Flame On The Snow: Victor Serge

Flame on the Snow (1920/1921) by Victor Serge

Snow and night. Burdens weigh. You stumble in the deep and deceitful whiteness of the snow. Around, men walk heavily, carrying rifles. The White Finns show hostility in their faces, closed, hard, heavy. They keep silent. The barrels of their guns seem attracted to the ground. A small bridge, sentry box, in the dark another man presses his two hands on his rifle. A bonnet of astrakhan tops a grey, pale coat and the thin face of a peasant. We greeted him without emphasis, tightened hearts, low voices, in spite of the exaltation: “Hello brother!” I do not see the eyes in the great shadows of the face turned towards me. The man asks gently: “Do you have white bread?” He takes the tendered round loaf. “Golodno?” You are hungry? – “Yes. It is nothing”, he answers only to the gate of immense Russia, our brother, the Red soldier, upright in the cold, the night, the hunger – and alone.

One is hungry, but it is nothing …

The white night with distant bursts of shell, abrupt passages by the empty streets, the roughcast trucks of bayonets. Hands grow numb on the rifle. But this midnight with its infinite pallor, this silence, this waiting become a singular peace. You feel almost liberated. Free, simple, calm, although it arrives.

Crosses of rifles stand in front of closed doors. Our steps sound in the mildness of unknown homes. Faces of anxiety, lamps suddenly lit among the grey half-light. Papers which you decipher badly in front of the window, the frightened eyes that you explore in an acute and sad glance, “Are you lying?”

Return. Tire. The rifle weighs. It is necessary. It is necessary. It is necessary. We will make the new life.

The crowd – this resolute crowd gathered in the vast quadrangular room, with white columns, the Tauride Palace, this drawn-up crowd, tender, vehement, willingly applauding the orator:

The man with his back arched, a high thick mane of greying hair. The energetic face of an intellectual, stressed voice, categorical gesture which proclaims the determination of the crowd to overcome. It proclaims terror.

The song of the crowd.

Young women – no preoccupation with elegance or prettiness, but what valour! – in short hair, their busts clasped by leather clothing or a military blouse; workers, soldiers, peasants, sailors, the crowd singing the Internationale after the Farewell to the Dead.

This crowd wants to live, to make life. But how many of those who are there have already been killed?

This immense white city, all in silence. Because the sledges do not make noise on snow. The steps do not resonate. A great pale light on all things. Broad, between its pink granite quays, the Neva solid under snow. Far away, the gold arrow of Peter-and-Paul.

The poor tattered people, many teenagers, some children all bearing rifles, with the straps often replaced by string. The hands numb with cold of these poor people. Their grey wretched crossing of the Liteyni prospect, in a determined step. At the end of a bayonet a red flag: Workers’ battalion from Narva district.

In a noisy barrack room – the walls showing Marx and Lenin framed with red ribbons – this avid group around us, the firm and defying face of the agitator, the pince-nez with gold mounting, these child-like and serious eyes, the comically round nose of the small comrade in leather jacket, the neat moustache of the Cossack – their hurried questions – “Demobilisation? … the working-class of France? … is the revolution growing? …” Anger, distress, revolt against having to answer these men, this woman: No, you are alone.

This face without apparent beauty, the vast face, these unpleasant white metal glasses behind which there was always the same serious glance, inattentive, a little distant, very attractive, something understanding and soft … Our labour until dawn. At dawn, seated on the edge of a window, above the deserted place (the formidable granite mass of St. Isaac’s, the enormous gold dome: cold rectangular palaces, and worked on its base this thin bronze rider from another time …) our search, our thought, our cold reasoning. (“… impossible that we would hold out for more than six months, unless …”) which made us smile us all the same, full of an unlimited confidence

This crowd in snow, under the midday sun, following coffins covered with branches of fir trees. Red ribbons, flags. A gold ray is posed on the arrow of the Admiralty. Songs – the song which soars. There are prayers and sobs in this farewell from a living crowd to a crowd of the dead. Here they sleep, behind a granite rampart, those hung, shot, whose throats were cut, those that died of typhus, who all, gave freely and with their souls. Died for the revolution. So often these funerals on the Field of Mars …

Four thousand soldiers, peasants from Viazma, Ryazan, Tver, Orel, Viatka, Perm – Russians, Tartars, Kirghises, Tcherkesses – four thousand soldiers nourished on dry herrings – hard like stone, that made the gums bleed – fed on four hundred grams of black bread per day, dressed in this icy winter with the old coats of the great war, beating their hands like children and laughing and houting and humming. The room, made from the velvet blue-gold of the imperial theatre vibrates suddenly with this clear human joy, because a sovereign artist sang.

Six hours of voyage by a frozen north wind, along Neva. Stiff, we heat ourselves in turns in the boiler room. And here in the Scandinavian cold landscape the dead carcass of an old castle: the Schüsselburg. And here, in its cottage, the coffin holding the large lengthened body of the anarchist Justin Jouk, the great face of Justin Jouk.

How they have great faces, those of us that are dead!

The Silver Wood, one June morning; the river caressing and murmuring between the meadows and the wood. A dome of a church – in blue or silver, I no longer know – emerging with the sun. Light in all things, fair light of Russia; and the houses of children, peaceful in the tepid warmth of June, in the greenery, in the murmur of water, in waiting for the future. Thin, long camp beds. Along the walls running with tar, the coloured drawings of the young girls; all this clear country of children so close to our town caught up in civil war

A young girl – seven years old – with very large black eyes, encased in a fine, small Kalmuk face, a small refined spirit, precocious, sensitive, encased in a thin body, slowly debilitated by the hunger: Tatiane, the daughter of an aristocrat, whom you fondly call Tania, Tanioucha, Taniouchetchka. She says:

“Since you are a Bolshevik, answer me! Why was Lavr Andreievitch shot?”

I am a Bolshevik, little Tania, and I do not know why Lavr Andreievitch was shot.

A street corner, the blackening mud of the thaw, a child who sells matches: stolen matches, the prize of speculation. A well-dressed passer-by, in military clothing, booted. The child follows with anger in its eyes: Bourgeois!

And the immense dead factory, scrap in the walkways, rusted benches, formidable squatted machines, oiled, inactive, the halls with windows whose panes have been broken. There will remain soon only the metal casings drawn up on the ruins of a city … The immense dead factory, thirty thousand workers in 1914, four and a half thousand present today. Others: dead, returned to the ground, they died the best, or soldiers.

But near the home of the porter, this negligible small garden cultivated with such an amount of care; and in the immense dead factory, a buzzing hall where seventy men tortured by hunger get on with rebuilding an engine.

The city. The streets narrow, dark. The streets in a state of siege which ended at eight, before nightfall. Far and wide, men with rifles, standing.

City, night, snow. In the homes, twinkling gleams of light. At the bottom of the cold rooms, an old man shrivelled in his fur-lined coat, his hands frozen, reads by the gleam of a candle:

The Mysticism of Vladimir Soloviev, and in the dark of the room, a teenager rolled in a soldier’s coat who shivers and thinks of great things, the electrification of the Urals.

The countryside. You can walk there for hours through fields or woods without hearing a voice of man, without seeing a cottage; but you cannot be there for a long time on the road without seeing, surrounded by birches a green chapel with a small triangular pediment, and a pinnacle of blue Byzantine – or of another colour, always bright, clear, radiant colour.

Space – the fields where the train goes during the so-long hours, the fields with their sparse villages: some grey thatched roofs, the fields with their remote churches whose gold cross always light up as the sun sets, and the woods of birch, white slenderness, the silver plated slenderness of the birch trees,

(that our ancient storytellers compared to virgins … )

Again the city, the old Fabergé store, goods from Paris, objets d’art (the sign is faded). Three balls divide the large window, scraps of paper (leaves torn from an accounts book, numbered 124), “3rd Office of Supply. This 24 February, one dry herring pound at cart B.” – From the windows of the old hotel Regina, poor, sickly soldiers look out. – Here: Aline Fashions, in large scripted gold letters. Below: Headquarters of the special battalion of Kazan sector – Cafe Empire. No, “Club of the 14th State Print works”. In the entrance, Karl Marx, framed with red ribbons. The ribbons are bleached; the portrait loses its colour.

By the street bordered with churches, palaces – where our clubs stand – ransacked stores, theatres, libraries, public buildings, the book centre, the military academy (a bank previously) by the street which goes from the Admiralty, built by Peter the Great, to the statue of Tsar Alexander, so heavy on his heavy bronze horse that he must be contemplating already with his overwhelming weight the fall of his empire.

By this street, the Mongolian riders pass singing. Red ribbons on the handle of their sabres, at the front the red star with five branches.

(You spoke, o poet, so much love for the things of Europe: “Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, Asians …”)

On the handle of their sabres, red ribbons.

Morning, spring, the desire to smile. People, in the square, read the paper which has just been posted. Why this word The Truth, this word of few syllable, is it so hard, sharp, curt, in all languages: Pravda, Wahrheit, Truth, Verdad? – a scrap of paper flapping in the wind.

“33: Nikitor Arkadievitch Ijine, 33 years old, speculator. 34: Denskaya Elena Dmitrievna, 24 years old, dressmaker, spy. 35: Vassili Vassilievitch Onéguine, 42 years old, officer, aristocrat, proven counter-revolutionary … 58: Abram Abramovitch, 30 years old, civil servant, member of the Communist Party, convicted of corruption …” shot.

Sixty! says a young voice. They read abstractly, without ceasing to smile. He is twenty years old, an aspiring Red; she, nineteen, militant in charge with of Dynamo factory. Which one will be killed beneath Kronstadt?

“Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars No XXX. Suppression of rent …”

“Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars No XXX. Suppression of private property in furniture …”

“Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars No XXX. Suppression of illiteracy …”

“Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars No XXX. Creation of the autonomous Tartar Republic.”

“Decree …”

One reads standing, in the street, in the snow. The cold grips, you hear gun-fire.

She came often about midnight, after a telephone call (“do you have tea?”). She shook her fair ashy hair. Her eyes had a good serious smile. She said:

“You understand, the regional devolution of the metal industry … Because the Higher Council of the Economy and the Trade Union …”, or:

“Bogdanov’s theses, from a rigorously Marxist a point of view …”, or

“The sub-section of the organisation of the Committee of the 2nd Sector decided …”

She lit a cigarette. Her lips had the pink colour of a ripe fruit.

Contempt for words – for the old words. Contempt for the ideas which mislead. Contempt for the hypocritical and cruel West which invented Parliaments, the public press, the asphyxiating gases, the prison system, after-dinner literature. Contempt for all that vegetates in satisfaction with these things.

Hatred for the formidable machine used to crush the weak – all disarmed humanity – for the vice of Law, Police, Clergy, Schools, Armies, Factories, Penal Colonies. Hatred for those who need that system, the rich, class hatred.

The will to undergo everything, to suffer everything, achieve everything in order to finish. Inexorable will. The will to live finally according to the new law, equal work, or to die showing the way. The willingness to plough up the ground and its souls so well that the earth shall be new tomorrow.

Consciousness that the present hardly exists; and that it is necessary to give everything, at this hour, to the future so that there may be a present. Consciousness that all of us are nothing if we are not with our class, its humanity rising. Consciousness that work ahead does not have limits, that it requires a million arms and brains, that it is the only justification of our lives. Consciousness that a world collapses and that you can live only while giving yourself to the world which waits to be born.

Petrograd-Moscow, 1920-21

Mumia On Haiti

Notes: The Guerilla, Haiti and Massachusetts

I’ve never been an Ernestophile; not that I dismissed Che or didn’t find him intriguing in his way, but he never caught my imagination the way some other revolutionaries, including Cuban revolutionaries, have.  I didn’t come to Che by Stephen Soderbergh as eagerly as others.  After a non-release theatrically in the United States and a question mark over its release on disc, the film was picked up by the venerable folks at Criterion for DVD distribution and is now available.  I watched the whole thing in a single sitting this week, a worthy film experience.

I wish I had seen it on the big screen (it played locally for only a day or two).  It’s so visually rich.  It reminded me a little of Terrence Mallick  (who was originally interested in doing the project) in its pacing and feel.  It could have gone in a biographical direction (yaaawwwnn), but chose instead to focus on Che the guerilla, to the exclusion of much else.  That focus is what made this film possible, based as it is on Che’s own diaries.  The sobriety of the film is to be found in those diaries.

I have some quibbles, the editing is clunky at times, but the film was much better and different from the expectations I had for it.  Demián Bichir as Fidel is fantastic.  The final days of the Bolivian column are as painful to watch as the scenes of Santa Clara are invigorating.  I’d say more, but all of those scenes are still tumbling around in me and haven’t yet found form.  I look forward to seeing it again.  A terrific film.

Haiti is now a wholly owned subsidiary of America Inc.  Bottled water will soon be followed by Pepsico water bottling plants to ship the stuff out of Haiti.  Progress.  With imperialism every helping hand has its price.

The Democrats deserved to lose in Massachusetts.  Yes, I wish they had lost to one of our team and yes I think Brown is bad news, but let no progressive dare lay his win at the feet of the left.  The Dems lost this all on their own.  With two center-right parties (well one center-right and the other right-center-right) governing, the best we can hope for is gridlock to limit the damage.

And don’t bring up health care either.  Obama’s bill is so bad that it would be better to fail than to codify the health insurance racket in the name of reform.  Far from blocking the right the Dems, more often than not, facilitate their return.  Massachusetts being only exhibit #12315 in the prosecution’s brief.

If Obama goes the way of Jimmy Carter then I wonder who Reagan will be?  Guaranteed that the next election will see the “progressives” anoint another savior in the Democratic Party and again try to corral the movements into the cul-de-sac to “block the right”.  Desperately seeking cover for the cover they are giving these are the same “progressives” who are now counting on the defeat to be a “wake-up call” which moves Obama to the left.  Fool me once shame on you…

Shouldn’t the Senate be forcibly abolished anyway?  It’s an old boys club that ensures the elite get their way every time; undemocratic (even by the limited norms of bourgeois politics) in form and essence.  Upper chamber?  All that “separation of powers” bs is just a bureaucratic shell game.  The dealer always wins.

Gotta Gettaway

Turn up those little speakers to maximum comrades.  SLF, the best punk band ever?  I know, their politics are a little mushy, but they, as they say, rock with the best hooks in the business.

Ireland: Scandal In The Sectarian Jigsaw

John McAnulty of Ireland’s Socialist Democracy writes on the current scandal in the north of Ireland:

The circumstances of the latest political scandal in the North of Ireland are by now well known. I ris Robinson, wife of first minister Peter Robinson and a leading loyalist figure in her own right, obtained for her teenage lover a loan of £50,000 from two property developers “simply by the ask” as one of her opponents put it.  The same figure (loyalist leader Jim Allister) went on to ask if there was any history of money transfers involving property developers.  There is evidence of a cash kickback of £5000 paid directly to Iris Robinson.

The young man was awarded tenancy of a restaurant by Castlereagh Borough Council, despite the fact that he was a teenager with no previous business experience.  Peter Robinson had been chair of the council for many years.  Iris Robinson was a current councilor, was present at the meeting and did not declare an interest.

Peter Robinson was aware of these financial activities.  One of the businessmen, a friend of the family, had been responsible for the majority of property development in Castlereagh.  Robinson advised Iris to arrange to have the money repaid, but did not inform the authorities of the breaches of the code of conduct.  He says he advised his wife that any payments should be made directly through a solicitor, seemingly unaware of the distinction between legal and moral deniability and the reality of corruption.

A sordid and nasty little scandal, but does it have any deeper significance?

DUP Corruption

Well, take away the sex and you have the last DUP scandal.  That one, involving Ian Paisley and his son, also involved money and property developers.  This corruption is an aspect of all capitalist parties, where the main reason for being politically active is to feather your own nest.  It is magnified a thousandfold in far right sectarian parties, where you start off with a program aimed at discriminating against a section of the population in favor of your own group.

Castlereagh borough council is a perfect example.  Sectarian division guaranteed that the Robinsons would be in absolute control and that their friends and family would also be elected.  Opposition nationalist politicians were completely ignored.  When people win elections on a promise to discriminate it is hardly surprising when they do and a culture develops where property developers can casually be asked for tens of thousands.

There is more to this issue than the mundane corruption of capitalism or the greed of the right-wing populist.

Not only are right-wing sectarian groups like the DUP systemically corrupt, but using and encouraging that corruption is a central strategy of the imperialist power and a mainspring of the so-called peace process.

Supporting “Pragmatism”

Under the 30-year rule political discussions in the British cabinet were released for the new year. T hey show that the British saw Ian Paisley’s bigotry as a major obstacle to a settlement.  They also saw his overwhelming greed and ambition to be supreme leader and believed that this could be used to win him over.

The strategy was eventually successful but had within it a hidden contradiction.  Bribery drew Paisley towards the British, but drew him away from the uncomplicated fundamentalist bigotry of the DUP base.  Paisley fell, in part because of allegations of corruption, in greater part because he had accepted Catholics in the administration.

In the current difficulties of the political process around devolution of policing those involved refer over and over again to the pragmatism of Robinson and his supporters.  Translated this means that the British and Irish nationalists understand that the loyalist program uncompromisingly opposes power-sharing with Catholics.  Nevertheless power-sharing can be got to work because for the loyalists desire for money, power and position will trump their sectarianism.

Since their capitulation to imperialism a process of corruption has engulfed Sinn Fein.  Liam Adams, a brother of Gerry, has fled the North following allegations of paedophillia.  It has become clear that the Sinn Fein leadership covered up the allegations for over a decade.  The organization today has its own crop of property millionaires and a whole social layer called the grantocracy maneuvering for payments from the British.

The British strategy has consequences in the current scandal.  The response of Robinson’s enemies in the DUP is uncomplicated. Gregory Campbell gave Robinson a week to clear himself. Days later the DUP “united” around Robinson on condition that he step down “temporarily”.   In reality he will find it enormously difficult to make a comeback. British Secretary of state Shaun Woodward, on the other hand, appealed to the DUP to preserve the peace process – in other words to support Robinson no matter what weight of scandal builds up against him.

Sinn Fein have reacted with incoherence.  Martin McGuinness intones with blinding insight that there are questions to be asked but Sinn Fein are the only party not to ask Robinson to consider his position and their decision to postpone an Ard Chomairle meeting was seen as an aid to the DUP first minister.  The line since then is that people should focus on the big picture of resolving outstanding issues and preserving the peace process – that is that the corruption of the current system is a matter of indifference and the role of Sinn Fein is to preserve the system indefinitely even if it means leaving the working class frozen in a morass of corruption and sectarian division.

And well might Sinn Fein consider their position.  The Irish bourgeoisie are even more frantic to save Robinson and complete the devolution process than the British are.  A front page cartoon in the Irish Times reacted to the Robinson scandal with – an all-out attack on the Provos!  All the old slanders of republican responsibility for the violence and caricatures of “green fascists” were included.

The message could not be clearer.  The Shinners know what to expect if they shirk in their support for the Stormont dung-heap.

Peter Robinson has become the Hamid Karzai of Ireland.  Like the Afghan leader, his role as an instrument of imperialism outweighs the failings of a corrupt system. The contradictions of that system are growing apace.

Decay

Pragmatism has not delivered.  It is difficult to use corruption to subvert an entire movement.  Even before the current debacle all the signs were that Robinson was caught in a classic scissors dilemma.  Opposition from Loyalism meant he was unable to deliver on promises to devolve policing.  Even when he took a hard line, the very fact that he was in government with Sinn Fein and negotiating with them was enough to weaken his position.

Robinson is unlikely to return to power.  Even if he does, the forces of absolutism in the DUP and outside in the Traditional Unionist Voice movement will be much stronger and the possibility of completing devolution and stabilizing the North much weaker.

A similar scissors operates with Sinn Fein.   A recent poll in the North showed 54% of Nationalists were willing to support the winding up of the Stormont administration if it failed to deliver reform.  This is a dramatic shift from the early days of the peace process when nationalist approval stood at 98% and is mirrored by a shift in unionism from an early 56% support for a settlement to a current 86%.  This means a grassroots pressure on Sinn Fein to make gains while Dublin, London and Washington will demand that they placate loyalism and keep the settlement functioning.  The DUP crisis has now become a crisis of the entire system and the process has reached frenzy with London and Dublin agreeing that the devolution of policing and justice must take place immediately.  The only issue is whether the DUP can be got to agree.  If they do they will need a great deal of support in the form of further concessions to assure their base that they have established sectarian primacy.  These concessions will revolve around giving a free rein to the Orange Order to intimidate Catholics and bribes for the Loyalist militia that made up the RUC reserve.  Sinn Fein, already greatly weakened, will support these concessions – there would be no point in the cycle of meetings if they were not willing to do so.

Alternative

We have been told for over a decade that there is no alternative to the sectarian settlement in the North, yet today its main supporters are indicating that it may fall in weeks.  If it does it will not be because of political opposition – there has been almost none.  Rarely has a political settlement has the level of support that nationalists gave this agreement.  Even in the absence of an opposition all the contradictions of colonialism and sectarianism have continued to operate and the administration now has a zombie life, totally incapable of meeting the needs of working people and poisoning all of society.

Yet beneath this instability there is an underlying inertia.  The inability of the peace process to meet the needs of Irish workers provokes discontent but not a political alternative.  Nationalist workers see that the process is not delivering, but do not see that a system based on sectarian horse-trading will never deliver.  They see the British as honest brokers rather than the imperialist gangsters who designed the current system to ensure their continued control in Ireland.  A strong element in this complacency is the fact that the organizations they look to, such as the Irish government, Sinn Fein and the trade union leaderships all rabidly support the settlement and refuse to consider any alternative.

There is a great deal of cynicism and contempt surrounding each new scandal, but most people believe that corruption should be tolerated as a price worth paying for peace and that it will gradually evolve towards a more equal society.  The Robinson scandal shows that the corruption extends into local councils.  Continuing movements to integrate loyalist death squads into civic society mean that it extends to street level.   In these circumstances there cannot be any form of democracy. It is replaced with shadowy cabals at one level and comic-opera assemblies at the other.  There can be no advancing of working class interests or any socialist alternative with all aspects of life frozen in a sectarian jigsaw. The decay of the system shows not only that there must be an alternative to a failed society, but that such an alternative must be actively constructed by the working class in the teeth of opposition by Irish capitalists and British imperialism.

Invited to express sympathy and support for the Robinsons, Edwina Currie, former British conservative minister and in no sense a left liberal, declined, describing the pair as “repulsive”.

Repulsive is what they are.  These are people who have spent their life whipping up sectarian hatred.  Iris Robinson has expressed homophobic hatred that would see her excluded from any civilized society, enriched by hypocrisy as she herself broke the religious strictures that she claimed justified her attacks on gays.  Peter boasts of his strength and professionalism in going to work on the day his wife attempted to take her life.  The couple have managed to become involved in a financial scandal even though they have a joint income of £600,000.  Peter supplemented this modest income by selling his back garden to property developers.

The task of socialists is to explain that British imperialism and Irish nationalism stand foursquare behind this corruption, that they are content to replicate sectarianism and corruption in every corner of society. Imperialist and nationalist policies negate the possibility of democratic rights or of working class organization.  The alternative is the self-organization of the workers in a 32 county socialist republic.

Thinking About Haiti, Watching Burn!

I walked home late from class in a deep freeze and watched the news for a few hours last evening after which I pulled out Queimada for a little late-night entertainment.  The film had come up earlier in the day and I watched it as much for the sights and sounds as anything else, winter blues and all.  Pat Robertson is an idiot and an easy target.  Just as racist is this Op-Ed from the newspaper of record.  As nauseating to me is all of the liberal hand-wringing on Haiti’s plight that, while perhaps sympathetic, is as part of the nature of the beast as the jackasses above.  For instance, Rachel Maddow ‘s understanding of Haiti’s history is as blinkered in its way as Brooks is in his.  The world exists only through the imperium, they can’t understand it in any other way.  For Maddow, the United States and Haiti are old republican friends, simpatico in spirit- a sort of family.  Sure they are.  One of many pieces of the story missing from Maddow’s little narrative is that one republic was built by expansionist slave-owners and the other built by rebellious slaves.  Nowhere does Maddow mention that the United states has routinely occupied Haiti, out of sisterly love we are sure, including a twenty year stretch into the 1930s.  No, we’re not all in this together; we have different interests.  While not about Haiti per se, Queimada sure looks a lot like it and has something to say on the general subjects generated by Haiti’s history.  I’ll let Pontecorvo’s film speak for itself.  “But to go where, Anglais?” indeed.

Daniel Bensaid 1946-2010

Another sad loss for the revolutionary movement occurred recently.  Long time Marxist intellectual and leading member of the French Revolutionary Communist League, the New Anti-Capitalist Party and the Fourth International (United Secretariat) Daniel Bensaid died this week after a long illness.

While I have had many disagreements with Daniel and the organizations he helped to lead I will sorely miss his articles and books.  He was a gifted, undogmatic and expansive thinker; impossible to not take seriously.  How many Trotskyists can you say that about?  His Marx For Our Times is a perfect example of his qualities.

Here is a selection of the English language appreciations I’ve come across (I’ve stumbled on obituaries in many, many different languages which is in itself a tribute to the revolutionary internationalist Bensaid).  I’ll add as they become available:

Bensaid’s comrade Francois Sabado from International Viewpoint writes of Daniel as militant, intellectual and friend.  Britain’s Socialist Resistance has condolences here.

Alex Callinicos writes on the newly revamped website of the British Socialist Workers Party this obituary and sent this statement to the NPA.

Liam has a rough translation of the article that appeared in the daily Liberation here.  The Junius Blog offers their thoughts as does Socialist Unity and Harpymarx.

The International Socialist Organization has an article by Gilbert Achcar of the Fourth International (Usec) in the latest Socialist Worker where he pays tribute to Bensaid’s contribution to the Trotskyist tradition.

A huge selection of Daniel”s articles in French can be accessed here and a substantial amount of English articles here.

Daniel Bensaïd, Presenté!

Haiti

If you are like me you’re glad you are an atheist today.  Who, after all, would want to live in a universe where God can unleash what has been wrought on Haiti these last centuries.  And now this?  A shocking day, frightful day to be a member of the human family.  If this is “God’s Plan” then to hell with God.  If not God, then who to blame for this catastrophe?  Blaming nature makes no sense.  It is in the nature of nature to be unforgiving, but only from our, mortal, standpoint.  From the standpoint of nature there is no point.

Nature, like shit, happens, but it is the inequality in our society that ensures shit rolls downhill.  And Haiti has been at the bottom of a mountain of inequality since its inception.  The latest reports are that tens of thousands may have died in Haiti– it is impossible at this early date to tell.  We hope it is less, but we fear it will be more.

In 1989 San Francisco had an earthquake of  the same magnitude as that which hit Haiti yesterday.  The San Francisco Bay area has a population somewhat lower than Haiti, but not enough to account for the disparity of casualties.  56 people died there in 1989.  That the hills of San Francisco aren’t crowded with the shantytowns, now flattened, that encase Port-au-Prince is not a product of luck, nor is the wealth that allows California homes to be built to withstand the shocks of nature while a shack in Haiti falls down on its inhabitants an accident.  It is the product of imperialism.

Haiti and the region have been on the receiving end of capitalist accumulation for 500 years now and it’s not the surplus they are receiving.  Capitalism is said to have a dynamic of creative destruction.  The wealth that created earthquake-resistant homes in California just as surely led to the tin shacks of Haiti yesterday destroyed.  As with Katrina five years ago, where the Lower Ninth still lies in ruin, what we are witnessing is not a disaster of nature, but a crime of capitalism.