The publication of the new English translation of Domenico Losurdo’s book, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend, is a major event for Marxists, as well as for scholars of Soviet history in the English speaking world. Originally published in Italian in 2008, Iskra Press has just released the first authorized translation into English, thanks to the translation work of Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro.

The late Domenico Losurdo was a first-rate philosopher, historian and scholar, and the author of many important works such as Liberalism: A Counter-History (2005) and Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History (2003). One of the most significant studies of Stalin ever written, English-speaking activists and scholars have long hoped that this important book on Stalin would be translated from Losurdo’s native Italian, but left-leaning publishers of Losurdo’s other books, such as Verso, refused to touch it.

It is noteworthy, as a bit of history about the translation, that when Henry Hakamäki wrote to Verso Books requesting that they publish Losurdo’s Stalin, Verso senior editor Sebastian Budgen responded, calling the book “one of Losurdo’s worst books” and insisted, “We will continue to publish the books by him that have intellectual merit and are based on real and serious research, but not these kinds of texts.” Hakamäki has noted, however, that the book contains at least “346 works cited in it, and has well over 1000 points of citation within the text.” Indeed, Losurdo is a world renowned scholar, whose research methodology in Stalin mirrors that of his other works. We can only assume, then, that by “these kinds of texts,” Budgen means that Verso will not publish books that challenge the anti-Stalin paradigm in scholarship, no matter how well researched.

Interestingly, this controversy regarding the book’s publication really cuts to the heart of what the book is about. The title of the book refers to the idea that a “black legend” has been constructed around Stalin with the intent of discrediting communism. This “black legend” regarding Stalin is the subject of the book. What does this mean? In historiography, which is the study of historical writing and research, a “black legend” refers to a sustained trend of fabrication, exaggeration, decontextualization, and distortion which aims to paint the subject as monstrous and without redeeming qualities.

In this sense, the book isn’t a biography. Losurdo’s book is a “history and critique” of the demonization of Stalin rather than a summation of the period of Stalin’s leadership in the Soviet Union, or an analysis of the figure of Stalin himself. The book breaks down this “black legend” in a systematic way, based on rigorous and well documented research. It shows how the history of Stalin and the Stalin era has been decontextualized, distorted, fabricated and exaggerated, in order to manufacture a political mythology of Stalin as a villain.

Stalin is a major figure in the history of the international communist movement, and both his theory and practice deserve careful study and summation, not just by scholars, but also by socialists and activists who are interested in building a better society. The demonization of Stalin has always been a cornerstone of anti-communism in the United States, and this demonization has been repeated by academics and even “socialists.” Some of these are indeed anti-communists, while others simply lack the courage to stand up to the anti-Stalin propaganda. Others still simply need to become better informed, which this book can help with.

But outside of the imperialist countries, Stalin is widely regarded as a great figure, who accomplished incredible things. Stalin is recognized for transforming the Soviet Union from a backwards, semi-feudal country to a world power, and for defeating Nazi Germany and saving the world from fascism. During the period of Stalin’s leadership of the USSR, the Soviet Union abolished illiteracy, did away with unemployment, provided universal healthcare and housing, and put an end to the cycles of economic crisis and famine that had plagued Russia for centuries prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.

While the Trotskyites had long shrieked impotently about “Stalinism,” the true origin of Stalin’s demonization in the West, according to Losurdo, is Khrushchev’s so-called “secret speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences.” The first chapter of Losurdo’s book, entitled “How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report” deals with dissecting the claims made against Stalin by Khrushchev in his “secret speech.” From there, Losurdo goes through the many charges against Stalin from then to now, looking at the historical, political and social context as a whole, and helps the reader to come to a fair conclusion about what really took place in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s leadership. Through the course of Losurdo’s work, the picture we are left with is very different from the one we are usually taught.

Losurdo notes that as scholarship has progressed. “On the whole,” he writes, “the caricatured portrait of Stalin drawn first by Trotsky and then by Khrushchev no longer enjoys much credit.” He also explains that “it now becomes clear that the Secret Speech is entirely unreliable. There is no detail in it that is not contested today.” And yet it still remains a cornerstone of the anti-Stalin paradigm.

As the Communist Party of China wrote shortly after Khrushchev’s secret speech, “the question of how to evaluate Stalin and what attitude to take towards him is not just one of appraising Stalin himself; more important, it is a question of how to sum up the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the international communist movement since Lenin’s death.” This is why Losurdo’s Stalin is an important and valuable book. It is a work of scholarship destined to shake up the predominant, anti-communist history that is taught at every level of U.S. society. It is also important for activists and revolutionaries to read.

Stalin himself once said, “Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect.” Losurdo has made an important contribution to our understanding and summation of that experience, and this translation helps to make it more accessible to readers in the United States and other predominantly English speaking countries. Today, people in the U.S are taking up socialist and revolutionary ideas in a way not seen in a very long time. Everyone who is interested in socialism’s history or its future should read this book.

This book is available from the Iskra Books website: https://www.iskrabooks.org/stalin-history-and-critique J. Sykes is the author of “The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism”. The book can be purchased by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook.

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The new book, The East is Still Red: Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century, by Carlos Martinez and published by Praxis Press, is a valuable and important defense of socialism in the People’s Republic of China today. As the U.S. ramps up propaganda and aggression against China, this book addresses an important need, for everyone who wants a better world, to understand and defend China.

The book begins by acknowledging that there is a great deal of ignorance and confusion, especially in the imperialist countries, about China. Martinez writes, “Even among socialists and communists, there are misconceptions and important gaps in understanding.” He addresses these issues head on.

The first chapter focuses on the continuities of the revolution in China, from the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921 until today. Martinez gives an overview of the history of the Chinese revolution and defends that legacy of Mao Zedong, while giving a balanced account of Mao’s more controversial initiatives, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

For example, while acknowledging that the turmoil and disruption of the Cultural Revolution significantly impeded China’s development, he also points out that it “had a more directly useful outcome” in terms of preventing the “ideological decay that was taking place in the Soviet Union.” According to Martinez it “set the parameters of how far Reform and Opening Up could go” and “laid the groundwork for Deng Xiaoping’s Four Cardinal Principles, which the CPC continues to observe today: 1) We must keep to the socialist road; 2) We must uphold the people’s democratic dictatorship; 3) We must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party; 4) We must uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.

Furthermore, he explains that the movement to send young intellectuals down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution “was a crucial factor in the development of a new generation of young intellectuals with a close understanding of the needs of the peasantry and the situation in the countryside.” It is noteworthy that Chinese President Xi Jinping was himself sent to the countryside as part of this movement.

Looking at the post-1978 Reform and Opening Up period initiated by Deng Xiaoping, Martinez recognizes that many see this period as “a turning point in the wrong direction.” Martinez argues against this view. Instead, Martinez notes, “Deng Xiaoping’s strong belief was that, unless the government delivered on a significant improvement in people’s standard of living, the entire socialist project would lose its legitimacy and therefore be in peril.”

This is a point that Martinez revisits in the chapter “Will China suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union?” He argues that the combination of economic stagnation and ideological decay in the USSR led to the collapse of socialism in the USSR.

This point should be made clearer. Indeed, while the material basis of Soviet revisionism was rooted in the economic reforms of the Khrushchev period, which emphasized market reforms, profitability, material incentives, and so on, a deciding factor was the question of the class struggle in the superstructure and the abandonment of Marxism-Leninism by the Soviet leadership. Contrast the People’s Republic of China’s Four Cardinal Principles with Khrushchev’s revisionist theses of “state of the whole people” and “party of the whole people,” negating the class character of the USSR and Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and it is easy to see the gulf that stands between the two approaches.

Martinez rightly notes that the CPC’s reform period took a “grassroots” approach that was “patient, incremental, and results-oriented” while the Gorbachev “reforms” that brought about the final restoration of capitalism in the USSR in 1991, were undemocratically imposed on the Soviet people, rather than leveraging the creativity of the Soviet masses.

Martinez explains, “Although China’s reform process served to introduce market forces into the economy, the whole process was carried out under the tight control of the government and took place within the context of a planned economy.” Indeed, the commanding heights of the Chinese economy remain state owned, with state owned enterprises making up 60% of the economy; and most of the value created by the working class in China is socially distributed, going towards the betterment of society. And while the revisionists in the Soviet Union attacked the history of the USSR and spent 30 years dismantling the rule of the proletariat and its party, the opposite has taken place in China, where the CPC maintains its central, leading role, based on the scientific application of Marxism to Chinese conditions. In fact, when rightists in the CPC led by Zhao Ziyang tried to restore capitalism in 1989, the CPC stood firm in its commitment to the socialist road.

A highlight of the book is a careful and thorough analysis of “China’s long war against poverty.” The People’s Republic of China has eradicated extreme poverty. What does this mean? “At the start of the targeted poverty alleviation programme in 2014,” Martinez writes, “just under 100 million people were identified as living below the poverty line; seven years later, the number was zero.” The Chinese government defines extreme poverty alleviation in terms of what it calls the “two assurances and three guarantees.” As Martinez explains, “The two assurances are for adequate food and clothing; the three guarantees are for access to medical services, safe housing with drinking water and electricity, and at least nine years of free education.” He contrasts this to the advanced capitalist countries, where nothing is promised, where profit is more important than people, and where poverty and inequality are on the rise.

Likewise, the book highlights the People’s Republic of China’s commitment to ecological development. Martinez writes that, “Over the last decade in particular, China has emerged as the undisputed leader in the fight against climate breakdown, and the results of this leadership are reverberating globally.”

Against the charge from some, even on the Left, that China is imperialist, Martinez argues that “imperialism doesn’t look like this.” He explains the Leninist theory of imperialism as monopoly capitalism. According to Lenin, imperialism is based on the concentration of capital into monopolies, whereby the economy becomes dominated by a “financial oligarchy.” The export of capital takes center stage, and monopolist capitalist associations share the world among themselves, leading to the total division of the world among the imperialist powers. The October Revolution in 1917 ruptured this imperialist chain, and the other socialist countries, including China, followed suit.

Against the claim that China is imperialist, The East is Still Red emphasizes that China’s role in the developing world is qualitatively different from that of the imperialist countries. It acknowledges that imperialism has the function of locking in underdevelopment, while China’s role encourages development while respecting sovereignty. The book discusses this issue in terms of China’s role in “building a multipolar world.” The concept of “multipolarity” doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue, however, as Martinez himself acknowledges by saying that “the multipolar narrative doesn’t make explicit reference to anti-imperialism.”

Indeed, it would be clearer to understand the place of China in relation to the four fundamental contradictions operating on a world scale: the contradiction between the working class and the capitalists, the contradiction between the imperialist powers, the contradiction between the imperialists and the oppressed nations, and the contradiction between the imperialists and the socialist countries. Of these, the contradiction between the imperialists and the oppressed nations is primary, meaning it is the contradiction that is driving things on a world scale. What China is doing is providing aid to the countries of the developing world that allows them to avoid the liberalization, privatization, domination and plunder that are central to the neo-colonialist approach of the imperialist countries. While this development isn’t sufficient to bring socialism to those countries, it does serve to further weaken imperialism.

Importantly, Martinez also discusses the growing drive for war against China from the imperialist powers, especially the United States. He explains how the U.S. attempts to manufacture consent for aggression against China, and answers the propaganda with facts. Against the “Third Camp” Trotskyites who say “Neither a Washington nor Beijing,” Martinez is clear that they are, in fact, playing right into the hands of the imperialists.

The bulk of Chapter 5 of The East is Still Red is devoted to debunking the imperialist accusations that the People’s Republic of Cina is committing human rights abuses against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. The book refutes the lie that the Chinese government is committing “cultural genocide” and is operating “concentration camps.” Similarly, it exposes the role of the U.S. in attempting to destabilize Xinjiang.

The book ends with a call to “unite to oppose the U.S.-led New Cold War on China,” and says that “All those that oppose imperialism must resolutely and consistently oppose the U.S.-led New Cold War in all its manifold forms.” This is certainly true, and this book makes a great contribution towards that effort.

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Minneapolis, MN – The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, published by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, is a concise and fantastic book detailing the fundamentals of Marxism. Written by J. Sykes, the book is an excellent introduction for those looking to learn the science of revolution, the history, methods and outlook of scientific socialism. It breaks down complex questions of philosophy, organizing and others into easily understandable terms, making it good for beginners and an excellent primer for those who already have a grasp on Marxism-Leninism and are looking to sharpen their understanding. For those seeking to do away with capitalism and its system of corporate exploitation, class oppression and national oppression, this is the book for you.

Introducing the science of revolution

The book begins with an explanation, not only of the purpose of its publication, but of a brief history of Marxism-Leninism. Sykes makes clear that Marxism didn’t just fall out of the sky one day, it arose out of the three component parts: socialism, political economy, and philosophy, and was (and continues to be) refined over the course of the practical experience and application of it in the struggles of working and oppressed people the whole world over.

In addition to dealing with the basics of Marxism, the book addresses problematic bourgeois ideological currents like post-modernism, Sakai’s take on settler colonialism, and pragmatism, which are harmful to the efforts to construct a revolutionary movement in this country.

Theory and practice

As Sykes says,

“Practice is the sole criterion of truth”, continuing, “Revolutionary theory is a guide to action, and it changes and develops as the world changes and develops, building upon itself just as Marx and Engels built upon the advanced theory of their time. In the early part of the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin and the experience of the October Revolution and socialist construction in the Soviet Union further developed the science of revolution in many ways. Lenin’s analysis of the further development of capitalism into monopoly capitalism led to his development of the theory of Imperialism and the importance of anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation.”

This is why The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism doesn’t focus simply on communist theory in the abstract, separated from real world conditions and struggles, but in the source (practice) its application, and use of it in those struggles. It also doesn’t take Marxism as an unchanging dogma, but as a science that is constantly being developed and enriched in its source, practice, as a tool that becomes sharper, not duller, with use.

Sykes explains how knowledge and theory develops from practical experience, to be summed up and learned from, to apply again. The book as well explains the “mass line,” the communist method of organizing and leadership from and to the masses, and how not only we as revolutionaries learn with it, but how the people as a whole learn from the process of taking our felt needs, issues and demands, studying and breaking them down, and synthesizing them into actionable plans, demands and slogans, and so raising the consciousness of the people.

A book for revolutionaries new and old

Throughout the entirety of The Revolutionary Science of Marxism-Leninism, important concepts such as imperialism, historical materialism and national oppression are all explained in an easily digestible manner. Questions of organizing, history and leadership are explained in clear and concise terms, and the book never steps away from discussing the practical use and understanding of each concept, and ties Marxist-Leninist theory firmly with the struggles of the masses that continues to develop and enrich it.

This book comes at a period of major importance today. As Mick Kelly, political secretary of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, states in the forward, “Not since the rise of the new communist movement in late 1960s and early 70s have we seen such large numbers of people arriving at the conclusion that monopoly capitalism is a failed system, and that revolution and socialism are necessities. Many new revolutionaries are making the leap and helping to build revolutionary organization.”

For those revolutionaries, new and old, looking to build such an organization, this book will undoubtedly be a vital and practical read.

The book can be purchased from FRSO organizers, or by visiting tinyurl.com/revsciMLbook.

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When legendary and prolific labor history researcher and author Phil Foner died in 1994, he left behind more than 100 meticulously researched and detailed histories of the U.S. labor movement. But Foner was not merely an historian in the usual university mold; he was a partisan, a lifetime communist, and he saw his work as not just chronicles of past events but serious guides to action for those still on the labor battlefront. His books in many ways became the untold stories of our class struggle.

Probably his most accomplished and massive work is the 11-volume History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Such an enormous work would be enough for any individual to research in a lifetime, but this series is only a small portion of his life’s work. Reaching from our colonial period all the way up through the early years of the Great Depression, Foner tracks the emergence of the early U.S. labor movement, its growth and evolution, and he details its many battles with employers and state forces alike.

At his death almost 30 years ago the series ended with Volume 10. Accidentally I learned about a lost draft manuscript that apparently existed for a Volume 11 several years ago. With persistence, the support of a small collective of fellow communists, and the cooperation of International Publishers, we were able to finally bring Volume 11 into print.

Setting apart Foner’s scholarship from most other labor historians is the fact that he includes the internal union political context of the era under study. Including the contributions made by the left, particularly communists and militants, is a constant theme that runs throughout the enormous history. Leadership roles played by communists were in many ways the key force both initiating and sustaining the dramatic labor struggles of the past 100 years. The author also takes great care to include details of the destructive roles frequently played by the business union leaderships, and where needed he exposes the negative roles too often played by social democratic forces. Few other labor histories will delve into these internal matters. Foner instead lays bare the actions of these forces, required for anyone to grasp the real context of the history. Most labor historians are allergic to dealing with these matters, but not Foner.

Newly published Volume 11 covers the early years of the Great Depression, from 1929 through 1932. Here Foner explains the political and organizational roots of what became the great class struggle upsurge that ultimately gave birth to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He reports on the desperate Depression-driven fights in multiple industries as workers were confronted with both employers bent on union liquidation, along with business union “leaders” determined to do whatever it took to water down or kill the growing spirit among the workers to aggressively fight back. Battle after battle is detailed as the working class resisted as best they could the mass joblessness, starvation, destitution and homelessness experienced by many millions.

Large sections of Volume 11 are dedicated to reports on the wind-down of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) and the birth of the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), the federation of Communist Party-sponsored industrial unions in more than a dozen industries.

Foner offers intricate reports on the launch of new unions in steel and metal manufacturing, the needle trades, coal mining, food processing, tobacco, agriculture, auto, fur and other industries. With AFL unions then barely functioning, and with tens of thousands of communists and militants expelled from their unions by reactionaries in a “rule or ruin” maneuver, the Communist Party set in motion the TUUL experiment. Under Depression conditions the establishment of the TUUL was an against-all-odds proposition, but in just a few years most of the unions returned to the more established unions and bolstered the forces who soon comprised the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). Some academic critics have written off the TUUL legacy as some sort of Communist Party blunder, although given the circumstances nothing could be farther from the facts.

My favorite class-struggle skirmish documented in Volume 11 – one of many – is Foner’s report on the rank-and-file communist-led delegation of workers who appeared at the 1932 Cincinnati convention of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to demand that the AFL support unemployment insurance for the many millions then out of jobs and literally starving.

The early years of the Depression found the conservative AFL leadership furiously opposed to unemployment relief, ridiculing it as “the dole” or “a Moscow plot.” Led by communist Louis Weinstock from the Painters Union, the ordinary union members were denied entrance to the seating in the main hall of the non-union hotel but were instead directed to the balcony seating. High above in the balcony the workers presented no threat and had no chance of being heard by the union big shots conducting their business-as-usual affair. But, seeing his chance – and being accustomed to working at great heights as a painter – Weinstock leapt from the balcony onto one of the gigantic chandeliers swinging above the seated labor chiefs. There, safely out of the reach of the police, he delivered his entire speech demanding AFL support for the urgently needed unemployment relief legislation. Unbelievably, and virtually unknown to labor leftists today, it required several more years before the AFL offered its support to such a basic reform as unemployment compensation. Many other such surprises are found here.

Much can be learned by studying the labor movement in the early years of the Great Depression. Argument could be made that the bulk of the business union leadership today is equally conservative, frightened, corrupted, directionless and as unimaginative as were their counterparts at the onset of that calamity. It quickly becomes obvious to the reader that the failed formulas of the business unions will not deliver any better results today than in the Depression decade. Today, as we are witness to the Amazon, Starbucks, and other new organizing upsurges, the imminent UPS contract showdown, and Biden’s destruction of the rail union strike, we see growing numbers of trade unionists demanding something better than the old losing approaches. In this moment Foner’s labor history series takes on added urgency.

Order Volume 11 and you will soon find yourself soon buying the others. William Z. Foster observed early in his career that, “The left wing must do the work.” He refers to the elements both within and around the labor movement who bear responsibility for altering the disastrous course set by the business union misleaders. Transforming the current unions from what they are into radically different and aggressive vehicles for working class progress is our mission. This series is a guide for action to that end.

History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 11, The Great Depression 1929 – 1932, by Philip Foner. https://www.intpubnyc.com/browse/the-history-of-the-labor-movement-in-the-united-states-vol-11/ Chris Townsend was the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE).

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Minneapolis, MN – Jon Melrod’s newly-published memoir, Fighting Times, is more than just a remembrance. It details his time as a revolutionary helping to build the fighting people’s movements – from the student movement of the 1960s in SDS and being part of the Revolutionary Union, to the solidarity struggle with the Menominee Warrior Society occupation in 1975, to building a fighting UAW local at an American Motors plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin – and the lessons learned from each fight. It is a book that class-struggle union militants, student organizers and activists from all the people’s movements alike would do well to read.

Students stand up, fight back

Attending school in Madison, Wisconsin in 1968, during the time of the Vietnam war, Melrod was quickly swept up into student activism, particularly as part of the resident chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He readily participated in the disruption of ROTC recruitment on campus and helped to build the broad fight among students. During this time, he also got his start in union organizing, joining up to help the Obreros Unidos, a union of agricultural workers led by of Jesus Salas, building support for the Delano Grape Strike called by the United Farm Workers.

In the fight on campus, Melrod and Madison SDS joined up with the Black People’s Alliance, a group formed by Black students on campus to challenge the administration’s refusal to address racism on campus, taking part in a student strike in support of the BPA’s 13 demands, which eventually the National Guard was called in to suppress. In response, as Melrod explains, “The BPA and SDS issued a clarion call for a mass march on the domed state capitol – home to the Wisconsin state legislature and the seat of state power. According to news accounts, twelve thousand students – over one-third of the student body – gathered as the sun set.” Going on to say, “Never had such a powerful force of humanity gathered under one banner in Madison’s history.”

In 1970, after a brutal attack by the police on a street party, the murder of Fred Hampton, the trial of the Chicago seven and the announcement of Nixon beginning of the invasion of Cambodia, Melrod and the rest of the Madison SDS chapter – many of whom had joined the Mother Jones Revolutionary League – led up another fight on campus which would grow to encompass many organizations in a United Front Against the War. Together they kicked off another mass student strike centered on the Army Math building.

Melrod at that time joined the many young people – steeled by their experience organizing in the student movement and realizing the need for revolutionary change – in becoming communists, and in joining the Revolutionary Union. That summer he spent time in Oakland organizing with the Bay Area Revolutionary Union, the predecessor of the RU, participating in the Los Siete de la Raza Defense Committe and more. After this last year of student activism, Melrod moved on, heading from campus to Milwaukee, intent on joining up with the working class struggle.

Class struggle in Kenosha, no contract, no work

Upon leaving campus, and after working for a time in a paint factory, Melrod got a job at an American Motors Company plant in Milwaukee and joined the resident United Auto Workers local. There he played a role in building a rank-and-file caucus on the shop floor to stand up to the petty rule of supervisors and constant company attacks. The “Fight Back” caucus, as it first came to be called, published a shop floor newsletter and quickly set to galvanizing workers against the bosses’ attacks and the concessionary outlook of the local’s executive board that got in their way of fighting back.

The caucus gained a leading position among workers on the shop floor and led the charge in fighting speed-up and forced overtime. After being defeated, the bosses responded by firing Melrod and another worker, Al Guzman. The campaign for rehire was fierce and drawn out with more than half the union local prepared to strike to win their brothers back their jobs, but the local president derailed the effort.

With few other options, Melrod filed a complaint with the NLRB, and spent the next 1008 days waiting for a response, while continuing to try to organize in other workplaces. After being reinstated, Melrod and other caucus activists on the trim line and other departments soon found themselves being transferred to the Kenosha plant as production was moved and layoffs kicked in.

In Kenosha, Melrod and other militants developed a newsletter and caucus know as Fighting Times. They again built up ties on the shop floor, distributing newsletters, buttons and shirts on each campaign, as well as trying to tie the movement at the plant to the working-class fight and progressive struggles going on all around.

Fighting Times organized militant walkouts on contract expiration dates, raising the call of “No contract, no work” and fought racism and male chauvinism on the shop floor. They allied themselves with reformers in the union to replace the leadership that was in the company’s pocket.

Melrod was eventually elected steward, then chief steward, and eventually on to the local’s executive committee. He continued to mobilize rank-and-filers for a long time to come, especially during the fight against concessions in the 80s, and for the fight for “one man, one vote” against the UAW international leadership who were more interested in securing board memberships at Chrysler and AMC than in waging a concerted fight.

Continuing the fight at home and abroad

After leaving AMC and the UAW local, Melrod went on to practice law, opening a practice which particularly defended refugees fighting for legal protections in the U.S. This led him to become involved in the solidarity movement with the people of the Philippines against the brutal rule of the Marcos and Duterte regimes, fighting to free the hundreds of political prisoners being held, as well as with the Lumad people in the southern Philippines in defending their lands against attacks from foreign corporations. He continues this activism with his wife today. In California, when a Sonoma County sheriff murdered 13-year-old Andy Lopez in 2013, Melrod went back to law to represent families of Chicano and Latino youth murdered by police in California.

At the end of the introduction, Jon Melrod expresses hope that “The chapters that follow, I hope, will answer many questions, point today’s new generation of organizers in the right direction, and maybe inspire a few young people to join the struggle.” At the end of the day, Jon Melrod’s book is truly a new movement classic. Activists and organizers from all over the people’s movements would take something away from reading it.

To purchase Jon Melrod’s Fighting Times, go to https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1349

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Minneapolis, MN – Dee Knight’s My Whirlwind Lives is both a memoir and manifesto – chronicling more than five decades of anti-imperialist resistance and revolutionary engagement. “Being a revolutionary is like being a midwife for the future,” he writes. “While there is blood and pain, its essence is hope and excitement for a future we can begin to see ahead of us.”

Knight’s first “whirlwind” started in the 1960s: “threats of nuclear catastrophe, rednecks with dogs terrorizing freedom marchers, Vietnamese children fleeing from napalm flame.” His memoir is a response to current stormy events and trends that are changing history. Knight places them in the context of “decades of turmoil in the U.S. and overseas, and decades of movement building against war, injustice and destruction of the planet,” as Medea Benjamin says. It tells of witnessing and supporting revolutions in Portugal and Nicaragua and building a socialist movement at home.

Gerry Condon of Veterans For Peace, Knight’s long-time comrade in resistance, says the story “shares much with that of thousands of young people whose lives and world views changed when they were pushed to participate in unjust U.S. wars.” In his last year of high school in small-town eastern Oregon, Knight supported far-rightist Barry Goldwater for president over the “peace candidate” Lyndon Johnson. But it didn’t take long for the struggles of the mid-sixties to change his mind, and his life.

Knight writes of meeting Clarence Thomas, the well-known leader of the International Longshore Workers Union, when he was a student in 1966 at San Francisco State College. Thomas was part of daily campus rallies led by the Black Students Union, denouncing the student draft deferment as a class and race inequality. Knight later met Walter Collins, a founding member of the Student National Coordinating Committee, who fought intense repression for his refusal to be drafted to go to Vietnam. Both Thomas and Collins helped mobilize a generation of young people to resist, in the streets. They were good teachers for a naïve but fast-learning young person whose life in resistance was just beginning.

As Knight tells it, the story of Clarence Thomas and the San Francisco longshore workers was an object lesson of the huge impact – and revolutionary potential – of militant trade unionists. “In 1984 they shut down the port of San Francisco rather than unload cargo from apartheid South Africa,” and “In 2011 ILWU joined hands with the Occupy movement to shut down the West Coast. Nearly every May Day the San Francisco dock workers take the day off to march. It recalls the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, when ILWU shut down the ports on the west coast for 83 days.” “This historic action, along with the Teamsters’ strike in Minneapolis, and others in Ohio and Michigan, nearly all led by communists or socialists, forged the Congress of Industrial Organizations – the CIO.”

“This can happen again,” Knight writes, “and it can spread like wildfire.” This is an example of how the memoir is also a manifesto – a kind of polemic for revolutionary optimism. He relates the surge in teacher strikes that began in 2018 and has spread across the country – with and without official union backing, and the struggles of nurses, fast food and retail workers that have become unstoppable. He adds in the prison strikes that emerged in 2018, which in at least one case commemorated the historic Attica rebellion of 1971 and the heroic leadership of George Jackson. He also pays tribute to iconic resistance fighters Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier.

Life in exile, and the fight for amnesty

Knight’s resistance took him to exile in Canada after “the battle of Chicago” in 1968. The first third of the book tells that story: how life outside the U.S. opened new possibilities – a chance, among other things, to learn about Marxism and socialism. The memoir tells how Knight became a leading organizer for amnesty for war resisters, in alliance with anti-war Vietnam veterans. That campaign culminated at the 1976 Democratic convention in New York, with a Gold Star Mother nominating a war resister for vice president, seconded by disabled Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic. This electrifying display of solidarity became part of a movie, Born on the Fourth of July. These efforts didn’t win the complete amnesty for draft resisters, but they did force a broad “pardon” from Jimmy Carter in his first act as president in January 1977. Knight tells how they continued organizing in defense of veterans with “less than honorable” discharges for years after. The point was to justify all types of resistance, in and out of the military: “Amnesty for the future – not just the past!”

After returning from Canada, Knight went to Portugal to witness the Carnation Revolution of 1974-75, then to Sandinista Nicaragua for three years in the 1980s, living the realities of revolution in a poor Central American country, and opposing Ronald Reagan’s illegal efforts to crush it. This part of the story includes a defense of the Nicaraguan revolution against continued U.S. efforts to strangle it.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, when President George W. Bush declared “endless war” against terrorists, Knight helped organize giant mass protests, so big a New York Times report said the anti-war movement was a “new super-power.” Knight then takes us through the mass popular reactions to the crash of 2008 – organizing a large “Bloombergville” camp-in near New York’s City Hall in a precursor to Occupy Wall Street. Closer to the present, he contrasts the massive Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 with the fake insurrection of January 6. He says the 2020 uprisings “hark back to the giant civil rights and anti-war protests of decades past, and are a harbinger of real change on the horizon.”

A “right turn” or a polemic for struggle?

In the context of its roots in the rebellious storms of the 1960s, seventies, and even the present, it’s a bit surprising to see Knight’s memoir turn to focus on Bernie Sanders and AOC’s “Socialism and the Green New Deal.” Knight gives credit to Sanders for popularizing socialism and calling for “a political revolution.” But he then goes on to explain that “we should be realistic. Such a revolution would also have to transform the old state apparatus – the military, cops and courts. We would need to take over the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy… to expropriate the banks, insurance, energy and rail transport industries, as well as the military-industrial complex and big pharma.”

Knight admits that “getting all this might take a miracle,” but then paints a picture of how it can happen: “Strikes and sit-ins by young people will spread and intensify. Workers can mobilize on a large scale, shutting down or taking over work places, ports, and entire cities. They can join with farmers, unemployed people and youth – everyone – in massive marches to demand change. Soldiers can shut down military bases across the country and around the world. That would have some impact!”

So in fact this memoir is indeed a manifesto – an impassioned argument that we do have what it takes to bring about the change we need. Knight makes it seem both exciting and possible. That’s good news.

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Excerpts of My Whirlwind Lives can be found at DeeKnight.blog. It’s due for release from Guernica World Editions on June 1. Advance copies are available at Mayday Books in Minneapolis and online from 1804Books in New York.

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