Loren Goldner Ultra Leftist Speaks In Los Angeles
August 29th, 2010
Last night I went to a talk given by Loren Goldner, ultra leftist communist, at the Barnsdale Art Park in Los Angeles. I was quite impressed with the setting. The park has several art related facilities including a gallery where the talk was given. Loren was introduced by Hector of the Insane Dialectical Posse, a drinking club as he put it. About 20 persons attended.
Loren described Marx's basic theory of surplus value and drew a couple of charts describing the economic history of capitalism from 1817 to the present. His theory is one of a series of cycles of growth and recession approximately once every ten years in 1817, 1827, 1837, 1847 and 1857. Then he describes a long deflationary process from approx. 1873 until 1914 when the capitalist system went into a thirty year crisis from 1914 until 1945. After that came the post war boom 1946 to 1970 ending in the long decline from 1970 to 2010.
He emphasized the break between pre 1914 and post 1914 with its radical departure from what had been the pattern previously(1). During the period prior to the outbreak of war the Socialist parties developed quite strong organizations in the industrialized countries as he pointed out. He claimed that the major capitalist countries were facing a severe recession in 1914 and that the war saved capital from both socialism and the economic downturn.
Loren quoted from Marx's `Grundrisse' and then talked extensively about the wild cat strikes of 1966-1973. He noted that workers in England were so rebellious that there was an inquiry by the British Government into the problem in 1968. The great strike of 1968 in France was a wildcat strike he observed. Then spoke about the auto workers in Detroit that were not satisfied with simply more benefits as long as the structure of the job remained the same. The strikes were at the climax of the period of prosperity when anyone could get a job. This he emphasized when asked about the 1930's strikes, he pointed out the majority were in 1934-37 when there was a lessening of the depression due to stimulus measures undertaken by the Roosevelt administration. His point being that wages and benefits are never enough.
As an example of workers solidarity Loren noted that unemployed workers had joined striking workers at the Auto-Lite Factory in Toledo, Ohio in 1934, an action that showed solidarity between workers.
Loren also pointed out that times of political crisis such as after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71 are times when revolutionary flareups are more likely as the Paris Commune shows and the revolutionary outbreak around Europe during and after World War One.
The talk lasted close to an hour and then there was a 45 minute question and answer period. Gifford, Insane Dialectical Posse member from the SF Bay area noted that the state employees who were being ordered to take work furloughs had self organized from the bottom up sick outs to protest and seemed to think that public employees would unite with others in the Oakland region in self activity. He wanted to know if Loren saw prospects for revolution. Loren said that he thought there were hopeful signs of self activity in the industrializing world, pointing to Chinese strikes, Bangladeshi strikes and the Tobacco workers strike in Turkey. He also mentioned the strike at the Cananea Copper Mine in Mexico which was ended in June with a police assault after 3 years. It was noted that the struggle of the workers leads to their being able to reach higher levels of consciousness, whether they win or lose a particular struggle.
One of the audience asked if small scale autonomous actions could not bring about revolutionary change. He pointed to the Italian Autonomist movement in the late 1970's. Loren discounted their efforts as being recuperated by capital, especially when the audience member mentioned working part time as a tactic of opposition. Another person pointed out that we are striving for a world in which capital is defeated and workers councils are the dominant form of organizational structure. He wanted to know what Loren saw as other potential forms of organization. Loren stated that he was hopeful that there will most likely be forms that we had not seen before and indicated that they would be more widespread as community efforts than just workplace structures. As an example he talked about the events in Argentina when the government collapsed in 2001 after people took to the streets and they developed cooperative means of survival as the economy failed.
When asked about the reason why there was more evidence of activity in the struggle in the 1930's than now, Loren noted that there was the problem with off shoring jobs. When a call center wanted to organize the jobs were sent overseas. But he did note that transport workers were in positions where they could control choke points and thus were in good bargaining positions. They had more successes as in New York, France, Argentina. He said in times like this many workers were fighting defensive battles and the prospects were mixed. Another audience member, myself pointed out that in the 1930's there was the example of the Soviet Union and the Communists provided some leadership even though Stalin had crushed the revolution at home.
Loren mostly dismissed the Communist Party for their United Front policies with a joke about calling themselves the descendants of Abraham Lincoln and being real American Patriots. He did acknowledge the Revolutions at the end of World War One had a major influence upon the workers around the world.(2)
There was literature, beer and chips available and a Loren is speaking in San Francisco.
(See for Recession info "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States")
(See for Toledo Auto Strike http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/tole-m27.shtml)
(See for Chinese Auto Workers http://libcom.org/news/more-strikes-chinese-honda-workers-17072010)
(See for Bangladesh Workers http://libcom.org/news/rage-over-wage-04082010)
(See for Turkish Tobacco Workers http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/326.php)
(See for Cananea Strike http://www.phongpo.com/search/mexican+copper+mine+strike)
(See for Autonomist Movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomist_movement)
(See for more Autonomists in Italy http://libcom.org/library/working-class-autonomy-crisis)
These notes below are my personal observations and not Lorens or those of the members of the Insane Dialectical Posse.
(1)The distinction between pre and post 1914, is very complex. Before 1914 there was a feeling of inevitable socialism coming about more or less peacefully. The fact that the Socialist parties did nothing to stop the war in Europe destroyed the hopes of many, just as the war destroyed the lives of many brave comrades. The war gave the US government an excuse to round up and arrest many activists who were deported to Russia in 1919 as you well know. The American Socialist party and the IWW split over whether to join the new Communist Party or not. Thus the major American revolutionary organizations were weakened entering the 1920's.
(2) In the1930's the communists organized demonstrations of the unemployed. Before the United Front days they were very active.
From an article on Unemployment Councils
http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/egd_02/egd_02_00522.html
"Unemployed Councils were grassroots organizations of unemployed workers created in the early 1930s to protest mass unemployment and inadequate relief. The first councils were established by the American Communist Party's Trade Union Unity League, an organization created in the 1920s to promote radical unionism. In March 1930 the Trade Union Unity League organized highly successful mass demonstrations to protest unemployment and demand government relief. In July of that year a national conference sponsored by the Trade Union Unity League declared the formation of the "unemployed councils of the USA.""
This is from Libcom.org
http://libcom.org/history/1930-1939-unemployed-workers-movement
"Len de Caux suggests(in his book):
"The communists brought misery out of hiding in the workers' neighborhoods. They paraded it with angry demands. . . . In hundreds of jobless meetings, I heard no objections to the points the communists made, and much applause for them. Sometimes, I'd hear a communist speaker say something so bitter and extreme, I'd feel embarrassed. Then I'd look around at the unemployed audience; shabby clothes, expressions worried and sour. Faces would start to glow, heads to nod, and hands to clap (162-163)."
The Communist Party before the United Front period was militantly advocating revolution. Too bad they allowed themselves to be tools of Soviet foreign policy. But they were the main radical organization that people knew and respected, they had the Soviet Union behind them an in the early thirties Stalin's wreckage of a revolution was not well known by the general public. Their influence grew in the period of the United Front.
"In the popular front era, the communists made their greatest gains. They captured peace groups and youth organizations, infiltrated church associations and played a fateful role in third parties in Minnesota and New York.
When John L. Lewis needed a cadre of C.I.O. organizers he turned to the Communists. By the end of the decade (1930's) the Communists sat in control of more than 1/3 of the C.I.O. and had men in key places in the national headquarters." `Franklin D. Roosevelt And The New Deal', Leuchtenburg, Page 282.
I am no apologist for the Communist Party. I just think they were a major reason why the left was so powerful in the 1930's and not now. There were other parties, the Trotskyists were beginning to form up and there were socialist parties, and the IWW was still active as well as the unions with the AFL and the new CIO. People had no choice but to be militant, organizing to stop evictions, appropriate food and demand services from relief organizations. They didn't have the social security benefits or the unemployment benefits or health insurance we have now. Those protections came as a result of battles on the part of workers and the unemployed in the 1930's.
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