Violent Class Struggles and the Need for Revolutionary Change: Anti-WTO Organized Labor Protest Vs Seattle Police

Violent Class Struggles and

the Need for Revolutionary Change:

Anti-WTO Organized Labor Protest VS Seattle Police

By Marco T. Ntobi

Lulu Press, Inc.

2016

Violent Class Struggles and the Need for Revolutionary Change:

Anti-WTO Organized Labor Protest VS Seattle Police

Copyright © 2016 by Marco T. Ntobi

All rights reserved. The copyright of this book, as well as all matter contained herein (including illustrations) rests with the Publishers. This book, part or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, stored in at retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written prior permission of the Publisher except for the use of or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or scholarly journals.

No use of this publication may be made for resale or for any other commercial purpose whatsoever without prior permission in writing from the Publisher. No person shall copy the name of the book, its title design, matter and illustrations in any form and in any language, totally or partially or in any distorted form, without the express written prior permission of the Publisher. Anybody doing so shall face legal action and will be responsible for damages.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN: 978-1-365-08175-0       eBook (epub)

ISBN: 978-1-365-03067-3       Paperback Print  Book

ISBN: 978-1-365-08037-1       Hardcover Print  Book

Lulu Press, Inc.

3101 Hillsborough St, Raleigh, NC 27607

http://www.lulu.com

This book is available from Lulu.com, http://www.lulu.com

Printed by Lulu Press, Inc.;

Distribution by Lulu Press, Inc.

DISCLAIMER:

We regret any errors or omissions that may have been unwittingly made.

http://www.lulu.com

Dedication

To my late mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Thobias Ntobi, for showing me the way... To my lovely wife, my children Hamida, Neema and Prisca, & all my friends who supported me in one way or another since  preparation up to publishing of this book. Without whose affectionate persistence this book would never have begun, and without whose help and insight it would never have been completed. Without whose support and patience, I would have never achieved my dream. Thank you!

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Violent Class Struggle: Revolutionary Movement

Imperialism vs Democracy

Socialism and the Property-holding Classes

Chapter 1: American History and  Imperialism

American History begins in Europe

Imperialism

The Roots of American Imperialism

The Free For All

Rise Of The Capitalist Class

Chapter 2: The Face of America and Capitalism

The Face of America

The face of Capitalism

State Crimes and Violence

The Urban Ruins

A Drugged Society

Colonialism is Not the Only Form of Imperialism

Imperialism and It's Concomitants

Imperialism is not a Conspiracy

The Red Flag

Chapter 3: The Face of Poverty

The Face of Poverty

The Successful System --- Successful For Whom?

What constitutes economic poverty?

Who Pays and who don't?

Chapter 4: The Bourgeois Mentality

The Bourgeois Mentality

Religion

Democracy

Violence

Revolutionary Violence

Chapter 5: Present-Day Class Struggles in the U.S.

Capitalism, Class & Class Struggle

Marx's Theory Of Crisis As A Theory Of Class Struggle

Marx’s Theory Of Accumulation And Crises

Crisis and Revolution

Beyond the Workplace

Class Relations

Property And Proletarian

A Letter to American Workingmen

Chapter 6: Revolutionary Resistance

The Industrial Revolution

Rise Of The Capitalist Class

The Rise Of The Labor Movement

Racism And The Class Struggle

Race and Empire

Racism Today

Race and Revolution

Black Lynchings

Revolution in Advanced Industrial Countries

Thoughts on the Nature of Revolution

Chapter 7: Globalizing Resistance

The Battle in Seattle: And The Future Of Social Movements

The Battle in Seattle: Environmental Case Study

The Battle in Seattle: The Third WTO Ministerial Meetings

The Battle in Seattle: A Moment in New Politics of Globalisation

Eros and the Battle of Seattle

Lessons from Seattle

Chapter 8: Anti-WTO Labor Protest on D-Day

Chapter 9: What is Netwar?

Chapter 10: Troops Move into position

Chapter 11: First Skirmishes

Chapter 12: The Police Battle Themselves

Chapter 13: The Battle Engaged

Chapter 14: Labor's U-Turn

Chapter 15: Terrain Of The Battlefield

Chapter 16: The Generals' Panic

Chapter 17: Black Blocs Run Amok

Chapter 18: Declaration Of Emergency

Chapter 19: The Battle Resumes

Chapter 20: The Day Of The Police Riot

Chapter 21: Post-Presidential Disorder

Chapter 22: Police Hallucinations

Chapter 23: Jail Blockade and Release

Chapter 24: Police Officials Resign

Chapter 25: Aftermath

Chapter 26: The Battles Yet To Come

Chapter 27: Anti-WTO Labor Protest 15 Years Ago

Chapter 28: Coalition Of Immokalee Workers

References

About the Author

Alphabetical Index

Acknowledgements

It would be impossible for me to list all those who have helped me with this book. Some do not know me and are unaware of how much their books and articles have added to my general understanding of issues about Imperialism, Social Movements and Class Struggle, especially events which happened in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1999.

I would like to thank my teachers, my course classmates, and my family for supporting me all the way.

To my mentor in academic matters, Mrs. Mkangara Martha D. who devoted her valuable time in advising me on how to succeed in writing and publishing.

To my editor, Miss. Prisca M. Ntobi, your use of the editor’s red pen… provides me an opportunity to acknowledge and thank everyone, especially people like Felix Greene, Paul de Armond, David Solnit, Maurice Blumleini, N. Lenin and William J. Fielding who were involved in the writing of useful articles and stories that are included in this book, and also all people who helped me in reviewing, editing, script typing or production  process such as Lulu Press, Inc. 

I wish particularly to thank Mr. Paul de Armond, who himself writen some reports about events which happened in Seattle, known as the Battle of Seattle. I am grateful to him for the reports and other articles he wrote because without his reports I could not have thought of writing this book. Paul de Armond is a research director at the Public Good Project, a pro-democracy research, analysis and investigative network. His past reports have dealt with subjects as diverse as right-wing domestic terrorism, internet fraud, community relations, and anti-environmental front groups.

Thank you for your patience and guidance, without whose help this book would never have been completed. Whatever usefulness this book may have is largely due to these great friends known and unknown who have helped me write it.

MARCO T. NTOBI

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,

April 2016

Foreword

Violent Class Struggles and Revolutionary Movements:

Anti-WTO Organized Labor Protest VS Seattle Police

I started writing this book primarily for myself, I wanted to find answers, if could, to certain questions which appeared to me important but complicated.

I wanted to clarify for myself, for instance:

- Why violence had always been so integral part of our Western civilization?

- And why it was that our supposedly advanced, enlightened, Christian nations have inflicted such enormous human suffering wherever we went in the world?

- Imperialism - yes. But the world by itself conveys very little.

- What are the central characteristics of imperialism ?

- How did it start?

- How does it operate? - What gives it such strength and tenacity?

- Where lie its weaknesses?

Writing this book primarily has been a very important experience for me. I thought I understood the operation of the imperialist systems and what it does to people.

But it was only while doing the reading and detailed research for this book that the full implications of imperialism struck home.

Only then I did begin to grasp the true depth of its cruelty and cunning and the measureless suffering it inflicted in the past and still continues to inflict today.

As my researches went on, many facts that before had appeared random and unconnected became linked together. History began to make new kind of sense. Just as when one looks at a slide through microscope everything at first is a little blurred and then, by turning a knob, the vague shadows and blobs spring into focus, so the writing of this book made the essential meaning of imperialism sharp and clear.

The history of imperialism is shock full of statements made by apparently wise and rational men in support of totally illegitimate policies. Just listen to the politicians of any capitalist country carefully attempting to justify humanly unjustifiable actions! Never before has so much precision been attached to so spurious a rationality!

They have fooled us too long, these reasonable men. They don't deliver the goods they promise. These men who sound so knowledgeable, so informed, are certainly not providing the answers we are looking for, and for us to expect them to do so and to get angry because they don't, is as foolish as to get angry with water when it refuses to flow uphill. They believe in money's power; and we believe in people's power. And as long as we remain in awe of them we will always be led in the wrong direction. They will go on telling us that of course they are taking us south towards the sun and we will continue to find ourselves further and further towards the cold north. We must get rid of these false navigators; we must begin to distrust utterly everything they say.

Pig! Pig! cried the young militants at the policemen in America, and it happened also when angered protesters who were among a large organized group during the Anti-WTO Organized Labor Protest in November 30, 1999, Seattle, Washington D.C. when the Seattle Police Department (SPD), tasked with preventing the protests while allowing the labor parade to continue. And if I were being clubbed, beaten by them or suppressed by the use of high explosives, pepper water sprays and tear gases, I would call them Pigs! too, no doubt, or epithets much worse. Yet in spite of our outrage, I feel it is important for us to remember that those who are using the clubs, high explosives, pepper water sprays and tear gases against us are the victims of imperialism as well as its agents, and that under other conditions they would be on our side. We look at them, their hard faces, tight lips, and we despair. It is logical that they are supporting imperialists. We look at them again, and the conclusion is quickly reached that they will never change. They will always be filled with resentments, fears and hates. And having so concluded, we-ended our examination and analysis of them and prepare to wait for more propitious times.

What is more, we assume that our social environment and it's institutions were determined by conscious decisions, but this is true only in a very restricted sense; the broad reality is that human consciousness and its "decision-making" process arise out of and are largely determined by environment. It is difficult to be a revolutionary, for to be a revolutionary means to believe in the innate goodness of man and it is to know that man in this environment has been programmed into non-man. Our job is to change the environment so that man can be man . . . !!!

None of us were born revolutionaries. Therefore, if we have found within ourselves the capacity to change, we must acknowledge that everyone has the capacity to change. Once we acknowledge this, we must begin to live and act as if we believe it . . .

The whole purpose of revolutionary violence is to destroy at its very roots the institutionalized system of greed which is also the institutionalized system of violence. Today, with the phoney cry of "law and order" the rulers of the imperialist nations attempt to throw the onus of violence on those who are protesting the system under which they live. But the onus is not on them, for violence is the near-monopoly of the state apparatus. Compared to the machinery of violence that the ruling class deploys, the violence of the protesters is like the pop of a toy gun beside the explosion of  a one-thousand-ton bomb. Today we have reached the very limits of imperialist violence. From now on imperialist violence can only be a form of human suicide. To any thoughtful and humane man, even though it be against his own deep inclinations, there is really no choice left---he can only join with others to bring the present imperialist system to an end.

As this book attacks the very basis of our Western social order, there will be those (I know from experience) who will make it their business to scrutinize every fact and argument in it in the hope of discrediting it, as what they are doing now in the case of searching the Truth about September 11, 2001 - 9/11 Terror Attacks which inflicted a lot of casualties and deaths of many innocent people at the Buildings WTC 1, 2 and 7.

I cannot, of course, promise that this book is completely free of error, though the facts I present have been checked and re-checked carefully. It is obvious, too, that this is by no means a definitive study of imperialism. That would take volumes.

This book represents some notes on the nature of capitalist and imperialism and the rising world class struggles against it. The best I can hope is that it will encourage others to make their own study so that we can all know more completely the enemy we are facing and challenging.

This book, then, is the result of explorations. In it I have attempted to trace as clearly and briefly as I can the nature of the capitalist and imperialist systems and the rising world class struggles against it -- a bitter, life-and-death conflicts which is now only in its middle phase.

Much in this book, of course, has been said before and has been happening, and it will be said again and again in many different ways by many different people before this enormous conflict is finally resolved.

MARCO T. NTOBI

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,

April 2016

Preface

Read any war memoir, and notice that veterans almost always comment on the battlefield stillness before the fighting begins. Often it is the only personal note in the writing; the rest of the account describes history, capitalism, imperialism, democracy, racism, religion, violence, class struggle, heroism and savagery, troop movements and general's strategies, cannonfire and the screams of the injured. But these preceeding hours of quietude always seem as memorable as the carnage that follows.

Welcome to Seattle Washington, as dawn rises on Tuesday, November 30, 1999, and about 5000 members of law enforcement prepared for duty. Sharing their own moments of stillness are about 35,000 protesters plus 15,000 members of organized labor. The police are out-numbered 10 to 1.

The evening before, the forces had aligned themselves into camps. There was the Direct Action Network (a coalition of enviro and human rights groups), which planned to shut down the WTO conference by swarming the streets. There was the AFL-CIO, which planned to hold a rally and parade in an effort to influence national trade policy--and the upcoming presidential elections.

There was the Seattle Police Department, tasked with preventing the protests while allowing the labor parade. There was the camp of outside law enforcement agencies, champing at the bit to enter into the fray--but as long as the SPD maintained order, they would be forced to sit on the sidelines. And milling around the edges were the Black Blocs, fondling their crowbars and dreaming of chaos.

What would happen next was anybody's guess--but as old veterans say, no plan of battle survives contact with the opposition. We present the story of the Battle of Seattle in a series of parts, meant to be read in sequence. Please don't skip ahead; each section builds on important details revealed before. It is purely a drill of Crowd Dispersal against the Civilian Protesters Organized Group. An interesting and important story to read and learn how to deal with a large protesting organized group. I humbly dedicate this book to be read by the Tanzanian law enforcement bodies and agencies.

MARCO T. NTOBI

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,

April 2016

Introduction

Revolution begins within the consciousness of men in a society.Know the enemy and know yourself; hundred battles, hundred victories.

[1]

[1](SUN WU TZU, Military scientist of ancient China, quoted by MAO TSE-TUNG).

Violent Class Struggle: Revolutionary Movement

All great events in world history have swung between two extremities of "War and Peace." The nature of warfare has been varying from time to time. It has been either military or political, philosophical or economic depending upon conditions or upon environments. The attributes that have till now undermined the greatness of individuals or nations have been:

- Presence of ego, jealousy and greed

- Exploitation of the weak

- Misinterpretation of religious ideas

- Exaggeration of personal ambitions

The world has produced titans of great stature but they have ultimately fallen like ninepins before human justice. Whatever dreams we cherish must be devoid of the above anomalies and caressed with a sense of divine sublimity.

Our history teaches us to nurture the attributes of:

- Self-Respect in place of Ego

- Freedom in place of Chaos

- Love in place of Lechery

- Ambition in place of Greed

- Complementation in place of Condemnation

- Utilization in place of Exploitation

- Harmony in place of Discord

- Rationality in place of Ritual 

- Equilibrium in place of Emotion

- Spirituality in place of narrow Religion

As we take a plunge into our historical treasure, at many places we shall find the above attributes wanting and scarce. However, there were some people who kept the torch of greatness burning, by applying cybernetic strategy for building their confidence. Cybernetic Strategy is nothing but proper streamlined approach for undertaking any given task, so as to accomplish certain goals successfully.

Any Revolutionary movement or class struggle, like a war is always won with the help of a properly laid out plan, in the same way any work has to be done with the help of a carefully laid out plan.

Similarly, to achieve greatness and nurturing confidence one has to carefully work the strategy that can almost become a self-propellant for the achievement of success, with regards of the possible hurdles that you are likely to face in your journey.

Those possible hurdles are physical deformity or weakness, poverty, social criticism or resistance, lack of education, lack of support and lack of confidence.

Important, People who believe in their mission never get intimidated by hurdles, for they have a deadly certitude about the truth of their mission. As a warrior, a revolutionary opting for success in the class struggle or revolutionary movements, and who has determined to overthrow the imperialist government in order, needs to answer the following questions:

- What is my target?

- What are the major threats?

- How to approach the target?

- What is the strength of my army?

- In how much time do I have to capture the enemy territory?

- How will I be able to maintain my victory?

So, the important step is prioritizing (fixing the priorities). Every person has to fulfil various needs in life. These needs can be pertaining to the family, education, career or society. The various needs can be earning a livelihood, taking care of family, maintaining a social image, protest and success and spiritual development etc.

Maslow's theory says that a person first fulfils his physical needs such as food, clothing and shelter, after which he caters to his social needs such as success, name and fame and in the end is spiritual or moral needs. But history bears testimony to the fact that most of the great people dared to break this theory of Maslow's hierarchy and proceeded to set their own priorities.

Great spiritual reformers have sacrificed their families, personal comforts and even food and shelter to seek for God. They have focused their entire energies on a single priority---to attain divinity! And in spite of all the odds, they have startled mankind by attaining the heights of spiritual powers which was almost inconceivable for the majority of mankind. They have taught to the world to set priorities according to one's strong will and not according to conventional systems, which an average person tends to follow with the fear of social dogmas.

All great people have had difficulties in fulfilling their family needs, but they never undermined their zeal. Karl Marx was confronted by extreme penury. He found it difficult to meet his both ends. His family reeled under poverty. But he gave to the world one of the greatest movements for the betterment of the poor and downtrodden.

. . . Sacrifice yourself for the family, the family for the neighborhood, the neighborhood for the city, the city for the state, the state for the country, and the country for Humanity. For there is no duty on this earth which comes above Humanity . . .[2]

[2] Karl Marx

Imperialism vs Democracy

This book is about democracy, revolutionary/social movements and class struggles (for the subjected majority) vs imperialism (what it is and how it works, and why, if it goes on it will eventually destroy us).

It gives an account on the revolutionary consciousness that is rising throughout the world, consciousness that repudiated the basic assumptions of imperialism and is directly challenging it's power. This world-wide class struggle between imperialism in its many forms and those who are determined to overthrow it, is the single greatest issue of our era - today; every lesser class struggle is linked to it. The battle is engaged and will grow in intensity and whether we like it or not, or even know it or not, we are all participants.

Though the United States is by no means the only imperialist country, a good deal of this book is about that country, for the United States today provides the main strength and sustaining force of imperialism everywhere. Without her imperialism as a system could not long survive. But America herself is moving towards crisis like the events happened in Seattle, Washington on Tuesday, Nov 30, 1999.

Americans increasingly feel trapped within a system which they know intuitively is leading their country to disasters both at home and abroad.Imperialism not as an abstraction but as a system, an organization that directly impinges on and degrades the lives of hundreds of millions of people. And it became clear to me, as it has of course to so many others, that imperialism means far more than the exploitation of poor countries by the rich. It involves a whole social system based on exploitation and violence, a whole way of thinking about other people.

The ghettos of America, racial injustices, the glaring inequalities that exist in every Western country, the dehumanization of industrial society, are as much as products of imperialism as apartheid in South Africa or the wanton slaughter of villagers in Vietnam.

I believe it may be more valuable for us today to begin by clarifying the questions confronting us than by attempting to formulate a set of blueprints for action, for we will never find the right answers until we ask ourselves the right questions.

After we have briefly examined the nature of imperialism; now, we need to attempt to understand the nature of the struggle against imperialism, I mean our aims:

-What do we do?

-Who oppose imperialism?

-Who want to destroy it utterly?

-Who want to weld together a wholly new society?

-What do we have to do to succeed in our aims?

-What is required of us?

Given the political circumstances of our day and the immense strength of the system we wish to bring down;

-What historically relevant actions can we take?

And, perhaps the most immediate and most important questions to me as the writer of this book:

-Where do I, as an individual, fit in?

-How can I, whoever I happen to be and with whatever skills I happen to possess, make my contribution in this immense encounter?

The answers to these questions, I myself, must admit at once, are not clear to me. I can only set down, for what they may be worth, some tentative ideas and the questions which, at the present stage of my understanding, seem to me to be important.

Whether consciously or not every writer upon, historical topics adopts some philosophy of social development and writes from the standpoint of some social class. He must do so if his work is to be anything more than a mere chronology, and even then the selection of events to be chronicled will be influenced by his attitude of mind and theory of society. Therefore I make no apology for having consciously written from the point of view of the working class, or for my belief that the socialist philosophy of history offers the true key to the progress of events, the "history of class struggles". Since the appearance of private property some one social class has always owned and controlled the instruments by which wealth was produced and distributed. This class by virtue of its ownership become the social ruler and fashions social institutions in its interest.

The methods of producing wealth are always changing. Chipped stone gave way to polished and this in turn to bronze and iron tools, and these were final!y displaced by the complex machine. As a result hunting and fishing were followed by agriculture and this in turn by machinofacture as the basis of social production.

These changes in the method of wealth creation constantly rendered the owner of outgrown methods superfluous and brought new classes of owners to the front. The struggles between these outgrown and the coming social classes have made up the great revolutionary class struggles that accomplished fundamental social transformations.

Along with these larger conflicts went minor struggles between classes having more or less divergent economic interests as to details. These formed political parties, factions and divisions, the story of which makes up the great mass of history.

Intellectual and Institutional fabric of Social Class stages

Each social stage contains as a part of its intellectual and institutional fabric much that is inherited from previous environments. These idealistic influences often play a great part in determining the course that society shall take. They are the material upon which each new social stage must work in building up a form of society suited to its needs. If these inherited ideas and institutions are not adapted to social progress, in the sense of a better control of environment, then they will either disappear or social evolution will be checked.

This view of history imputes no moral condemnation to the commercial, financial and manufacturing interests, because they violently seized upon social power in diffferent periods of their history. At these times their accession to rulership seems to have been necessary to further the higher evolution of society which we call progress.

If, today the institution of private property and the further rulership of monopolized capitalistic interests is not in accord with the best development of the social whole; and if this institution and class are retained through the power of idealogical impressions inherited from a time when they were socially essential then progress will cease and stagnation, or worse, result.

To the student of industrial history the outcome of the Civil war is plain from the beginning. In military conflict, wage slavery is incomparably, superior to chattel slavery. The wage workers with modern machinery produce such enormous quantities of surplus value that the expenses of war are little more than a spur to industry. The development of the transportation system, and indeed the whole industrial and financial situation of the North was of a higher social type, more complex, more effective, in producing results of all kinds than that of the South. In modern wars, banks are of more importance than bullets, and bonds out-rank bayonets as weapons of offense and defense.

In very many senses the Civil war was the father of modern plutocracy. It was fought that the capitalist class might rule. Its progress laid the foundations and mightily extended the scope of the capitalist system. It is characteristic of war under capitalism that it produces a sort of hot house industrial growth.

The Civil War marked the close of struggles between anything like equal divisions of the exploiting class in the United States.

While for the next generation or two there would be spasmodic attempts on the part of different divisions of the exploiters to grasp the reins, yet the position of the capitalistic class as a whole was never threatened.

This book, then, is the result of explorations. In it I have attempted to trace as clearly and briefly as I can the nature of the capitalist and imperialist systems and the rising world class struggles against it--a bitter, life-and-death conflicts which is now only in its middle phase. Much in this book, of course, has been said before and has been happening, and it will be said again and again in many different ways by many different people before this enormous conflict is finally resolved.

The Working Class Struggles (Social Progress)

Against this tremendous power but one force is capable of maintaining an effective fight. This force is, like plutocracy, the creation of the great industrial age of today. This is the working class. We have seen them slowly gathering strength, solidarity and intelligence, blindly groping for better methods of organization, going down to apparently hopeless defeats before militia rifles and plutocratically dominated judiciaries, but like the fabled giant Anteas they are crushed to earth only to receive new strength and new energy for further fighting. Steadily the idea has grown among them that their fight must be transferred from the brute test of physical and financial strength on the economic field, to the political arena. Here the evolution of industry, the development of events that cast their shadows before have written a platform upon which the working class must stand. That platform sees in the consolidation of ownership, in the organization of industries, in the trusts, in the concentration of wealth with its merciless inevitable onward movement, but a preparation for collective ownership and control. It sees in the ever recurring panics the death pangs of an old society, and in the ever growing solidarity of labor and capital with protests, strikes, boycotts, lock outs, and injunctions, but the birth pangs of a new society in which for the first time in the world, the workers shall rule, and all shall be workers, and thereby rulership and oppression shall pass from off the earth. Farmers learning at last the lesson of their helplessness and isolation, together with the inadequacy of their previous demands, are joining hands with the wage-workers where they find the strength that means victory for both; the program that means freedom for all.

In this great struggle we are now engaged there can be but one outcome. Previous class struggles in America have ever been waged in the interest of a minority!, but that minority in the Revolution, in the formation of the Constitution; in the Civil War, in Reconstruction always represented the forces of social progress. Therefore it was compact, consolidated and was able to secure the support of the workers for their fighting.

Today it is the working class which represents social progress, and which embraces all that is essential within our industrial process. Moreover it is they who have done the fighting in all other wars, and who must now fight for themselves; and whereas in previous struggles the class that represented social progress was a minority depending upon the worker for support in its battle, the working class is today in an overwhelming majority and has but to make plain the facts of history to its membership to be assured of victory.

The Battle of Protesters v/s Seattle Police Department (SPD) in Seattle (Nov 30, 1999)

Socialism and the Property-holding Classes

Modern society cannot escape shipwreck unless it re-organize itself into a co- operative commonwealth. The establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth implies a social revolution; it implies the overthrow of the capitalist system of production, that has become a drag to all further development and an incubus upon the common weal; it means the placing of the machinery of production, now held and owned by landlords and capitalists, into the hands of the people; in other words, it implies the downfall of the system of private ownership in the implements of labor-land and capital, i. e., machines, tools, etc.-and its substitution with public, common, collective ownership, to be operated for use and not for private profit.

The substitution of the capitalist with the co-operative or socialist system of production is in the interest, not of the propertiless claeses alone, but of all classes. The same as slavery was an injury to the slave-holders, and its abolition tended to promote their highest interests, so is the present system of private ownership in the implements of labor injurious, in the highest sense, even to the landlords and capitalists themselves, and its abolition would redound to the benefit of these as well. They also suffer severely under the contradictions that typify the modern system of production: one set of them rots in idleness, an other wears itself out in a neck-breaking hunt after profits, and over the heads of all hangs the Damocles sword of bankruptcy, of shipwreck, and of final down fall into the class of the proletariat, i. e., the class that has been stripped of all the things necessary for production, except its labor power, which, lest it perish outright, it is compelled to sell for starvation wages-happy if it succeed in doing that.

It would be thought from these premises that all classes of society, capitalists and landlords, no less than proletarians, would join in the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth. Yet the reverse is the case. Experienoe teaches, the fact glares us in the face, that, the same as the slave-holders of old, the property-holders of today, landlords and capitalists, are blind to their higher interests. The bulk of the property holding and exploiting classes not only looks upon Socialism with suspicion, but stands up aggainst it in an attitude of the most bitter antagonism.

Chapter 1: American History and  Imperialism

American History begins in Europe

The thread of events connecting the American life of today to the distant past runs through Spain, England, France and Italy back to Greece and Asia and not through Sioux, Iroquois and Pequod back to mound builders, and pre-historic residents of the American continent. It is in Europe that the germs and sometimes the developed forms of the institutions which make up our present society have their roots.

At the time of the discovery of America a new social class was struggling into power in Europe. Clergy and nobility with priests, knights and kings had ruled for centuries. They were soon to be overthrown by the rising class of traders. New inventions, bringing about changes in the methods by which men satisfy their wants, were creating this new class and carrying it into power, as they have ever created new classes and led them to victory.

Gunpowder had destroyed the knight’s monopoly of military skill; printing had abolished the monopoly of learning hitherto’ vested in the monks and a chosen few of the nobility, while the mariners’ compass had broken the narrow circles of trade and released the voyagers from their confinement to land marks.

As the trading class struggled into power it changed its location. The kingdom of trade had long had its capital in the cities of the Mediterranean. The great trade routes of the time ran through the Red Sea or over land to the north to China, India and Japan.

Over these routes came spices, silks, rugs, wines and precious jewels for the gratification and adornment of the social rulers of that days. These came to Genoa and Venice to be distributed over the remainder of Europe. But the Moslem was cutting one after another of the trade connections along which these Oriental luxuries flowed to the Mediterranean cities. Everywhere the traders were calling for a new route to India.

During the 14th and 15th centuries the seats of trade began to move north and west. The Hanseatic league of powerful cities arose on the shores of the Baltic. Manufacturing, especially the weaving of woolen, moved across the English channel.

This moving of the com- mercial centers to the Atlantic had turned the face of Europe westward. The voyage around Gibraltar between these Hanse cities and Italy required the building of larger and more powerful ships, which made ocean navigation possible.

Some, of these vessels under the command of Portuguese navigators were creeping around the coast of Africa seeking for a route to India. The rotundity of the earth was generally accepted by navigators, at that time, although most of our school histories state the reverse. In the midst of this age of discovery Columbus’ voyage was but an incident, but one of a host of adventurous voyages, some one of which was sure sooner or later to land on an American coast.

In The Colonies

During the first few years of settlement man bulked small compared with the untrodden continent, and geographical conditions were of more importance than industrial in determining social institutions. The northern climate, land locked bays, abundant forests, convenient fishing grounds and swift flowing rivers decided that New England should be the seat first of a ship building and fishing, and later a manufacturing population. The central states with their deep harbors and abundant minerals pointed the way first to agriculture, then to manufacturing. The south with its torrid sun, rich soil, and few discovered minerals was especially fitted for cotton, rice, tobacco, plantations, and chattel slavery.

Soon, however, there arose a division into social classes. Along the coast was the manufacturing, trading, plantation, creditor class; in the back country the toiling small farmer, hunter, pioneer, the conqueror of a continent, always hopelessly indebted to his economic masters on the oceans brim. The pioneer debtor class desired free land, low taxes, and most of all paper money. The creditor coast class insisted on restriction of land sales, taxation and metal currency.

Sometimes this struggle between the back country and the coast took on a violent form, as in Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, and Leisler’s in New York. But the powers of the government were in the hands of the coast and these early rebellions were soon crushed. The commercial and plantation classes of the sea board reigned supreme.

America's Fatal Legacy of genocide and slavery

For this is a beautiful world, this is a wonderful America, which the founding fathers dreamed until their sons drowned it in the blood of slavery and devoured it in greed. Our children must rebuild it. Let then the dreams of the dead rebuke the blind who think that what is, will be forever and teach them that what is worth living for must live again, and that which merited death must stay dead.[3]

Across the Atlantic a new nation has emerged. Thirteen years before the French Revolution the American colonies had broken their colonial ties and had enunciated what was up till then the most revolutionary doctrine in history.

The United States was the first nation to be founded openly on the right of rebellion, the right of revolution; on the proposition that a people may legitimately abolish their existing government, if necessary by force, and institute a new one. The principles propounded by the American colonists were at the time (and still are) explosive: all men are created equal; all men have a right to life, liberty and happiness; the purpose of government is to guard these rights; the people are sovereign---government is the people's servant and not their master. Other principles were adopted that must have struck the ruling classes of Europe as terrifyingly subversive. No aristocracy; no established church; freedom of speech; freedom to criticize the rulers; education for everyone; society without class distinctions. The new Americans believed that men could remake their society and, more important, that a re-made society would remake men. This was the new revolutionary message to the old world. It was not a socialist, but a bourgeois-democratic ideal, but as such it was an historic milestone. It represented the most advanced, the most humane, the most optimistic thinking of that time. Other countries since then, as they have freed themselves from colonial rule, have taken the principles expounded by the nineteenth-century Americans as the basis on which their new societies were to be formed. (Even Ho Chi Minh's 1945 Declaration of Vietnam Independence refers to and is based on the Declaration written in America 169 years before.)

To the hungry and oppressed masses of Europe---many of them living in the most terrible conditions of poverty and ruthlessly exploited by the new industrialists---American then represented the land of hope. Millions came across the Atlantic to start their lives anew. The words on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor expressed the promise that the new world held out to Europe:

. . . give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free---the wretched refuse of your teeming shore---send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me.

They came. Not the rich, but the very poorest, the most destitute. Many arrived owning nothing but the tattered clothes they wore on their backs. The treatment they received on their arrival was often brutal. They were cheated and exploited; they were herded into the most frightful slums, and could find work only in sweatshops where they were paid a pittance. They suffered agonies of homesickness for their homeland and for their families left behind; they conformed themselves by living close to others from the same country, singing the old songs, speaking the old language.

But they did not go back home. Dreadful though their conditions in America were, they were still better than those they had known in Europe. The American dream for many seemed real enough. Men like Jefferson, Paine, Whitman, Emerson took it seriously---they were not cynical men.

They did not realize that from the start, at the very heart of the American vision, there was already a fatal flaw: a society built on the principle of human equality could not at the same time be a slave society, and that is what the United States had already become; nor could it condone the ruthless massacre of the indigenous Indian peoples, the immigrants and the Negroes; nor is human equality possible while the means of production remain in private hands. This contradiction between the ideal as expressed in rhetoric and the reality as expressed in action was to have untold consequences, and the time would come when it would tear the whole nation apart.

The social history of the United States in the nineteenth century is the story of the growing disparity between the initial impetus, the hope and the promise, and the spoilers. As mercantile class grew more powerful, as industry expanded and the nation became more capitalist, we see repeated in the United States many of the same features that marked the industrial revolution and the growth of imperialism in Britain.

What Britain did to the "natives" in her overseas colonies, the United States was doing to her internal colonies---"the slaves, the indigenous population of Indians, the immigrants and the Negroes. In the South the economy was firmly established on slave labor supplied originally by the British slave traders who sold their human cargoes to the cotton and tobacco growers.

Meanwhile the landgrabbers moved westward, exterminating the indigenous population of Indians so as to possess their lands and the gold that perhaps lay beneath the surface. Whole Indian nations population were slaughtered. The extermination was deliberate---the men, the women, the children by the tens of thousands, and then by tens of thousands more. By the time the slaughter ended, of an original population of about a million, three-quarters of a million had been killed by murder or starvation.

In the expanding cities of New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, we see repeated the same exploitation of the workers by those who had accumulated capital as occurred in London, Manchester or Sheffield. The 12 or 14-hour working day under unspeakable conditions; the same slums; the same inhuman exploitation of children.

Thousands of workers died of overwork, undernourishment and tuberculosis. As in Britain every effort was made to prevent the workers from mobilizing their collective power. Unions were illegal; strikes were forbidden and when they occurred were often forcibly ended by military action. Those attempting to organize the workers were arrested and imprisoned.  Even as early as 1890 the New York Tribute was referring to those who were attempting to improve the workers' conditions as communist agitators---a phrase that was to become monotonously familiar even to the present day.

Thus was the peoples' dream prostituted. The new