James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left 1890 – 1928

By Bryan D. Palmer

2007 University of Illinois Press

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

This past summer, there were large demonstrations around the world protesting murders by police officers of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others. Clearly, police officers have murdered literally thousands of people before this year. Clearly, institutionalized racist discrimination has been a routine aspect of the history of this country throughout its history. However, this summer those murders by the police became intolerable for people all over the world.

Some will argue that those demonstrations were just a way of letting off steam during the pandemic. Some will argue that people were enraged by the openly racist comments of President Donald Trump. Well, in my opinion, today there is a new generation that is developing their own perspective of dealing with a world where they see profound problems in the future. 

Many young people attended universities and now have astronomical debts. Many have seen their jobs eliminated and now have no way of paying their rent. Today, people are becoming aware of the fact that there are fifty million people in this country who don’t have enough food to eat, while this country has the potential to feed the world. Then, there are the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives unnecessarily because of decisions by the government not to advance a course that could have saved many lives.  

Thinking about this reality, many are beginning to see that the idea of a socialist world might be the way to deal with the persistent problems we face. So, if the idea of socialism has the potential to begin to resolve our problems, then we need to study the history of this movement in the United States.

There are many books about the history of the communist movement in this country. In my opinion, there is one name that ties this history together better than any other. His name is James P. Cannon. Bryan D. Palmer is a professor at Trinity College in Canada, and he has written an incisive and informed biography of Cannon. This volume is only the first of three proposed volumes about Cannon’s life story. Reading this book gives us a glimmer into aspects of the history of this country that few people who call themselves historians are interested in.

Rosedale, Kansas

James Patrick Cannon was born in 1890 in Rosedale, Kansas. His parents were immigrants from Ireland, who were well aware of the Irish Potato Famine that cost the lives of about one million people on the island. After looking for work in several cities, Jim Cannon’s parents settled in Rosedale, that was a neighborhood in Kansas City. 

The shack young Jim Cannon shared with his brothers and sisters had no direct access to running water or electricity. His mother needed to carry water from a central location every day. At that time, Rosedale was in a relatively rural area where young people could roam in open fields and the forest in their free time.

When young Jim Cannon was about twelve-years old, he assisted his father working in a lumber yard. In those days, children routinely worked in industrial environments that were dangerous. An accident caused young Jim to injure his thumb. Because the employer chose not to transport young Jim to a hospital where he could be properly cared for, Jim Cannon lost part of his thumb.

We might think about the fact that in 1903 Mother Jones organized a 125-mile March of the Children that protested child labor in Philadelphia. The labor leader Eugene Debs mentioned efforts like Mother Jones’ March of the Children in his speech protesting the U.S. participation in the First World War. Debs highlighted the hypocrisy of President Woodrow Wilson’s claim that the war was a “war for democracy.” Today there is a historical marker commemorating Mother Jones March of the Children on the north side of City Hall in Philadelphia.

Jim Cannon didn’t go to high school until the age of seventeen. Before that time, there was no high school for him to attend in Rosedale. During those years young Jim worked at various industrial jobs attempting to make a living. He also gravitated to a neighborhood pool hall where he could relax and hang out with his friends.

Young Jim’s friends teased him for going to school with students who were twelve and thirteen years old. Defending himself for wanting an education was one of his first battles. In his later life James Cannon said that making the decision to go to high school and defending that decision was a turning point in his life.  

Eventually, young Jim became interested in literature, and this interest flourished in his two years of high school. Another reason high school became one of many turning points in young Jim’s life was because he became fascinated with radical politics. Jim’s father was an ardent supporter of Eugene Debs, who was one of the most articulate supporters of the interests of working people in the history of this country. While he was in high school, young Jim Cannon joined Debs Socialist Party.

Jim married one of his teachers, Lista Makimson, who was six years his senior. He fathered two children with her, and his high school education enabled him to get a low-level clerical job. However, a union federation known as the Industrial Workers of the World was in the midst of organizing, and young Jim Cannon began to travel all over the country working to build the I.W.W.

In those days, young Jim Cannon became what was known as a hobo. Hobos travelled the country looking for work, jumping on trains for free rides, trying to avoid conductors who would throw them off. This was one of the ways Cannon and others worked to travel the country to build the International Workers of the World.  

At that time, the American Federation of Labor was the dominant union organization. However, the A.F.L. restricted itself to organizing craft workers, and that strategy limited the effectiveness of the union movement. The I.W.W. filled in this void, but the combined efforts of the government as well as corporate power proved to be persistent obstacles for workers who wanted to escape horrendous conditions on the job and miserable wages. Jim Cannon never forgot how receptive workers all over the country were to the message that we have the potential to organize and transform our lives.

However, while the I.W.W. had some success in organizing workers, they were unable to overcome many of the challenges they faced. When members of the I.W.W. were arrested on various charges many refused to defend themselves because they didn’t want to plead their case in a court that effectively supported the interests of employers. Many I.W.W. members served longer prison sentences because they refused to defend themselves in court. 

For these and other reasons, Jim Cannon was one of the members of the I.W.W. who started an organization called the Workers Party that eventually became the Communist Party.

The Russian Revolution and the Palmer Raids

The Russian Revolution was a watershed moment in the history of the human race. While workers in this country went on numerous strikes against employers, the working class in Czarist Russia established their own government and named it the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. While workers around the world were inspired by this development, capitalist governments became obsessed with limiting the influence of the Russian Revolution.

So, James Cannon was one of many revolutionaries from the United States who visited the Soviet Union to see for himself what a nation with a worker’s government would look like. There he met the African American poet Claud McKay. He also met many of the leaders of the Russian Revolution. Initially Cannon became familiar with Grigory Zinoviev, who headed up international work for the Bolsheviks.

The United States government was one of fourteen nations that invaded the Soviet Union in an attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government. After a war that lasted two-and-one-half years, the Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, defeated the invaders.

By 1919 the U.S. government, under the direction of A. Mitchell Palmer, started arresting immigrants in this country who might have supported the Russian Revolution. In all, about 10,000 people might have been arrested in the Palmer Raids, and the government deported hundreds of those arrested.

In 1920, the federal government arrested Jim Cannon for supporting a miner’s strike. This absurd charge had to do with the idea that the miner’s strike compromised the war effort. The facts were that this strike took place after the First World War was over. Yet the government demanded the astronomical sum of $30,000 for Cannon’s bail. 

At that time, the workers movement was largely comprised of immigrants who recently came here from other countries. Among those, there were Jewish workers who recognized that Cannon had unique abilities that would benefit the labor movement. This group raised Cannon’s bail money. After about two years, the government dropped their absurd charges against Cannon.

The Palmer Raids, as well as the systematic repression by the government had an effect on the labor movement. For a while, activists felt they could only operate as an underground movement. The argument was that if workers attempted to organize openly, this would setup activists for arrest, incarceration, and even murder. 

Jim Cannon argued against this perspective and believed it was possible to organize openly. He made his case while participating in an international workers conference in the Soviet Union. The leadership of the Soviet government had experienced severe repression under the regime of the Czar. However, they also understood the need to advance the interests of workers openly, and supported Cannon’s perspective.

Within the Workers Party, Cannon organized the International Labor Defense. This organization worked to defend political prisoners all over the world, but concentrated on the political prisoners in this country. The ILD had its own newspaper that had about 22,000 subscribers. 

The most prominent case that the ILD supported was the defense of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. This was a clear frame-up and the government executed Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. While Cannon was enraged by this execution, he argued that the defense committee prevented the execution from happening quietly. The names of Sacco and Vanzetti became known all over the world as clear examples of the horrendous injustice of the United States government.

However, for most of his years in the Workers and then Communist Party, Cannon argued against those who attempted to use that organization for their personal gain. For a while, Cannon succeeded in being a part of the majority faction of the party. However, when Joseph Stalin began to betray the core values of the Russian Revolution, Cannon’s idea of advancing a genuinely proletarian party became increasingly impossible. 

At this point, there is a question that needs to be asked. In 1928, Cannon had a salary on the staff of the Communist Party. He had been doing effective work in the International Labor Defense. So, why would he advance a perspective in support of the politics of Leon Trotsky, knowing that position would mean his expulsion from the Communist Party? This would also mean that Cannon and a few other individuals would need to start a new workers political party from scratch.

When we look at the early life of Cannon, we can also begin to see the answer to that question. From an early age, Cannon not only believed that the horrendous conditions workers experienced needed to be improved, he also believed that workers have the potential to create an organization that can transform the world. His work in support of Eugene Debs, the International Workers of the World, and the Communist Party gave him that confidence. What set Cannon apart from many others was his understanding and determination to organize a proletarian political party capable of advancing the interests of the working class. 

So, in 1928, while Cannon attended an international workers meeting in the Soviet Union, he accidentally came across a document written by Leon Trotsky. At that time, Joseph Stalin was working to transform the Bolshevik Party into a cult that supported him. While Trotsky had been a central leader of the party, as well as the central military commander of the Red Army, Stalin first had him exiled to Siberia, then he was exiled out of the Soviet Union, then in 1940 a supporter of Stalin assassinated Trotsky in Mexico.

Reading that document written by Trotsky was a turning point in the life of James Cannon. He began to realize that he had a choice. If he continued to be a leader of the Communist Party, he would no longer be advancing a revolutionary organization. Cannon began to become aware that his continued participation in the Communist Party would make him nothing more than a bureaucrat. Cannon’s life story would not allow him to live that kind of life.

So, first Cannon needed to smuggle Trotsky’s document out of the Soviet Union. Then, he spoke with two other co-thinkers about declaring their support of the political orientation of Leon Trotsky. That act prompted a trial withing the Communist Party where Cannon and his co-thinkers were expelled. One of those who the Communist Party expelled was Rose Karsner, who was Cannon’s wife and co-thinker. Karsner became one of the founding members of the organization that became the Socialist Workers Party.   

At that time the leader of the Communist Party in this country was Jay Lovestone. The Communist Party eventually expelled Lovestone from its ranks.

After Cannon’s expulsion from the C.P., other leading members of the party were also expelled. One of the cities where Cannon gained support was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cannon’s supporters in that city would eventually become the leaders of a teamster’s union strike in 1934. That strike would be one of three strikes that would advance a movement that recruited millions of workers into unions. 

Just as Eugene Debs gave a speech in opposition to U.S. participation in the First World War, supporters of the Socialist Workers Party opposed sending soldiers to battle in the Second World War. The teamsters of Minneapolis waged a persistent battle against the capitalists of that city for about one year. Leaders of that strike argued that workers in this country would gain nothing by murdering workers who lived in Europe.

Because the Socialist Workers Party exercised their First Amendment rights of free speech, the government arrested eighteen members of the SWP. Many of those arrested, including James Cannon, would serve sixteen months in prison. The government would later acknowledge that there was no legal basis for arresting the SWP members for exercising their First Amendment Rights.

The Socialist Workers Party then became active in defending the Cuban Revolution, supporting and publicizing the ideas of Malcolm X, and becoming leaders of the movement against the war in Vietnam. This was all made possible because James Cannon decided to support a political perspective advanced by Leon Trotsky. Cannon also carried out the seemingly impossible task of organizing a new political party with its newspaper The Militant.

During the war against Korea, Cannon sent a letter to President Truman protesting that war. We might think about how this son of Rosedale, Kansas grew up to express his solidarity with the people of Korea who fought against the invasion of their country by the armed forces of the United States.

Today, for those who are in the streets protesting against police brutality, the destruction of the environment, and the indifference of employers in establishing safe working environments, I believe that understanding the life story of James P. Cannon holds important lessons. One is how Cannon stood up, for his entire life, under seemingly impossible circumstances, to advance the interests of the working class.

We can also learn about the life of Farrell Dobbs, who was the Socialist Workers Party leader who was the central leader of the teamster’s strike in Minneapolis. All these efforts were made possible because of Leon Trotsky’s defiance of Joseph Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution.

One of the lessons we can learn from Cannon was his statement that in a healthy revolutionary party, there will be disagreements. When there are no disagreements, Cannon believe that this is a sign that the party is stagnating. So, when we hear people who are engaged in struggle say things we don’t agree with, that is not necessarily a bad thing. What is important is to establish an environment where there can be civil discussions about how to advance a political movement that can transform the world.

We are the Working Class of the World

By Steve Halpern

Everyone in this country has been barraged with information concerning the so-called Presidential election. We can also say that the news media, the government, as well as most of academia has made a determined effort to ensure that issues essential to working people would never be discussed. One of those many facts is the issue that there exists in literally every nation of the world, a working class. That working class, along with farmers, consists of the immense majority of the world’s population.

Understanding this, we might also consider that workers around the world have essentially the same interests. We all need and want food, clothing, a place to live, health care, education, transportation, communication, and exposure to culture that includes, music, art, dancing, theater, film, sports, literature, and recreation. We also want to live in a world that is in basic harmony with the environment, where women and people of all nationalities are fully liberated.

However, when we think about these ideas, we might consider that politicians routinely argue that the interests of workers in this country are different from the interests of workers in other countries. Politicians from both parties argue that one of their top priorities is to deport immigrant workers. They do this, understanding that the economy of this country is totally dependent on the labor of immigrants. They promote their policy of deporting immigrants, understanding that one of the foundations of this country has been the genocide against Native Americans. 

From time to time, politicians argue that we need to go to war against workers in other countries. Those wars cost the lives of literally millions of people. When we think of all the destruction caused by those wars, we might think about how resources might have been used to eliminate poverty in the world. This is another issue the media isn’t interested in raising.

So, in order to think about how we can advance the interests of the international working class, we might look at our history. We have had many outstanding leaders. The capitalists, on the other hand, have been relying on Donald Trump and Joe Biden to support their interests.

Before we look at some of the leaders of the working class, we might look at some of the theoreticians who supported the capitalist system. When we begin to understand their arguments, we can learn why capitalism came into existence, and why this system routinely experiences one crisis after another. 

John Locke

John Locke was a physician and philosopher who lived at a time of the British revolutions of the 1600s. This was at a time after the writers Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare began to imagine the world in different ways.

Locke attempted to make sense of the transition from the systems of feudalism to capitalism. During the feudal epoch, the royal families had absolute power they shared with religious clerics. Most people were peasants who worked on farms or manors that were controlled by the royal families. This meant that peasants were not allowed to travel away from the manors where they toiled.

Feudalism became an obstacle to advancing the interests of humanity. There was little interest in developing large-scale manufacturing because the economy was based on agriculture. So, a new class emerged that worked towards developing enterprises that would be financed to produce commodities for profit. In order to advance this new capitalist class, revolutions erupted in the Western Hemisphere and Europe. 

John Locke understood that capitalism was an advance over feudalism. He argued that this new system needed to support the idea of giving everyone “life, liberty, and property.” Locke felt that the right to property was important because this wasn’t insured in feudalism, where power was centered with the royal families. This idea of Lock was similar to the slogan raised in the French Revolution, “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”  

Locke also argued that “All wealth is the product of labor.” This argument that all wealth comes from the labor of workers has been routinely rejected by people who have power in the capitalist world. 

Bernie Sanders and many of his co-thinkers argue for reforming health care with a single-payer system. If we think of John Locke’s argument, we see that health care always has been, and always will be, funded with a single payer. That single payer is the working class of the world. According to Locke, we are the ones who produce all wealth. Therefore, we are the ones who will always sustain the health care systems throughout the world. The problem is that workers don’t control how health care systems are organized.

David Ricardo and John Smith

David Ricardo and John Smith both developed a more comprehensive analysis of capitalism. They both took advantage of their understanding of the system and became wealthy. However, both Ricardo and Smith understood that because of capitalism’s routine functioning, the system would periodically experience profound crisis. 

Today, the mainstream economists reject this point of view. They argue that capitalism will continue indefinitely and has the capacity to overcome all obstacles. The current pandemic is teaching us that this confidence in capitalism is merely a matter of wishful thinking.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels drafted their Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848. In this Manifesto, they argued that, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” With the emergence of capitalism, two new classes came into being. These were the capitalist class and the working class. 

As we have seen with the writing of Locke, the working class creates “all wealth.” However, in capitalism the owners of corporations, who produce nothing, are the ones who control the means of production. 

Frederick Engels lived in Manchester, England and wrote a study of the conditions of the working class there. Engels gave concrete evidence showing how capitalists profited from the horrendous conditions of working class in that city.

Looking at this reality, we might think about the so-called educational system in the United States. Boards of Education that routinely support the interests of corporations, and demand that teachers adopt to lesson plans that support capitalist interests.

So, teachers ask students to start their days by pledging allegiance a flag, they claim represents “liberty and justice for all.” Along those lines, many teachers tell students that we live in a “democracy,” and that this is the greatest nation in the world. These arguments are based on the idea that in one day every year many working people have the right to vote.   

Understanding this relationship, we see how capitalists always have had interests that are antagonistic to the interests of workers. The capitalist drive to maximize profits comes in direct conflict with the basic needs of workers. 

Since working people are the overwhelming majority, and we have no control over the means of production, there can be no genuine democracy in the capitalist system. Marx and Engels argued that, “the capitalist state serves as the managing committee of the bourgeoisie.” The state consists of the government, the media, as well as the academic community.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

In February of the year 1917 there was a revolution is czarist Russia. Millions of Russian soldiers died as a result of the First World War. In a nation that was a breadbasket for the entire region, the Russian people experienced famine. At that time, Czarist Russia had the reputation of being the most repressive nation in Europe. These conditions were so horrendous that the Cossacks, who normally broke up and murdered protesters in the past, refused to be used against the revolutionaries.

As a result, a Provisional Government took power. However, that government refused to end the war, or use its power to feed the people, or to institute a comprehensive land reform.

So, when Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia from exile, his organization demanded all power to the workers councils known as the Soviets. In order to help politically arm his organization, known as the Bolsheviks, he wrote a pamphlet titled State and Revolution. 

In that pamphlet, Lenin quoted Frederick Engels and argued that the capitalist state is a “special instrument of repression.” In other words, governments were invented to be used in the capitalist system as a way of legally robbing workers of the immense wealth we produce.

In the same year as Lenin wrote his State and Revolution, he also wrote another pamphlet titled: Imperialism—The highest stage of capitalism. In this pamphlet, Lenin showed how capitalist cartels were dominating nations all over the world. This was not because of a mistake made by the owners of corporations. No, because of the nature of capitalism, corporations and banks need to obsessively work to dominate the entire planet. This is why war has become a constant feature of the capitalist system. This is another example of how capitalist governments can only be a, “special repressive force.”

Fidel Castro

Then, in the year 1959 the Cuban Revolution erupted, and a new revolutionary government took power. This new government issued a document titled, The Second Declaration of Havana. That document asked a question that was similar to Lenin’s thinking on imperialism. “What is the history of Latin America if not the history of imperialist exploitation?”

Because the corporate drive to maximize profits was no longer the priority in Cuba, the government advanced a course that is unthinkable in the capitalist world. This was in spite of the fact that Cuba is a relatively underdeveloped nation. 

Initially, the government organized a massive literacy drive aimed at teaching everyone on the island how to read. As part of that effort, many teenagers who lived in the cities volunteered to live with impoverished families in the countryside in order to teach people how to read. That literacy drive became the foundation for the Cuban health care system, as well as the Cuban initiatives in bio-medical research, agriculture, and energy conservation.

Today Cuba has more doctors, per capita, than any other nation in the world. With respect to the United States, Cuba has about three times more doctors per capita. Cuban doctors travel all over the world treating some of the poorest patients.

In the current pandemic, Cuban health care workers visited literally everyone on the island checking to determine who has symptoms of COVID-19. Cuban scientists have also developed a treatment called Alpha-2B that has been effective in preventing COVID-19 patients from getting the potentially fatal disease of pneumonia. Currently Cuba also developed vaccines that will prevent people from getting infected with COVID-19. Yet, the United States has a trade embargo against Cuba that prohibits people living here to have access to Cuban advances in medicine. 

By utilizing this approach, Cuba has been able to combat the pandemic in ways that were unthinkable to the ruling powers in the United States. When we look at the state of Pennsylvania, the nation of Sweden, and Cuba, we are talking about three places that have populations of between ten and twelve million. As of this writing, in Pennsylvania there were over 9,000 COVID-19 deaths. In Sweden there have been over 6,000 COVID-19 deaths. In Cuba there have been 132 COVID-19 deaths. Yet, while the Black and Latino communities were hit the hardest by the pandemic, 100% of the Cuban population is Latino, and about 40% are Black.

Malcolm X

Malcolm X lived his entire life in the United States while Black people were routinely denied citizenship rights. This was in full violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Malcolm’s father Earl Little was lynched and, as with thousands of other lynchings, the government made no attempt to prosecute his murderers. 

As a child, when Malcolm mentioned to a teacher that he wanted to be a lawyer, his teacher responded, “That’s no job for an n—word.” Because he was blocked from becoming a lawyer, he became something similar to a corporate lawyer. He became a thief. Then, after the authorities apprehended Malcolm, he received a longer prison sentence because he was Black and was in a relationship with a white woman.

While Malcolm served time in prison, he became a supporter of the Nation of Islam. After Malcolm was released from prison, he appealed to young Black people who also became justifiably enraged with the routine and systematic racial discrimination of this country.

Malcom argued that this discrimination didn’t only exist in the states where Jim Crow segregation was the law. He said: “Stop talking about the South. If you’re south of Canada, you’re in the South.” This statement was similar to the idea promoted by Engels and Lenin that the state is a, “special repressive force.” Understanding this reality Malcolm felt that Black people have the capacity to develop a political movement that can liberate humanity and do away with the systematic discrimination we see today.  

Why hasn’t capitalism been replaced already?

So, if humanity has been experiencing this history for many years, we might ask a question: Why does the working class of the world continue to allow a tiny minority, that produces nothing of value, to control the immense amount of wealth in the world? 

Aside from the revolutions in Russia and Cuba, there were many revolutions in the world. There were the Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Revolutions where imperialist exploitation was blocked for a while. Then, there were revolutions in Algeria, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Iran. However, in those nations, capitalism managed to adapt to new environments. 

The facts are that after the Second World War, revolutions erupted all over the world. The wars against Algeria, Korea, and Vietnam were imperialist efforts to maintain control over the world.

In the United States the labor movement and civil rights movements succeeded in improving the standard of living in this country. However, capitalist enterprises are routinely driven to sell more and more commodities and cut costs. So, they invested huge amounts of money to build factories in nations where wages are between one and ten dollars per day. This not only cut the costs of manufacturing, those new manufacturing centers created new middle classes that became lucrative new markets.

One would think that this huge exodus of capital from the United States would have had a devastating impact on the standard of living. Well, the overall standard of living in this country has been in steady decline for about fifty years. However, there are two reasons why the standard of living in this country hasn’t plummeted even more.

Women have always worked in this country. This is especially true in the Black community where there has been systematic racial discrimination. However, there was a time when many women were homemakers and didn’t need to work because the wages of their husbands were sufficient. 

All of that has changed. For the past fifty years, women have had access to contraception and abortion. This means that they have some control over if and when they become mothers. As the standard of living deteriorated, there was more of a need for two breadwinners in the family. So, today women routinely enter the labor force, and families now have two bread winners. This is one reason why the overall standard of living hasn’t deteriorated even more than it has already.

The other reason why the standard of living hasn’t plummeted more is because of the massive debt of workers with respect to loans for homes, cars, education, and health care. Corporations are also in astronomical debt. 

The days of capitalist expansion are over

Because of the steadily declining rate of profit, corporations need to routinely sell more and more commodities and become obsessed with cutting costs. This has meant that in order to maintain relative capitalist stability the economy needs to grow at a rate of about three percent per year. 

However, even with this growth, recessions erupt about every four to seven years. This is one reason why layoffs are routine in the capitalist system. The pandemic became a reality at the same time as capitalism was due for another recession. However, the economy never fully recovered from the recession of 2008.

These facts underscore the current capitalist dilemma. Added to those problems is the fact that the pandemic, and the corporate drive for profits have meant that the economy has been shrinking from where it was in 2019. However, while the overall economy became smaller, the stock market grew significantly. The one reason for this growth was the decision by the government to print money and give that money to corporations that serve the interests of some of the most affluent people in the world. 

So, when we look at this history, we can begin to understand why people who have power are indifferent to those who are suffering during the pandemic. Millions of jobs were eliminated. This means that millions of people have no way of paying their rent or buying basic commodities. This means that sooner or later the numbers of people who experience homelessness and hunger will continue to increase.

The need to learn from the past

The purpose of this article is to show that when we look at the history of capitalism, we see that we need to escape from this system in order for humanity to make any basic advances. We can also say that during the past fifty years there has been no sustained working class movement anywhere in the world. Cuba is the one place that has resisted all efforts to compromise the interests of workers. 

Saying this, we can also see that capitalism in the world is in deep trouble. The only force that has prevented a total collapse has been massive government bailouts. Those bailouts cannot continue indefinitely.

While there have been many revolutions in the world during the capitalist epoch, only Cuba has been able to maintain a genuine workers government.

Given this history, we can anticipate a few things. Conditions will continue to deteriorate in capitalism. Sooner or later there will be a massive response by workers demanding a reversal of our deteriorating standard of living. Hopefully, working people will learn from the events of the past, and develop a political movement that will allow humanity to escape the clutches of capitalism for all time.              

Against the Loveless World

A novel by Susan Abulhawa

 

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

 

The main-stream news media in this country routinely gives an extremely jaded view of the events in the nation that was once called Palestine. Susan Abulhawa cuts through this mythology in her three novels that depict what it means to be a Palestinian in the world today. Against the Loveless World is latest of these important works, and it gives a unique view of how Palestinians have responded to the events over the past 20 years.

 

The main character in this book is Nahr, who was born in Israel, but is expelled when she was an infant. We might add that Palestinians were about 90% of the population the nation that is now Israel in the year 1900. One of the justifications for supporting the creation of the state of Israel was the Nazi holocaust where fascists murdered about six million Jews. Palestinians never murdered even one Jewish person in the Nazi concentration camps. 

 

Nahr’s family moved to Kuwait and lived there for her early years. During that time, the government of Kuwait viewed Palestinians as second-class citizens. However, Nahr grew fond of Kuwait and all it had to offer.

 

Nahr’s father died. Her family needed to make a living and to save money to pay for her brother’s education. Because these and several other reasons, Nahr drifted to a life of prostitution.

 

We might consider that prostitution has a history that is older than marriage. While people who have power tend to openly frown on prostitution, many of these same people are some of the most affluent people who pay for sex. Because of routine discrimination, many women have felt the need to sell their bodies in order to attain the means to live. This reality exists in a world where 40 million people in this country don’t have enough food to eat, and about 40% of the world’s population lives on $2 per day or less.

 

My dictionary has the following definition of the word prostitution: “The unworthy or corrupt use of one’s talents for the sake of personal or financial gain.” Frederick Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin both wrote about how the state, as we know it, was invented to take the wealth working people create, and use that wealth to benefit a tiny minority. Engels and Lenin also argued that the state is a “special repressive force.” Understanding this argument, we can say that government officials routinely engage in the classic definition of prostitution.

 

Then, the armed forces of Iraq invaded Kuwait and occupied the country for about six months. The United States went to war against Iraq and restored the Emirate of Kuwait to power. After the U.S. invasion of this region, the government of Kuwait expelled the large Palestinian population. Nahr and her family moved to Jordan.

 

From Jordan Nahr would eventually move to an agricultural community in the West Bank. We might think about the agreement known as the Oslo Accords of the 1990s between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel agreed to the idea of a Palestinian homeland in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, after signing this accord, the Israeli government proceeded to build numerous settlements in the West Bank. These settlements use most of the water in this area and are separated from the Palestinian majority. Today, about 11% of the population of Israel lives in the West Bank. This is the same land that the Israeli government argued might be the Palestinian homeland. 

 

The family that Nahr lived with had much of their land confiscated. A constant concern of the people living in this village was that the Israeli settlers would take their present home.

 

In this environment, Nahr becomes a revolutionary. Initially, the other Palestinian revolutionaries were wary of her because she is a woman who freely speaks her mind and was once a prostitute. However, like many women who become revolutionaries in the world, Nahr gains respect from those who at one time questioned her commitment.

 

Nahr, like many Palestinians, spent years in prison. Susan Abulhawa researched what it means to be held in prison from several people who had been held in the dungeons of this country. This research led her to look at the lives of Mumia Abu Jamal as well as other members of the organization MOVE who have been held in prison for decades.

 

The title of this book is Against a Loveless World. Thinking about that idea and the prison conditions described in the book, we might think about many of the most important leaders who have also served time in prison. There was, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Fidel Castro, and George Jackson. So, when we think of Palestinians who are held in prison today, we can also think of all those who served time in dungeons who made profound contributions to the world.

 

In fact, the title of this book came from James Baldwin who wrote a letter to his nephew with the words: “Here you were to be loved. To be loved baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world.” 

 

My experience

 

There is a section in this book where Jewish settlers raid a Palestinian orchard attempting to burn down the trees. This is the kind of effort that has been used to continue to drive Palestinians off their land in the West Bank. In this section of the book a young Palestinian warned the others, “The Jews are coming.”

 

I happen to be Jewish. For me, it is particularly horrifying to see how the genocide of Palestinians has been justified by the absurd argument that the policies of the Israeli government in some way benefit Jews. In order to understand why I feel this way, my background might be useful.

 

I was raised in the southern section of Newark, New Jersey known as Weequahic. The novelist Phillip Roth was also raised in this neighborhood and wrote about it in his book Portnoy’s Complaint. I’m younger than the late Philip Ross, and when Ross lived in Weequahic the neighborhood was overwhelmingly Jewish. I lived in this neighborhood when it changed from a Jewish to an African American community.

 

My father and uncle would never buy a German car because of the Nazi holocaust. During that holocaust, the Nazis murdered about one third of the international Jewish population. I believe that one of the reasons why my parents sent me to Hebrew School was their effort to continue the Jewish identity the Nazis attempted to exterminate.

 

At that Hebrew school, the teachers routinely glorified the state of Israel. In fact, it wasn’t until I reached the age of nineteen that I heard the word Palestinian for the first time. At that time, I discovered that all those arguments aimed at glorifying Israel were a bold-faced lies.

 

My years at the Hebrew school culminated with my Bar Mitzvah. This is a celebration of a Jewish boy’s thirteenth birthday. The Bar Mitzvah traditionally signifies when a boy becomes a man. My opinion is that in ancient times, young women began to menstruate at this age, and men became adults because they would soon become fathers.

 

The Rabbi who supervised my Bar Mitzvah was Joachim Prinz. Prinz was also the President of the World Jewish Congress. He represented that organization marching with Martin Luther King in the 1963 March on Washington that demanded an end to Jim Crow segregation.

 

Joachim Prinz became a Rabbi in Germany, the nation where he was born. He was a Zionist who argued that Jewish people around the world would only be liberated if they had a homeland in Palestine.

 

There were about six years after the election of Adolf Hitler where Jews experienced persecution, but they continued to live in Germany. Joachim Prinz was a Rabbi in Germany during those years.

 

At that time Prinz became friends with a Nazi SS officer who had been charged with carrying out the ruthless programs of the government. We might think about the fact that while the Nazis argued for a homeland for the Arian race in Germany, the Zionists argued for a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. These were similar philosophies.

 

Because of information Prinz received from his SS agent friend, he managed to leave Germany before massive numbers of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This is when Prinz moved to Newark, New Jersey.

 

While Prinz celebrated the establishment of the state of Israel, he also protested against the persecution of Palestinians. He was one of the first to advocate for what became the Peace Now movement in Israel. In my opinion, Prinz lived with the contradiction that the establishment of the state of Israel could only lead to the genocide against Palestinians.

 

Several years ago, I attended a demonstration in Washington D. C. protesting the enormous aid the United States government gives to Israel every year. That demonstration culminated in Lafayette Park that is across the street from the White House. In the middle of that park is a statue of former President Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s portrait is also on the $20 bill.

 

The so-called history books of this country have labelled Jackson as a “populist.” This is because he pretended to support the interests of working people in this country. However, Jackson was also a slave owner who viciously brutalized human beings he called “slaves.” Jackson was also indifferent to a Supreme Court decision arguing that the Cherokee people had a right to live in their homeland located in what is now the state of Georgia. Because of Jackson’s indifference to that decision, thousands of Cherokee died when they were forced to march hundreds of miles to the Indian Territory that is now the state of Oklahoma.

 

While I attended the demonstration and viewed the statue of Jackson, I thought about the similarity of the struggles of the Cherokee and the Palestinians. Both had been forced off their homeland by politicians who argued that this genocide served the “greater good.” 

 

We live with a political economic system known as capitalism. Literally all capitalist enterprises depend on a continuing flow of oil in order to survive. Most of that oil is located in the same region of the world as the state of Israel. My opinion is that this is the fundamental reason why Israel has received massive imperialist support for the past 72 years.

 

While I am Jewish, I’m also a part of the working class of the world. Over the years, I’ve learned that the only way for the working class to advance is by acting on the idea that an injury to one is an injury to all. In other words, the struggle for unconditional liberation for Palestinians, Black people, immigrants, Native Americans, and women can only benefit the interests of workers all over the world.

 

Susan Abulhawa’s book Against the Loveless World gives us a clear view of why we need to support the unconditional liberation of the women and men who happen to be Palestinian.