The growing interest in socialism continues to provoke attempts to falsify its history. This is the aim behind the New York Times’ publication last week of a column on the pioneering American socialist, Eugene V. Debs. Written by Hamilton College professor Maurice Isserman, the article presents Debs as a tragic figure who attempted to create a distinctly “American socialism” only to see it fail.
Debs’s fervent insistence on the centrality of working class revolution, which dominated his writings and speeches, is overlooked entirely. Isserman makes no mention of the Russian Revolution, though Debs enthusiastically supported it. Indeed, in Isserman’s rendering, Debs was not much of a socialist at all.
Though he admits that Debs “certainly read his Marx and Engels,” and that he never joined a church and professed no religious faith, Isserman nonetheless argues that Debs really stood in the tradition of “Protestant radicalism,” tracing this pedigree back to religious dissent in “the founding days of Massachusetts Bay Colony.” After religious influences, Isserman gives pride of place in Debs’s political worldview to the concept of “citizenship,” writing that Debs “spoke American, not Marxist.”
To Isserman, Debs was, in sum, a moral crusader unwittingly mobilized (“whether consciously or not”) by religious and patriotic concepts. All Debs really wished for, according to Isserman, was “another, more equitable America.” This portrayal serves a definite political purpose, revealed by Isserman in the column’s last sentence. What is needed today, he argues, is a form of American radicalism that joins “the redemptive promise of moral protest and the practical achievements of political action. …” One suspects the professor may have in mind Bernie Sanders.
Debs would be horrified. He spent his entire 25-year career as a socialist fighting against—albeit within the straitjacket of the “all inclusive” American Socialist Party—just such anodyne politics and those “experts” and intellectuals who, like Isserman, espoused them.
In his attempt to discover “the real Debs,” Isserman is compelled to overlook what Debs himself said and wrote. In answer, it is worthwhile to let Debs speak for himself. In countless speeches and hundreds of articles, Debs railed relentlessly against capitalism and capitalist exploitation in the most searing language.
He could not have been much clearer. “The Socialist Party is not a reform party!” Debs thundered in a speech to miners in 1902. “It proposes to abolish the capitalist system to transfer from private hands all the means of production and distribution and turn them over to the people in their collective capacity.”
In his several runs for the presidency, Debs always “campaigned on a program of straight class-struggle socialism,” in the words of James P. Cannon. Debs traveled the country demanding the expropriation of the capitalist and the liberation of the “wage slaves.” With such slogans Debs won 6 percent of the vote in the 1912 election. An equivalent outcome in the last presidential election would have meant some 8 million votes.
But Debs viewed elections only as a means of political education. “Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal,” he said. “Of far greater importance than increasing the vote of the Socialist party is the economic organization of the working class. … Socialism must be organized, drilled, equipped and the place to begin is in the industries where the workers are employed.”
The overriding aim of Debs’s political activity was to wrest workers away from the Democratic Party. “This world only respects as it is compelled to respect, and if you working men want to be respected you have got to begin by respecting yourselves,” he told striking workers in Philadelphia in 1908. “Get out of the capitalist parties. You do not belong there.”
If you're looking to read more on Debs, I would recommend Marguerite Young's Harp Song For A Radical which is one of my favorite books of all time.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Tuesday:
Tuesday, April 30, 2019. Joe Biden's not building support and the Yazidi leadership is giving all Yazidis a very bad name.
In the US, the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues. No Momentum Biden continues to be defined by his past actions. Why? Because Joe offers no future. He is the past.
In the US, the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues. No Momentum Biden continues to be defined by his past actions. Why? Because Joe offers no future. He is the past.
"I helped lead the fight against NAFTA; [Vice President Biden] voted for it. I helped lead the fight against PNTR with China; he voted for it. I strongly opposed the TPP; he supported it. I voted against the war in Iraq; he voted for it," @BernieSanders.
A voting record is a voting record:
“I strongly opposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership; [Vice President Biden] supported it.
I voted against the war in Iraq; he voted for it." – @SenSanders
Joe is the man who chaired the Hill-Thomas hearing and he's the man who smeared Anita as a "liar" (see the late Senator Arlen Spector's 2000 memoir PASSION FOR THE TRUTH. He can't apologize to Anita Hill to this day. In fact, it was only this month that he bothered to call her in what can best be described as a "We good, right?" phone call. No, Joe, you aren't good. You owe Anita Hill an apology. The women of THE VIEW made that clear at the end of last week but even in a friendly and encouraging format, Joe couldn't apologize.
If he hadn't decided to run, he obviously would never have called Anita Hill -- that's all you need to know on that. He was fine without apologizing or making amends. But when he decided he was running, it was reach out to Anita time and hope Anita would fall in line for The Great White Male, right? Hope, she'd just go along with whatever Joe wanted.
That's not how it works. His inability to apologize and his inability to take accountability for his actions demonstrate that he is not fit to be president. He voted for the Iraq War yet insists he has no regrets. He gives Bully Boy Bush a medal and raves over him in a public speech. And this is who will save the country?
Obama picked Biden specifically to pander to moderate Republicans. The fact that he is being rolled out to lead us through a slow, painful repeat of 2016 is incomprehensible to me. They don’t even have to try when Americans are this deeply brainwashed
"We don't need someone who voted for the Iraq War, for mass incarceration, and for the Bankruptcy Reform Act while voting against gay marriage, reproductive rights, and school desegregation," -@alexandrasiera
Biden voted for Bush's Iraq War, to gut welfare, to deregulate Wall Street, to ban 'partial-birth' abortion, doesn't support Net Neutrality, supports the failed drug war, silenced Anita Hill, and even wrote horrible 1994 Crime Bill
msnbc.com/msnbc/joe-bide… #Biden2020
“I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again,” Biden said in August 2003.
In other news, ALJAZEERA reports:
Children born to Yazidi women raped by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) fighters will not be permitted to join the community in northern Iraq, the minority sect's faith leaders have said.
In a statement late on Saturday, the Yazidi Supreme
Spiritual Council said an earlier declaration stating "all survivors"
of ISIL crimes and their children would be accepted in the community did
not, as widely interpreted, "include children born of rape, but
[instead] refers to children born of two Yazidi parents".
The Yazidis. It's hard to feel sorry for them with their war hungry leaders who aligned with the neocons in DC. It's hard to feel sympathy for them when they are led by repugnant people who attack innocent children.
For those who've forgotten, the group labeled as "devil worshipers" by the international press throughout the first decade of the Iraq War suddenly got a rehab when they merged with the neocons to implore that more US troops be sent into Iraq. Apparently, their religion renders them ineffective in battle so they needed others to fight for them. For reasons they might want to address, the Iraqi military didn't feel the need to help them. The Kurdish peshmerga did and their thanks for that help was to be endlessly attacked by Yazidi leaders.
In the end, the Yazidi leadership just can't seem to get along with anyone.
Now they're saying that children should be discarded. MANORAMAOLINE explains, "Those who had children with IS fighters faced a difficult choice: either remain ex-communicated from their Yazidi relatives, or leave the children behind. Dozens who returned to the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar in northwest Iraq in recent months chose the latter."
Wow.
What a religion.
Stay away or abandon your child.
What a religion.
I think the world needs to register this. I think the world needs to grasp that the official Yazidi position is that children should be abandoned -- even infants.
And the world should grasp that and remember it so that the next time the Yazidis -- in all their pathetic splendor -- are unable to fight for themselves and are whining that they need help? Don't pick up the phone. Just let it ring.
People who scapegoat innocent children are not people you want as allies.
Their leadership is war like and demands one war after another. They've made known that the US should remain in Syria. I'm sorry, who asked them? If they think fighters need to be in Syria, why don't they take their delicate little asses over their themselves. They're so very good, the Yazidi leadership, at insisting others fight.
It's past time that the rank and file Yazidis either reject their leadership or accept that they're telling the world that they're okay with this.
What is being done here is appalling. It's truly an indecency. It's also how hate is bred and it is how never-ending wars are launched. These children will grow up feeling scapegoated and attacked and persecuted. It is perfectly natural that they will want to respond as adults. What kind of an idiot, what grown adult, sets that in motion?
It's the 21st century, unless you're a Yazidi leader. In which case, it's the Dark Ages.
The Yazidis begged for the world's mercy but they have no mercy for children? They have no compassion for the young mothers? If that's the message they want to send the world, they better grasp that the world is just fine letting the Yazidis isolate themselves through the next crisis and the one after and the one after that and . . . Humanitarian aids is pretty much predicated on the recipient acting like a member of the human race. It's going to be a lot harder next time to gin up support for a group that has forced young mothers to abandon their children.
The Norwegian Refugee Council notes:
“We face a
possible human time-bomb. Allowing these children to have an education,
healthcare, simply the right to exist, is key to ensuring a sustainable
future for them and for the country,” said Jan Egeland, Secretary
General of the Norwegian Refugee Council. “A society cannot be at peace
if it allows a generation of stateless children in its midst.”
The report ‘Barriers from Birth’ found that children born under IS rule were issued birth certificates by the group that are considered invalid in the eyes of the Iraqi government. Others lost their documentation as they fled. Without a valid birth certificate, one health official reported that newborns are unable to receive vaccinations in some areas, raising fears of new diseases. Children’s enrolment in Iraqi schools also requires ID. Sitting exams or obtaining graduation certificates is often not allowed without civil documentation. As they reach adulthood, these children risk being denied state recognized marriages, owning property or even being formally employed.
The chance of obtaining civil documentation is nearly impossible for children from families accused of IS affiliation, resulting in the collective punishment of thousands of innocent children.
“Children are not responsible for crimes committed by their relatives, yet many are denied their basic rights as Iraqi citizens,” said Egeland.
The number of undocumented children will increase significantly in the coming weeks with the expected return of more than 30,000 Iraqis from Syria, 90 per cent of whom are wives and children with suspected ties to IS militants.
As the Iraqi government and the international community continue to invest in restoring public services and institutions, it is critical to ensure communities most affected by the conflict with IS — many of whom are children — have the documents required to benefit from these services. This will guarantee Iraq’s road to recovery and reconstruction.
“Undocumented children risk remaining left on the margins of society if this issue is not addressed immediately. This seriously undermines future prospects of reconciliation efforts,” Egeland added. “We urge the government to ensure that undocumented children have the right to exist like any other Iraqi citizen.”
The report ‘Barriers from Birth’ found that children born under IS rule were issued birth certificates by the group that are considered invalid in the eyes of the Iraqi government. Others lost their documentation as they fled. Without a valid birth certificate, one health official reported that newborns are unable to receive vaccinations in some areas, raising fears of new diseases. Children’s enrolment in Iraqi schools also requires ID. Sitting exams or obtaining graduation certificates is often not allowed without civil documentation. As they reach adulthood, these children risk being denied state recognized marriages, owning property or even being formally employed.
The chance of obtaining civil documentation is nearly impossible for children from families accused of IS affiliation, resulting in the collective punishment of thousands of innocent children.
“Children are not responsible for crimes committed by their relatives, yet many are denied their basic rights as Iraqi citizens,” said Egeland.
The number of undocumented children will increase significantly in the coming weeks with the expected return of more than 30,000 Iraqis from Syria, 90 per cent of whom are wives and children with suspected ties to IS militants.
As the Iraqi government and the international community continue to invest in restoring public services and institutions, it is critical to ensure communities most affected by the conflict with IS — many of whom are children — have the documents required to benefit from these services. This will guarantee Iraq’s road to recovery and reconstruction.
“Undocumented children risk remaining left on the margins of society if this issue is not addressed immediately. This seriously undermines future prospects of reconciliation efforts,” Egeland added. “We urge the government to ensure that undocumented children have the right to exist like any other Iraqi citizen.”
Read more at: https://english.manoramaonline.com/news/world/2019/04/30/yazidi-council-disowns-children-of-women-taken-as-sex-slaves-by-is-men.html
The following sites updated:
