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On the History of the “Landvolkbewegung” – The Black Flags of the Peasant Movement (1929 – 1931) – Jan Ackermeier – zur Zeit n°11 – 2014

12 Thursday Apr 2018

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The peasant revolt movement that shook Schleswig-Holstein between 1928 and 1932 arose from an unprecedented agricultural crisis. It was initiated by Claus Heim, “the peasant general,” who took leadership of it and staged many demonstrations and explosive attacks. However the questions he posed largely surpassed the framework of Schleswig-Holstein’s economic history. Its development actually coincided with period of the National Socialist party’s formidable progress in the rural milieus of this province, which would be, in July 1932, the first region in Germany to vote with an absolute majority for the NSDAP. What historic originality can this farmer’s revolt represent?

After the first world war, the majority of German peasants were confronted with enormous economic difficulties. In order to be able to somehow supply the population with food, German agriculture, from the start of the Weimar Republic and until 1922, had been forced to accept a constraining, managed policy, willingly or not. This policy aroused a general rejection of the young Republic in the large strata of the peasantry who traditionally voted for liberal or conservative groupings.

This negative tendency was further accentuated during the years of heavy inflation (1922 and 1923). At first, the peasants, as owners of land and tangible goods, profited from the devaluation of Germany currency. Later however, with the introduction of the “Rentenmark” in 1923, they were forced to endure heavy economic sacrifices. Above all when it became necessary to back the new currency through mortgages imposed by public authorities on landholdings in the agricultural sector the rejection of the Republic became widespread: this policy was perceived as a terrible injustice, as a special sacrifice demanded from the peasantry alone.

Towards the middle of the 1920s, the peasants had to confront a dilemma: buy agricultural machinery in order to consolidate their hitherto little mechanized enterprises, in order to be able to produce more and compensate for the deficits caused by the increase in the prices of industrial goods. During the years of inflation, the peasants practically had nothing to capitalize on: they consequently saw themselves forced to take out credit on very disadvantageous conditions in order to finance the necessary new investments. But, from 1927, they could foresee the global economic crisis where prices, in agricultural markets, fell on the international scale; moreover, disastrous harvests in 1927, due to deplorable climactic conditions, lead many peasants to bankruptcy.

Heim

In 1931, the peasant dissidents opted for the black flag of peasant revolt, hoisted in the revolts of the 16th century. The black flag was “the flag of earth and misery, the German night and the state of emergency.”

It was especially in rural Schleswig-Holstein, with a sector largely dominated by livestock and livestock speculation, that numerous peasants were threatened. They could no longer pay taxes or interest. Bankruptcy was waiting for them. This critical situation lead the peasants of the region to rally in a protest movement because traditional peasant associations, the government of the Reich (rendered incapable of acting because of its heterogeneous composition) or the established parties couldn’t help them. This protest movement didn’t present clear organizational structures but instead was characterized by a sort of spontaneity, where some determined peasants rapidly mobilized their counterparts in order to organize formidable mass demonstrations.

In January 1928, Schleswig-Holstein was the theater of numerous peaceful mass demonstrations, where sometimes more than 100,000 peasants descended into the streets. The representatives of the peasantry then asked the government of the Reich to establish an emergency aid program. The peasantry radicalized and within it ever more numerous voices rose to demand the dissolution of the “Weimar sytem.” The leaders of the movement had always been moderate: they limited themselves to demanding timely measures in the domains of agriculture and livestock alone. Faced with incomprehension by the Reich’s authorities, these moderate men were quickly replaced by more politicized activists who henceforth demanded that the entire “Weimar system” be abolished and destroyed in order to replace it with a form of popular (folkish) state, whose contours were poorly defined by its advocates, but which could essentially be qualified as agrarian.

At the end of the year 1928, the movement took the name Landvolkbewegung (Rural People’s Movment), under the direction of Claus Heim, from the countryside of Dithmarschen, and Wilhelm Hamkens, from Eiderstedt. Together they financed and published a journal, Das Landvolk, together with “guard associations” (Wachvereiningungen), a type of paramilitary unit lead by former Freikorps combatants. The movement thus acquired a form of organization that it didn’t posses before.

In 1928, Heim launched an appeal to boycott taxes. Suddenly, public protests were no longer passive: they were followed by strong armed actions and even terrorist attacks. The bailiffs who came to seize the property of bankrupt peasants were set upon and driven out with violence. The small city of Neumünster was subjected to a boycott on the part of peasants who refused to go there to buy commodities and materials. The opponents of the movement fell victim to explosive attacks, designed to intimidate them. Following these explosive attacks, the agitators where pursued by justice and condemned to prison. The movement was broken.

Revolutionary Syndicalism: A French Specialty- Rébellion – September 16th 2014

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

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“French Syndicalism was born from the reaction of the proletariat against democracy” (H. Lagardelle)

In the history of the European worker’s movement, French revolutionary syndicalism holds a special place due to the originality of its organization and its style of action.

Its Origins

The confiscation of the Revolution of 1789 by the bourgeoisie to their benefit alone, lead to the establishment of its domination. One of its priorities was to prevent the workers from organizing themselves in order to defend themselves against their exploitation. Under the fallacious pretext of eliminating the guilds of the Ancien Régime, the “Le Chapelier” law of July 1791 forbid any agreement between workers to assure their interests. Any attempt on their part was judged as “an attempt against liberty and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.”

Consequently, the worker’s movement was born in secrecy. The growing development of worker’s mutual aid organizations was recognized under the Second Empire which ended the criminalization of unionizing in 1864. But the bloody repression of the Commune lead to the disappearance of the best revolutionary cadres; shot, exiled, or deported to penal colonies overseas following the Bloody Week.

The working class would then be under the draconian surveillance of successive governments. The bourgeoisie, fearing a general uprising at any time against its power, encouraged the harshest resolve. We cannot understand bourgeois selfishness without taking into account the permanent fear of being denied the property they had bought up. For the workers, the state became the repressive tool of Capital. In 1831, 1848, and 1871, the ruling classes responded with violence to the legitimate claims of the working class. This experience of repression forged the conviction of the proletarian vanguard that faced with the authorities, they could not negotiate but only fight. The anti-parliamentarianism of revolutionary syndicalism is explained by the conviction that no reform is possible in a system derived from and dominated by capitalism. Anti-militarism also comes from that. The army was no longer the defender of the nation, but the breaker of strikes. The deployment of troops was the response of public power to the people’s expectations. The intense anti-militarist propaganda of the revolutionary syndicalists meet a favorable response in the popular classes forced to see their sons drafted into the service of the repressive regime.

The Labor Exchanges

The proclamation of the Third Republic did not put an end to repression. The disorganization of the syndicalist structures lead to the appearance of reformist groups, preaching agreement with the state and the bourgeoisie, which only confirmed the uselessness of dialogue with oppression. Which transcribed itself into a resurgence of revolutionary oriented syndicates.

During this period, with the goal to control the circulation of its workforce, the employers encouraged municipalities to create labor exchanges with the goal of regulating the labor market at the local level. They multiplied with prodigious speed (the first in Paris in 1887 and from 1890 in Toulouse).

Very quickly, their re-appropriation by revolutionary militants turned the exchanges into centers of social struggle. Organizing workers’ solidarity, they were a laboratory for future forms of action by French syndicalists. This movement was lead by an exceptional man, Fernand Pelloutier who was one of Georges Sorel’s inspirations, who qualified him as “the greatest name in the history of syndicates.” He drove the creation of the French Federation of Labor Exchanges (Fédération des bourses du travail de France). The French workers’ movement owes the idea of the general strike and the independence of the syndicates from political parties and the state to him. He was then in total opposition with Jules Guesde, founder of the Marxist inspired Parti Ouvrier Français, which affirmed the priority of the party’s political action over syndicalist struggles.

The exchanges pursued two axes of action in parallel. In the first place, social action, which consisted of employee placement, to help the workers qualify professionally and improve themselves. The labor exchanges were concrete applications of the revolutionary socialist program through professional and general teaching courses, medical dispensaries charged with fighting against insurance companies too complacent with the employers during work accidents, libraries for the workers’ ideological formation and leisure, or legal teaching services to inform workers about new social laws of the Third Republic. The dimension of popular education was one of Pelloutier priorities, according to his famous quote “educate in order to revolt.” The emancipation of the workers happens first by the realization of the reality of their exploitation. As Emile Pouget declared, “the task of revolutionaries does not consist of attempting violent movements without taking into account contingencies. But to prepare the spirits, so that these movements erupt when favorable circumstances present themselves.”

Secondly, the action of connecting and unifying with worker’s syndicates. The establishment of exchanges lead to the development of syndicates that could rely on their networks. They were gathering places for striking workers, strikes funds were raised from dues in the factories in order to aid the workers in the struggle. CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail) and the Federation of Exchanges merged in 1902 during the Montpellier congress, thus constituting a single central organization composed of two sections, that of the worker’s federations, and that of the labor exchanges. But before that a founding event for the French syndicalist movement took place: the birth of the CGT.

 

1895: The CGT

In 1884, when the law authorized the creation of syndicates, the Republic tried to seduce the working class in order to make them forget its objective alliance with big capital. The majority of the workers remained distrustful, considering that this law was conceived in order to control the existence of structures that were clandestine until then.

After preliminary negotiations, at Limoges in September 1895 the Confédération Générale du Travail arose, which fixed its principal objective as “to unite workers in struggle on the economic field and in bonds of tight solidarity, for their complete emancipation.”

After the first chaotic years, under the leadership of Victor Griffuelhes the organization would experience a period of intense activity. Named secretary general of CGT, this old worker was a fierce Blanquist militant, devoted to making the organization a machine of class war.

With Emile Pouget, his faithful comrade, we find him everywhere where strikes erupt. Not accustomed to interminable discussions, he imposed his authority with an iron hand. For which he would often be reproached and which would earn him many enemies, but we can never question his interest. Thanks to his relentless character, disputes between different currents were muted and the syndicate could retain total independence regarding the state which tried to corrupt the syndicalist leaders.

During the adoption of the Charter of Amiens, during the confederate congress of 1905, we recall that : “The CGT, beyond any political school, gathers all the workers aware of the struggle to bring about the disappearance of wage labor and the employers… The congress considers that this declaration is a recognition of the class struggle in the economic domain that opposes the workers in revolt against any form of exploitation and oppression, both material and moral, established by the capitalist class against the working class.

Direct Action

In the socialist movement in January 1905, Victor Griffuelhes gave the following definition of direct action: “Direct action means the action of the workers themselves. That is to say, action that is directly exercised by the interested parties. It is the worker himself who directs his efforts; he personally exercises them against the powers that dominate him, in order to obtain the benefits he demands from them. Through direct action, the worker creates his own struggle, he leads it , resolved not to grant to another person the responsibility for his own emancipation.”

The revolutionary syndicalists lead the struggle for the improvement of labor conditions so that “the daily struggle prepares, organizes, and realizes the Revolution” as Griffuelhes wrote.

Direct action, done by active and aware minorities, aimed to strike the spirits (like during the general strike of 1907 where Paris found itself plunged into darkness following a sabotage action by revolutionary syndicalist electricians). It must impose the will of the workers on the employer, the possible use of just proletarian violence can enter into this strategy. “Actually there is only complete emancipation if the exploiters and bosses disappear and if the slate is wiped clean of all capitalist institutions. Such a task cannot be conducted peacefully – and even less legally! History teaches us that the privileged have never sacrificed their privileges without being compelled and forced to do so by their revolting victims. It is improbable that the bourgeoisie have exceptional magnanimity and will abdicate willingly… It will be necessary to resort to force, which, like Karl Marx said, is the midwife of societies.” (Emile Pouget-La CGT).

The Myth of the General Strike in Action

A fierce battle between the CGT and the state for the eight hour work day engaged in 1904. The campaign culminated in a demonstration of force on May 1st 1906, which was actively organized for a year. All the forces of the organization were thrown into the battle for eight hours. The context was then insurrectionist, the world of labor was seething following the drama of the Courrières mine where 1200 miners found death. 40000 miners in Pas-de-Calais went on strike spontaneously. Repression didn’t solve anything and the anger spread. Nearly 200,000 strikers mobilized in construction (a bastion of revolutionary syndicalists), metallurgy, printing … the movement culminated with 438,500 strikers throughout France! The government maintained the fear of imminent social war and collusion between the two anti-system forces of the epoch: the revolutionary syndicalist movement and the nationalist movement (convergences observed by Professor Zeev Sternhell).

Before this alliance, the Republic rapidly reacted, Clemenceau, named Minister of the Interior, directed the repression. Griffuelhes and the principal directors of the CGT were arrested without reason (including the treasurer Lévy who would be returned by the police during his imprisonment). The 1st of May was accompanied by an important mobilization of the Republic’s guard dogs that multiplied the arrests and fired on the crowd of strikers. In common agreement, the authorities and the employers organized the dismissal of the functionaries and workers most engaged in direct action, blacklists of militants were created to make their hiring impossible.

But where Clemenceau and his successor A. Briand were the most effective, was in the turning syndicalist leaders through corruption and the infiltration of provocateurs (the archives of the police prefecture are full of their reports on the activities of the CGT) who spread discontent and discredited the action of revolutionary syndicalists. Furthermore, the aggravation of internal dissent and the wars of tendencies created an explosive situation among the leadership.

The Rupture: The Proletariat Against the Republic

It was the Draveil-Vigneux affair, assembled from scratch by Aristide Briand, then Minister of the Interior that put flame to gunpowder. A demonstration of diggers and railway workers in the Parisian region on July 30th 1908 turned into a riot. We note two deaths among the workers. The CGT called for the workers mobilization in a general strike. Following a demonstration at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges they lamented seven more deaths. By the aid of an agent provocateur, the Minister of the Interior found the pretext to arrest most of the confederate leadership, among them secretary general Victor Griffuelhes, which allowed the traitors to benefit from his imprisonment in order to stage a veritable putsch.

The liberation of the imprisoned leaders was not delayed, but in the shadows the henchmen of Briand, and notably the treasurer Lévy (likely corrupt) and Latapie, launched a veritable cabal against Griffuelhes, openly accusing him of misuse of funds in the affair of the purchase of a confederate local. The following congress exonerated Griffuelhes of any suspicion, but the crisis was opened, as the embittered secretary general resigned. Niel succeded him, who was elected the 25th of February 1909, as secretary general of the CGT with the reformist votes. But the revolutionary syndicalists didn’t leave him alone: six months later Niel was forced to resign in turn.

He was replaced by Léon Jouhaux. It is not astonishing that tension with the state powers started to rise again from 1910. In October, the strike of railway workers, situated in the scheme of a grand campaign against the high cost of living, made Briand envision the dissolution of the CGT. Briand decided to make an example: the Durand affair. The secretary of the charcoal burners syndicate of Havre was condemned to death for strike actions that he was entirely uninvolved with. A vast workers’ protest movement was unleashed.

At this crucial moment in its history, the working world was largely opposed to the liberal Republic. It was disgusted by the attitude of the old Dreyfusards (Clemenceau et Briand), who had called for the working class to mobilize for justice and then once in power revealed themselves to be assassins of the people. This rejection of democracy was demonstrated until the war. The eruption of the Great War was a failure for the revolutionary syndicalists. After having done everything to halt the march towards war, the patriotic elan towards the Sacred Union carried them away. Léon Jouhaux, at the grave of Jaurès, called for the workers to rally towards the regime. This rally towards the Sacred Union marked the end of the heroic period of the syndicalism of direct action within the CGT, which, after the war was taken over by bureaucrats who made it the reformist tool we know today.

Source: http://rebellion-sre.fr/le-syndicalisme-revolutionnaire-une-specificite-francaise/

The Québécois National Communist Manifesto – NazBol Québec – August 14 2014

15 Thursday Sep 2016

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Québec is still a nation dominated by Anglo-Canadian imperialism for over 250 years. This domination endures despite the will of the Québécois people to free themselves from this cruel yoke. To complete our struggle of national and social liberation we need a clear and exact alternative. It is not the Parti Québécois nor Bloc Québécois, fervent adepts of free market economic liberalism and NATO, who can realize the independence of Québec. National Communism precisely represents the doctrine that is necessary to give a second wind to the Québécois independence movement.

During the last provincial election, April 7th 2014, the Parti Libéral du Québec lead by Philippe Couillard took back power from the hands of Parti Québécois. The PLQ symbolizes the servitude of Québec to the Anglo-Canadian yoke and has defended the interests of employers and high finance for a long time. Without taking account of its acquaintances with the powerful Zionist lobby that it has firmly supported for decades. We do not forget the controversial and roundly decried decision of the Charest government to 100 % subsidize private Jewish schools, which very often do not respect the program of the minister of education, in 2005. He had to retreat before the popular discontent that this scandalous decision had caused. It must be said that many of the donors to the PLQ are of the Jewish confession as luck would have it! Le Parti Québécois for its part has shown its credentials to the masters of high finance and often sidelined the struggle for independence in the name of “political realism” and the balancing of public finances. As for the left wing party Québec Solidaire, it is infested with Trotskyites and advocates multicultural politics in the image of the Parti de gauche of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France.

National Communism as an ideology advocates a fusion between patriotism and socialism in a perspective of national and social liberation. We firmly reject the system of capitalist exploitation that concentrates the wealth produced by the working class in the hands of a countryless and plutocratic elite always greedier for exorbitant profits. The Québécois National Communists are favorable to the thesis of socialism in one country advanced by Joseph Stalin. It is necessary to construct a socialist system adapted to the characteristics of each nation.

The nationalization of the predominant and strategic sectors of the economy, like banks and other financial institutions, natural resources, big businesses, as the first step, is a vital necessity in order to prevent private interests from acquiring too much power over our political life. We participate in the struggle of the working class and other oppressed sectors of society against the increasingly brutal attacks of capital against our social benefits and democratic rights.

We situate ourselves in the ideological line of the leaders and theorists of National Bolshevism like Jean Thiriart, Ernst Niekisch, Alexander Dugin, Edouard Limonov. We also recognize communist leaders like Stalin, Mao, Enver Hoxha, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, Kim Il Sung, and many others who have theorized about and lead the fight of the workers and popular masses against capitalism and imperialism.

The Québécois National Communists recognize the socialist camp that was constituted by the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe, represented an advance of the working class despite its faults and the serious errors committed by its leaders. The systems of social protection that existed in the socialist countries procured numerous advantages for the working class like free health care and education, inexpensive housing, accessible and affordable childcare, job security, etc. These regimes also encouraged patriotic pride and developed the national culture, for example like Stalin notably did in the course of the Second World War.

These regimes constituted a counterweight to imperialism and their fall once again freed the hands of capital for an anti-worker and anti-socialist offensive. The defense of socialist Cuba and North Korea as well as the Bolivarian Revolution lead by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and continued by President Nicolas Maduro against the attacks and constant harassment of American imperialism is a fundamental task today for any anti-capitalist militant worthy of the name. The Québécois National Communists are allied with all the other political forces, patriotic and socialist, who share a similar fight against countryless and neoliberal globalism.

Québec is a Francophone country and should remain so and we must be proud of our roots and origins so that they do not disappear under the Anglo-Saxon steam roller widely favored by ultraliberal globalization. We have nothing against other nations and cultures but we demand respect for what we are as a people bearing a particular and original culture. The Québécois National Communists are vigorously opposed to the national masochism that praises foreign cultures and considers national and patriotic pride as tantamount to fascism, even Nazism, at the same time! There is nothing progressive about advocating the erasure of cultures and peoples to the benefit of big capital!

Mass immigration is a threat for a small nations like ours and constitutes one of the most redoubtable weapons of capital. For example, the desire of the liberal government of Jean Charest to raise the immigration threshold to 55,000 people per year in 2008, for a nation that now counts 8 million inhabitants is completely irresponsible. That does not mean to reject immigration or immigrants outright nor above all to stigmatize or demonize them, but it is very certain that we cannot welcome mass immigration without engendering a panoply of social problems (unemployment, unreasonable housing demands, the creation of ethnic ghettos, social tensions like in the Montréal-Nord neighborhood in August 2008, etc).

We are the heirs of Nouvelle-France and from this title we can claim European culture, which does not exclude international solidarity with the struggles of workers and different oppressed peoples in the world. For example we give our support to national liberation struggles like those of the Palestinian people against the colonialist Zionist state, those of the Abkhazians and South Ossetians against the Georgian regime, or the rebels of Donbass against the Ukrainian oligarchy.

Capitalism is an exploitative and countryless system that has no respect for national languages and cultures and which represents a fundamental obstacle to their flourishing. It contributes greatly to the phenomenon of the Anglicization of the world by making English the language of business and the labor market to the detriment of workers everywhere in the world who want to defend their right to work in their respective national language.

In Québec we are always faced with the desire to assimilate us and make us disappear in the Anglo-Saxon swamp largely predominant in North America. It is necessary to reinforce Law 101 that has been so watered down for more than 8 years by the combined action of the Supreme Court of Canada and certain Québécois governments. Capitalism equally desires to constantly lower our working conditions and degrade our standard of living in a perspective of downwards social standardization.

If you agree with this text do not hesitate to join us. In short we combat the neoliberal policies of privatization and the dismantlement of social programs as well as the dictatorship of multinationals thirsting for profit, we fight for the defense of the language and French culture in Québec. Our national and social liberation combat cannot wait long. We need a structured organization filled with militants of good will who are committed to the independence of our country, the safeguarding of our language and culture, as well as the relentless and tireless struggle against the system of capitalist exploitation and the establishment of a society based on National Communism.

Forward towards a socialist Québec freed from the yoke of capital!

Source: http://nazbolquebec.blogspot.ca/2014/08/manifeste-national-communiste-quebecois.html