Community Control and the Pandemic

By Steve Halpern

 

The other morning, I opened up our Philadelphia Inquirer to see the lead story. This was about a report that claimed to look at why the Philly police department tear gassed peaceful protesters this past June. I happened to attend one of the peaceful demonstrations that was teargassed. I headed for home before the police teargassed the demonstrators.

 

Apparently, with all the problems Philadelphia is experiencing, the city paid Ballard Spahr LLP and AT-RISK International Inc. to conduct this make-believe investigation. What was the conclusion of this study?

 

According to the Inquirer, the report argues that, “the city’s actions through early June as the most aggressive Philadelphia response to civil unrest since the 1985 MOVE bombing.

 

The police initially argued that they needed to use teargas on Rout 676 because of the aggressive behavior of the demonstrators. That was until the New York Times released a video that was clear evidence of absolutely no aggression by the demonstrators.

 

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw responded to these charges with the statement that during those demonstrations the police were, “woefully understaffed.”

 

Well, I attended one of the demonstrations that the city teargassed after I left for home. Before the demonstration, Mayor Jim Kenney made a statement hoping that this action would be peaceful. Given what happened on the following day, we know that the police were preparing to mobilize to harass a peaceful demonstration.

 

At Broad and Vine Streets on May 30, I witnessed a line of bicycle police separating one peaceful section of the demonstration from another section of the peaceful demonstration. Then, I witnessed a phalanx of about fifty SWAT team members marching in formation dressed in black, armed with clubs. They marched towards the peaceful demo and appeared to have the intention to cut right through.

 

Later in the day, the police arrested a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer while her press credentials were clearly visible. The police handcuffed her and kept her on a bus for two hours.

 

Since people in power felt they were “woefully understaffed” to provoke peaceful protesters, the National Guard came to Philadelphia armed with semi-automatic rifles, as well as armored vehicles.

 

After I returned home that day, I learned from reports on the television that the police were mobilizing in cities throughout the country to harass peaceful demonstrators. While the police had no reason to use teargas, the demonstrators had a legitimate right to be enraged by the murder of George Floyd, and many others by the police. After all, the salaries of the police are paid for by taxpayers who were being teargassed.

 

What is the history?

 

In order to place this story in context, we might quote from the founding document of this country, The Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

 

So, the fact that police murdered thousands of citizens, and teargassed peaceful demonstrators appears to be a contradiction of that sentence. However, there is more.

 

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died during the Civil War to end the horrendous system of chattel slavery. After the Civil War, the government amended the Constitution to include all men who lived here. The Fourteenth Amendment argued that everyone is supposed to have “equal protection under the laws.”

 

Every day, teachers ask millions of students in this country to stand up, place their hands on their hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance that argues how, in this country, there is “liberty and justice for all.” Perhaps murdering and teargassing civilians might be judged as contradictions to those words.

 

The facts are, that in spite of those words, the history of this country has gone from chattel slavery, to Jim Crow, segregation, to the mass incarceration we see today. So, after all the studies, legislative initiatives, and even an African American President, routine racist discrimination continues with respect to education, employment, housing, health care, as well as the enforcement of the law.

 

One strategy that has not been used was the one proposed by Malcolm X who argued for Black people to take control of their own communities. I saw a glimmer of what that would mean later in this same day.

 

Getting my COVID-19 vaccine

 

Because of the pandemic, we are all looking for ways of getting vaccinated. My wife, Judi contacted the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium. We both registered with their service and had our first Moderna Vaccine.  

 

We got our vaccine at the Deliverance Evangelical Church that is located in the African American community of North Philadelphia. This happens to be former sight of the home of the Philadelphia Phillies, Connie Mack Stadium.

 

From what I could tell, all of the people working at vaccinating hundreds of people were African American. Everything went smoothly and all the workers were courteous. In fact, vaccinations at this sight appeared to be better organized than in other areas of the city. Given all the tasks that needed to be completed in order to organize these vaccinations, this effort appeared to be highly successful.

 

So, the question to be asked is: How are these two stories related? Why is it that the police have been known to murder and teargas civilians, but when Black people are in charge, everything runs relatively smoothly?

 

The German Ideology by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

 

Currently, I’ve been reading the book The German Ideology by Marx and Engels. How in the world could this book be relevant to what is happening in Philadelphia today?

 

Marx and Engels studied philosophy in Germany. In this book, they reported that the philosophers of their day developed their ideas totally divorced from the reality they viewed every day. However, those philosophies were about looking for ways of rationalizing that reality, and not about changing it.

 

So, we see a similar problem when the Pledge of Allegiance argues that there is “liberty and justice for all,” while the police murder and teargas civilians.

 

However, Marx and Engels liked to look at the root cause of the problems of workers. They argued that throughout history there were ruling powers, and then there were the people who produced wealth. There were slaves and owners of slaves. There were peasants, craft workers and lords. Today, in the capitalist system, there are workers and employers.

 

So, when the framers of the Declaration of Independence argued that “all men are created equal” and that we are supposed to have certain “inalienable rights,” they weren’t thinking about what it means to work for a living. As we know, employers have a way of advancing a, do it their way or hit the highway, style of democracy.

 

Because of the nature of capitalism, employers are always obsessed with cutting costs. This leads to their drive to discriminate against African Americans, women, immigrants, as well as Native Americans. They do this while arguing that they are vehemently opposed to discrimination. As Marx and Engels argued, there is the idea, and then there is the reality.

 

Malcolm X understood the words of the abolitionist Martin Robinson Delaney who argued:

 

“A people, to be free, must necessarily be their own rulers: that is, each individual must, in himself, embody the essential ingredient—so to speak—of the sovereign principal which composes the true basis of liberty.”   So, when we look at the actions of the government and their police, against the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, community control appears to be a clear alternative to the madness we see every day.

 

We might also consider a few more facts. The states of Pennsylvania and Ohio have populations that are similar to the population of Cuba. The cities of New York and Los Angeles have populations that are less than Cuba. In all those locations there have been over 10,000 COVID-19 deaths. In Cuba, the number of COVID-19 deaths has been 180. While the Black and Latino communities in this country have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, Cuba is 100% Latino and about 40% Black. Why is there such a stark difference between the United States and Cuba with respect to the pandemic?

 

Cuban expenditures on health care are a tiny fraction of the money spent on health care in this country. In fact, the United States leads the world in the most money spent on health care per person. However, Cuba has three times more doctors, per capita as this country. Cuba has also been training students to become doctors, free of charge, from all over the world.

 

Literally every Cuban has been visited by a health care worker, at least once, during the pandemic. Cuban scientists have developed treatments and vaccines to battle the pandemic. Cuban doctors have also travelled the world to treat COVID-19 patients. Thinking about this stark contrast in health care between Cuba and this country, I believe that the words of Martin Robinson Delaney become even more profound. “A people, to be free, must necessarily be their own rulers” 

The Attack on the Capitol and the Business of Capitalism

By Steve Halpern

A few days ago, the world viewed supporters of President Donald Trump invade the Capitol and overwhelm the security guards in the building. Clearly, over the past four years, we have seen Trump say and do many things that appear to be outrageous. However, Trump’s support for this racist mob has caused many of his most ardent supporters to abandon him. So, the question Marvin Gaye asked in his famous song has never been more relevant. What’s going on?

While I read the newspapers every day, I’ve found that the media’s view of the world is extremely jaded. When we look at their view of the attack on the capitol, all news outlets appear to be in basic agreement. 

This is their explanation of the event. A racist mob that supported the President’s attempt to decertify the election stormed the Capitol. About 147 Congresspeople also supported Trump’s effort to “Stop the steal” of the election. All of this was about the idea that the President of the United States has serious problems, and next week he will no longer be the commander and chief. 

Well, this point of view also has some serious problems. Throughout the world, many elected governments have been overthrown. Francisco Franco didn’t like the Spanish government. German fascists supported his war to overthrow the elected Spanish government. In Iran mobs supported by the United States government overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh. In the Congo, mobs overthrew the elected government of Patrice Lumumba. In Chile, the military overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende. In Venezuela, mobs attempted to overthrow the elected governments, of both Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro.

We might also think about a quotation by former President Dwight Eisenhower on the war against Vietnam. Eisenhower argued that if there had been a national election in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have won that election by a margin of 90%. As we know, the puppet regime the United States government installed did not allow that election to take place. As a result, millions of people died in a war aimed at preventing the Vietnamese people from deciding their own fate. 

So, attempts to overthrow elected governments aren’t new in the world. The question is, why would mobs want to overthrow governments that won majorities in elections? A better question to be asked is: Why would people who have immense wealth organize to overthrow elected governments. One would think that they might be satisfied with the opulent lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to. In order to answer that question, I believe we need to take a look at how the system known as capitalism works.

The reality of capitalism

In Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels’ 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party, they argued that in the capitalist system, the government is a “support committee” of the bourgeoisie. Today, the bourgeoisie consists of some of the most affluent people in the world. These are the people who’s enormous wealth is totally dependent on the labor of workers in literally every country. 

So, here we see a problem the news media rarely if ever mentions. While the working class of the world produces all wealth, a tiny minority has control over the wealth we produce.

In their manifesto, Marx and Engels identified a basic problem of capitalism. Before capitalism came into being, when there was an overabundance of goods, those were the good times and the people celebrated. However, with capitalism Marx and Engels argued that there is a disease in capitalism known as overproduction. So, when there are more commodities on the market than people will buy, capitalists have been known to close down factories. This creates the contradiction that one source of scarcity for workers is the overproduction of the system.

Why would overproduction create an economic crisis? Because of the nature of capitalism, the people who control the means of production need to be obsessed with two tasks. They need to sell more and more commodities, and the need to cut costs. So, when workers in this country organized unions that forced employers to give up significant concessions, capitalists invested huge amounts of money to move their factories to other countries. In those countries, wages range between one and ten dollars per day.  

The response of capitalists to the pandemic has put a spotlight in this insanity. For a very long time, the resources have been available to eliminate poverty in the world. Yet, when the pandemic struck, corporations laid off tens of millions of workers. As a result, today there might be about twenty-million apartment dwellers who could be evicted from their homes because they don’t have the money to pay rent.

The government responded to this state of affairs by giving corporations trillions of dollars. As a result, some of the most affluent people in the world became even richer. This happened while hospitals lacked in protective equipment and ventilators. This happened while about fifty-million people in this country don’t have enough food to eat. 

Capitalists and government officials expected workers to accept this madness quietly. However, something happened that they didn’t expect. 

A police officer murdered George Floyd by placing he knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes. Before the murder of George Floyd, the police had murdered thousands of Black people. However, as they say, the times are a-changing.

In the past, tens of millions of people took advantage of the so-called “American Dream.” They endured the humiliation of what it means to work for a living, but managed to get homes in the suburbs, as well as cars, and college education for their children. While tens of millions took advantage of this economic climate, the majority experienced a stagnating or deteriorating standard of living.

This has all changed. Today, young people are experiencing astronomical educational, housing, and health care expenses. Most young people see the future as uncertain. Then, there was the pandemic.

Back in 1967, I was fourteen years old, and lived in Newark, New Jersey. The Black people who lived in Newark and hundreds of other cities endured routine police brutality. Then, in the years 1966 through 1968 Black communities throughout the country erupted in open rebellion. In Newark, the governor ordered the National Guard to attack the Black community. As a result, the National Guard murdered about twenty-one people in the city.

So, many young people in this country started to think for themselves. They looked at their lives and the world around them. They see that the future is precarious. They see that racist discrimination is routine and has been institutionalized in this country. Many feel that they no longer had a good reason to sit back and allow this madness to continue, while they remained quiet. So, millions of young people demonstrated in the streets demanding justice for George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and many others who had been murdered by the police.

The capitalists respond

The people who have power in this country were challenged by the entirety of these events. While they need the economy to continually grow, the massive numbers of layoffs caused the economy to shrink. The enormous financial aid packages of the government failed to reverse the crisis in the economy. Many corporations have gone out of business. Others are only in business because of government assistance, and are now labelled as the walking dead, or “zombie corporations.” 

Some capitalists supported Joseph Biden for President. Others supported Donald Trump. Many of those who have power opposed Trump’s argument that the election was fraudulent. However, as I said, about 147 congresspeople supported Trump’s effort to decertify the election. 

We might consider that congresspeople and senators routinely talk on telephones for hours every day asking for money for their campaigns. Clearly, most of those phone calls are not to working people. No, politicians routinely ask capitalists for support, and some of those capitalists support Donald Trump.

Anyone who has been following the news knows that many of Donald Trump’s statements are bold-faced lies. Aside from arguing that the election was fraudulent, Trump has argued that immigrants bring crime to this country and have taken jobs away from workers who were born here. 

Back in 1989, Trump called for the execution for five Black teenagers in New York City. After having served up to seven years in prison, the Central Park Five were declared not guilty. They eventually received about $40 million for being wrongfully incarcerated. Yet, Donald Trump continues to argue that they are guilty. 

However, when we look at the reality of capitalism, we see that dishonesty in the government is routine. My opinion is that politicians are paid considerable amounts of money to routinely lie. 

What would it mean to tell the truth? That would mean that politicians would argue that we all need to spend out entire lives working alienating jobs, so a tiny minority can maximize profits on their investments. Telling the truth would mean that all the wars since the Civil War were about were about defending the immense wealth of the most affluent people in the world. We can see this hypocrisy clearly in the policies of former President Barack Obama.

Imagine for a moment, that a politician adopted a policy that meant that you would never see your parents or children ever again. Certainly, few if any people would support that politician. 

Now, think about the fact that no one has control over where we are born. Yet, President Obama separated thousands of parents from their children because their parents were immigrants, and the children were born here. It is possible that those parents might never be able to see their children again.

Now, think about what it would mean to be hungry, not just once and a while, but every day. Think about what it would mean if your children were crying because they don’t have enough food. Think about what it would mean for millions of people in this country who don’t have proper access to health care. According to the Department of Agriculture, there are about fifty million people in this country who don’t have enough nutritious food to eat. Certainly, these people find it challenging to access the health care system.

President Obama signed his Affordable Health Care Act. This act required those fifty million hungry people to come up with about $1,500 to pay for health care. However, even before Obama adopted this plan, health care expenditures for every person in this country were significantly more than in any other nation in the world. Much of that $1,500 dollars went to the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. 

In my opinion, asking hungry people to give up $1,500 is not something they might view as “affordable.” To make his policies clear beyond a shadow of a doubt, President Obama cut the food stamps program by $8.7 billion. While he cut aid to hungry people, President Obama doled out trillions of dollars to corporations in his so-called quantitative easing plan.

We also might consider, that for all of his efforts, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize.

The attack on the capitol

So, when media pundits like Trudy Rubin argue that the Congresspeople who supported President Trump’s effort to decertify the election are “brain dead” we also might consider who is making that statement. While President Trump’s dishonesty is out in the open, the routine dishonesty of pro-capitalist politicians is routine.  

The late capitalist Sheldon Adelson was an ardent supporter of Donald Trump. Before his death Adelson contributed $75 million to a political action committee supporting Trump’s reelection.

In Philadelphia, Comcast is the largest corporation and Brian Roberts is the CEO. Roberts cut all funding to the 147 Congresspeople who supported Trump’s efforts to decertify the election. While Roberts normally supports the Democrats, capitalists oftentimes finance the campaigns of opposing candidates. Clearly, they continue to gouge out profits no matter who is in office.

James Baldwin understood where the attitudes of racist mobs come from. In his book The Price of the Ticket he argued:

“A mob cannot afford to doubt: that the Jews killed Christ or that 'n—words' want to rape their sisters or that anyone who fails to make it in the land of the free and the home of the brave deserves to be wretched.  But these ideas do not come from the mob.  They come from the state, which creates and manipulates the mob.  The idea of black persons as property, for example, does not come from the mob.  It is not a spontaneous idea.  It does not come from the people, who knew better, who thought nothing of intermarriage until they were penalized for it: this idea comes from the architects of the American States.  These architects decided that the concept of Property was more important––more real––than the possibilities of the human being.”

We can also see a similar reality with respect to the massive support Adolph Hitler received from German capitalists. This has been documented in Daniel Guerin’s Fascism and Big Business, and in William Manchester’s Arms of Krupp. While we don’[t have that kind of fascist movement in this country today, we see similar forces at work. 

Today we are experiencing a political and economic crisis. The many examples I’ve used in this blog point to the fact that capitalists will not hesitate to support politicians who operate outside the borders of the law.

Donald Trump argued that he wants to, “Make America Great Again.” As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once argued, the capitalist state is a “special instrument of repression.” There was a time in the history of this country when the Jim Crow laws legalized the discrimination against African Americans. Malcolm X talked about how that repression also existed outside the Jim Crow states with the following words: “Stop talking about the South. If you’re south of Canada, you’re in the South.” 

Capitalist governments use this repression to extract the enormous wealth workers create. They then support the system that gives this wealth to the most affluent people in the world. As many people already know, Trump’s statement about “Making America Great Again” is absurd.

However, when we look at history, we see how history rarely goes backward, and when it does, this becomes a disaster. The Nazis openly acknowledged that they wanted to go back to the times when, in effect, royal families ruled in the feudal system. In those times, the decisions of feudal monarchs were the law. As we have seen, when the fascists had absolute power, their crimes were significantly worse than the most diabolical feudal monarchs.  

As of this writing, the Congress has impeached Donald Trump for a second time. The aftermath of the attack on the capitol demonstrates that the ruling powers in this country are unwilling to overthrow the elected government in this country. However, when we look at the world, we see that there are times when ruling powers will not hesitate to push aside elected governments.

The economic and political crisis in this country will continue. Because of this reality, it is entirely possible that the next four years will be even worse than the last four. However, while there hasn’t been a mass movement of the working class in over fifty years, that doesn’t mean the working class will continue to be relatively quiescent. 

The attack on the capitol gives us an idea of the racist forces that will organize to take power. The working class has a tremendous potential to prevent that from happening. When we look at the history of struggle of the working class in the world, we see that we indeed have the potential to transform the world into a place where human needs are seen as more important than profits.

The Black Jacobins - Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

By C.L.R. James

First published in 1938

Random House – 1963 with an afterword

Vintage - 1989

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

Back in the 1970s, I had the opportunity of listening to C.L.R. James speak at a Militant Labor Forum in Brooklyn, New York. I was in my twenties, and James was in his seventies. When he spoke, James attracted several people from the West Indian community in Brooklyn. 

I remember being impressed by C.L.R. James. He wasn’t just a revolutionary, but an intellectual who easily made his ideas clear to anyone who was willing to listen. 

Then, in the early 1990s, I read James book The Black Jacobins for the first time. This was a turning point for me. Before reading this book, I had an interest in history, but was just beginning to see how that history is relevant to our lives today. In this book, James explained how an event that transpired about 200 years ago, on a relatively small island in the Caribbean, was profoundly relevant to the world today. After reading that book, I began a lifelong study of some of the watershed moments in the history of the human race.

A few years ago, I learned that C.L.R. James had discussions with Leon Trotsky at a time when Trotsky was living in Mexico. This was about one year after his book The Black Jacobins was published. Trotsky was a central leader of the Russian Revolution who had been deported from that country due to the betrayal of the revolution by Joseph Stalin.

Recently, I viewed the Netflix film series Small Axe, created by Steve McQueen. This series is about the West Indian community living in London. In a few of those episodes, McQueen’s characters recommended that people read C.L.R. James’ book The Back Jacobins. Eventually I decided that it might be a good idea to pick this book up again. I was glad that I did.

The French colony of San Domingo

Today, the island of Hispaniola is split up into two nations. The western section, that is closest to Cuba, is the nation known as Haiti. The primary language there is Creole, a language derived from French. In the east is Santo Domingo where the primary language is Spanish.

Before the Haitian Revolution, Haiti was the French colony of San Domingo. For most of the years of this colony, slavery was the law. While there were about 30,000 whites and 40,000 mulattos, there were about 400,000 slaves in San Domingo.

While today Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world, in the late 18th century the French colony of San Domingo was a wealth producing center of the world. About 30% of the French economy came from San Domingo.

C.L.R. James gave an unvarnished history of the horrors inflicted on the slaves who produced this enormous wealth. Routine torture and murder were legal in those years. Because of those unimaginably horrendous conditions, the life expectancy of slaves was only a few years. For the slave owners, it was less expensive to import slaves on the notorious slave ships, than to make life even slightly less miserable for the slaves who produced their wealth. 

There were good reasons why C.L.R. James gave those vivid descriptions of the horrors of slavery. When we begin to realize the full weight of the unimaginable lives those slaves endured, we can also begin to appreciate the unwavering will of these same slaves to free themselves from that institution for all time.

As long as the institution of slavery existed, there were slave rebellions. One of the most famous was the slave rebellion led by Spartacus against the Roman empire. According to histories I’ve read, about 90,000 slaves joined Spartacus in rebellion.

However, until the Haitian Revolution, none of these rebellions managed to take power and put in place a government of former slaves who would maintain power. The story of the Haitian Revolution explains why this exceptional event happened in the former French colony of San Domingo.

The initial rebellion of slaves on the island succeeded in burning some of the most profitable crops on the plantations. However, most of the slave owners maintained their control. Due to their isolation, the rebelling slaves went to the Spanish half of the island, where they received support. The Spanish gave aid to the former slaves as a way of putting pressure on the French colonial authorities. 

The French Revolution and its effect on San Domingo

At this same time, the French Revolution erupted. Initially the French monarchy managed to maintain power. During this time, the principal debate in France viewed the problem of San Domingo as a conflict between the whites and mulattos. 

In San Domingo, there were 127 levels of mixed race. If someone had one part to 127 parts of Black to white ancestors, that person was not considered to be white. The white people living on the island had absolute power over the Blacks and mulattos. This meant that murder, rape, and torture against Blacks and mulattos was legal.

However, while many mulattos were slaves, many were also free. Some mulattos received advanced education in France. This reality meant that there were white people who were in debt to mulattos, but those same white people had absolute power over the very people who loaned them money. So, within France many were aware of this discrimination and felt it was wrong. However, in the early stages of the French Revolution slavery remained the law.

In the next stage of the French Revolution the masses of the working class of France became intolerant of the old order and exerted their influence. For many French workers, they felt that the slaves of San Domingo had their same interests and became horrified when they learned of the reality of human bondage. Many French workers at that time refused to drink coffee in protest of the conditions faced by slaves. Under those conditions the new revolutionary government of France united under the slogan liberty, equality, and fraternity. This same government outlawed slavery.

When the rebelling slaves of San Domingo learned that slavery was outlawed, they realized that France was the only nation that took this step. This made the revolutionary army switch sides, and they joined with the new French government to take control of the island and remove the Spanish from power.                   

Toussaint L’Ouverture was a slave who knew how to read and had a relatively better position on the Bréda plantation where he worked. Because the slave owners on this plantation were more benevolent than most, Toussaint aided those owners. This support allowed them to avoid the rath of those who were in rebellion.

Then, Toussaint joined the slave armies, and because of his medical background, tended to the injured soldiers. Toussaint was different from the other slave leaders. He understood from the beginning that the goal of the revolution needed to be the complete abolition of slavery. He also recruited about 500 former slaves and drilled them to become a competent fighting force.

By the time the French government outlawed slavery, Toussaint became the central leader and organized to end Spanish rule on the eastern section of the island. Then, Toussaint needed to deal with a British invasion.

The British attempted to take advantage of the weakened position of France. As I’ve said, the colony of San Domingo was the most lucrative wealth producing location in the world. The British sent an army to the island with the intention of taking control of this enormous wealth.

At that time, Britain and France had the most powerful armed forces in the world. However, those armies proved to be ineffective in taking San Domingo from the army of former slaves. 

Because the French government had changed, the new government supported the slave army in the war against the British invasion. Toussaint, for the most part, got along well with the first governors the French sent to the Island.

During the few years when there was relative peace in San Domingo, Toussaint made a determined and effective effort to end the horror story of slavery and develop the island in a meaningful way.

Toussaint won the support of the former slaves by making it clear that he was one of them. He not only tended to many who were injured, he worked at routine tasks along with everyone else.

For Toussaint, a meaningful development of the island meant allowing the former slave owners to keep their plantations.  However, those former slave owners needed to pay a wage to the former slaves and the use of torture was now outlawed. Under those conditions, the former slaves would gradually become literate and a meaningful development would unfold.

One of Toussaint’s top military commanders was his nephew General Moise. Moise came into conflict with Toussaint because he believed the government sided with the landowners over the former slaves in many instances. Moise led a rebellion aimed at advancing the interests of the former slaves. Toussaint defeated that rebellion and ordered the execution of Moise. This was a profound mistake that greatly weakened the revolution.

The changing political climate in France and its consequences

In France the capitalist powers were taking control of the country. Napoleon Bonaparte became their leader and the ruling powers in France began to change their political outlook towards San Domingo. Napoleon bowed to the French maritime interests who gouged out immense fortunes derived from the horrors of slavery. As a result, Napoleon developed a plan to bring slavery back to San Domingo.

His plan was based on the absurd idea that the leaders of the Haitian slaves were stupid. Napoleon thought that he could lure these leaders into supporting him, then the revolution would evaporate, and France would have slavery once again in its colony. Initially Napoleon mobilized 12,000 soldiers to advance this task. 

Toussaint felt that the only realistic way for the people of San Domingo to advance was to remain a colony of France. At that time, the nations of Britain, Spain, and the United States continued to engage in the slave trade. 

Certainly, during the years of relative peace on this island there were important advances, and the horrors of slavery appeared to be over. Given these facts, Toussaint believed that his government had a mutually beneficial relationship with France. 

The British warned Toussaint that a French military expedition was on its way to San Domingo, and that this expedition had hostile intentions. However, because of Toussaint’s refusal to believe this, the French expedition was able to land on the island unmolested. Had Toussaint mobilized to stop this invasion, the French would have never been able to take any strongholds on the island.

The other problem was that the former slaves believed that the French were their friends. So, when the French landed many former slaves supported the invasion. However, as the French made clear what their intentions were, the army of former slaves mobilized to take on the French, who were the most advanced army in the world at that time. 

General Rigaud was the central commander of the mulattos on the island. Rigaud made the catastrophic mistake of taking the French side against Toussaint. Rigaud paid for that mistake. After he supported the French invasion of San Domingo, the French had him arrested and deported from the island.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines was the top military commander under Toussaint. Dessalines had a different political perspective than his commander. Dessalines hated the slave owners and argued that the freedom of the former slaves needed to take precedence over San Domingo’s relationship with France. So, early in the revolution, Dessalines advocated for independence. 

After the French military force landed on the island, the army of the former slaves was in an extremely disadvantageous position. However, in one of the most courageous moments in human history, the army of former slaves managed to push back the French invasion of the island. After the French invasion had been neutralized, the rainy season started. The mosquitoes then infected most of the French forces and their army became incapacitated. 

Because the former slaves were more resistant to the mosquito born diseases, they had an excellent opportunity to mount an offensive to decisively defeat the French. However, because Toussaint felt that San Domingo needed to continue to be a French colony, he called for a truce to discuss a workable peace. 

While Toussaint was in the French camp, soldiers arrested him. He was placed on a ship where he was forced to sail to France. Toussaint died in a French prison. After Napoleon had been defeated in the war against Britain, he acknowledged that he should have left Toussaint alone to rule the island. This is a clear example of how racism blinds people to the facts of the world. The Haitian Revolution is a clear example how that blindness can have disastrous consequences. 

However, after Toussaint’s arrest, Dessalines took over the army of the former slaves. Now, there was no question that this army would demand nothing less than independence from France. In all, the French would lose about 60,000 soldiers in their defeat in San Domingo. 

The British took advantage of this defeat and went to war against France. The small French force that survived the revolution sailed into a British fleet. The British then sent those soldiers to prison for many years. Dessalines told those French soldiers that if they attempted to return to the new nation of Haiti, their ships would be blown out the water.

The Haitian Revolution and its lessons for the world

C.L.R. James argued that in the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin didn’t make the same errors as Toussaint L’Ouverture. Lenin had a real advantage of both a formal education, and the political legacy of Karl Marx. 

Lenin understood that the only way for the Russian Revolution to succeed would be to establish a government of the workers councils known as Soviets. When 14 nations invaded the Soviet Union after the revolution, Lenin didn’t hesitate to mobilize the masses in an army to defend their government. The examples of the Russian and Haitian Revolutions are clear examples of how the masses of working people have the potential to overcome extreme obstacles in order to defend a government they can claim as their own.

Today Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world. Toussaint was fully aware of the difficulties an independent Haiti would face in a world where the most powerful nations supported slavery. The United States occupied Haiti for about twenty years in the early 20th century. Then, they installed the horrendous puppet governments of Francois Duvalier and his son. 

The French government demanded that Haiti pay for the Haitian Revolution that removed the French colonial government. All these measures weakened any possibility for Haiti to become a viable nation advancing the interests of all the people.

The Russian Revolution was betrayed by a clique organized by Joseph Stalin. As a result, Russian capitalism now flourishes, and Vladimir Putin is attempting to become a power broker in the capitalist world.

However, C.L.R. James identified the Cuban Revolution as following in the West Indian tradition that began with the Haitian Revolution. As a result of the Haitian Revolution, many slave owners left the island and settled in the eastern Oriente Province of Cuba. Oriente is the section of Cuba that has the largest Black population, and was the place where the Cuban Revolution began. The revolutionary Cuban government has been able to survive in spite of an imperialist invasion, threats of atomic warfare, and a sixty-year trade embargo by the United States.

While the Haitian Revolution succeeded in ending French colonialism of the island, C.L.R. James identified the central mistake of Toussaint L’Ouverture in the following quotation:

“His grasp of politics led him to make all preparations, but he could not admit to himself and to his people that it was easier to find decency, gratitude, and humanity in a cage of starving tigers than in the councils of imperialism.”

Today as the capitalist system in the world is beginning to fall apart, the example of the Haitian Revolution, as well as the words of C.L.R. James have never been more relevant.