  You know?  [chuckles]”

C.S. SOONG:  “I think, to both of them, what was so appealing about Hegel is he presented for the first time the idea that change, not stasis and stability, was the human condition.

“If you think about the time, in which Hegel is writing, a time when Europe is changing so drastically, when the economies are in the middle of that shift from hundreds of years of feudalism to this new industrial capitalism that changes everywhere.

“That doesn’t sit very well, if you are a king and want to hold [power] with the divine right of kings, that says: You’re family has been on the throne forever and should be on the throne forever.  So, Hegel, by suggesting it was change, that marked human history opened up a whole new world.

“[snip]

[snip]  (c. 59:59)

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

***

[Image of book cover by source used via fair use rationale for educational purposes.]

[7 JUL 2017]

[Last modified at 14:59 PDT on 15 JUL 2017]

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