What should a Communist in the US have done during WWII?

[Lokomotive293]

The usual thing to do in an Imperialist war is to say


The main enemy is in your own country

and


Turn the Imperialist war into civil war

However, WWII was not a usual Imperialist war, it was a war against fascism. Now, the analysis of fascism is such, that it is a different quality as well as the most reactionary form of bourgeois rule, that therefore it does make a difference wether you live in a bourgeois democracy or a fascist state, and that therefore the strategy to defeat fascism is to immediately ally with whoever you can, up to the parts of the bourgeoisie who are opposed to fascism.

On top of that, in that specific situation, Nazi Germany was also a direct threat to the Soviet Union, which was the greatest achievement of the working class at the time.

So, what SHOULD you have done at the time? Supported the US going to war against Germany? Joined the US military? Or should you have continued to work against the US war effort? Or something else entirely?

[Questionable]

I think the argument that we should join our country when it's fighting fascism is based on a fallacy. America didn't go to war against Nazi Germany because it was the "right thing to do," as they'll tell you, they went to war because Germany and Japan threatened their financial dominance. America and Britain were very willing to throw the USSR under the bus near the beginning of the war. It was only when it started to affect their profits that they began to give a damn. I'd be willing to bet that if Nazi Germany had been content to slaughter minorities and take away individual rights without upsetting the imperialist division of the world, the Nazi regime would still be in power today. Hell, fascism itself is just capitalism in crisis. America itself could have just as easily turned fascist if things had turned out a little bit worse for them, and they even resorted to fascist methods such as the banning of political parties and gathering ethnic groups into concentration camps.

Now that we've established the image of the American bourgeoisie as brave freedom protectors is a lie, let's move onto the question; I would support the war against fascism, but I would recognize that the war against them waged by capitalist nations is just another imperialist war, and wouldn't lead to any liberation of workers anywhere. I would not join the US military. I would probably devote most of my time to insuring that people know what fascism truly is, so that they don't buy into the "benevolent bourgeoisie" image and don't let fascism gain strength in the US.

[Art Vandelay]

However, WWII was not a usual Imperialist war, it was a war against fascism. Now, the analysis of fascism is such, that it is a different quality as well as the most reactionary form of bourgeois rule, that therefore it does make a difference wether you live in a bourgeois democracy or a fascist state, and that therefore the strategy to defeat fascism is to immediately ally with whoever you can, up to the parts of the bourgeoisie who are opposed to fascism.

Ugh no no no, so not only are you a supporter of class collaboration, but you also feel that certain manifestations of capital and quantitatively better than others?


On top of that, in that specific situation, Nazi Germany was also a direct threat to the Soviet Union, which was the greatest achievement of the working class at the time.

The soviet union was simply another twisted form of capitalism by that time, if not full blown state capitalism.


So, what SHOULD you have done at the time? Supported the US going to war against Germany? Joined the US military? Or should you have continued to work against the US war effort? Or something else entirely?

During WWI the bolsheviki agitated and helped spark a revolution. I always wonder why people who takes the words of Lenin so seriously, ignore his actions during the first world war and become cheerleaders for capital in the second.

[wsg1991]

USA refused to allow jewish immigrants to enter the country , and sent them back to Europe , and knew they would be slaughtered by Nazis

[Offbeat]

but you also feel that certain manifestations of capital and quantitatively better than others?

I never understood this, if all forms of capitalism are the same, is social democracy no better than fascism?

[eric922]

Ugh no no no, so not only are you a supporter of class collaboration, but you also feel that certain manifestations of capital and quantitatively better than others?

Certain manifestations are better than others. I would much rather live in a social-democracy than an American style capitalist state, and I would much rather live in America than Nazi Germany. So yes, I do think some forms of capitalism are better than others.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

The Trotskyist position was for military defense of the USSR -- no support to any of the imperialist powers, fascist or not. In the US, the SWP had many leading members thrown in jail for their opposition to the US war machine (see Cannon's Socialism on Trial). The CP was gung ho about the US war effort -- they did not defend the Japanese Americans sent to concentration camps -- and even cheered when the US nuked Japanese civilian centers. For communists, the correct position is against one's own bourgeoisie.

[Lokomotive293]

I never understood this, if all forms of capitalism are the same, is social democracy no better than fascism?

This is indeed a very dangerous analysis, and one of the reasons the Nazis could come to power in Germany. I don't have time for a detailed reply right now, I'll come back later, but I suggest anyone who wants a deeper understanding of what fascism is and how to fight it to read Georgi Dimitrov's analysis.

I also want all of you to note that I was in no way trying to argue that Communists in the US should have joined the US military during WWII, this is an open question, because I really don't know what the correct thing to do would have been.

[Martin Blank]

WWII was not a usual Imperialist war, it was a war against fascism.

The Second Inter-Imperialist War was never a "war against fascism", except in propaganda. Britain and France declared war on Germany because it was swallowing up their client states in Central Europe: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, etc. The USSR entered the war because they were invaded, but for the previous two years they had an agreement with Hitler that even extended to military assistance (if Britain and France had invaded Germany, the USSR agreed to send Red Army units to fight alongside the Wehrmacht.) The U.S. entered the Pacific War because of the expected attacks on its military-colonial holdings, Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, and entered the European War in order to insure that all that lend-lease money they were owed was actually paid back.


(Snip "official Communist" song-and-dance.)

So, what SHOULD you have done at the time? Supported the US going to war against Germany? Joined the US military? Or should you have continued to work against the US war effort? Or something else entirely?

The main enemy was still at home. This was proven in the years following the end of the War: Taft-Hartley, McCarthyism, the blacklists, the purges in the labor movement, etc. The United Nations may have defeated "fascism" in Europe and East Asia, but the American ruling classes let it run loose here for close to two decades after the War.

Communists in the U.S. should have organized cells in as many military units and factories as possible, and used those as a launching pad for mass political action. Moreover, it would have been necessary for communists here to unite with their comrades across Europe and Asia, including those in the Axis states and the USSR, to organize joint action aimed at bringing down all of the regimes and establishing workers' republics.

[Art Vandelay]

I never understood this, if all forms of capitalism are the same, is social democracy no better than fascism?

Not quantitatively. No form of capitalism is acceptable to me.

[jookyle]

Most American communists(especially those of the CPUSA) at the time saw Stalin as a comrade(no one outside of the USSR at the time really knew what was happening) so there would have been no hesitation in supporting the war effort as the USSR was apart of the allied powers and most likely agreed with the popular front tactic.

We can always say in what should have happened in hindsight, but when it was happening, such a perspective was unavailable.

[Hiero]

Not quantitatively. No form of capitalism is acceptable to me.

What do you mean quantitatively? Quantitatively for workers, social democracy is better then say Fascism or neo-liberalism capitalism. Because in terms of quantity, they receive more for their labour through welfare and protection of workers rights. While all these systems at qualitative level, capital and it's working share some similarities, the quality of life is vastily different.

Chances are if you actually do live in Canada and have all your life then you have not experience life during Fascism or laissez faire styled capitalism (in its American or Asian varients), so you have no idea what your talking about. But that is the short commings when look at every detial through a dialectical materialist (albeit, incorrectly in your experience) framework.

You would strangely have that countries where people are jailed or murdered for unionism and left-wing politics, no free education up to the age of 18, expensive and privatised healthcare as the only option etc is some how quantitatively not less or better off then countries which have a legal framework to protect workers movements, free education, public healthcare and employment rights.


We can always say in what should have happened in hindsight, but when it was happening, such a perspective was unavailable.

In hindsight, Communist should still have supported the USSR in the war regardless of Stalinism, while challenging USA's projects in Asia and the Pacific through criticising neo-colonialism. We know now what was happening in NAZI Germany and how the Nazis viewed Slavic people, to some how not want the USSR to win the war because of Stalin would be idiotic and careless.

[Manic Impressive]

Chances are if you actually do live in Canada and have all your life then you have not experience life during Fascism or laissez faire styled capitalism (in its American or Asian varients), so you have no idea what your talking about.
Coming from an Australian. This obviously means that you also have no idea what you are talking about.

Which is fairly obvious from the rest of your post.

[Art Vandelay]

What do you mean quantitatively? Quantitatively for workers, social democracy is better then say Fascism or neo-liberalism capitalism. Because in terms of quantity, they receive more for their labour through welfare and protection of workers rights. While all these systems at qualitative level, capital and it's working share some similarities, the quality of life is vastily different.



Chances are if you actually do live in Canada and have all your life then you have not experience life during Fascism or laissez faire styled capitalism (in its American or Asian varients), so you have no idea what your talking about. But that is the short commings when look at every detial through a dialectical materialist (albeit, incorrectly in your experience) framework.

You would strangely have that countries where people are jailed or murdered for unionism and left-wing politics, no free education up to the age of 18, expensive and privatised healthcare as the only option etc is some how quantitatively not less or better off then countries which have a legal framework to protect workers movements, free education, public healthcare and employment rights.

People always take this argument to the extreme. Of course it would be better to live in a liberal democracy than a fascist state, but that is not the point. What you are arguing for is class collaboration and my opinion on it is not going to change. You know what would have worked stopping fascism? Proletarian revolution; not aligning with bourgeois states so millions of workers can be slaughtered in the interests of capital.

[Blake's Baby]

I never understood this, if all forms of capitalism are the same, is social democracy no better than fascism?

I don't know how someone who calls themself an Anarchist even needs to ask this question.

Capiatlism and the state are capitalism and the state, no matter how smiley a social-democrat is in charge.

It was the German social democrats who gave the orders to the Freikorps in 1918 to murder revolutionary German workers. It was the social democrats who betrayed the working class to become 'recruiting sergeants for capital' in the name of supporting 'their bourgeoisie' during WWI. The crimes of social democracy against the working class are legion. Why would anyone believe that social democracy needed support?

[Questionable]

I think that the difference between forms of capitalism such as fascism or social-democracy is pretty much just the difference between how good or bad business is going at the time. During times of economic prosperity, capitalist governments could afford to give their workers some ground such as higher wages or free healthcare, but take away the good business and these social-democrats of today will be sending in the National Guard to put down strikes tomorrow.

[Blake's Baby]

It's also to some extent a measure of the history of class struggle. Governments don't concede reforms out of generosity when things are going well, they concede them out of fear when they think the working class is getting, errm, 'Bolshy'. When they're sure they can take them away again without provoking social unrest, they do.

I did realise that I didn't answer the original question however.

The attitude of communists to WWII should have been to work against the war effort of all sides, agitate for fraternisation, and pursue the international union of revolutionary forces for the overthrow of all the belligerant countries.

'Turn the imperialist war into a civil war' as someone said.

[Lokomotive293]

I don't know how someone who calls themself an Anarchist even needs to ask this question.

Capiatlism and the state are capitalism and the state, no matter how smiley a social-democrat is in charge.

It was the German social democrats who gave the orders to the Freikorps in 1918 to murder revolutionary German workers. It was the social democrats who betrayed the working class to become 'recruiting sergeants for capital' in the name of supporting 'their bourgeoisie' during WWI. The crimes of social democracy against the working class are legion. Why would anyone believe that social democracy needed support?

While everything you said about the social democrats is true, there is just no comparison to fascism. Fascism is not simply another form of bourgeois rule, it's a new quality of the same, it's, as Dimitrov said, "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital", and it is what the bourgeoisie resorts to only when there is absolutely no other way to ensure its rule.
The first thing fascists always do once they are in power is to completely eliminate the whole working class movement.
It is not a question of wether anyone believes that social democracy needs support, it's a question of wether we need any support we can get against fascism. And we do.

However, my question was a different one. My question was: What do you do if your country, which is an Imperialist nation, is fighting a war against a fascist country, for Imperialist reasons, but against a fascist country nevertheless, and in alliance with the only socialist country on the planet, which is directly threatened by said fascist country?

Edit: I'm sorry, I didn't see your last post.

[Blake's Baby]

I don't believe in 'socialist countries'. My answer in the post above yours stands. 'Turn the imperialist war into a civil war'.

[Hiero]

Coming from an Australian

That is not even a sentence.

What do you mean? Coming from an Australian...?


People always take this argument to the extreme. Of course it would be better to live in a liberal democracy than a fascist state, but that is not the point. What you are arguing for is class collaboration and my opinion on it is not going to change. You know what would have worked stopping fascism? Proletarian revolution; not aligning with bourgeois states so millions of workers can be slaughtered in the interests of capital. You actually took it there with your confusing dialectics and your simple politics. You ended up making no point.

If you can't show that you understand what quantative and qualatative mean in a dialectical sense then don't pretend you do.

My grammar and spelling is poor at times, but neither of you can form a concise argument.

[Deliverous]

It would have only been the strategic option to form a united front against Nazi Germany, assuming you considered the survival of the Soviet Union a progressive option.

[Sea]

That is not even a sentence.

What do you mean? Coming from an Australian...?
Ugh.. I'll humor you.

He means that someone from Australia has no special privilege to call shenanigans on a Canadian's perception of unrubbered capitalism on basis of their location. Then again, by that logic nobody here is authorized to speak poorly of feudalism, slavery, Jack the Ripper or the bubonic plague.

[Blake's Baby]

I think that's Manic's point. If someone from Canada is unqualified to speak about neo-liberalism or fascism, then someone from Australia is no more qualified, and probably not qualified to talk about Canada anyway; and yes, if one has to suffer something to be able to talk about it, then presumably the only people qualified to oppose murder are already dead, etc.

[Hiero]

Ugh.. I'll humor you.

He means that someone from Australia has no special privilege to call shenanigans on a Canadian's perception of unrubbered capitalism on basis of their location. Then again, by that logic nobody here is authorized to speak poorly of feudalism, slavery, Jack the Ripper or the bubonic plague.



I think that's Manic's point. If someone from Canada is unqualified to speak about neo-liberalism or fascism, then someone from Australia is no more qualified, and probably not qualified to talk about Canada anyway; and yes, if one has to suffer something to be able to talk about it, then presumably the only people qualified to oppose murder are already dead, etc.

I never actually said this. 9mm made a confusing post that fascism and Social democracy were not different "Not quantitatively." and that "No form of capitalism is acceptable to me."

Quantity means to me, things that can be counted, measure, units, standards etc. The only measurement of quantitative difference in fascism and social democracy is living standards. Quantitatively they are different, as the living standards in social democratic society are much better then Fascism.



He has made such a fundamental and morally wrong statement, and then I can only put it into context “being from Canada you clearly have never really lived through fascism, so you have no idea what you are talking about." If Canada has had a fascist stage please inform me.


In much the same way if someone from Canada says "Liberia and Canada are basically the same ‘quantitatively“ then an appropriate statement would be "Well living in Canada, you have no idea what life in Liberia is like". When someone is so wrong sometimes it is personal/subjective experience that is the barrier to understand certain things.

[Offbeat]

I don't know how someone who calls themself an Anarchist even needs to ask this question.

Capiatlism and the state are capitalism and the state, no matter how smiley a social-democrat is in charge.

It was the German social democrats who gave the orders to the Freikorps in 1918 to murder revolutionary German workers. It was the social democrats who betrayed the working class to become 'recruiting sergeants for capital' in the name of supporting 'their bourgeoisie' during WWI. The crimes of social democracy against the working class are legion. Why would anyone believe that social democracy needed support?
I never said that social democracy needed support, I was simply challenging the idea that all forms of capitalism are quantitatively no different. How can the crimes of the Weimar social democrats be the same as the crimes of fascism, by definition they are quantitatively very different. Would you rather live in a fascist state or a social democracy? I'd prefer neither, but if it was a case of one or the other then there is no question that any sane person would pick the latter.

[Geiseric]

During WW2 communists in the U.S. Should have defied and fought against the entire war effort, which is a time period when a revolution would have been possible. The no strike pledge supported by the CP USA Stalinists killed the class struggle. Anybody saying fascism and social democracy are the same has no fucking idea what they're saying by the way. I'm not saying "support social dems," but when a united front against capitalism was presented in 1930, the KPD betrayed the entire world when they worked WITH fascists AGAINST social democrat workers who were struggling against fascism in defense of what's been won, who because of the KPD's reformism through the 1920s saw no difference between the two leaderships. This third periodism is a fucking joke, i can't believe that people still take those stances after 1933 and after it's painfully obvious that Nazis are worse than social democrats. The SPD was defending what the working class has won, not "fighting for capitalism."

[wsg1991]

I think that the difference between forms of capitalism such as fascism or social-democracy is pretty much just the difference between how good or bad business is going at the time. During times of economic prosperity, capitalist governments could afford to give their workers some ground such as higher wages or free healthcare, but take away the good business and these social-democrats of today will be sending in the National Guard to put down strikes tomorrow.

this kind of arguments is like workers did not struggle to get that ,

you see capitalists don't simply hand over healthcare ( very profitable business ) , because they can afford it , but because they HAD too duo to an alive working class that forced them to give them something to maintain their rule for a little further

how they get it back ? usually through out disasters , where workers are the most vulnerable

[wsg1991]

Ugh no no no, so not only are you a supporter of class collaboration, but you also feel that certain manifestations of capital and quantitatively better than others?



The soviet union was simply another twisted form of capitalism by that time, if not full blown state capitalism.



During WWI the bolsheviki agitated and helped spark a revolution. I always wonder why people who takes the words of Lenin so seriously, ignore his actions during the first world war and become cheerleaders for capital in the second.

i did read several of your ultra left comments here , like it's some kind f contest who can prove to be more leftist , and usually that lead to the point you cannot present any alternative or solution , or some imaginary Utopian one





what does a communist supposed to DO ? stay home ?

[Blake's Baby]

... The SPD was defending what the working class has won, not "fighting for capitalism."

The SPD, having drowned the German working class in blood, realised that there was no force left to stand up to the Nazis. So they paid for murdering the German revolution. Why should communists support the people who were having them shot, against the people who will have them shot?

[MarxSchmarx]

The problem with those who advocate fighting the US war effort of the time is that American involvement in WWII did effectively curtail the development of fascism and ultimately helped break up colonial strongholds.

I think it's important to understand that America was, apart from Germany, the only nation that really fought that war on two fronts.

Whereas American intervention in Europe probably wasn't really necessary to defeat Germany (at least in hind sight), and therefore I think a plausible case could be made that fascism would have collapsed even without American involvement in Europe, I don't find this argument terribly persuasive for the Pacific. It is unlikely that Japanese expansionism would have been defeated absent American intervention. Faced with the choice of breaking a near-hegemonic fascist colonial monopoly or relative isolation, I think that advocating American disengagement from the pacific is only possible with teh benefit of hindsight.

This is a non-trivial fact to consider. As bad as the Americans were as colonialist masters in places like the Philippines, the Japanese were considerably worse and sought to impose their incredibly authoritarian system on their territories. had the US not gone to war with Japan there was no serious alternative to Japanese regional domination in the Pacific. It's very likely China would have lost the war, I doubt Britain could have held on to India and Australia (the way the Americans lost their colonies), and the ussr had no real reason to open in a second front by engaging in a protracted war with Japan

Under these circumstances, I think it's pretty clear that at least at the time, advocating American non-involvement is tantamount to having let Japan effectively gained hegemony over the region. It's possible that a more democratic Japan could have emerged and that the outcome would have been just as brutal considering the American legacy in Korea, Vietnam, and its covert roles in Marcos's philippines or Suharto's Indonesia, but given the militarist restrictions set in motion by the Sino-Japanese war, and the brutality of forced assimilation Tokyo imposed on its colonies, I rather doubt an east Asia dominated by the Japanese empire would have been any more preferable. At the time, and for decades since, I think the alternative to AMerican non-intervention in the Pacific has predominantly been viewed as a net gain for the Japanese empire and quite plausibly have led to Japanese hegemony over most areas where nationalist China and European colonial powers had been operating. Any leftist who asserts that such an outcome would have been obviously preferable has no business calling himself a leftist.

[wsg1991]

I think the alternative to AMerican non-intervention in the Pacific has predominantly been viewed as a net gain for the Japanese empire and quite plausibly have led to Japanese hegemony over most areas where nationalist China and European colonial powers had been operating. Any leftist who asserts that such an outcome would have been obviously preferable has no business calling himself a leftist.

one thing , the defeat of imperialist countries in WW2 and the rise of new once (USA , and later USSR ) did allow an opening for smaller countries to have welfare regimes (Egypt , Algeria ) , and even broke away of Imperialism ( china ) . that might not be Socialism , but much better for the local population

this choice between lesser evils is horrible , i know , but sometimes , in the absent of a third choice , you have to make a choice , at least until you can create a third choice

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

The usual thing to do in an Imperialist war is to say



and



However, WWII was not a usual Imperialist war, it was a war against fascism. Now, the analysis of fascism is such, that it is a different quality as well as the most reactionary form of bourgeois rule, that therefore it does make a difference wether you live in a bourgeois democracy or a fascist state, and that therefore the strategy to defeat fascism is to immediately ally with whoever you can, up to the parts of the bourgeoisie who are opposed to fascism.

On top of that, in that specific situation, Nazi Germany was also a direct threat to the Soviet Union, which was the greatest achievement of the working class at the time.

So, what SHOULD you have done at the time? Supported the US going to war against Germany? Joined the US military? Or should you have continued to work against the US war effort? Or something else entirely?

Well, dialectically speaking, if we would oppose bourgeois democratic imperialist war on imperialist fascism, then there might be a chance that the war effort of the slightly better imperialists is undermined and we all sit in KZ Earth.

Allying with and supporting all armed opponents of fascism is necessary by basic proletarian morality, but history is on our side and we have no need to risk such dubious mistakes as not allying with anyone to fight fascism. Fascists versus Communists is, out of matters of logic and foresight, the final struggle of the proletariat to free humanity from classes; only a completely planned economy will be socially feasible within the next 80 years when markets, capital hence the profit-motive dies off, and Fascism is what a capitalist majorly planned economy looks like.

[Martin Blank]

The problem with those who advocate fighting the US war effort of the time is that American involvement in WWII did effectively curtail the development of fascism and ultimately helped break up colonial strongholds.

I think this is a far too simplistic argument to make, and that oversimplification leads to an unprincipled position.

First, it is not factually correct to say that American involvement "curtailed the development of fascism". Many of the fascist regimes that existed in Europe were defeated by the UN forces not because they were fascist, but because they were a part of the Axis. This is demonstrated in the September 1943 Fairfield Armistice signed between Italy and the UN. Italy was still being ruled by the Grand Council of Fascism and the Fascisti. The only difference was that Mussolini had been removed as prime minister, replaced by General Pietro Badoglio, and the restoration of King Victor Emmanuel III as head of state. Moreover, the plans developed by the War's triple entente, the U.S., Britain and France, allowed for the fascist regimes in Hungary, Romania and a restored Czechoslovakia to remain in place as long as they severed their ties with the Axis.

Second, if the Second World War was indeed a "war against fascism", then why was Spain allowed to remain neutral? For that matter, why was the Chinese KMT under Chiang Kai-Shek, which was fascist in all but name, allowed to be a central part of the UN forces (and one of the original Big Five when the UN was reorganized into a new League of Nations)? The USSR at least had a contingency plan for the invasion and occupation of Spain if they had to fight all the way to the Atlantic.

Third, the years after the end of WWII show that, far from being curtailed, fascism experienced a rapid international expansion, under the aegis of the U.S., throughout Latin America, Africa and southern Asia. Even the U.S. got a strong taste of fascism, in the forms of McCarthyism, the John Birch Society, the Young Americans for Freedom and the resurgence of the KKK during the Civil Rights movement.

As for breaking up colonial strongholds, this was more a change in form than content. "De-colonization" in the post-War years was the product of the "Silent War" (1944-1946) between the U.S. and Britain, where the latter was squeezed into submission by Washington through the use of credit and trade. Key British and French (and German and Italian) holdings were opened to the U.S. through "de-colonization" in exchange for assistance under the Marshall Plan. Colonies became semi-colonies and neo-colonies, with the Union Jack or Tricolor being replaced by the Stars and Stripes.


As bad as the Americans were as colonialist masters in places like the Philippines, the Japanese were considerably worse and sought to impose their incredibly authoritarian system on their territories. had the US not gone to war with Japan there was no serious alternative to Japanese regional domination in the Pacific. It's very likely China would have lost the war, I doubt Britain could have held on to India and Australia (the way the Americans lost their colonies), and the ussr had no real reason to open in a second front by engaging in a protracted war with Japan

Under these circumstances, I think it's pretty clear that at least at the time, advocating American non-involvement is tantamount to having let Japan effectively gained hegemony over the region. It's possible that a more democratic Japan could have emerged and that the outcome would have been just as brutal considering the American legacy in Korea, Vietnam, and its covert roles in Marcos' Philippines or Suharto's Indonesia, but given the militarist restrictions set in motion by the Sino-Japanese war, and the brutality of forced assimilation Tokyo imposed on its colonies, I rather doubt an east Asia dominated by the Japanese empire would have been any more preferable. At the time, and for decades since, I think the alternative to American non-intervention in the Pacific has predominantly been viewed as a net gain for the Japanese empire and quite plausibly have led to Japanese hegemony over most areas where nationalist China and European colonial powers had been operating. Any leftist who asserts that such an outcome would have been obviously preferable has no business calling himself a leftist.

This is a strawman argument. I don't think anyone here is arguing that a Japanese victory would have been preferable to the actual outcome. What I am arguing is that a communist's preference would be to see the defeat of all the belligerents at the hands of the world's working class, and to work toward that end. That would have meant a coordinated international movement of revolutionary workers in all of the belligerent states (including the USSR), striking together against the main enemy -- the ruling classes and their states. It's not about choosing a "lesser evil" in war, but rather choosing an end to war and the "evil" social system that demands it.

[Art Vandelay]

i did read several of your ultra left comments here , like it's some kind f contest who can prove to be more leftist , and usually that lead to the point you cannot present any alternative or solution , or some imaginary Utopian one





what does a communist supposed to DO ? stay home ?

What the fuck are you even on about? A guy with a Bakunin quote in his sig calling me ultra-left? I am not trying to prove myself to be the most "leftist" whatever the fuck that even means; not to mention that its frankly probably the opposite of what I have ever actually said on here, as I have never been shy about my class background and lack of actual productive political work.

[Art Vandelay]

I never actually said this. 9mm made a confusing post that fascism and Social democracy were not different "Not quantitatively." and that "No form of capitalism is acceptable to me."

Didn't think it was that confusing but okay.


Quantity means to me, things that can be counted, measure, units, standards etc. The only measurement of quantitative difference in fascism and social democracy is living standards. Quantitatively they are different, as the living standards in social democratic society are much better then Fascism.

Perhaps quantitative was the wrong word to use, but I think the point stands. Fascism is merely a shade of capital; if you want to cheer lead for a shade of capital than be my guest.


He has made such a fundamental and morally wrong statement, and then I can only put it into context “being from Canada you clearly have never really lived through fascism, so you have no idea what you are talking about." If Canada has had a fascist stage please inform me.

So being from austrailia, you do? Leave strawmen out of this.


In much the same way if someone from Canada says "Liberia and Canada are basically the same ‘quantitatively“ then an appropriate statement would be "Well living in Canada, you have no idea what life in Liberia is like". When someone is so wrong sometimes it is personal/subjective experience that is the barrier to understand certain things.


But in this case it is not.

[wsg1991]

What the fuck are you even on about? A guy with a Bakunin quote in his sig calling me ultra-left? I am not trying to prove myself to be the most "leftist" whatever the fuck that even means; not to mention that its frankly probably the opposite of what I have ever actually said on here, as I have never been shy about my class background and lack of actual productive political work.

the second quote is for a religious Islamic figure who lived in the 7century (Abu Dharr al-Ghifari) , i deeply respect him ,

that guy believed that a man should not own more than his house , his workplace , and his night food , and share the rest with his neighbors , and did several anti Islamic Feudal Lords and wealthy caravan traders who took over political control , and started building Palaces


and i no longer consider myself a muslim , since i got to medicine university and started noticing the many medical errors ( soul don't exist , humans are organic machines , heart has nothing to do with emotions) , except for few Islamic ceremonies i still attend and do ,
does quoting him make me religious ?

[Art Vandelay]

the second quote is for a religious Islamic figure who lived in the 7century (Abu Dharr al-Ghifari) , i deeply respect him ,

that guy believed that a man should not own more than his house , his workplace , and his night food , and share the rest with his neighbors , and did several anti Islamic Feudal Lords and wealthy caravan traders who took over political control , and started building Palaces


and i no longer consider myself a muslim , since i got to medicine university and started noticing the many medical errors ( soul don't exist , humans are organic machines , heart has nothing to do with emotions) , except for few Islamic ceremonies i still attend and do ,
does quoting him make me religious ?

No, but I didn't need the run down on some forgotten Islamic dude.

[MarxSchmarx]

I think this is a far too simplistic argument to make, and that oversimplification leads to an unprincipled position.

First, it is not factually correct to say that American involvement "curtailed the development of fascism". Many of the fascist regimes that existed in Europe were defeated by the UN forces not because they were fascist, but because they were a part of the Axis. This is demonstrated in the September 1943 Fairfield Armistice signed between Italy and the UN. Italy was still being ruled by the Grand Council of Fascism and the Fascisti. The only difference was that Mussolini had been removed as prime minister, replaced by General Pietro Badoglio, and the restoration of King Victor Emmanuel III as head of state. Moreover, the plans developed by the War's triple entente, the U.S., Britain and France, allowed for the fascist regimes in Hungary, Romania and a restored Czechoslovakia to remain in place as long as they severed their ties with the Axis.

Second, if the Second World War was indeed a "war against fascism", then why was Spain allowed to remain neutral? For that matter, why was the Chinese KMT under Chiang Kai-Shek, which was fascist in all but name, allowed to be a central part of the UN forces (and one of the original Big Five when the UN was reorganized into a new League of Nations)? The USSR at least had a contingency plan for the invasion and occupation of Spain if they had to fight all the way to the Atlantic.


This repeated focus on Europe neglects my original point - that 'fascism' in europe would likely not have survived even if americans never intervened. But that's just europe, not the world. And, hindsight being 20/20, most communists were probably more anxious abotu the outcome in Europe, fearing all of europe would go the way of spain but for help from outside. as to the fate of fascism globally see below




Third, the years after the end of WWII show that, far from being curtailed, fascism experienced a rapid international expansion, under the aegis of the U.S., throughout Latin America, Africa and southern Asia. Even the U.S. got a strong taste of fascism, in the forms of McCarthyism, the John Birch Society, the Young Americans for Freedom and the resurgence of the KKK during the Civil Rights movement.


We will never know what would have happened in latin america africa and "southern asia" had america stayed out of wwii. But we can make educated guesses, and it's unlikely that fascism would have been averted without american invovlement. for instance, given america's track south of the border record pre-1940s and the military rule in those regions as well as the strong fascist bend of the catholic church at the time, I'm doubtful US intervention in wwii had much of anything to do with the spread of fascism in that region.

As to asia, who knows what would have happened if japanese or soviet, instead of American, hegemony reigned in the region. the precedent of soviet backed arab nationalist dictatorships, Japanese-backed Thailand and the philippines are telling. Only india managed to build a (barely) functioning democracy and i don't have real reason to believe the track record would have been any better had america not intervened in the pacific.

As to africa it's impossible to say what the post-colonial situation would have looked like if america never entered wwii, there were just so many variables, so I (and most others, I suspect) cannot speak to it.



As for breaking up colonial strongholds, this was more a change in form than content. "De-colonization" in the post-War years was the product of the "Silent War" (1944-1946) between the U.S. and Britain, where the latter was squeezed into submission by Washington through the use of credit and trade. Key British and French (and German and Italian) holdings were opened to the U.S. through "de-colonization" in exchange for assistance under the Marshall Plan. Colonies became semi-colonies and neo-colonies, with the Union Jack or Tricolor being replaced by the Stars and Stripes.




I was thinking of Asia, with the Japanese having replaced the british, french, americans and dutch as the colonial rulers. The independence of most Asian states traces its origins back to the pacific theater of wwii. Without a pacific theater, who knows what would have happened.



This is a strawman argument. I don't think anyone here is arguing that a Japanese victory would have been preferable to the actual outcome. What I am arguing is that a communist's preference would be to see the defeat of all the belligerents at the hands of the world's working class, and to work toward that end. That would have meant a coordinated international movement of revolutionary workers in all of the belligerent states (including the USSR), striking together against the main enemy -- the ruling classes and their states. It's not about choosing a "lesser evil" in war, but rather choosing an end to war and the "evil" social system that demands it.

This last point raises an issue I've always had with this sort of argument.

Yes, of course, such a world wide uprising would have been preferable. ultimately communists in america at the time had to largely work with the war they got, not the war they wanted. and the conditions at the time were such that such a global revolution was exceedingly unlikely for a world wide war of liberation. The fact was there was no second russian revolution even before America joined the war and conditions were desperate, mainland Japan was already undergoing a decade of harsh war and there was no revolution there, I don't know any serious person who saw a real opening for social revolution in germany or britain of the time, and about the only credible revolutionary force anywhere on earth was the chinese communist party that had allied themselves with the same people you call fascists and maybe the left wing of the Indian independence movement. Was such a global uprising beyond the realm of possibility? No. But was it probable? Also no. THe choice facing american communists was not between world revolution or yet another imperialist quagmire. It was between supporting American isolationism or the outcome of a lesser evil. American communists were simply in no position, let's say after pearl harbour, to build a world wide worker's uprising against all the imperial states instead of going to war. This would have resulted at best in nothing and quite likely with a lot of them ending up in jail for supporting a cause that was simply not viable at the time.

Yes, american involvement in wwii ultimately laid the groundwork for the reactionary cold war. But this is again noted with hindsight. It's worth pointing out, also, that prior to the wwii america had very limited military ability to carry out global imperial ambitions. To fault the american communists of the time, therefore, for supporting the only credible alternative (which itself was not a military power) to an objectively rapidly ascendant yet brutal japanese empire and a seemingly invincible nazi army because it distracted their cause from an international revolution that was, at least with hindsight, DOA, seems to me to be answering a strawman argument with the nirvana fallacy.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I never understood this, if all forms of capitalism are the same, is social democracy no better than fascism?

The only meaningful difference between social democracy/social liberalism and fascism is that the former does not abandon electoralism.

[Hiero]

Fascism is merely a shade of capital; if you want to cheer lead for a shade of capital than be my guest.
The only meaningful difference between social democracy/social liberalism and fascism is that the former does not abandon electoralism.

Are we taking about the same fascism here? People actually have to face the consequences of fascism. I think for instance one of the meaningful differences between say fascism Nazi Germany, and social democracy in France my by, 6 million dead jews.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The only meaningful difference between social democracy/social liberalism and fascism is that the former does not abandon electoralism.Well, but the latter makes a point of crushing any independent worker's movement - in fact that's the main function of fascism. In social-democracy we can still organize, in fascism we basically have to go underground to fight. We might be able to put up a resistance that way (and antifas did) but it's a huge barrier to actually being able to organize consciously as a class since we can only organize in secret.

[Blake's Baby]

No no no no no... Nazism took power when the workers movement had already been smashed, by social democracy. It was the social democrats who destroyed the German Revolution, not the Nazis.

In Italy I suppose it's more arguable that Fascism defeated the workers movement, but some of us would instead argue that the workers' movement in Italy disarmed itself due to Gramsci's failed leadership and the 'Bolshevisation' policy dictated by Moscow.

The very fact of a strong workers' movement means that the bourgeoisie can't institute fascism.

[Art Vandelay]

No no no no no... Nazism took power when the workers movement had already been smashed, by social democracy. It was the social democrats who destroyed the German Revolution, not the Nazis.

In Italy I suppose it's more arguable that Fascism defeated the workers movement, but some of us would instead argue that the workers' movement in Italy disarmed itself due to Gramsci's failed leadership and the 'Bolshevisation' policy dictated by Moscow.

The very fact of a strong workers' movement means that the bourgeoisie can't institute fascism.

This. Also what I have never understood about supporting class collaboration when facing down fascism, is that fascism is merely a form of capitalism, ie: capitalism in decay. All liberal democracies will turn fascist when a threat comes along to the state. So basically what the argument entails is to align the workers movement with liberal democracies (which will turn fascist themselves when the time comes), so that all the workers who are used like pawns can be slaughtered and those lucky enough to survive will have gained nothing (seeing as how they would still be under capitalism). Great idea; we've already seen how it worked once. Never again, never again.

[Art Vandelay]

The best tool proletarians have against fascism is proletarian revolution, not class collaboration and popular fronts.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The best tool proletarians have against fascism is proletarian revolution, not class collaboration and popular fronts.And if that's not possible at the moment, then lay down and die?

It's a strawman to say that the only choice for radicals is a popular front method of fighting fascism. Secondly, how does the class build for this revolution - part of that can be done through organizing to fight the right when the liberals are equivocating, showing who has the power and the concrete reason to oppose fascism and giving our class confidence in its own ability to fight. It's also a strawman to say that the only way for workers to organize against fascism is to tail liberals or support the US or USSR war efforts.

And it's historical insanity to say that conditions under fascism or social-democracy for building working class resistance are more or less the same.

You couldn't even organize an independent Boy-Scouts in Nazi-Germany, all social organizations were brought into the regime.

And it's a slap in the face for people who went underground or died from fascism or police states to make an equivalency between fascism and bourgeois democracies. I'm sure they'd have given anything to have the conditions most of us have today in which to organize.

[Martin Blank]

This last point raises an issue I've always had with this sort of argument.

It seems that both of us have issues stemming from how we're responding to each other. You say:

"Communists in America at the time had to largely work with the war they got, not the war they wanted. And the conditions at the time were such that such a global revolution was exceedingly unlikely for a worldwide war of liberation."
Your first statement is nothing but a tautology. Anyone with a faint pulse knows that you deal with the war that is, not the one that is wanted. It's also besides the point. Contrary to what you seem to believe, I wasn't talking about keeping the U.S. out of the war. My argument begins from the material reality that the U.S. was already in the war; this is fully in line with the intent of the OP: "What should a Communist in the US have done during WWII?"

(Personally, I think the idea that the ruling classes can be prevented from going to war, short of a workers' revolution, is incredibly naive. The events of the last 200-plus years demonstrates this.)

The second statement is much more of a political problem. It reflects a method that owes more to reformist, social-democratic "lesser evilism" than to communist principle. This is how we get your statement:

"Was such a global uprising beyond the realm of possibility? No. But was it probable? Also no. The choice facing American communists was not between world revolution or yet another imperialist quagmire. It was between supporting American isolationism or the outcome of a lesser evil. American communists were simply in no position, let's say after Pearl Harbor, to build a world wide worker's uprising against all the imperial states instead of going to war."
In your posts, you've argued about me taking a position based on the benefit of hindsight, yet your entire position reeks of hindsight and an inaccurate understanding of the dynamics during the War. In both theaters of the war -- Europe/North Africa and East Asia/Pacific Islands -- many of the countries under occupation or ruled by the Axis had strong underground revolutionary workers' movements. Some were involved in "official" resistance groups, while others organized their own armed resistance. As the War came to a close, revolutionary workers' movements in both formerly occupied or Axis states, and in some of their colonies, were able to seize the initiative and begin a fight for proletarian revolution.

Since you like to use the Pacific as the basis for your argument, I would point to French Indochina and the 1945 nascent workers' revolution, which was crushed by UN forces working together with the remnants of the Japanese puppet regime. Indeed, in most French, and in many British, colonies, there were growing, viable revolutionary workers' movements that were squelched mainly by the U.S. occupation of both western Europe and eastern Asia. America's presence allowed the British and French to devote military resources to crushing revolutionary movements. The presence of the U.S. military in western Europe also aided in the crushing of revolutionary workers' movements in central and eastern Europe.

The other issue I have is with the laundry list used as "proof" of the improbability of revolutions breaking out. The reason I see this as an incredible political problem can be demonstrated thus:

"The fact was there was no new Paris Commune before America joined the war and conditions were desperate, Austria-Hungary was already undergoing a decade of harsh war and there was no revolution there, I don't know any serious person who saw a real opening for social revolution in Germany or Britain of the time, and about the only credible revolutionary force anywhere on earth was the Second International, whose leading parties had allied themselves with 'their own' ruling classes."
In a nutshell, what you wrote about the Second World War is fundamentally no different than the argument of the social-patriots during WWI. They, too, "had to largely work with the war they got, not the war they wanted. And the conditions at the time were such that such a global revolution was exceedingly unlikely for a world wide war of liberation."

Or so they thought. Take Lenin, for example:

"We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can, I believe, express the confident hope that the youth which is working so splendidly in the socialist movement of Switzerland, and of the whole world, will be fortunate enough not only to fight, but also to win, in the coming proletarian revolution." ("Lecture on the 1905 Revolution", LCW Vol. 23, p.253)
This lecture was delivered in January 1917. And this is where the logic of my position begins. What you call "answering a strawman argument with the nirvana fallacy" is, in fact, answering bourgeois pragmatism with revolutionary principles. Would we actually see proletarian revolutions in multiple countries if revolutionary workers were united and working together across national borders and battlefronts? None of us know. Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? Well, that would have been entirely up to us.

Taking a side in a capitalist war -- no matter how noble or ignoble one side or another might be -- is not only taking responsibility for the government, it is supporting "one's own" ruling classes. It is fundamentally no different than what the German and French Social Democratic parties did by voting for war credits. It is an "August 4" moment.

And it is sad to see.

[human strike]

Jeez what a headache. What should a communist do in that situation? Smoke a joint, I reckon. But in all seriousness, the best thing to do was to stay alive. There's nothing revolutionary about sacrificing your self for anti-capitalism or anti-fascism. I suspect abstaining from the entire mess may have been the most sensible course of action, especially if you were lucky enough to be in North America.

[Geiseric]

The war effort, the halocaust, the popular frontism with the Stalinist parties with liberals, and Imperialism altogather in that time period should have all been fought against, unconditionally by every Communist. Defensism equates to laying in a hole and waiting for the bourgeois to bury you with concrete. also if anybody thinks that americans are "better," than japan, I don't think the people living at Hiroshima or Nagasaki would agree. there is also no difference between the menshevik bolshevik civil war united front (which worked) and a possible SPD and KPD front against fascism. And even in Japan there was a strong revolutionary movement before the war.

[Art Vandelay]

And if that's not possible at the moment, then lay down and die?

Who said that?


It's a strawman to say that the only choice for radicals is a popular front method of fighting fascism.

I never said that; were talking about what happened historically, not what could be done in a similar situation. A popular front was used and with it brought the global resurgence of capital. WWII has allowed capitalism to sustain itself and helped spark the following economic upswing.


Secondly, how does the class build for this revolution - part of that can be done through organizing to fight the right when the liberals are equivocating, showing who has the power and the concrete reason to oppose fascism and giving our class confidence in its own ability to fight.

Agreed.


It's also a strawman to say that the only way for workers to organize against fascism is to tail liberals or support the US or USSR war efforts.


Once again I never said that.


And it's historical insanity to say that conditions under fascism or social-democracy for building working class resistance are more or less the same.


Once again I never said that and frankly am sick of having this accusation levied against me; so this will be the last time I reply if it continues in the future. Not once have I said that the living conditions are the same under liberal democracies and fascism. To do so would indeed be "historical insanity." What I have been saying, perhaps not very articulately (which could have caused confusion), is that fascism and liberal democracies are 2 sides of the same coin. As communists we know that fascism was capital's solution to the crises it was facing at the time and that it was merely a specific manifestation capital took. Capitalism must be abolished on a global scale and must be fought internationally. In my opinion, to do this, we must unequivocally oppose it globally; not choose our favorite form capital takes, ie: Liberal democracy, fascism, state capitalism.


You couldn't even organize an independent Boy-Scouts in Nazi-Germany, all social organizations were brought into the regime.

Which is precisely why I made known my agreement with blake's baby's statement that fascism was able to take power due to the failure of the workers movement.


And it's a slap in the face for people who went underground or died from fascism or police states to make an equivalency between fascism and bourgeois democracies. I'm sure they'd have given anything to have the conditions most of us have today in which to organize.

Dear god, for someone who claimed I was hurling ad hominem's, half of your post seems to have been filled with them levied against me. I never said half of what you have claimed I have, so this part doesn't even apply.

[MarxSchmarx]

It seems that both of us have issues stemming from how we're responding to each other. You say:

"Communists in America at the time had to largely work with the war they got, not the war they wanted. And the conditions at the time were such that such a global revolution was exceedingly unlikely for a worldwide war of liberation."
Your first statement is nothing but a tautology. Anyone with a faint pulse knows that you deal with the war that is, not the one that is wanted. It's also besides the point. Contrary to what you seem to believe, I wasn't talking about keeping the U.S. out of the war. My argument begins from the material reality that the U.S. was already in the war; this is fully in line with the intent of the OP: "What should a Communist in the US have done during WWII?"


Fair enough. It seemed to me that what is now called wwii was well under way by early Dec. 1941, and where I think American communists could have most decisively made any difference (although i doubt their small numbers would have mattered) would have been before, or immediately after, Pearl Harbor. Once the machinery of war started moving, I don't know if there was much the american communists could have done, but I suppose we'll never know since most in fact supported the war effort.



(Personally, I think the idea that the ruling classes can be prevented from going to war, short of a workers' revolution, is incredibly naive. The events of the last 200-plus years demonstrates this.)



That may be, but it's also a focus of a lot of left activism today and in the past. Although I agree it's basically futile.




The second statement is much more of a political problem. It reflects a method that owes more to reformist, social-democratic "lesser evilism" than to communist principle. This is how we get your statement:

"Was such a global uprising beyond the realm of possibility? No. But was it probable? Also no. The choice facing American communists was not between world revolution or yet another imperialist quagmire. It was between supporting American isolationism or the outcome of a lesser evil. American communists were simply in no position, let's say after Pearl Harbor, to build a world wide worker's uprising against all the imperial states instead of going to war."
In your posts, you've argued about me taking a position based on the benefit of hindsight, yet your entire position reeks of hindsight and an inaccurate understanding of the dynamics during the War. In both theaters of the war -- Europe/North Africa and East Asia/Pacific Islands -- many of the countries under occupation or ruled by the Axis had strong underground revolutionary workers' movements. Some were involved in "official" resistance groups, while others organized their own armed resistance. As the War came to a close, revolutionary workers' movements in both formerly occupied or Axis states, and in some of their colonies, were able to seize the initiative and begin a fight for proletarian revolution.

Since you like to use the Pacific as the basis for your argument, I would point to French Indochina and the 1945 nascent workers' revolution, which was crushed by UN forces working together with the remnants of the Japanese puppet regime. Indeed, in most French, and in many British, colonies, there were growing, viable revolutionary workers' movements that were squelched mainly by the U.S. occupation of both western Europe and eastern Asia. America's presence allowed the British and French to devote military resources to crushing revolutionary movements. The presence of the U.S. military in western Europe also aided in the crushing of revolutionary workers' movements in central and eastern Europe.


Wait, so how is any of this hindsight? And, to be repeat, reason I focus on the pacific is that I think the us intervention "destroyed fascism" view is implausible for Europe where the American contribution to the defeat of Italy and Germany was pretty mild.

But again the problem with the movements you raise is that these revolutionary workers movements, while very real, we have little idea how well they would have fared if the axis powers, and not the allies, could devote their military resources to crushing such uprisings. Maybe the axis would have failed where the allies largely succeeded. I'm somewhat skeptical of such claims.

If anything, your argument suggests that leveraging American military power accomplished what its leftist apologists said it would - "destroy fascism." Thus the problem was not US war against Japan per se (well, neglecting the air raids, Hiroshima, etc...) but the us occupation (and in Indonesia, btw, this also involved substantial dutch and australian collaboration as well) that followed turned out to be a "cure as bad as the disease". But this latter point isn't really a case against any intervention - unless you argue it is an inevitable outcome?



The other issue I have is with the laundry list used as "proof" of the improbability of revolutions breaking out. The reason I see this as an incredible political problem can be demonstrated thus:

"The fact was there was no new Paris Commune before America joined the war and conditions were desperate, Austria-Hungary was already undergoing a decade of harsh war and there was no revolution there, I don't know any serious person who saw a real opening for social revolution in Germany or Britain of the time, and about the only credible revolutionary force anywhere on earth was the Second International, whose leading parties had allied themselves with 'their own' ruling classes."
In a nutshell, what you wrote about the Second World War is fundamentally no different than the argument of the social-patriots during WWI. They, too, "had to largely work with the war they got, not the war they wanted. And the conditions at the time were such that such a global revolution was exceedingly unlikely for a world wide war of liberation."

Or so they thought. Take Lenin, for example:

"We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can, I believe, express the confident hope that the youth which is working so splendidly in the socialist movement of Switzerland, and of the whole world, will be fortunate enough not only to fight, but also to win, in the coming proletarian revolution." ("Lecture on the 1905 Revolution", LCW Vol. 23, p.253)
This lecture was delivered in January 1917. And this is where the logic of my position begins.


I see your point, but we were talking about WWII and so the details of the analogy are actually important. The governments fighting WWII were very different in important respects from those that fought WWI. For instance, their control over mass propaganda via radio had a very different effect. Finally, this pre-supposes that the revolutions sparked by wwi in Russia/Germany/Hungary were genuine, much less viable, workers revolutions - a position on which the left by no means has reached consensus.




What you call "answering a strawman argument with the nirvana fallacy" is, in fact, answering bourgeois pragmatism with revolutionary principles. Would we actually see proletarian revolutions in multiple countries if revolutionary workers were united and working together across national borders and battlefronts? None of us know. Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? Well, that would have been entirely up to us.


But it was not "entirely up to" American communists. Indeed, an unthinking attachment to "revolutionary principles" sometimes imply annilation. Communsits in America at the onset of WWII were in better shape than they are today, but they were still marginalized, weak, and very few in number. Crushing such a group, if they had spoken out against the war, even if in the name of the "workers global revolution", would have been quite easy for the US government and I doubt they would have hesitated to do so. Indeed precisely this fate befell communists in Germany and Japan who opposed the war. Had these countries won the war (or at least not lost), I suspect the damage done to the communist movement in both countries would have been substantially worse.

Maybe one can take the view that a communist that doesn't risk annilation, or a communist that compromises in favor of "lesser-evilism" is no communist at all. I don't want to get into a detailed discussion of the 2nd international as that's too OT - and although i think it's ultimately a flawed argument, the fact that the reformist pro-war parties of wwi survived in western europe while the anti-war left in america was essentially decimated does give one pause.




Taking a side in a capitalist war -- no matter how noble or ignoble one side or another might be -- is not only taking responsibility for the government, it is supporting "one's own" ruling classes.

The latter point is patently false. It's not hard to find people in Germany and Japan for instance who consider the American intervention in WWII to have been a good thing. I'm also not sure what is meant by "taking responsibility for the government". If it means tacit approval of a bourgeois government, well, so is paying taxes.

Moreover, I fail to see how taking a "noble" side of a capitalist war (your words, not mine) is qualitatively different from asserting to, say, top down state reforms. Indeed, to the capitalist state, war is just another policy. If policies of the capitalist state results in a "net good" - compared to not having that policy, with reforms leftists routinely support this. Why is war waged by a capitalist state held to a different standard?

[Geiseric]

I have a question for the Ultra Lefts who oppose fronts with social democrats that has never been answered. How was a front with SPD (a workers party, albeit led by bourgeois socialists like Kautsky) different than a front with Mensheviks, which worked in Russia against the white guard? If the issue is class vs. class like it was in 1930 (or 1917), it seems like a no brainer to leech off of the SPD (or mensheviks) while exposing their leaders who refused to fight fascism (or czarists) untill that point.

[wsg1991]

a second question , adding to Leon Brotsky , are each faction of the left
aware of it's actual size out side revleft ?

[Welshy]

Are we taking about the same fascism here? People actually have to face the consequences of fascism. I think for instance one of the meaningful differences between say fascism Nazi Germany, and social democracy in France my by, 6 million dead jews.

Just to point out, the UK killed several million people in India in a famine they caused in order to fight the nazis. Also the US was responsible for genocide and ethnic cleansing in the century and decades preceding WWII. So mass murder is hardly unique to fascism as the two things I just mention were done by liberal democracies and in fact not all fascism even advocated genocide just the nazis. Fascism is characterized by its role suppressing/diverting a (revolutionary) workers movement which is a similar role that social democracy plays. Social Democracy tends to be nicer and more on the side of workers when capitalism isn't in grave danger but the moment it is it can be quite brutal (look at the role the SPD played in suppressing the german revolution).

[Welshy]

a second question , adding to Leon Brotsky , are each faction of the left
aware of it's actual size out side revleft ?

We are all aware of how tiny we are, but the left wasn't tiny during WWII and the years preceding it. So I don't know how this is relevant.

[Hiero]

Just to point out, the UK killed several million people in India in a famine they caused in order to fight the nazis. Also the US was responsible for genocide and ethnic cleansing in the century and decades preceding WWII. So mass murder is hardly unique to fascism as the two things I just mention were done by liberal democracies and in fact not all fascism even advocated genocide just the nazis. Fascism is characterized by its role suppressing/diverting a (revolutionary) workers movement which is a similar role that social democracy plays. Social Democracy tends to be nicer and more on the side of workers when capitalism isn't in grave danger but the moment it is it can be quite brutal (look at the role the SPD played in suppressing the german revolution).

For one there is a difference between the structural consequences of colonialism and marching a whole cluster of an ethnic population into camps and killing them in an industrial fashion in a short period of time.

On the other note, I would say that the SPD showed the limits of social demoracy's patiences for a worker's poltics by supressing worker revolution, but this is not akin to fascism. For the SPD did not propose the enabling act, it was the fascist who did. We all know social-democrats do not like revolutionaries, but there is a fundamental differences for people in terms of living conditions under fascsim, this is evident in Europe and outside.

People are claiming in a reductionist materialist fasion that there is no fundemental difference between fascism and social-democracy, they are ludicrous. The social democrats will shot working class parties who use weopons against the bourgioes state but the fascist will cut your hand off for simply rasing a fist. You have no room to breathe in a fascsist society.

[Geiseric]

Wow great job not answering. But for most time, SPD actually fought for workers rights and demands, Karl Leibnacht and Rosa were part of it, so its base politics were actually directed towards what the working class wanted. The imperialist war was where the bolsheviks and mensheviks had to split, but SPD is in no way worse than fascism. Modern day social democracy are mirror images of the Democratic party, not the social democracy, founded by Engels, that raised class consciousness for several decades after the paris commune and the 1848 revolutions/insurrections failed.

[Welshy]

Wow great job not answering. But for most time, SPD actually fought for workers rights and demands, Karl Leibnacht and Rosa were part of it, so its base politics were actually directed towards what the working class wanted. The imperialist war was where the bolsheviks and mensheviks had to split, but SPD is in no way worse than fascism.

When we are talking about social democracy here we are referring to post-split social democracy, the section of social democracy that betrayed the revolution and slaughter revolutionaries. I personally don't claim that social democracy is worse than fascism. I'd personally prefer to live in modern Norway than in Fascist Italy, but that's not the point. By forming a united front with social democracy you are making an alliance that will preserve capitalism. During the rise of fascism you had a strong working class and revolution, while in retreat, was still fresh in peoples minds and communists had large support, to ally with people who seek to preserve capitalism is to betray the communist movement and to give up on revolution. Also it is really convenient that you forget that the SPD had no desire to form a united front with KPD anyways.

Also I don't think anyone denies the rank and file of social democracy at the time were workers and that the demands of social democracy were things workers wanted, but when you form a united front with a social democratic party it isn't the rank and file you have to deal with, it is their leaders/bureaucrats. The leaders of social democratic parties oppose revolution and any united front with them would require revolutionaries to give up revolution. If anything should have been done, it was that the KAPD and KPD should have united to fight fascism and push forward revolution while trying to break workers in the rank and file of the SPD from the SPD while constantly being opposed to the SPD leadership and denouncing them for their betrayal of the german revolution.



Modern day social democracy are mirror images of the Democratic party, not the social democracy, founded by Engels, that raised class consciousness for several decades after the paris commune and the 1848 revolutions/insurrections failed.

The issue is that when you talk of social democracy you are not talking about the social democracy of Engel's. What is being talked about here is the social democracy that actively fought revolution and killed revolutionaries and workers.

[Welshy]

For one there is a difference between the structural consequences of colonialism and marching a whole cluster of an ethnic population into camps and killing them in an industrial fashion in a short period of time.

My point was to show that mass murder and genocide wasn't exclusive to nazis when talking about the combatants in WWII. Also it shouldnt matter if one group committed genocide in an industrial fashion while others committed genocide by starving populations or purposefully spreading disease with in a population. The fact of the matter is that both sides were responsible for the deaths of millions. Also genocide isn't an inherent feature of fascism either.




On the other note, I would say that the SPD showed the limits of social demoracy's patiences for a worker's poltics by supressing worker revolution, but this is not akin to fascism. For the SPD did not propose the enabling act, it was the fascist who did. We all know social-democrats do not like revolutionaries, but there is a fundamental differences for people in terms of living conditions under fascsim, this is evident in Europe and outside.

People are claiming in a reductionist materialist fasion that there is no fundemental difference between fascism and social-democracy, they are ludicrous. The social democrats will shot working class parties who use weopons against the bourgioes state but the fascist will cut your hand off for simply rasing a fist. You have no room to breathe in a fascsist society.

See my post before this one for a relevant response, but I would like to say that I am personally (I don't know about others) saying that fascism is the exact same as social democracy, they've played similar roles in fighting revolution and working class movements, but they're basic tactics are different. But to ignore the brutality that other forms of capitalist rule inflict on workers and communists in order to push forward the idea that they deserve support whenever fascism raises its head is quite frankly stupid, IMO. Being Australia you may not know much about the history of the US labor movement, but let me tell you that US government was pretty big on cutting off your hand for raising fist (as they would beat, shoot, arrest/deport and sometimes bomb you for striking or being involved in communist politics).

[shinjuku dori]

also if anybody thinks that americans are "better," than japan, I don't think the people living at Hiroshima or Nagasaki would agree

Actually the non-Atomic fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people than either of these events. Even though they are the most known. Worst bombing in history. Most destruction. More than 100.000 people killed.

Search wikipedia: "bombing of tokyo"

[shinjuku dori]

As bad as the Americans were as colonialist masters in places like the Philippines, the Japanese were considerably worse and sought to impose their incredibly authoritarian system on their territories.

It's like talking about orange and apples. Or maybe atomic bombs and napalm.

Normal Japanese people faced the highest price because of the war too. Hundreds of thousands died. Reds were carried off into camps in Germany and Japan. Japanese and Germans were carried off into camps in America. It was no benefit. American warplanes did not drop "better bombs" than Japanese warplanes. In the end, the normal people suffered. Hirohito was wartime emperor and post-wartime emperor. Fascists found their way into the new government in West Germany. Many joined American intelligence forces and were helped into comfortable positions in South America because they were such useful anticommunists.

America "liberated" the Philippines and helped "liberate" Vietnam. Then what? A massive war against the Philippines by the Americans that killed countless people and ruined the Philippines until this day, and another against Vietnam that became the most deadly in world history.

Sorry for your grandpa sacrificing. Mine did too. Neither was for their own benefit. They shed blood (their own and others) in the name of capital.

[MarxSchmarx]

As bad as the Americans were as colonialist masters in places like the Philippines, the Japanese were considerably worse and sought to impose their incredibly authoritarian system on their territories. It's like talking about orange and apples. Or maybe atomic bombs and napalm.

Normal Japanese people faced the highest price because of the war too. Hundreds of thousands died. Reds were carried off into camps in Germany and Japan. Japanese and Germans were carried off into camps in America. It was no benefit. American warplanes did not drop "better bombs" than Japanese warplanes. In the end, the normal people suffered. Hirohito was wartime emperor and post-wartime emperor. Fascists found their way into the new government in West Germany. Many joined American intelligence forces and were helped into comfortable positions in South America because they were such useful anticommunists.

America "liberated" the Philippines and helped "liberate" Vietnam. Then what? A massive war against the Philippines by the Americans that killed countless people and ruined the Philippines until this day, and

I'm not sure I understand your point. Nobody is saying the Japanese people didn't suffer during the war, or that they didn't benefit from colonial rule, or that Americans were benevolent. Are you equating Japanese imperialism with the subsequent neo-colonial administration by Americans in East Asia? Are you suggesting that the mainland Japanese were just as much victims of the war as the people of, say, Nanking or the Philippines were?



another against Vietnam that became the most deadly in world history.


Really?

[shinjuku dori]

I'm not sure I understand your point.

The point is no war but class war, turn imperialist war into revolution. Communist principle. That's' what we're talking about here.


Are you equating Japanese imperialism with the subsequent neo-colonial administration by Americans in East Asia? Are you suggesting that the mainland Japanese were just as much victims of the war as the people of, say, Nanking or the Philippines were?

America killed more in Philippines and Vietnam than Japanese did. By far.

But who is comparing? Who wants to between murderous imperialist powers?

Did Japanese people suffer "same"? Of course. From foreigner attack as well as Japanese fascist regime itself. Reds were murdered or locked away. Workers struggles crushed. Then bombs came. Fire then atomic. Hundreds of thousands killed or injured. Whole cities ruined.

We can also talk about normal men turned into savage killing tools for the use of the ruling classes too.

There were no winners among the workers sent off to die in the Second Imperialist World War. Only losers. In all country.


Really?

Really. 2.700.000 dead. 2.100.000 injured. Effects lasting until this day. Still there is uneven gender in Vietnam from all of the deaths of Vietnamese men. And agriculture and birth defects even now from Agent Orange. Compared to Germany which was "back to normal" within a few years of WWII.

[MarxSchmarx]

The point is no war but class war, turn imperialist war into revolution. Communist principle. That's' what we're talking about here.




Well that's all well and good as a slogan; the question as far as I'm concerned is whether it was even remotely viable on the eve of pearl harbor.



But who is comparing? Who wants to between murderous imperialist powers?

Who wants to between murderous imperialist powers?
Did Japanese people suffer "same"? Of course. From foreigner attack as well as Japanese fascist regime itself. Reds were murdered or locked away. Workers struggles crushed. Then bombs came. Fire then atomic. Hundreds of thousands killed or injured. Whole cities ruined.

We can also talk about normal men turned into savage killing tools for the use of the ruling classes too.

There were no winners among the workers sent off to die in the Second Imperialist World War. Only losers. In all country.

This frankly is like saying it doesn't matter whether Stalin's gulags resulted in 10 million deaths or 1 million deaths. Whilst I agree even 1 gulag death is an injustice, it is in a sense a white washing of history to present false equivalencies like you seem to want to do here. The unthinking equivalence of American imperial ambition in East Asia with Japanese colonial rule, which is basically the position you take here, is misplaced for numerous reasons. Not least among which is the fact that America's wars in East Asia/Pacific lasted several times longer than Japan's (c. 1860 ~ 1975 v. c.1880~1945), Japan had a more comprehensive control penetrating far into China and South Asia, and the fact that both regimes used the same collaborators to their own distinct ends. But setting all that aside.

Moreover, it's important to understand the limitations of the contemporary equivalence between the "victimized" Japanese people and the people who lived in places like the Philippenes, Burma, and Indonesia, much less Korea and China. The idea that the Japanese poeple suffered just as much as the people of colonial Asia is, although containing a kernel of truth for the reasons you mentioned, also a vicious tool used by the Japanese right wing to in essence absolve Japan's institutions of criminal responsibility for the war. I think there is a very real, visceral sense in which a lot of the former colonial countries feel that much of modern Japanese politics fails to see just how brutal colonial rule was, and the idea of a "victimized Japanese populace, fooled into militarism" contributes to this perceived (and perhaps real) indifference.

Oh, and one more thing. There is this presumption among some posters that Japan's involvement in East Asian wars effectively ended in 1945. This is wrong. The Korean war, for example, was waged by teh Americans in part on the belief that Korea could be "reintegrated" into Japan's economic sphere, and in both Korea and Vietnam Japan supplied crucial economic, armament, and military support to AMerican operations. In fact, Japan after WWII enjoyed tremendous economic growth spurred in no small part to the Korean war, and this was no accident. THe same technocrats that engineered Japan's recovery relied heavily on America's own war-driven recovery a decade earlier. In a very real sense, the cold war in east asia was a shifting of the alliance from the US-China since the 1920s to a US-Japan anti-Soviet alliance.







another against Vietnam that became the most deadly in world history. Reall?
Really. 2.700.000 dead. 2.100.000 injured. Effects lasting until this day. Still there is uneven gender in Vietnam from all of the deaths of Vietnamese men. And agriculture and birth defects even now from Agent Orange. Compared to Germany which was "back to normal" within a few years of WWII.

Well, the Soviet Union alone lost 8.8 million (8.8 x 10^6) soldiers and 13.6 million civilians in WWII alone. So I don't know how that makes Vietnam, at least on the vietnamese side "the most deadly in world history."

[Hexen]

Certain manifestations are better than others. I would much rather live in a social-democracy than an American style capitalist state, and I would much rather live in America than Nazi Germany. So yes, I do think some forms of capitalism are better than others.

It's like choosing between Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum.

Point is they're still the same thing.

Hence it's still Capitalism in the end...

[shinjuku dori]

Yes. I won't partake in choosing which is "better" or "more kind" war machine on behalf of capital. That's not for communist. That's for historical play actor or some kind of liberal apologist.

Maybe American society is "better" for woman to live in than Afghan society. And so these comrade would have support American invasion of Afghanistan??

[Jimmie Higgins]

Who said that?I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to single you out or take on your argument point-by-point; I was just using your quote as a jumping-off point to discuss the question in this thread and some of the attitudes about the question in general.

[Martin Blank]

Fair enough. It seemed to me that what is now called WWII was well under way by early Dec. 1941, and where I think American communists could have most decisively made any difference (although I doubt their small numbers would have mattered) would have been before, or immediately after, Pearl Harbor. Once the machinery of war started moving, I don't know if there was much the American communists could have done, but I suppose we'll never know since most in fact supported the war effort.

Even if we were to "start the clock" in September 1939, it would not have mattered; FDR and a large section of the American ruling classes had already been looking for an excuse to enter the war from the moment the Nazis entered Czechoslovakia (and especially after they entered Poland). The Lend-Lease programs begun in 1940 were a pretty clear expression of Washington's intent to enter on the side of Britain, France and China. What they lacked was an excuse to rally petty-bourgeois "public opinion" behind a war banner. In the end, the Japanese provided that excuse, but only after being provoked (i.e., threatened with an oil embargo by the U.S. in the summer and early autumn of 1941). This brings me to ...


That may be, but it's also a focus of a lot of left activism today and in the past. Although I agree it's basically futile.

The "machinery of war" was already in motion before the war in Europe started. "Public Opinion" in favor of entering the war grew slowly but steadily, but was not the most important polling number for FDR's White House. Rather, they watched the "preparedness" numbers -- i.e., the number of Americans who believed the country needed to be "prepared" for war. This number quickly passed the majority mark after the war began; even those who would say openly that the U.S. should not get embroiled in "foreign wars" were in favor of being "prepared" in case it should spill over into the American sphere of influence.

I would argue that there was really no chance to keep the U.S. out of the war. The decision had already been made by the ruling classes to keep Germany and Japan in check. If the ruling classes had wanted to avoid war, they would not have given FDR an unprecedented third term in 1940, since they knew he favored going to war against the Axis states as early as December 1938.

By the time the European war had started in September 1939, stopping U.S. involvement was more or less impossible. Millions had already been loaned to China, Britain and France to assist in their war efforts. Shortly thereafter, the first drafts of what became the Lend-Lease program were already being discussed in the White House and Congress. The draft was soon to start, expanding the U.S. military from about 250,000 to over 2 million by the middle of 1941.

Contrary to what you say in your first paragraph, at this time virtually the entire left was antiwar. You forget that, after the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Non-Agression Pact was signed, the parties of the Comintern (including the Communist Party USA, which had close to 100,000 members and sympathizers at the time) abandoned the concept of the "anti-fascist united front" and empirically turned to opposing "imperialist war". It was not until the invasion of the USSR in June 1941 that the CPUSA once again called for a "war against fascism", this time as a means of "defending the Soviet Union".


Wait, so how is any of this hindsight? And, to be repeat, reason I focus on the pacific is that I think the U.S. intervention "destroyed fascism" view is implausible for Europe where the American contribution to the defeat of Italy and Germany was pretty mild.

On this point, we agree. I would argue that it was the USSR that really broke the back of European fascism, and that its departure from the world stage has given European fascists the space to grow again.


But again the problem with the movements you raise is that these revolutionary workers' movements, while very real, we have little idea how well they would have fared if the Axis powers, and not the Allies, could devote their military resources to crushing such uprisings. Maybe the Axis would have failed where the Allies largely succeeded. I'm somewhat skeptical of such claims.

The example of French Indochina is actually a good example to consider when it comes to this question. The revolutionary workers' movement had gained considerable strength during the years of Japanese occupation -- so much strength that they were able to launch an armed uprising against the Japanese in the closing months of the war. The uprising was, as I recall, moderately successful, with the revolutionaries having control of significant areas of the colony. The Japanese were failing to keep the revolution from succeeding, so they effectively handed it over to the U.S., French and British by withdrawing their soldiers. The result was that the fresh but battle-hardened U.S. Marines, French commandos and British ANZ soldiers, along with the assistance of the officials and police from the pro-Japanese puppet regime, were able to suppress the revolutionary movement relatively quickly. This led to the formation of the Viet Minh. Similar scenarios played out in Europe as well, especially in countries like Italy, France, Yugoslavia, Greece and Albania.

The defeat of the Axis on the battlefield weakened their hold on occupied areas, undermined the power of the fascist occupation regimes and allowed for stronger revolutionary action to take place at the same time that these regimes began to unravel. The key difference between the nascent revolutions at the end of WWII and the Russian Revolution of 1917 is that the UN forces were able to quickly rush in and establish their own authority, whereas in the case of Russia the Germans did not have that ability.


If anything, your argument suggests that leveraging American military power accomplished what its leftist apologists said it would -- "destroy fascism". Thus the problem was not US war against Japan per se (well, neglecting the air raids, Hiroshima, etc...) but the U.S. occupation (and in Indonesia, BTW, this also involved substantial Dutch and Australian collaboration as well) that followed turned out to be a "cure as bad as the disease". But this latter point isn't really a case against any intervention -- unless you argue it is an inevitable outcome?

In a sense, it was an inevitable outcome. That is, the change from Japanese to American imperialist domination did not fundamentally change the social position of the working class in occupied regions one bit. The "cure" was indeed "as bad as the disease". Or, to put it another way, "the operation was a success, but the patient died."

And this was the case whether we are talking about the Asia/Pacific or Europe/N. Africa theaters. Imperialism, whether it flew the Rising Sun, Swastika, Stars and Stripes or Union Jack, was incapable of carrying out socially-progressive transformations of any type. There would be no "revolutions from above" resulting from the defeat of the Axis. Indeed, even in those states where the USSR successfully smashed the Nazi puppet regimes, the social position of the working class only changed quantitatively, not qualitatively.

It may be that the U.S. military power was capable of "destroying fascism", but only if you equate "fascism" solely with the regimes that made up the Axis. I disagree with such an equation. American military power was able to greatly contribute to the defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as their puppet regimes, but the whole concept of "destroying fascism" was merely a propaganda tool to maintain public support. Fascism was not "destroyed" by the UN forces; I pointed this out in previous posts. Quite the opposite!


I see your point, but we were talking about WWII and so the details of the analogy are actually important. The governments fighting WWII were very different in important respects from those that fought WWI. For instance, their control over mass propaganda via radio had a very different effect. Finally, this pre-supposes that the revolutions sparked by WWI in Russia/Germany/Hungary were genuine, much less viable, workers revolutions -- a position on which the left by no means has reached consensus.

Not only radio, but also film. I think it's hard to deny the effect that Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will had on the German population, or that Chaplin's The Great Dictator and Curtiz's Casablanca had on the American population. Nevertheless, the use of these modern media only enhanced the effect of propaganda; they did not fundamentally change it. I know it's hard these days for people to understand the power of newspapers, but a century ago people literally lived and died by what was printed in certain newspapers -- especially the newspapers owned by Hearst, Pulitzer and Ochs.

What actually was fundamentally different between the bourgeois regimes of the First and Second World Wars was that they went into the new war with the results of the old one weighing heavily on their minds. For the French, for example, the devastation of their military-age population in WWI was foremost on their minds, especially since it meant there were too few men capable of fending off a Nazi invasion. The Germans, on the other hand, went into WWII still believing themselves to be undefeated on the battlefield. The Japanese held something of a similar view, with the exception of having their asses handed to them by the Red Army in 1938, which is why they regularly sought to maintain Soviet neutrality throughout WWII.

But very little of this had a fundamental effect on the prospects for proletarian revolution. If anything, it only emphasized in people the need for revolution -- especially in the case of those countries still suffering from the effects of WWI. Moreover, the role and influence of the Comintern has to be taken into consideration -- not in the sense of the parties themselves, but in the sense of the influence that its propaganda over the course of the 20 years between its foundation and the beginning of the European war. The mass circulation of the works of Marx and Engels, which began in earnest in the early 1920s, and, yes, Lenin, among workers in the years before the war also had an effect. In the U.S., for example, it can be argued that the protests by Black workers against the racism in war factories were due in large part to the relationship between the "official Communists" and African Americans from the mid-1920s to the late-1930s.

As for "consensus" about the Russian, Hungarian and German revolutions, I understand that there are those who reject them as being real workers' uprisings. I happen to disagree with that view. Let those who do hold that viewpoint justify their positions here. I will justify my own.


But it was not "entirely up to" American communists. Indeed, an unthinking attachment to "revolutionary principles" sometimes implies annihilation. Communists in America at the onset of WWII were in better shape than they are today, but they were still marginalized, weak, and very few in number. Crushing such a group, if they had spoken out against the war, even if in the name of the "workers global revolution", would have been quite easy for the US government and I doubt they would have hesitated to do so. Indeed precisely this fate befell communists in Germany and Japan who opposed the war. Had these countries won the war (or at least not lost), I suspect the damage done to the communist movement in both countries would have been substantially worse.

I think you sort of misunderstand what I mean when I say it would have been entirely up to us. By that, I mean that objective conditions already existed in the U.S. to make a proletarian revolution possible. What was fundamentally lacking was both a communist party and proletarian party capable of raising us into being a class-for-itself, overthrowing the supremacy of the exploiting and oppressing classes, and clearing the way for the proletariat to conquer political (state) power. Given the social situation in the U.S. between 1938 and 1941, it was entirely possible to create a proletarian party that was capable of carrying out a revolution (perhaps not immediately before the U.S. entry into the war, but certainly in the period after).

Contrary to your assertion, self-described communists and Marxists were quite powerful and numerous at the onset of WWII. As I said before, the CPUSA had upwards of 100,000 members and supporters, most of them key leaders, organizers and members of the CIO unions. The SP, SLP and SWP (and, after 1940, the WPUS) each had thousands of members, many of whom would have been a part of a proletarian party in a revolutionary period. Plus there were tens of thousands more workers -- organized, unorganized and unemployed -- who would have participated in revolutionary action. Now, of course, we can argue about the likelihood of all these elements coming together for a revolutionary struggle. But that sort of misses the point. The point is that there already existed a potential mass movement of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of workers in the U.S. who already had or were in the process of developing a strong class consciousness, with a significant section of them developing or having communist consciousness. Bringing them all together was "entirely up to us".

Could the U.S. left had been crushed as easily as the German or Japanese were? It's possible, but unlikely. The Nazi takeover resulted in many German KPD members, including most of its leadership, fleeing to the USSR or other countries. Of the nearly 2 million KPD members and supporters that existed before 1933, only a small fraction were ever sent to concentration camps. Most went underground. Japan saw a similar dynamic take place, with its leaders exiled in the USSR and most members forced underground. Proportionally speaking, the numbers of American leftists were smaller than Germany and Japan, but at the same time the Americans had greater positions of influence on the FDR administration. Let's not forget that FDR relied on the Socialists and Communists in the CIO to keep these unions from going in a revolutionary direction. FDR's Vice President in his third term was Henry Wallace, who had ties to the CPUSA through the "anti-fascist united front"; Wallace was known to offset the anti-communist policies of conservative Democrats in FDR's cabinet. Roosevelt was also well known for keeping his friends close ... and his enemies closer. There was almost no likelihood that the communist movement in the U.S. would have been crushed like that of Germany or Japan. The only way that would have been probable is if the Business Plot of 1933 had succeeded.


Maybe one can take the view that a communist that doesn't risk annihilation, or a communist that compromises in favor of "lesser-evilism", is no communist at all. I don't want to get into a detailed discussion of the Second international as that's too OT -- and although I think it's ultimately a flawed argument, the fact that the reformist pro-war parties of WWI survived in western Europe while the antiwar left in America was essentially decimated does give one pause.

The broad antiwar left in pre-WWII America committed suicide, with some casting their lot with the nationalist (and semi-fascist) "America First" committees and others backing Roosevelt's Democratic Party.


The latter point is patently false. It's not hard to find people in Germany and Japan, for instance, who consider the American intervention in WWII to have been a good thing. I'm also not sure what is meant by "taking responsibility for the government". If it means tacit approval of a bourgeois government, well, so is paying taxes.

There may indeed be Germans and Japanese who saw or see the U.S. military victory as "a good thing". There are also many Americans who would have preferred to see Germany defeat the U.S. (I don't think I need to tell you who they are.) Looking at what I wrote, I can see where your objection comes from. It would have been more accurate to say, "it is supporting one set of ruling classes over another". This is certainly accurate, and is what I meant in the first place.

When you make a conscious choice to support a government taking a certain action, you also take a measure of responsibility for it. This is because you give the government the authority to act in your name and the basis to legitimize and justify their actions. The same is true with voting or otherwise lending support to a candidate or party. You are undertaking a conscious political action which has repercussions throughout society.

For the most part, paying taxes is an involuntary act; it is something you have to do if you want to eat (consumption or "sin" taxes, excise taxes, sales taxes), work (withholding taxes, payroll taxes, income taxes), etc. These taxes are extracted from workers' wages without their consent; you cannot tell the cashier at the grocery store to leave out the sales and excise taxes any more than you can tell the payroll department of the company you work for to not subtract payroll and income taxes. As for owing the government taxes, I wouldn't tell anyone to pay the ruling classes.


Moreover, I fail to see how taking a "noble" side of a capitalist war (your words, not mine) is qualitatively different from asserting to, say, top down state reforms. Indeed, to the capitalist state, war is just another policy. If policies of the capitalist state results in a "net good" -- compared to not having that policy, with reforms leftists routinely support this. Why is war waged by a capitalist state held to a different standard?

For communists, the only supportable reforms are those that give the working class greater breathing space and room to organize for the revolutionary struggle. "Net good" is a moralism that should not play a part in our analysis. Did the victory of the UN forces over the Axis result in a greater breathing space and room to organize for a workers' revolution in Europe and Asia? No. Did communists understand this before the war started? Some did, yes.

Speaking from the standpoint of principle, wars and reforms should not be held to different standards. Both are a part of the capitalist system, and both need to be analyzed from that position. There needs to be consistency in principle and the application of "standards", or else we see both sectarianism and opportunism swamp the working class.

Your words, though, should by all rights give pause to those who are quick to declare any kind liberal legislation to be a supportable reform. I'm especially reminded of this in the context of the Supreme Court of the U.S. upholding the Affordable Care Act (i.e., "Obamacare"). The standards set by the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists are so low that it can be rightly argued that their positions on war (well, inter-imperialist war, that is; they do seem to have a low standard when it comes to who should be supported in an "anti-imperialist" conflict) are out of sync with the rest of their "standards" of what is supportable.

[Martin Blank]

I have a question for the Ultra Lefts who oppose fronts with social democrats that has never been answered.

I don't consider myself an "Ultra Left", but I'll answer your question.


How was a front with SPD (a workers party, albeit led by bourgeois socialists like Kautsky) ...

The SPD was not a workers' party (a proletarian party) in the sense that Marx and Engels defined such a formation. It wasn't a unification-in-action of all the various factions and fractions of the working class. It did not stand for the raising of the proletariat to a class-for-itself; it did not advocate the overthrow of the supremacy of the ruling classes; it did not fight for the proletariat to conquer political (state) power. It had ceased being a proletarian party, by Marxist (communist) standards, in the 1890s, when it abandoned revolutionary action in favor of electoralism. By 1930, the SPD was little more than a bourgeois socialist party with a large working-class base -- not a workers' party by any measure.


... different than a front with Mensheviks, which worked in Russia against the White Guard?

First, it wasn't a front with all Mensheviks, only with the Menshevik-Internationalists, which was a relatively small split from the RSDLP(M). Second, it was a front that included all of the pro-soviet parties: Bolsheviks, Left SRs, etc. Third, the M-Is were something of a transitional organization, with most of them joining the RCP(B) in 1918.


If the issue is class vs. class like it was in 1930 (or 1917), it seems like a no-brainer to leech off of the SPD (or Mensheviks) while exposing their leaders who refused to fight fascism (or czarists) until that point.

I am figuring that by "leeching off the SPD" you mean winning over their working-class members. If so, I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I don't think you needed to be in a "united front" with the SPD -- whether "from above" or "from below" -- to do that. If anything, such a "united front" would have given the SPD leadership a left cover, allowing them to say, "See, they need us more than we need them, and they will follow us no matter what we do."

In the end, all that ends up happening is that the SPD is strengthened.

[shinjuku dori]

Perfect posting!

[Blake's Baby]

Well that's all well and good as a slogan; the question as far as I'm concerned is whether it was even remotely viable on the eve of pearl harbor...

This is a pathetic argument. 'Communists should strive to be against war, unless there's a war, in which case they should be for it'.

By the same token, I've given up smoking, unless I happen to have a cigarette in my mouth. And I'm a non-swimmer. Unless I'm in some water of course. What can you do?

It's pretty much the same logic the traitors of the Second International used when they supported their own bourgeoisies in WWI and cheerled the murder of 'enemy' workers. It is not a communist position, it is a bourgois position. It's the position of nationalist scum.

[MarxSchmarx]

This is a pathetic argument. 'Communists should strive to be against war, unless there's a war, in which case they should be for it'.

By the same token, I've given up smoking, unless I happen to have a cigarette in my mouth. And I'm a non-swimmer. Unless I'm in some water of course. What can you do?

It's pretty much the same logic the traitors of the Second International used when they supported their own bourgeoisies in WWI and cheerled the murder of 'enemy' workers. It is not a communist position, it is a bourgois position. It's the position of nationalist scum.

Well, aside for your nonsensical mischaracterization of my point, the argument that it was not viable was a reference to the crushing of communists that would likely have resulted in America if they opposed the war. I'm not sure I agree with Miles that it would have been as difficult, but to glibly proclaim from the comfort of 70 years distance that American communists should have opposed a war in the face of basically guaranteed virtual annihilation seems to me to not be a viable position.

[Blake's Baby]

Why not? There were other groups that opposed WWII from a proletarian position in much worse circumstances than the US. The Left Communists in France, for instance, who were being hunted by the Gestapo while smuggling people out. At the same time they were putting out propaganda calling for fraternisation and for the overthrow of all the belligerent states. They risked being shot or deported to the camps. They could do it. Why not the communists in the US?

[MarxSchmarx]

Why not? There were other groups that opposed WWII from a proletarian position in much worse circumstances than the US. The Left Communists in France, for instance, who were being hunted by the Gestapo while smuggling people out. At the same time they were putting out propaganda calling for fraternisation and for the overthrow of all the belligerent states. They risked being shot or deported to the camps. They could do it. Why not the communists in the US?

Well you tell me. One important, giant difference is that French communists also operated under an occupying foreign regime - conditions which even caused the Chinese fascists and communists to unite. Indeed, this lended a very unique kind of popular credibility to anybody opposing the German occupation. Moreover, many of the french leftist resisters saw in the Spanish civil war how the bourgeois liberals could be fought at the same time as the fascists. although they played a role in that war, relatively few American communists had experienced spain the way many leftist resisters in France had.And furthermore, french left communists risked being killed, but so did french communists and even capitalist french resisters. So once the decision was made to oppose the occupation, there were relatively few marginal risks incurred by advocating overthrowing all belligerant states.

These in themselves are transparent differences between the conditions faced by American communists and those faced by french left communists.

For a lot of this was not the case with American communists. You are basically asserting it was in essence sheer cowardace on the part of tens of thousands of people? Well I suggest that perhaps a large number of American communists came to the conclusion that opposing a war against a pretty objectively barbaric regime would be a tactical mistake at a time when the party was ascendant, dooming them to the comparative irrelevance the French left-communists have been dealing with. Given that French left communists have had nowhere near the success of the regular French communists (for a whole host of reasons, to be sure) I still don't see how it is accurate to say the reaction of American communists, even if they knew a lot about what the french left communists were doing, was irrational at the time.

Anyway, I think you don't appreciate just how precarious the American communists saw their situation at the time. They were at a rather unique historical juncture - the party had been growing steadily, the public was starting to see the USSR in a more tolerable light (esp. since the germans invaded), and there were strong inroads made into the labor unions. The communists had started to make headway, but I contend that they understood that they had quite a way to go and at any moment they could be wiped out.

To most American communists, therefore, to actively oppose the war and work to overthrow the us government when so much of the country saw a German/Japanese invasion as imminent would have seemed imprudent at best and quite likely suicidal (despite their supposed friends in high places). The oppression that followed in america after wwii speaks to the veracity of the communists concern with the fragility of their gains, and just how quickly accusations of "fifth columns" could undermine decades of gains.

[shinjuku dori]

Must love American communist who fantasies that his beloved country sent his parents to war because they were against fascism, even though they established fascism in half of the world after and never picked a single herring bone with Spain, which was fascist until recently,

[MarxSchmarx]

Did the victory of the UN forces over the Axis result in a greater breathing space and room to organize for a workers' revolution in Europe and Asia? No.


Well, cutting through all the rest of it, I think that gets to the heart of the disagreement. There are two issues:

First, "result in a greater" implies that there would be some baseline - presumably an Axis victory. So, of course nobody knows that. The best we can do is make educated guesses, based on what the axis did do in lands they occupied, about how a post-war axis victory might have looked like.

But the second issue is that this really just paints too broad a brush for the post-war reality. Some workers movements were allowed to come back in places like Japan, Italy and France, although suppressed with a inordinate virulence in places like South Korea, Hungary or Greece. Would the axis powers, whose version of class war was, in Germany and Japan at least, considerably more brutal than America, the USSR or England at the time, have let any worker's movement return anywhere where they had power to anything remotely resembling what the allies created?

In part both of these are why I am still not convinced with the French Indochina example. The worker's resistance there gained strength precisely when the IJA was least able to respond, being under assault on so many fronts. That doesn't speak so much to the strength of the worker's resistance there as it does to the weakness of the Japanese army particularly along the south china sea that was under enormous pressure from the US, Australia and Britain. A better indication of what might had happened where the Japanese army wasn't as stressed, may be Manchuria. There probably the best resistance fighters anywhere in the world (who later fought off the Americans in Korea) were still unable to claim many successes until the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.

[Geiseric]

You're supporting the terrorist firebombing of japan and active nuclear war against huge working class populations, as well as disarming the workers movement at home and sending millions of american working youth to war because you think the U.S. government, who just did the smith trials and imprisoned James Cannon and Max Shachtman for opposing the war and organizing the teamsters strike, is "nicer to communists." I'm sure Roosevelt was better than Hirohito and Tojo in keeping illusions of democracy" alive, but you're simply supporting american over japanese capitalists. by the way engels was in favor of electoralism in the 1880s, so one of the founders of marxism still defined that tactic as a marxist, workers one. They were defensists, meaning they would be willing to Defend what was won against the Nazis, which any communist with a clear view on the party's strength at the time should have agreed with, and which the SPD asked for. But ultra leftism ruined germany, just like it did italy!

[Die Neue Zeit]

Contrary to what you say in your first paragraph, at this time virtually the entire left was antiwar. You forget that, after the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Non-Agression Pact was signed, the parties of the Comintern (including the Communist Party USA, which had close to 100,000 members and sympathizers at the time) abandoned the concept of the "anti-fascist united front" and empirically turned to opposing "imperialist war". It was not until the invasion of the USSR in June 1941 that the CPUSA once again called for a "war against fascism", this time as a means of "defending the Soviet Union".

You two comrades raised some definitely good points.

I think what comrade MarxSchmarx was trying to imply was that WWII didn't pose a revolutionary period for the working class.


Not only radio, but also film. I think it's hard to deny the effect that Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will had on the German population, or that Chaplin's The Great Dictator and Curtiz's Casablanca had on the American population. Nevertheless, the use of these modern media only enhanced the effect of propaganda; they did not fundamentally change it. I know it's hard these days for people to understand the power of newspapers, but a century ago people literally lived and died by what was printed in certain newspapers -- especially the newspapers owned by Hearst, Pulitzer and Ochs.

[...]

But very little of this had a fundamental effect on the prospects for proletarian revolution. If anything, it only emphasized in people the need for revolution -- especially in the case of those countries still suffering from the effects of WWI.

It seems your statement here contradicts the paragraph you wrote above. How was this emphasized in the midst of enhanced propaganda via radio and film, and the continuing propaganda power of the newspaper?




I think you sort of misunderstand what I mean when I say it would have been entirely up to us. By that, I mean that objective conditions already existed in the U.S. to make a proletarian revolution possible.

I'm sure the three of us comrades are already in agreement on the "objective conditions" (though I disagree with the use of that term):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/there-something-valuable-t170683/index.html?p=2428380


What I wrote in my earlier pamphlet and in my work-in-progress suggests quite a contradiction: there was the "inevitability" belief relative to advanced capitalism, which led to legalist fetishes, and yet they emphasized political activity. On the other hand, there's also an "inevitability" belief on the downside (ahem, crisis, decadence, etc.), which leads to strike fetishes, and dismissal of political activity.

Isn't the "belief" that capitalism has already developed enough productive forces for socialist transformation, crisis or no crisis, technological "revolution" or no such thing, enough of an "objective" factor to leave everything else to "subjective" factors? The stage is set, but the strings need to be pulled.

Now:


What was fundamentally lacking was both a communist party and proletarian party capable of raising us into being a class-for-itself, overthrowing the supremacy of the exploiting and oppressing classes, and clearing the way for the proletariat to conquer political (state) power. Given the social situation in the U.S. between 1938 and 1941, it was entirely possible to create a proletarian party that was capable of carrying out a revolution (perhaps not immediately before the U.S. entry into the war, but certainly in the period after).

Indeed.

I'd like to relate this to your comment above about the Comintern temporarily abandoning the Popular Front and opposing "imperialist war." Which devils in the details were positive, and which weren't?

In my opinion, without your "subjective conditions" / my "revolutionary period for the working class" scenario, it would have been ludicrous to call for turning an imperialist war into a civil war. It seems here the Comintern echoed the Second International "centrist" line of "peace without annexations or indemnifications," only this time somebody got it right about linking this line to non-revolutionary periods.

Also, in my opinion, had the non-Soviet parties of the Comintern been independent enough, they might have been consistent enough to apply this anti-"imperialist war" line as a backhanded critique of the Soviet trade with Nazi Germany (the trade feeding imperialist war)!

[I say the post-Pact trade and not the Pact itself, the realpolitik of which I respect as a counter for West European wheelings and dealings against very basic Soviet security interests.]


For communists, the only supportable reforms are those that give the working class greater breathing space and room to organize for the revolutionary struggle. "Net good" is a moralism that should not play a part in our analysis.

True, but I'm sure the comrade already knows the distinction between an overwhelmingly pro-labour reform and, say, a primarily pro-corporate reform that somehow "trickles down."


Your words, though, should by all rights give pause to those who are quick to declare any kind liberal legislation to be a supportable reform. I'm especially reminded of this in the context of the Supreme Court of the U.S. upholding the Affordable Care Act (i.e., "Obamacare"). The standards set by the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialists are so low that it can be rightly argued that their positions on war (well, inter-imperialist war, that is; they do seem to have a low standard when it comes to who should be supported in an "anti-imperialist" conflict) are out of sync with the rest of their "standards" of what is supportable.

What about class-strugglist defencism and revolutionary defencism? Because there was no revolutionary period, the first option was the only one, and I'm pretty sure this applied only to the Soviet war effort.

Now, with respect to strategic ultra-leftism:


This is a pathetic argument. 'Communists should strive to be against war, unless there's a war, in which case they should be for it'.

Comrades MarxSchmarx and Miles actually know the distinction between revolutionary and non-revolutionary periods, and looked up the lines "peace without annexations or indemnifications," class-strugglist defencism (a la Engels if [I]Imperial Germany itself were attacked without any provocation), and revolutionary defencism (a la Bukharin). I suggest you do the same.


It's pretty much the same logic the traitors of the Second International used when they supported their own bourgeoisies in WWI and cheerled the murder of 'enemy' workers. It is not a communist position, it is a bourgois position. It's the position of nationalist scum.

Not every form of defencism is reactionary. :glare:

[Die Neue Zeit]

Off-topic:


The SPD was not a workers' party (a proletarian party) in the sense that Marx and Engels defined such a formation. It wasn't a unification-in-action of all the various factions and fractions of the working class. It did not stand for the raising of the proletariat to a class-for-itself; it did not advocate the overthrow of the supremacy of the ruling classes; it did not fight for the proletariat to conquer political (state) power. It had ceased being a proletarian party, by Marxist (communist) standards, in the 1890s, when it abandoned revolutionary action in favor of electoralism. By 1930, the SPD was little more than a bourgeois socialist party with a large working-class base -- not a workers' party by any measure.

Comrade, I'll have to agree yet disagree with your statement on the pre-WWII SPD. The agreement is in relation to the non-proletarian character of the SPD from the 1910s onwards. The disagreement is in relation to your assessment of the SPD in the 1890s and 1900s.

I think the term "petty bourgeois worker party" might apply for the 1900s, but the SPD was firmly proletarian in the 1890s. I'm pretty sure it wasn't engaged in provincial/regional/local coalitionism until the 1900s.


First, it wasn't a front with all Mensheviks, only with the Menshevik-Internationalists, which was a relatively small split from the RSDLP(M). Second, it was a front that included all of the pro-soviet parties: Bolsheviks, Left SRs, etc. Third, the M-Is were something of a transitional organization, with most of them joining the RCP(B) in 1918.

Was this transition genuine or forced, consider the multiple Bolshevik coups d'etat against soviets themselves which didn't return Bolshevik majorities?

[Martin Blank]

First, "result in a greater" implies that there would be some baseline - presumably an Axis victory. So, of course nobody knows that. The best we can do is make educated guesses, based on what the axis did do in lands they occupied, about how a post-war axis victory might have looked like.

The "baseline" was the status quo, what actually existed in these territories, not a mythical Axis victory.


But the second issue is that this really just paints too broad a brush for the post-war reality. Some workers movements were allowed to come back in places like Japan, Italy and France, although suppressed with a inordinate virulence in places like South Korea, Hungary or Greece. Would the axis powers, whose version of class war was, in Germany and Japan at least, considerably more brutal than America, the USSR or England at the time, have let any worker's movement return anywhere where they had power to anything remotely resembling what the allies created?

Yes, some workers' movements were allowed to re-establish themselves in the wake of the UN forces' defeat of the Axis, but only those that had been tamed and domesticated. Even workers' movements led by the "official Communists" became increasingly restricted and proscribed in the months and years following the war, as Europe and parts of the Asia-Australia-Pacific Islands region carried out their own version of McCarthyism. The only workers' movements allowed to exist relatively unmolested were the "free trade" unions that, through their officials, pledged their loyalty to capitalism -- and even they, as the case of the AFL and CIO in the U.S. demonstrate, did not escape the restrictions and proscriptions.

Would the Axis allow any kind of workers' movements to exist? Yes, they would. In fact, they did. There were fascist/corporatist unions in nearly all of the Axis states. In Germany, for example, these "unions", an arm of the Nazi Party, were in charge of the compulsory labor programs that built such things as the Autobahn. In Italy, these "unions" were in corporatist councils with the bosses, planning out production, setting wages and working conditions, etc. Sure, they were what we would call company unions, but they were a kind of workers' movement -- albeit one shackled by all fours to the fascists.


In part both of these are why I am still not convinced with the French Indochina example. The worker's resistance there gained strength precisely when the IJA was least able to respond, being under assault on so many fronts. That doesn't speak so much to the strength of the worker's resistance there as it does to the weakness of the Japanese army particularly along the south china sea that was under enormous pressure from the US, Australia and Britain. A better indication of what might had happened where the Japanese army wasn't as stressed, may be Manchuria. There probably the best resistance fighters anywhere in the world (who later fought off the Americans in Korea) were still unable to claim many successes until the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.

What you seem to miss here is that it is that shift in the balance of class forces, coming as it does as a result of war, that allows the revolutionary workers' movement to more easily (and bloodlessly) overthrow the supremacy of the ruling classes and conquer state power. On the other hand, the handover of imperialist occupation from a debilitated to a strengthened Great Power (e.g, from Japan to the U.S.), shifts that balance back in favor of the exploiting and oppressing classes.

From a purely military standpoint, protracted stalemate is the most preferable condition for a revolutionary movement. From a political standpoint, on the other hand, open fraternization between soldiers and with the revolutionary movement is most preferable. The Indochinese revolutionaries sought to use the latter, since the former had not yet come into being; the problem was that fraternization was not possible, since a stable front line and stalemate of one type or another (e.g., trench warfare) is necessary to give soldiers the time and capability to talk. As a result, the revolutionaries were relatively limited in the tactics they could use to shift the balance of class forces in their favor. It didn't matter that they had the support of the majority of the Indochinese working class; it didn't matter that neither the French nor the Japanese (nor the Americans, for that matter) had any real support among the population. It all came down to the bloody arithmetic of war -- i.e., the balance of class forces in arms.

And this, in the end, is why your position is so dangerous. It is analyzing almost exclusively "from above" -- the machinations of the various belligerents and how well they may potentially treat the working class after their respective victories. The proletariat itself is transformed from active subject to passive object, to a sideline role, raising their head only to see which set of ruling classes will give them a better deal. It buries the principle that the proletariat is the only really revolutionary class by assigning the task of improvement of social position to that of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.

[Martin Blank]

By the way, Engels was in favor of electoralism in the 1880s, so one of the founders of Marxism still defined that tactic as a Marxist, workers one.

Yes, Engels favored electoralism as a tactic. The SPD, on the other hand, saw electoralism as a principle. They even went so far as to alter articles written by Engels and remove references that, even in a hypothetical sense, went against the SPD's parliamentary cretinism.


They were defensists, meaning they would be willing to defend what was won against the Nazis, which any communist with a clear view on the party's strength at the time should have agreed with, and which the SPD asked for.

Actually, this is not true. By 1932, the SPD had aligned itself behind the conservative Bonapartist Brüning in order to ostensibly stop Hitler. The reality, however, was that Brüning favored many of the same policies as Hitler, especially when it came to breaking the relative power of the working class. It was only on the eve of the 1933 election, when it was clear that the Nazis would come to power, that both the KPD and SPD saw any value in working together.


But ultra-leftism ruined Germany, just like it did Italy!

It wasn't some mythical "ultra-leftism" that put Germany in the hands of Hitler. It was the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialism, the sectarian opportunism, of both the KPD and SPD.

[Martin Blank]

I'll have to get to your longer post later.


Comrade, I'll have to agree yet disagree with your statement on the pre-WWII SPD. The agreement is in relation to the non-proletarian character of the SPD from the 1910s onwards. The disagreement is in relation to your assessment of the SPD in the 1890s and 1900s.

I think the term "petty bourgeois worker party" might apply for the 1900s, but the SPD was firmly proletarian in the 1890s. I'm pretty sure it wasn't engaged in provincial/regional/local coalitionism until the 1900s.

I have real problems with terms like "bourgeois workers' party" or "petty-bourgeois workers' party". I think it obscures the political character of the organization, reducing the analysis from a political to an organizational one. A proletarian party is not based on composition alone; it is composition and program. It is the overall class character of the group -- the political and organizational combined -- that makes a "workers' party".

I would look to the circular letter by Marx and Engels in 1879 as an indicator of what kind of party the SPD was becoming. In that letter, they argued that lack of action against elements like Bernstein would result in the SPD becoming a "Social-Democratic Petty-Bourgeois Party" -- a petty-bourgeois socialist party. As far as I can see, no action was ever taken against the Bernsteinians, the gradualists, the Katheder Socialists, etc. In fact, these elements were elevated and revered in the SPD. I would say that the SPD was a petty-bourgeois socialist party (with both proletarian socialist and bourgeois socialist factions) from the 1880s to the 1910s. After 1914, the SPD became a bourgeois socialist party.


Was this transition genuine or forced, consider the multiple Bolshevik coups d'etat against soviets themselves which didn't return Bolshevik majorities?

Some of both ... and other things. Some Menshevik-Internationalists did genuinely come to support the Bolsheviks. Others were likely "convinced" to join in order to continue their political activity. And still others saw which way the wind was blowing, and who signed off on their salaries.

[Geiseric]

No i meant at the kornilov uprising, the bolsheviks worked with the provisional government against the Czarists, which was identical to germany's situation (except switch Tzarist for Nazi). The ultra leftism towards the SPD should of happened in 1923 but Brandler wasn't capible of that. Instead it happened in 1930, when the Nazis had 7000000 votes. Doesn't seem very far sighted, as in they didn't worry about what fascism would mean for the socialist movement.

[Blake's Baby]

Maybe the SPD shouldn't have supported the massacres of the working class in World War I. Or maybe they shouldn't have begun murdering communists in 1918 if they wanted the communists to protect them from the Nazis. That might have helped relations a bit.

[Per Levy]

if i may quote a part of paul mason's "live working or die fighting":


in 1945 fascism was beaten but the labour movements of the world paid a massive price. the independence, radicalism and gut anarchism that had driven them for decades were expunged.

he goes on then that the unions of the allied countries did ally themselves with the employers and conservative politicians to defeat fascism. in return they got a welfarestate.

just thought it was somewhat fitting to the topic. personally im always for fighting against your bourgeois master then die fighting for him.

[MarxSchmarx]

The "baseline" was the status quo, what actually existed in these territories, not a mythical Axis victory.



So if you agree that we have to use as a basis how the Axis acted in their own territories, then you open yourself up to all sorts of querries - e.g., were people better off under Ameican rule or Japanese rule? One can measure this with things like life expectancy, the relative purchasing power, time spent in conscription, the extent of human experimentation, how oppressive the laws of the time were, etc... I don't know if anyone's done a tally, but if one excludes the Soviet Union I suspect that few people would see the condition of workers and the left as being better or approximately the same in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan and the Anglo-Saxon countries, China, Benelux, Norway and France (say). And indeed many leftists did leave these places like Germany for UN countries even outside the USSR.







Yes, some workers' movements were allowed to re-establish themselves in the wake of the UN forces' defeat of the Axis, but only those that had been tamed and domesticated. Even workers' movements led by the "official Communists" became increasingly restricted and proscribed in the months and years following the war, as Europe and parts of the Asia-Australia-Pacific Islands region carried out their own version of McCarthyism. The only workers' movements allowed to exist relatively unmolested were the "free trade" unions that, through their officials, pledged their loyalty to capitalism -- and even they, as the case of the AFL and CIO in the U.S. demonstrate, did not escape the restrictions and proscriptions.

Would the Axis allow any kind of workers' movements to exist? Yes, they would. In fact, they did. There were fascist/corporatist unions in nearly all of the Axis states. In Germany, for example, these "unions", an arm of the Nazi Party, were in charge of the compulsory labor programs that built such things as the Autobahn. In Italy, these "unions" were in corporatist councils with the bosses, planning out production, setting wages and working conditions, etc. Sure, they were what we would call company unions, but they were a kind of workers' movement -- albeit one shackled by all fours to the fascists.



Are you being serious? b/c I'd hate to think that you're serious about equating the "corporatist" unions of fascist regimes as being no better than, say, the Japan Railway workers union, the British miners union or the French CGT or the Italian CGIL. In fact, I'm starting to suspect the fact that you see unions like these as being on a par with Nazi jokes really boils down to one of two things. Either the disagreements go much, much further than whether the American victory provided some breathing room whereas the Axis utterly suffocated their workers movements, or you really do think that there is no objective difference between the last half century of workers struggles in the global north and the crap unions the fascists had.

Would the American, French and British (and post-war Japanese Italian and German) bourgeoise have preferred the Nazi approach to unions? Indeed they came quite closely to openly advocating it. And at least in America and China they almost succeeded. But there were constraints on the bourgeoisie in the UN states that the axis states never had - constraints which were won often by the immediate precursors of the unions and orgs you disparge by equating them to Nazi jokes. So either way, I'm rather disappointed, and admittedly surprised, you'd take that kind of position that workers movements in the west were as pathetic as the Nazi shells than concede that as mediocre as worker's movements were after the war, their modicum of success benefited from what little breathing room under bourgeois liberal democracy they wee provided than was denied under fascism.



What you seem to miss here is that it is that shift in the balance of class forces, coming as it does as a result of war, that allows the revolutionary workers' movement to more easily (and bloodlessly) overthrow the supremacy of the ruling classes and conquer state power. On the other hand, the handover of imperialist occupation from a debilitated to a strengthened Great Power (e.g, from Japan to the U.S.), shifts that balance back in favor of the exploiting and oppressing classes.

From a purely military standpoint, protracted stalemate is the most preferable condition for a revolutionary movement. From a political standpoint, on the other hand, open fraternization between soldiers and with the revolutionary movement is most preferable. The Indochinese revolutionaries sought to use the latter, since the former had not yet come into being; the problem was that fraternization was not possible, since a stable front line and stalemate of one type or another (e.g., trench warfare) is necessary to give soldiers the time and capability to talk. As a result, the revolutionaries were relatively limited in the tactics they could use to shift the balance of class forces in their favor. It didn't matter that they had the support of the majority of the Indochinese working class; it didn't matter that neither the French nor the Japanese (nor the Americans, for that matter) had any real support among the population. It all came down to the bloody arithmetic of war -- i.e., the balance of class forces in arms.



Well the Korean war seems to provide a rather persuasive counter-example to that analysis, but it seems somewhat ancillary. Indeed, I don't know what it is I'm missing. That the balance in Indochina shifted precisely because the Japanese were fighting the American and British behemoths was what I'd been arguing all along. Nor did I ever say it was a great thing the French/Americans became/resumed the new imperial power in Indochina. But had the Americans not intervened, would there have been any chance the Indochinese resistance would have had its successes? Again, the example of Manchuria, where a very effective, popularly supported resistance with a pretty stable front line between Japanese occupied North East asia and the USSR/Mongolia was nevertheless seriously languishing and threatened with complete military defeat on several occasions, does suggest to me that there is some exaggeration of the viability of the resistance in Indochina at the time absent an external assault on the IJA.

Now I'll buy that that the return of European rule was no help for the Indochina case. But again, (as I refer to above), my point is not that the allies were benevelont everywhere, or even a majority of places. Only that they were marginally better than the axis.





And this, in the end, is why your position is so dangerous. It is analyzing almost exclusively "from above" -- the machinations of the various belligerents and how well they may potentially treat the working class after their respective victories. The proletariat itself is transformed from active subject to passive object, to a sideline role, raising their head only to see which set of ruling classes will give them a better deal. It buries the principle that the proletariat is the only really revolutionary class by assigning the task of improvement of social position to that of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.

I am actually quite sympathetic to that critique. The problem as I see it is just that even if the American communists had opposed the war, they were in no serious position at the time to stop it, or to realistically strengthen workers movements in axis states by much. Under those conditions, does it really make much sense to speak of the "agency" of the working class? Again, maybe we just disagree, but I think the fact that WWII ended very differently than WWI for the global left, without any intervening worker's revolution to take over a major belligerent to speak of, is not due solely or even primarily to the temerity of communists in allied states.

Moreover, there was not a lot the American communists could do to make much of a difference to the anti-colonial struggle in axis territory, and, in the pacific, in French Dutch and British territories. Given that any serious prospective success in America was at least a decade away, supporting an American behemoth that would provide the conditions for "shifting the balance of power" away from the primary bourgeois enemy wasn't insane. And for what it's worth, the American military did disband en masse after past wars, so I think it's pretty likely the communists misjudged how permanent the American military presence was going to be. But, again, hindsight.

Finally, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the evidence is strong that an all out opposition to american entry in the war would simply accelerated the annihilation of American communism. Maybe the communists would have taken control of America and "exported liberation" in the Pacific? Unless such an outcome was realistic (or maybe we just disagree as to how realistic such an outcome was), given that the UN victory did allow some breathing room to continue the long struggle, whereas by any serious analysis the status quo of how the axis states operated not even those concessions would have been won, then once we divorce ourselves from the need to learn from what happened the issue here seems to therefore be one of in essence mere criticism of the conscience of American communists at the time.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Are you being serious? b/c I'd hate to think that you're serious about equating the "corporatist" unions of fascist regimes as being no better than, say, the Japan Railway workers union, the British miners union or the French CGT or the Italian CGIL. In fact, I'm starting to suspect the fact that you see unions like these as being on a par with Nazi jokes really boils down to one of two things. Either the disagreements go much, much further than whether the American victory provided some breathing room whereas the Axis utterly suffocated their workers movements, or you really do think that there is no objective difference between the last half century of workers struggles in the global north and the crap unions the fascists had.

I don't know where I am on this so-called "workers movement" divide, comrades. I strong disagree with Miles' use of the term "workers movement" with respect to mere labour unions for very political, anti-economist reasons.

On the other hand, we've had enough history to deem that unions just aren't political enough to begin with, and can't be. Lassalle was right (though using wrong economics).


Would the American, French and British (and post-war Japanese Italian and German) bourgeoise have preferred the Nazi approach to unions? Indeed they came quite closely to openly advocating it. And at least in America and China they almost succeeded. But there were constraints on the bourgeoisie in the UN states that the axis states never had - constraints which were won often by the immediate precursors of the unions and orgs you disparge by equating them to Nazi jokes. So either way, I'm rather disappointed, and admittedly surprised, you'd take that kind of position that workers movements in the west were as pathetic as the Nazi shells than concede that as mediocre as worker's movements were after the war, their modicum of success benefited from what little breathing room under bourgeois liberal democracy they wee provided than was denied under fascism.

Comrade, it goes back to the very function of collective bargaining representation. I don't know about Miles, but I made pretty clear my stance on campaigning for a "good faith" public monopoly on all private-sector collective bargaining representation, taking the best from "universal unionization" without compulsory association. I'd trust such state organization to improve labour bargaining power more effectively than yellow unions, and at the same time point out that any agency sellouts would be more obvious.

[Martin Blank]

So if you agree that we have to use as a basis how the Axis acted in their own territories, then you open yourself up to all sorts of queries -- e.g., were people better off under American rule or Japanese rule? One can measure this with things like life expectancy, the relative purchasing power, time spent in conscription, the extent of human experimentation, how oppressive the laws of the time were, etc.... I don't know if anyone's done a tally, but if one excludes the Soviet Union I suspect that few people would see the condition of workers and the left as being better or approximately the same in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan and the Anglo-Saxon countries, China, Benelux, Norway and France (say). And indeed many leftists did leave these places like Germany for UN countries even outside the USSR.

Let's start with your question: Were people better off under American rule or Japanese rule? I really don't think either of us is in any position to say. I would tend to think that the workers of China, Indochina, the Philippines, Korea, Okinawa, etc., are in a far better position to answer that -- and something tells me that the answer may surprise both of us. I would also point to the example of the people of the Bikini Atoll, who were forcibly relocated to another island so that the U.S. could conduct above-ground nuclear testing.

Of course, the real question here is not if people were better off under this or that imperialist thumb, but whether the people wanted that thumb. Even the most sophisticated crime cannot be covered up by a multitude of statistics.


Are you being serious? b/c I'd hate to think that you're serious about equating the "corporatist" unions of fascist regimes as being no better than, say, the Japan Railway workers union, the British miners union or the French CGT or the Italian CGIL. In fact, I'm starting to suspect the fact that you see unions like these as being on a par with Nazi jokes really boils down to one of two things. Either the disagreements go much, much further than whether the American victory provided some breathing room whereas the Axis utterly suffocated their workers movements, or you really do think that there is no objective difference between the last half century of workers struggles in the global north and the crap unions the fascists had.

Don't get all high-and-mighty with me about this. You were the one who asked if the fascist regimes would allow any kind of workers' movement. You made no qualifications or modifications to that, so you got the appropriate answer: yes, but only ones that were fully in line with the fascist regimes. Of course, they weren't the same as the workers' movement that both preceded and followed the fascists, but they did exist. I wasn't making a comparison; I was simply stating a fact.

But now that you bring it up, let me ask you a question?

What kind of union volunteers to refrain from strikes or other industrial action, from improving the wages, working conditions and livelihoods of its members, from bargaining over work hours, etc., out of a sense of loyalty to the ruling classes and their state?


Would the American, French and British (and post-war Japanese Italian and German) bourgeoisie have preferred the Nazi approach to unions? Indeed they came quite closely to openly advocating it. And at least in America and China they almost succeeded. But there were constraints on the bourgeoisie in the UN states that the axis states never had....

And what exactly were those "constraints"?


Now I'll buy that that the return of European rule was no help for the Indochina case. But again, (as I refer to above), my point is not that the allies were benevelont everywhere, or even a majority of places. Only that they were marginally better than the axis.

I guess it's my turn to question your choice of words, since it seems like you see more than a marginal difference between the UN and Axis states. At the very least, you see the western "democracies" as having more "constraints" on them when it comes to the class struggle. In my view, that's much more than a mere marginal difference. A marginal difference is the difference between a humid 100-degree day and a humid 95-degree day. You are implying something much more than a matter of degrees, especially considering it is something that has fundamentally altered the social relationships among classes to the point that the exploiting classes are "constrained" to wage all-out class warfare against the exploited.


The problem as I see it is just that even if the American communists had opposed the war, they were in no serious position at the time to stop it, or to realistically strengthen workers movements in axis states by much. Under those conditions, does it really make much sense to speak of the "agency" of the working class?

You've tied yourself into a Gordian Knot of pragmatism. The revolutionary workers' movement is a conscious movement -- i.e., a movement that exists because it chooses to exist. It is not something that is wholly spontaneous, emerging fully matured from the head of Minerva. It takes conscious activity to build up a movement of proletarians acting as a class-for-itself. "Agency", as you call it, is part of the process of building that movement -- of promoting and disseminating communist education and agitation among our class.

History knows all kinds of transformations, including those that begin as a small rabble and end as a mass movement. Where the American communist movement was in 1941, 1943 or 1946 was not set in stone; it was not fate that determined its position. When I talked about how you were basing your positions on hindsight, this is what I meant. You were forgetting that the dynamics would have been altered in any of the alt-hist scenarios we've been talking about. Once you begin to introduce new contradictions to the existing dynamic, the latter begins to change. Think of it like the motion of stars in the universe; if a star was to go supernova, or implode and become a black star, the movement of stars and galaxies even billions of light years away will be affected by the changes in gravitational field, in its own motion, etc. Development of history and human society are affected similarly by changes in material conditions.

But I don't really need to tell you all this. You know it as well as I do, which is why this conversation is so damned frustrating. It really seems like you have abandoned any kind of materialist analysis for pragmatic impressionism. And that, in turn, is feeding a sense of defeatism and cynicism. I don't know if it is all stemming from the specific context of WWII, or if it is more modern in its origins.

[A Marxist Historian]

The usual thing to do in an Imperialist war is to say



and



However, WWII was not a usual Imperialist war, it was a war against fascism. Now, the analysis of fascism is such, that it is a different quality as well as the most reactionary form of bourgeois rule, that therefore it does make a difference wether you live in a bourgeois democracy or a fascist state, and that therefore the strategy to defeat fascism is to immediately ally with whoever you can, up to the parts of the bourgeoisie who are opposed to fascism.

On top of that, in that specific situation, Nazi Germany was also a direct threat to the Soviet Union, which was the greatest achievement of the working class at the time.

So, what SHOULD you have done at the time? Supported the US going to war against Germany? Joined the US military? Or should you have continued to work against the US war effort? Or something else entirely?

Just as an answer to the OP:

The Trotskyist position was that the war between the "Allies" and the Germans and Japanese was just another imperialist war, not a war vs. fascism. The USA committed Hiroshima, the US & Brits committed Dresden and Hamburg, and there is no significant difference.

But the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which is what WWII really boiled down to in Europe, 90% of the German Army was on the Eastern Front, was something different. It was a war between a workers state and a capitalist state, so supporting the Red Army in liberating Europe from the Nazis was absolutely necessary.

As to what exactly to do, that was much discussed among Trotskyists, you had something called the "proletarian military policy," which IMHO was dubious.

Here's a link for a good analysis of what should revolutionaries have done in WWII.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/prs2-pmp/index.htm

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I never actually said this. 9mm made a confusing post that fascism and Social democracy were not different "Not quantitatively." and that "No form of capitalism is acceptable to me."

Quantity means to me, things that can be counted, measure, units, standards etc. The only measurement of quantitative difference in fascism and social democracy is living standards. Quantitatively they are different, as the living standards in social democratic society are much better then Fascism. ..



A plausible idea that is, in fact, wrong.

Living standards in Germany were higher than in Australia and Canada during WWII...if you had the good fortune to be Aryan.

Why? Because Hitler wanted to keep the home front happy, and all the rest of Europe was being exploited with the most extreme brutality.

The point is that what is wrong with fascism isn't just economics and wage levels.

-M.H.-

[aquaruis15000]

I would say that the SPD was a petty-bourgeois socialist party (with both proletarian socialist and bourgeois socialist factions) from the 1880s to the 1910s. After 1914, the SPD became a bourgeois socialist party.


How does a party transform itself like this, and why? One day you have a Communist Party and then a week later it's a bourgeois party? This is confusing to me.

[A Marxist Historian]

The problem with those who advocate fighting the US war effort of the time is that American involvement in WWII did effectively curtail the development of fascism and ultimately helped break up colonial strongholds.

I think it's important to understand that America was, apart from Germany, the only nation that really fought that war on two fronts.

Whereas American intervention in Europe probably wasn't really necessary to defeat Germany (at least in hind sight), and therefore I think a plausible case could be made that fascism would have collapsed even without American involvement in Europe, I don't find this argument terribly persuasive for the Pacific. It is unlikely that Japanese expansionism would have been defeated absent American intervention. Faced with the choice of breaking a near-hegemonic fascist colonial monopoly or relative isolation, I think that advocating American disengagement from the pacific is only possible with teh benefit of hindsight.

This is a non-trivial fact to consider. As bad as the Americans were as colonialist masters in places like the Philippines, the Japanese were considerably worse and sought to impose their incredibly authoritarian system on their territories. had the US not gone to war with Japan there was no serious alternative to Japanese regional domination in the Pacific. It's very likely China would have lost the war, I doubt Britain could have held on to India and Australia (the way the Americans lost their colonies), and the ussr had no real reason to open in a second front by engaging in a protracted war with Japan

Under these circumstances, I think it's pretty clear that at least at the time, advocating American non-involvement is tantamount to having let Japan effectively gained hegemony over the region. It's possible that a more democratic Japan could have emerged and that the outcome would have been just as brutal considering the American legacy in Korea, Vietnam, and its covert roles in Marcos's philippines or Suharto's Indonesia, but given the militarist restrictions set in motion by the Sino-Japanese war, and the brutality of forced assimilation Tokyo imposed on its colonies, I rather doubt an east Asia dominated by the Japanese empire would have been any more preferable. At the time, and for decades since, I think the alternative to AMerican non-intervention in the Pacific has predominantly been viewed as a net gain for the Japanese empire and quite plausibly have led to Japanese hegemony over most areas where nationalist China and European colonial powers had been operating. Any leftist who asserts that such an outcome would have been obviously preferable has no business calling himself a leftist.

so then the purpose of WWII was so that the USA could spread the benefits of the American Way to Vietnam? No US involvement in the Asian war, no My Lai?

In the 1940s, the Japanese were more brutal in the Phillipines than the Americans. But the original American occupation of the Philippines was more brutal by far than anything the Japanese did there, millions died.

Horrible as what the Japanese did was, the Americans were hardly behind hand. It was not the Japanese who nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

And then you have the Korean War, which was even worse than the Vietnam War.

And the mass slaughter arranged by the CIA in Indonesia, which probably killed more Indonesian Communists than Stalin did Russian Communists.

And on and on, ad nauseam.

-M.H.-

[Geiseric]

Besides would you tell Japanese communists (who were dying in firebombings) to support the American army? That would be a laugh!

[A Marxist Historian]

...

We will never know what would have happened in latin america africa and "southern asia" had america stayed out of wwii. But we can make educated guesses, and it's unlikely that fascism would have been averted without american invovlement. for instance, given america's track south of the border record pre-1940s and the military rule in those regions as well as the strong fascist bend of the catholic church at the time, I'm doubtful US intervention in wwii had much of anything to do with the spread of fascism in that region.

Hm? There have never been fascist regimes in Latin America, ever. What there have been is extremely brutal military dictatorships, usually sponsored by the USA, and often directly put in by US troops in Central America and the Caribbean.

Do you know anything at all about Latin America?


As to asia, who knows what would have happened if japanese or soviet, instead of American, hegemony reigned in the region. the precedent of soviet backed arab nationalist dictatorships, Japanese-backed Thailand and the philippines are telling. Only india managed to build a (barely) functioning democracy and i don't have real reason to believe the track record would have been any better had america not intervened in the pacific.

And the Indians, of course, were Soviet ally more or less during much of the Cold War. And Thailand was an American airbase during Vietnam. And peasant guerilla movements in the Phillipines have been brutally suppressed from the Hukbalahap days up to now.

Since the prime "soviet backed dictatorship" was North Vietnam, can we assume that you think leftists should have supported the US during the Vietnam War? That's the logical conclusion from your argument.


...
I was thinking of Asia, with the Japanese having replaced the british, french, americans and dutch as the colonial rulers. The independence of most Asian states traces its origins back to the pacific theater of wwii. Without a pacific theater, who knows what would have happened.

Indeed, who knows? But if we are going to do utterly unverifiable historical speculation, let us try to do it properly.

Let us suppose that Japan had been able to conquer the entire "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" with no American opposition, in that case rather peacefully, except for China.

What would then have happened?

Well then, Japan would have likely demilitarized, returned to the "Taisho Democracy" of the 1920s, and Japanese rule over Asia would probably have ended up looking rather like American rule over Asia.

Once firm economic control over the colonies was established, quite possibly they would have been given their independence.

Remember, the official Japanese line was that they were just liberating Asia from the oppression of white imperialism. And in India, a lot of Indians believed that, you had the pro-Japanese movement of Subhas Chandra Bose.

As for China, Mao would probably have kicked the Japanese out, with Soviet support, sooner or later.

Or, for that matter, maybe the Japanese empire would have been overthrown by revolution altogether.

Or maybe your nightmarish vision would be what happened. The point is, who really knows? You can't come up with a policy on the basis of Monday morning quarterbacking as to what you think would have happened.

Supporting US imperialism in the Pacific sphere in WWII means you support Hiroshima. End of story really.

-M.H.-


This last point raises an issue I've always had with this sort of argument.

Yes, of course, such a world wide uprising would have been preferable. ultimately communists in america at the time had to largely work with the war they got, not the war they wanted. and the conditions at the time were such that such a global revolution was exceedingly unlikely for a world wide war of liberation. The fact was there was no second russian revolution even before America joined the war and conditions were desperate, mainland Japan was already undergoing a decade of harsh war and there was no revolution there, I don't know any serious person who saw a real opening for social revolution in germany or britain of the time, and about the only credible revolutionary force anywhere on earth was the chinese communist party that had allied themselves with the same people you call fascists and maybe the left wing of the Indian independence movement. Was such a global uprising beyond the realm of possibility? No. But was it probable? Also no. THe choice facing american communists was not between world revolution or yet another imperialist quagmire. It was between supporting American isolationism or the outcome of a lesser evil. American communists were simply in no position, let's say after pearl harbour, to build a world wide worker's uprising against all the imperial states instead of going to war. This would have resulted at best in nothing and quite likely with a lot of them ending up in jail for supporting a cause that was simply not viable at the time.

Yes, american involvement in wwii ultimately laid the groundwork for the reactionary cold war. But this is again noted with hindsight. It's worth pointing out, also, that prior to the wwii america had very limited military ability to carry out global imperial ambitions. To fault the american communists of the time, therefore, for supporting the only credible alternative (which itself was not a military power) to an objectively rapidly ascendant yet brutal japanese empire and a seemingly invincible nazi army because it distracted their cause from an international revolution that was, at least with hindsight, DOA, seems to me to be answering a strawman argument with the nirvana fallacy.

[A Marxist Historian]

I have a question for the Ultra Lefts who oppose fronts with social democrats that has never been answered. How was a front with SPD (a workers party, albeit led by bourgeois socialists like Kautsky) different than a front with Mensheviks, which worked in Russia against the white guard? If the issue is class vs. class like it was in 1930 (or 1917), it seems like a no brainer to leech off of the SPD (or mensheviks) while exposing their leaders who refused to fight fascism (or czarists) untill that point.

You should really read Trotsky's writings on Germany. He did not advocate "a front" with the SPD, in fact a lot of what he wrote was against people like the Brandlerites who did. He never once called for voting for the SPD. Instead he wanted workers to vote for the quite Stalinist KPD.

And there was no "front with the Mensheviks" vs. the white guards, as half the time the Mensheviks were supporting the white guards. And when they opposed them, it was rather feebly and inconsistently.

The Cheka put a lot of effort into watching the Mensheviks like hawks, and did not hesitate to lock them up when, as was the case all too frequently, their anti-white-guard rhetoric wasn't matching their actual practice.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Well, aside for your nonsensical mischaracterization of my point, the argument that it was not viable was a reference to the crushing of communists that would likely have resulted in America if they opposed the war. I'm not sure I agree with Miles that it would have been as difficult, but to glibly proclaim from the comfort of 70 years distance that American communists should have opposed a war in the face of basically guaranteed virtual annihilation seems to me to not be a viable position.

American Trotskyists opposed the war. They were not annihilated, in fact their influence grew. The peak influence of the Socialist Workers Party was in fact right after WWII. And the Shachtmanite Workers Party, which was totally antiwar, had its peak influence during WWII, playing an important role in wildcat illegal strikes.

-M.H.-

[aquaruis15000]

Hm? There have never been fascist regimes in Latin America, ever.

Hm? Peron? Pinochet? Stroessner? MNR in Bolivia?

[A Marxist Historian]

Hm? Peron? Pinochet? Stroessner? MNR in Bolivia?

Brutal military dictatorships, not fascist regimes. I don't know what Peron is doing in there, he was a military populist, not too different from Chavez in Venezuela now in practice, though his rhetoric was different, less Castro, more Hitler.

The MNR in Bolivia actually came to power in 1952 as a result of--a workers revolution, and opportunist policies by the Trotskyist POR, the mass party of the Bolivian workers. Not one of the better moments in the history of Trotskyism. Of course the local Stalinists were much worse, basically supporting the military dictatorship the miners overthrew.

A fascist regime is brownshirts in the streets taking over, a mass middle class reactionary movement to annihilate the working class's organizations. Like Italy, like Nazi Germany. Not just a military dictatorship, no matter how brutal.

-M.H.-

[aquaruis15000]

A fascist regime is brownshirts in the streets taking over, a mass middle class reactionary movement to annihilate the working class's organizations. Like Italy, like Nazi Germany. Not just a military dictatorship, no matter how brutal.

Sounds a lot like Pinochet.

Anyway, fascist movements can be preemptive as much as reactions to something that already happen. The bourgeoisie doesn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And they can put up sandbags before the flood reaches them.

[A Marxist Historian]

Sounds a lot like Pinochet.

Anyway, fascist movements can be preemptive as much as reactions to something that already happen. The bourgeoisie doesn't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. And they can put up sandbags before the flood reaches them.

Pinochet was a pure military dictator--appointed as head of the Chilean army by Allende, who presumably didn't think he was a fascist at the time.

There was no mass movement behind Pinochet seizing power, it was a pure 100% military coup, backed of course by the CIA.

After he took power, he was pretty popular with the middle classes, but that's not who put him into power, it was the army and the navy. Especially the navy.

-M.H.-

[Geiseric]

MH my entire arguement comes from "the struggle against fascism in germany," almost verbatum. Trotsky said that during the kornilov reaction, he was freed from prison and cooperated with SRs and Mensheviks to protect what was gained by that point. Germany is no different, if we simply replace Czarism with Nazism. Trotsky's point was in favor of a front against fascism with other social democratic parties, ONLY IN 1930, since they themselves were trying to protect the existance of say unions and other gains from the workers movement which is in line with what the KPD's goals were. Dave Walters explained that bit to me. Imagine if Nazism was defeated by working class parties in 1930, that would of been the revolution itself over capital itself. But i've been reading Trotsky's stuff on germany, you should review it given the sparts support for KKE.

[International_Solidarity]

I believe that in those times the best thing to do would have been to fight the fascists OR to aid in the revolution at home. I probably would have chosen to fight the Fascists had I lived in that time. That's what my grandfather did, mainly because our Sicilian cousins were enslaved by Mussolini. He would not stand by and allow his homeland to be overrun by such filth! Although America didn't treat Sicily much better, bombed it to high hell.

[A Marxist Historian]

MH my entire arguement comes from "the struggle against fascism in germany," almost verbatum. Trotsky said that during the kornilov reaction, he was freed from prison and cooperated with SRs and Mensheviks to protect what was gained by that point. Germany is no different, if we simply replace Czarism with Nazism. Trotsky's point was in favor of a front against fascism with other social democratic parties, ONLY IN 1930, since they themselves were trying to protect the existance of say unions and other gains from the workers movement which is in line with what the KPD's goals were. Dave Walters explained that bit to me. Imagine if Nazism was defeated by working class parties in 1930, that would of been the revolution itself over capital itself. But i've been reading Trotsky's stuff on germany, you should review it given the sparts support for KKE.

You want to apply Trotsky's writings on fascism to Greece now? Easily done. You have the Golden Dawn. All workers organizations should unite to sweep them off the streets and shove them back into their holes.

But that's not a "front." Au contraire. You say you are reading Trotsky's writings on Germany, then read what he says about the Brandlerites, who have just about exactly your position.

Your "front" term is confusionist. A united front and a Popular Front are two totally different things. What you advocate is a political coalition with SYRIZA. That is not at all a united front in the sense Trotsky advocated.

Yes, by all means, if the Mensheviks & SRs are willing to fight Kornilov, which briefly they were, a military united front. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with a political coalition with them, which is what you advocate as to Greece.

If you just want to mechanically transpose Trotsky's policies in Germany in the early '30s to Greece, what do you get?

Voting for the KKE and not voting for SYRIZA. The Spartacist policy.

That is not why I support that policy, but that's the only argument you're giving for what you advocate, namely that it's orthodox Trotskyism. And it isn't.

-M.H.-

[MarxSchmarx]

I'm happy to admit my understanding of the world as it appeared to American communists on the eve of Pearl Harbor is pretty impressionistic. I also admit that I am not sure it's really worth the effort of digging up testimonials, diaries, etc... of the time, but as you note, perhaps both of us would be surprised if we look back that far. So with that, I guess I'll just try to clarify a few things to wind this all down.


Let's start with your question: Were people better off under American rule or Japanese rule? I really don't think either of us is in any position to say. I would tend to think that the workers of China, Indochina, the Philippines, Korea, Okinawa, etc., are in a far better position to answer that -- and something tells me that the answer may surprise both of us. I would also point to the example of the people of the Bikini Atoll, who were forcibly relocated to another island so that the U.S. could conduct above-ground nuclear testing.

Of course, the real question here is not if people were better off under this or that imperialist thumb, but whether the people wanted that thumb. Even the most sophisticated crime cannot be covered up by a multitude of statistics.


A multitude of statistics in the right direction, though, must count for something. But anyway, there is indeed no way to answer this concretely; my point was simply that American communists could form opinions about this at the time. Many in fact did.



Don't get all high-and-mighty with me about this. You were the one who asked if the fascist regimes would allow any kind of workers' movement. You made no qualifications or modifications to that, so you got the appropriate answer: yes, but only ones that were fully in line with the fascist regimes. Of course, they weren't the same as the workers' movement that both preceded and followed the fascists, but they did exist. I wasn't making a comparison; I was simply stating a fact.


I did walk into that trap with my use of extreme statements which I generally eschew, but at the same time, I must admit I didn't anticipate you to interpret what I said to such a literal extent to suggest that Nazi unions were a real concession comparable to the unions of the west.



But now that you bring it up, let me ask you a question?

What kind of union volunteers to refrain from strikes or other industrial action, from improving the wages, working conditions and livelihoods of its members, from bargaining over work hours, etc., out of a sense of loyalty to the ruling classes and their state?



A loaded question much?



But there were constraints on the bourgeoisie in the UN states that the axis states never had.... And what exactly were those "constraints"?



Among others, the right to collective bargaining was also settled in law in the UK during WWII; a judicial decision like that would, and forgive my use of extremes, be incredulous in either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, much less by and large by complied by the government. Elsehwere, The Labor Standards Act of 1947 (american-occupied japan), the NLRA (america) for example gave unions unprecedented ability to organize and sought to keep the judiciary and the systems of contract law out of strikes and organizing efforts. Many of these laws were emulated in western Europe after the nazis were defeated.



I guess it's my turn to question your choice of words, since it seems like you see more than a marginal difference between the UN and Axis states. At the very least, you see the western "democracies" as having more "constraints" on them when it comes to the class struggle. In my view, that's much more than a mere marginal difference. A marginal difference is the difference between a humid 100-degree day and a humid 95-degree day. You are implying something much more than a matter of degrees, especially considering it is something that has fundamentally altered the social relationships among classes to the point that the exploiting classes are "constrained" to wage all-out class warfare against the exploited.



I tend to think so-called qualitative differences are still ultimately just matters of degree. It's impossible (or, to be more precise, rarely worth it) to try to draw a firm line in the sand. I suspect I've more or less made my point on what I see as the differences between the axes and the allies that there isn't too much further that would be helpful.



You've tied yourself into a Gordian Knot of pragmatism. The revolutionary workers' movement is a conscious movement -- i.e., a movement that exists because it chooses to exist. It is not something that is wholly spontaneous, emerging fully matured from the head of Minerva. It takes conscious activity to build up a movement of proletarians acting as a class-for-itself. "Agency", as you call it, is part of the process of building that movement -- of promoting and disseminating communist education and agitation among our class.

History knows all kinds of transformations, including those that begin as a small rabble and end as a mass movement. Where the American communist movement was in 1941, 1943 or 1946 was not set in stone; it was not fate that determined its position. When I talked about how you were basing your positions on hindsight, this is what I meant. You were forgetting that the dynamics would have been altered in any of the alt-hist scenarios we've been talking about. Once you begin to introduce new contradictions to the existing dynamic, the latter begins to change. Think of it like the motion of stars in the universe; if a star was to go supernova, or implode and become a black star, the movement of stars and galaxies even billions of light years away will be affected by the changes in gravitational field, in its own motion, etc. Development of history and human society are affected similarly by changes in material conditions.

But I don't really need to tell you all this. You know it as well as I do, which is why this conversation is so damned frustrating. It really seems like you have abandoned any kind of materialist analysis for pragmatic impressionism. And that, in turn, is feeding a sense of defeatism and cynicism. I don't know if it is all stemming from the specific context of WWII, or if it is more modern in its origins.

Well so here's the thing. I'm not arguing so much that the working class needs to root for one side or the other, or that backing American war effort was necessarily the correct position to take. My original motivation, several posts back, was actually not to make some cosmic pronouncement on "bourgeois pragmatism" versus "revolutionary principle", but primarily to argue that a regime widely considered to be openly emulating and exporting its brand of fascism, Imperial Japan, was challanged and defeated by a non-fascist US. This was in contrast to Europe, where fascism was primarily defeated by the non-fascist USSR. The "war against fascism" slogan therefore wasn't inapplicable to America merely because the American contribution to the european theater was relatively minor. It had a kernel of truth, if one considers the pacific war.

Indeed, there is much less agreement on the left as to whether one calls the subsequent rule of Marcos, Rhee, Ngo Diem, et al. "fascist". They were atrocious regimes, but so were non-fascist Maoist China, Democratic Kampuchea and North Korea. But even if one chooses to call all those regimes fascist, the end of fascism in the Japanese mainland suffices to show that American intervention reduced the reach of 'fascism' compared to where it was in say Dec. 1941. That was merely my point. If one wants to argue that Imperial Japan was never really fascist, well, that's fine, but that's also a somewhat separate discussion in my mind.

But given the direction this has gone, my point is that we need to understand where the AMerican communists were coming from, why they saw the need to take such a "pragmatic" stance, and perhaps that some of the outright denounciations are unfair and can only be defended by appealing to leftist axioms rather than through analyzing the particular social conditions American communists faced. I suppose I am also perhaps unduly deferential to people who lived during the time in their decisions, as opposed to the comfort 70 years hence we have. And I do tend to see a role for pragmatism in the struggle, perhaps moreso than makes people comfortable. But it was because I think an analysis of why the American communists took the pro-war stances they did requires giving considerable weight to their perspectives, than in this sense that I still think there is something somewhat more materialist about an analysis that, if not quite seeking to justify communist support for AMerican war against Imperial Japan, at least seeks to take seriously the support American communists gave to that rather than dismissing off hand. So you're absolutely correct my view is based on hindsight; unfortunately, hindsight is all we have in trying to recreate an understanding for why American communists supported the war. I will add, however, that the point about the outcome of the war being unknown at the time is well taken. I suspect the American communists and most westerners had a pretty pessimistic projection of a Japan-dominated Asia, and perhaps were b/c of racism and other factors inclined to think an American dominated asia would have been preferbale, but I hadn't considered the simple fact taht the outcome of the war was completley unknown as much as I should have.

[A Marxist Historian]

...
Indeed, there is much less agreement on the left as to whether one calls the subsequent rule of Marcos, Rhee, Ngo Diem, et al. "fascist". They were atrocious regimes, but so were non-fascist Maoist China, Democratic Kampuchea and North Korea. But even if one chooses to call all those regimes fascist, the end of fascism in the Japanese mainland suffices to show that American intervention reduced the reach of 'fascism' compared to where it was in say Dec. 1941. That was merely my point. If one wants to argue that Imperial Japan was never really fascist, well, that's fine, but that's also a somewhat separate discussion in my mind.

Merely labelling both the regime of Mao and the regime of Chiang Kai-Shek as "atrocious" is subjective, non-Marxist and just plain wrong, from the standpoint of a Chinese peasant or worker. The difference between the two may not have been great from the viewpoint of a democracy-minded intellectual eating regularly, but that was then a rather microscopic portion of the population of China.

And yes, it's hard to claim that the Imperial Japanese regime was "fascist" in a Marxist sense, as opposed to the insult sense, in which people run around calling Bush Jr. or Obama fascist. And Marcos, Rhee and Diem, even less so.


But given the direction this has gone, my point is that we need to understand where the AMerican communists were coming from, why they saw the need to take such a "pragmatic" stance, and perhaps that some of the outright denounciations are unfair and can only be defended by appealing to leftist axioms rather than through analyzing the particular social conditions American communists faced. I suppose I am also perhaps unduly deferential to people who lived during the time in their decisions, as opposed to the comfort 70 years hence we have. And I do tend to see a role for pragmatism in the struggle, perhaps moreso than makes people comfortable. But it was because I think an analysis of why the American communists took the pro-war stances they did requires giving considerable weight to their perspectives, than in this sense that I still think there is something somewhat more materialist about an analysis that, if not quite seeking to justify communist support for AMerican war against Imperial Japan, at least seeks to take seriously the support American communists gave to that rather than dismissing off hand. So you're absolutely correct my view is based on hindsight; unfortunately, hindsight is all we have in trying to recreate an understanding for why American communists supported the war. I will add, however, that the point about the outcome of the war being unknown at the time is well taken. I suspect the American communists and most westerners had a pretty pessimistic projection of a Japan-dominated Asia, and perhaps were b/c of racism and other factors inclined to think an American dominated asia would have been preferbale, but I hadn't considered the simple fact taht the outcome of the war was completley unknown as much as I should have.

Oh please. Where were the American "communists" coming from? Surely you know the answer to that?

During the Hitler-Stalin pact, the party line was that Hitler was no worse than Churchill, following Molotov's famous line that fascism was "a matter of taste." The Communist Party supported pro-Hitler anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh's "anti-war movement."

The second that the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, total flipflop, and all the anti-fascist powers needed to unite in a Front Against Fascism, people needed to stop saying mean things about British & US imperialism, anyone like, say, American labor leader John L. Lewis calling his members out on strike was a fascist-Trotskyite agent who needed to be locked up, and A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement demanding equal rights for black people in military industry and ending segregation in the army was dividing the American people for the benefit of the Japanese and should not happen.

And full support for throwing Japanese Americans in concentration camps, even the CPUSA's own Japanese members!

And, oh yes, support for the nuking of Hiroshima.

The real American communists, the Trotskyists, had a very different POV.

-M.H.-

[Geiseric]

Are nationalist defensists allowed on the board? i've seen people banned for much less than supporting the nuclear bombing of two cities and the complete destruction of Japan with firebombings since "the american government is nicer to communists."

[Art Vandelay]

Are nationalist defensists allowed on the board? i've seen people banned for much less than supporting the nuclear bombing of two cities and the complete destruction of Japan with firebombings since "the american government is nicer to communists."

Unacceptable statements from a "communist."

[electrostal]

Are nationalist defensists allowed on the board?
What are those? :confused:


i've seen people banned for much less than supporting the nuclear bombing of two cities and the complete destruction of Japan with firebombings since "the american government is nicer to communists."
The communists had no say in these bombings, the same in the case of Dresden. It is detestable to "support" these bombings of course, but total war is war total war, and it was the Axis that famously started and asked for it ( Goebbels' speech in, IIRC, 1943). Firebombings of Tokyo for example also caused many civilian deaths.

The question is should have communists supported the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, which I think should be answered in positive.

[Art Vandelay]

The question is should have communists supported the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, which I think should be answered in positive.

Ummm no....and you won't see me, a communist, supporting the massacre of large sections of the working class and their families simply because they happened to be from a different set of imaginary lines. We communists, are not too fond of the bourgeois social construct which is the nation state.

Why do I feel like so many of us "communists" have a tough time remembering the phrase: The workers of the world have no country.

[electrostal]

Ummm no....and you won't see me, a communist, supporting the massacre of large sections of the working class and their families simply because they happened to be from a different set of imaginary lines. Communists don't support that.
Again, the democratic countries did not choose total war. I think of Dresden as a war crime, but I sure as hell don't feel any pity for all those millions of poor workers in uniforms who left their bones in Russia.



Why do I feel like so many of us "communists" have a tough time remembering the phrase: The workers of the world have no country. Yes, if only the people in Auschwitz or those killed in Nanjing knew of that phrase...
FYI the Soviets tried with such propaganda in the early times of the GPW, but it just didn't work.

[Art Vandelay]

Communists don't support that.

They do when they take sides in bourgeois quarrels.


Again, the democratic countries did not choose total war. I think of Dresden as a war crime, but I sure as hell don't feel any pity for all those millions of poor workers in uniforms who left their bones in Russia.


Are you saying that you do not support the German working class?


Yes, if only the people in Auschwitz or those killed in Nanjing knew of that phrase...

What is this even supposed to mean?


FYI the Soviets tried with such propaganda in the early times of the GPW, but it just didn't work.

Good for them; being a bourgeois state fighting in the interests of capital I don't really give a shit about their propaganda.

Turn the imperialist war into a civil war. The only option, unless you want millions of workers to sacrifice themselves to establish representative democracy over socialism.

[electrostal]

They do when they take sides in bourgeois quarrels. This is bordering on idiocy. Auschwitzes and Nazi mastery over Europe wasn't just "bourgeois quarrels". WW2 wasn't an ordinary imperialist war, despite the Soviet opportunistic propaganda from '39-'40. That became all too clear even to the dumbest of workers on June 22 1941. That is, to those who still hadn't sided with fascism.


Are you saying that you do not support the German working class?No, the German working class didn't support itself once it sided with the Nazis and their war.


What is this even supposed to mean?It means that you're spewing out empty phrases.


Good for them; being a bourgeois state fighting in the interests of capital I don't really give a shit about their propaganda.You are a complete moron. Your idiotic views are shattered by the obvious conclusion that the German working classes were overwhelmingly pro-Nazi and pro-imperialist, so you have to start with some off-topic cliches.
You should spit on yourself, you pro-Nazi piece of shit.


Turn the imperialist war into a civil war. The only option, unless you want millions of workers to sacrifice themselves to establish representative democracy over socialism. That's what the Soviets tried to do, you imbecile.

[Art Vandelay]

you pro-Nazi piece of shit.

I was going to ignore the rest of your flaming, but this crosses the line. Listen to me you piece of shit, if we were face to face and you said this to me I would knock your fucking teeth in you pro-imperialist scumbag. Consider yourself reported (never done that before either). In a recent thread I mentioned how calling revolutionary leftists (regardless of political stripe) "fascists" is about as low as you can get; congratulations you've joined their company.

Its not my fault your a simple minded prick who equates anyone who doesn't side with the allies in WWII as "pro-nazi."

[electrostal]

Listen to me you piece of shit, if we were face to face and you said this to me I would knock your fucking teeth in you pro-imperialist scumbag. Oh, we got a badass over there!
I am shitting my pants Mr. Internet Nazi Strongman.


Its not my fault your a simple minded prick who equates anyone who doesn't side with the allies in WWII as "pro-nazi." Yep, that so makes you a pro-Nazi. Defeatism and "not choosing sides" in such a war = pro-Nazism, no question about it.

[Art Vandelay]

Oh, we got a badass over there!
I am shitting my pants Mr. Internet Nazi Strongman.

I'm six feet tall and a buck sixty, I haven't been in a fight (minus hockey fights) since elementary school. I ain't no tough guy, but anyone who calls me pro-nazi is either going to get the shit kicked out of them, or I will as I am trying to take their fucking head off.


Yep, that so makes you a pro-Nazi. Defeatism and "not choosing sides" in such a war = pro-Nazism, no question about it.

I take the side of the working class, ie: turn the imperialist war into a civil war. As I have stated earlier in this thread, the best tool the working class had to stop fascism was proletarian revolution.

[electrostal]

I'm six feet tall and a buck sixty, I haven't been in a fight (minus hockey fights) since elementary school. I ain't no tough guy, but anyone who calls me pro-nazi is either going to get the shit kicked out of them, or I will as I am trying to take their fucking head off. I am 12 and what is this?
And you're calling me an idiot?


I take the side of the working class, ie: turn the imperialist war into a civil war. As I have stated earlier in this thread, the best tool the working class had to stop fascism was proletarian revolution. Are you completely dumb? I've already told you that this was tried many times with no results. People like you would have willingly led millions into gas-chambers, because of recycled paroles you don't even understand.

GPW was no imperialist war, it was an imperialist war only in the sense of it being an imperialist aggression against a socialist country.



As I have stated earlier in this thread, the best tool the working class had to stop fascism was proletarian revolution. What the fuck are you babbling about? What proletarian revolution in a country whose working class wasn't even for bourgeois democracy and which sided with the most reactionary regime in its quest for genocide?
This only confirms what I already said about you.

[Martin Blank]

A multitude of statistics in the right direction, though, must count for something. But anyway, there is indeed no way to answer this concretely; my point was simply that American communists could form opinions about this at the time. Many in fact did.

The thing I was trying to point out is that statistics often lie. For example, we can look at the statistics related to Native Americans; according to statistics gathered by governmental and non-governmental sources, Native Americans are living longer than their ancestors and have a higher standard of living. If you went by statistics alone, you would think that life on a Rez was great, compared to the primitive conditions that existed in the 18th and 19th centuries.


I did walk into that trap with my use of extreme statements which I generally eschew, but at the same time, I must admit I didn't anticipate you to interpret what I said to such a literal extent to suggest that Nazi unions were a real concession comparable to the unions of the west.

It was, technically speaking, a workers' movement -- albeit one that was little more than organized slavery. For the sake of not going too far off-topic, I won't get into where the Nazis got their ideas for ... labor discipline.


A loaded question much?

:D Yes, and for good reason.

Communists cannot be fetishistic when it comes to labor unions. What may be a militant union today can become a company union tomorrow, under the right material conditions. We saw that during WWII, when the ostensibly militant AFL and CIO unions signed no-strike pledges, sabotaged efforts by African American workers to combat racism on the workplace floor, allowed the government to impose changes to work hours, pay scales and working conditions outside of the union contracts. And it was all done to help Washington (and Wall Street) win the war (and get the money back that Britain, France, China, the USSR, etc., owed from Lend-Lease).

In this sense, what really made them different, in their actions, from the corporatist unions of Italy or the Nazi labor organizations? Was it the presence of self-described socialists and communists in the leadership? No, because most of them were pro-war; those who weren't, like the SWP and WP activists, were already being witchhunted out of the unions or had no significant influence. Was it because they had the ability, once the war was over, to return to their pre-war militancy? Yes and no. Yes, because they did have the ability, and did use it over the next two years; no, because while they could once again be militant, they retained their slavish adherence to the American capitalist state. Any thought of the CIO, for example, becoming a class-struggle-oriented union after WWII was mere fantasy.


Among others, the right to collective bargaining was also settled in law in the UK during WWII; a judicial decision like that would, and forgive my use of extremes, be incredulous in either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, much less by and large by complied by the government. Elsehwere, The Labor Standards Act of 1947 (american-occupied japan), the NLRA (america) for example gave unions unprecedented ability to organize and sought to keep the judiciary and the systems of contract law out of strikes and organizing efforts. Many of these laws were emulated in western Europe after the nazis were defeated.

It may indeed be true that these laws were adopted in Europe, Japan, etc., after the defeat of the Axis, but that doesn't mean much when the unions they are supposed to apply to have been tamed and domesticated into being the loyal labor lieutenants of capital. The only time the ruling classes voluntarily agree to such liberties for the proletariat is when they believe there is no reason to fear them -- when they believe they will not be a weapon in the hands of the working class. When FDR signed the Wagner Act (NLRA) into law in 1935, he and the bulk of the ruling classes did not see any threat from the AFL (the CIO not yet existing as an independent union organization).

I think the mentioning of the 1947 Labor Standards Act in Japan is interesting, especially since you compare it to the NLRA in the U.S. First, the LSA was based on the labor laws that existed in Japan during the 1920s, before the military government took power, with some updating to comply with the ILO's labor standards. It was not written by the U.S. occupation forces, but by a former member of Japan's Special Higher Police (aka, the "Thought Police"). In fact, with the exception of the soon-to-be "people's democracies" in central Europe, those states occupied by the UN forces, including Germany and Italy, saw the same process take place -- i.e., a restoration of pre-war labor laws, with some minor changes to meet ILO and UN standards.

Second, it should be noted that, while Japan and other countries were adopting such labor laws, the U.S. was curtailing them. The year 1947 may have seen the adoption of the Labor Standards Act in Japan, but it also saw the adoption of the Taft-Hartley "Slave Labor" Act in the U.S., and the beginning of a decade-long anti-communist witchhunt in the AFL and CIO unions. Why? Because the two years following the end of WWII saw massive strike waves in the U.S., especially by steel and auto workers' unions, which were strongholds for self-described communists and socialists. The ruling classes in the U.S. now had a palpable reason to fear union organizing, so they set about resolving that problem.


I tend to think so-called qualitative differences are still ultimately just matters of degree. It's impossible (or, to be more precise, rarely worth it) to try to draw a firm line in the sand. I suspect I've more or less made my point on what I see as the differences between the axes and the allies that there isn't too much further that would be helpful.

By this logic, capitalist rule and workers' rule -- as well as capitalism and communism -- are also "just matters of degree". This has implications that go well beyond the topic at hand, and just arguing over this narrow topic, without getting into the broader questions that are raised by this viewpoint, does indeed appear to be counterproductive.


But given the direction this has gone, my point is that we need to understand where the American communists were coming from, why they saw the need to take such a "pragmatic" stance, and perhaps that some of the outright denounciations are unfair and can only be defended by appealing to leftist axioms rather than through analyzing the particular social conditions American communists faced. I suppose I am also perhaps unduly deferential to people who lived during the time in their decisions, as opposed to the comfort 70 years hence we have. And I do tend to see a role for pragmatism in the struggle, perhaps moreso than makes people comfortable. But it was because I think an analysis of why the American communists took the pro-war stances they did requires giving considerable weight to their perspectives, than in this sense that I still think there is something somewhat more materialist about an analysis that, if not quite seeking to justify communist support for American war against Imperial Japan, at least seeks to take seriously the support American communists gave to that rather than dismissing off hand. So you're absolutely correct my view is based on hindsight; unfortunately, hindsight is all we have in trying to recreate an understanding for why American communists supported the war. I will add, however, that the point about the outcome of the war being unknown at the time is well taken. I suspect the American communists and most westerners had a pretty pessimistic projection of a Japan-dominated Asia, and perhaps were b/c of racism and other factors inclined to think an American dominated Asia would have been preferbale, but I hadn't considered the simple fact that the outcome of the war was completley unknown as much as I should have.

As AMH pointed out in his own inimitable way, there were self-described socialists and communists who did oppose the war. While the CPUSA (and some sections of the SPA) had become social-patriotic during WWII, there were other sections of the SPA who were antiwar and social-pacifist, such as the Norman Thomas wing of the Socialist Party. There were also parties like the SLP, SWP and WP, which were actively opposing the war on ostensibly revolutionary terms. And they were right to do so. They acted in parallel with basic communist principle when it came to the war, even if there was much about which to be critical.

I think this has actually been a good discussion, even if it has had its moments where more heat than light was generated. I certainly think it has been one of the more educational threads, with all manner of positions presented and debated. Thanks for being willing to go this far with it.