research from the Committee for the Study of
HISTORY AND THE CURRENT CONTEXT
[HistoryAndCurrentContext.blogspot.com]
* "The invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation" (by Michael Perelman) (.pdf) [http://is.gd/qe4PgM]
* "The Invention of Capitalism: How a Self-Sufficient Peasantry was Whipped Into Industrial Wage Slaves" (by Yasha Levine, exiledonline.com) [archive.is/XZETK]:
“…everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.” —Arthur Young; 1771.Our popular economic wisdom says that capitalism equals freedom and free societies, right? Well, if you ever suspected that the logic is full of shit, then I’d recommend checking a book called The Invention of Capitalism, written by an economic historian named Michael Perelmen, who’s been exiled to Chico State, a redneck college in rural California, for his lack of freemarket friendliness. And Perelman has been putting his time in exile to damn good use, digging deep into the works and correspondence of Adam Smith and his contemporaries to write a history of the creation of capitalism that goes beyond superficial The Wealth of Nations fairy tale and straight to the source, allowing you to read the early capitalists, economists, philosophers, clergymen and statesmen in their own words. And it ain’t pretty.
One thing that the historical record makes obviously clear is that Adam Smith and his laissez-faire buddies were a bunch of closet-case statists, who needed brutal government policies to whip the English peasantry into a good capitalistic workforce willing to accept wage slavery.
Francis Hutcheson, from whom Adam Smith learned all about the virtue of natural liberty, wrote: ”it is the one great design of civil laws to strengthen by political sanctions the several laws of nature. … The populace needs to be taught, and engaged by laws, into the best methods of managing their own affairs and exercising mechanic art.”
Yep, despite what you might have learned, the transition to a capitalistic society did not happen naturally or smoothly. See, English peasants didn’t want to give up their rural communal lifestyle, leave their land and go work for below-subsistence wages in shitty, dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of landowning capitalists. And for good reason, too. Using Adam Smith’s own estimates of factory wages being paid at the time in Scotland, a factory-peasant would have to toil for more than three days to buy a pair of commercially produced shoes. Or they could make their own traditional brogues using their own leather in a matter of hours, and spend the rest of the time getting wasted on ale. It’s really not much of a choice, is it?
But in order for capitalism to work, capitalists needed a pool of cheap, surplus labor. So what to do? Call in the National Guard!
Faced with a peasantry that didn’t feel like playing the role of slave, philosophers, economists, politicians, moralists and leading business figures began advocating for government action. Over time, they enacted a series of laws and measures designed to push peasants out of the old and into the new by destroying their traditional means of self-support.
“The brutal acts associated with the process of stripping the majority of the people of the means of producing for themselves might seem far removed from the laissez-faire reputation of classical political economy,” writes Perelman. “In reality, the dispossession of the majority of small-scale producers and the construction of laissez-faire are closely connected, so much so that Marx, or at least his translators, labeled this expropriation of the masses as ‘‘primitive accumulation.’’
Perelman outlines the many different policies through which peasants were forced off the land—from the enactment of so-called Game Laws that prohibited peasants from hunting, to the destruction of the peasant productivity by fencing the commons into smaller lots—but by far the most interesting parts of the book are where you get to read Adam Smith’s proto-capitalist colleagues complaining and whining about how peasants are too independent and comfortable to be properly exploited, and trying to figure out how to force them to accept a life of wage slavery.
This pamphlet from the time captures the general attitude towards successful, self-sufficient peasant farmers: "The possession of a cow or two, with a hog, and a few geese, naturally exalts the peasant. . . . In sauntering after his cattle, he acquires a habit of indolence. Quarter, half, and occasionally whole days, are imperceptibly lost. Day labour becomes disgusting; the aversion in- creases by indulgence. And at length the sale of a half-fed calf, or hog, furnishes the means of adding intemperance to idleness."
While another pamphleteer wrote: "Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or admitted little care for raiment or covering."
John Bellers, a Quaker “philanthropist” and economic thinker saw independent peasants as a hindrance to his plan of forcing poor people into prison-factories, where they would live, work and produce a profit of 45% for aristocratic owners:
“Our Forests and great Commons (make the Poor that are upon them too much like the Indians) being a hindrance to Industry, and are Nurseries of Idleness and Insolence.”
Daniel Defoe, the novelist and trader, noted that in the Scottish Highlands “people were extremely well furnished with provisions. … venison exceedingly plentiful, and at all seasons, young or old, which they kill with their guns whenever they find it.’’
To Thomas Pennant, a botanist, this self-sufficiency was ruining a perfectly good peasant population:
“The manners of the native Highlanders may be expressed in these words: indolent to a high degree, unless roused to war, or any animating amusement.”
If having a full belly and productive land was the problem, then the solution to whipping these lazy bums into shape was obvious: kick ‘em off the land and let em starve.
Arthur Young, a popular writer and economic thinker respected by John Stuart Mill, wrote in 1771: “everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.” Sir William Temple, a politician and Jonathan Swift’s boss, agreed, and suggested that food be taxed as much as possible to prevent the working class from a life of “sloth and debauchery.”
Temple also advocated putting four-year-old kids to work in the factories, writing ‘‘for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them.’’ Some thought that four was already too old. According to Perelmen, “John Locke, often seen as a philosopher of liberty, called for the commencement of work at the ripe age of three.” Child labor also excited Defoe, who was joyed at the prospect that “children after four or five years of age…could every one earn their own bread.’’ But that’s getting off topic…
Even David Hume, that great humanist, hailed poverty and hunger as positive experiences for the lower classes, and even blamed the “poverty” of France on its good weather and fertile soil:
“‘Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more, and really live better.”
Reverend Joseph Townsend believed that restricting food was the way to go:
“[Direct] legal constraint [to labor] . . . is attended with too much trouble, violence, and noise, . . . whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry, it calls forth the most powerful exertions. . . . Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjugation to the most brutish, the most obstinate, and the most perverse.”
Patrick Colquhoun, a merchant who set up England’s first private “preventative police“ force to prevent dock workers from supplementing their meager wages with stolen goods, provided what may be the most lucid explanation of how hunger and poverty correlate to productivity and wealth creation:
"Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth."
Colquhoun’s summary is so on the money, it has to be repeated. Because what was true for English peasants is still just as true for us:
“Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society…It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.”
* "Medieval peasants got a lot more vacation time than you: economist" (2013-09-04, nypost.com) [archive.is/OZW50]
---
* "British industrialists armed pro-slavery Confederates in American Civil War – study" (2016-03-08, rt.com) [archive.is/KDBT8]
* "How British businesses helped the Confederacy fight the American Civil War" (2016-03-07, theconversation.com) [archive.is/Hlpk9]
---
* "The birth of the Koch Clan: It all started in a little Texas town called Quanah" (2011-11-07, exiledonline.com) [archive.is/J2x2] [begin excerpt]: Charles and David Koch are the most powerful right-wing billionaires of our time. They have spent hundreds of millions bankrolling a broad attack against Social Security, organized labor, financial regulations, environmental protection and public education. The brothers plan to funnel at least $200 million to elect right-wing, anti-government Republicans in 2012, according to Politico. They seem hell-bent on dragging America back to the dark days of unregulated capitalism. The history of their grandfather in Texas may help explain why. Because, apparently, it runs in the family.
Much of the Koch brothers’ ideology can be found in Harry Koch’s newspaper editorials of nearly a century ago. Take, for instance, the Kochs’ current fight against Social Security. Harry Koch took part in a multi-year right-wing propaganda campaign to shoot down New Deal programs. Grandfather and grandsons employ eerily familiar talking points to bash government pension and welfare programs.
“No political system can possibly guarantee either a national economic security or an individual standard of living. Government can guarantee no man a job or a livelihood,” Harry Koch wrote on February 1, 1935, nine months before Charles Koch was born.
Fast-forward 75 years and you can see Charles Koch using the same lines of attack in his company’s newsletter: “government actions … stifle economic growth and job creation, which in turn will significantly reduce the standard of living of American families.”
This summer I traveled to Quanah, the dusty North Texas railroad town that Harry Koch called home, to find out more about the life of the man who spawned the two most powerful oligarchs of our time. After spending days hunkered over newspaper archives and rifling through a century’s worth of county records in the town’s tiny courthouse, I began to see a picture emerge of a man who spent his life learning how to use newspapers and media for ideological manipulation and as a platform for pro-business agendas. As I strained to read the battered microfilm, I was constantly surprised at the degree to which Harry’s views—on everything from the economy to the role of government in a democratic society—have been passed on nearly unchanged through two generations, and are now being pushed by Charles and David Koch.
HARRY KOCH WAS BORN in Holland in 1867 to a wealthy German-Dutch family of merchants, farmers and doctors. After apprenticing to a newspaper publisher, he decided to seek his fortune in America. At 21, he set off on a steamer and arrived in New York on Dec. 5, 1888. He spent his first few years in America working for various Dutch newspapers in Chicago, New Orleans, Grand Rapids and Austin until, in 1891, he finally settled down in Quanah, a town that the railroad had established just a few years before. Harry always remained curiously vague and evasive about why he decided to stake his claim in a remote North Texas town, but there is no real mystery to it: he came because of the railroads.
In the second half of the 19th century, America was in the grip of a massive railroad boom. Boosted by eager investors, lucrative subsidies and free land, railroads sprung up connecting every corner of the United States without much thought for demand or necessity. America’s rail mileage quadrupled from 1870 to 1900, with enough track laid down by the end of the century to stretch from New York to San Francisco 66 times.
In those wild early days of the railroad age, real estate speculation was a central plank of the business plan. The U.S. government had given vast stretches of public land to railroad companies, and the companies needed to sell that land to settlers to create customers and pay off debts. And that meant railroads were in constant need of local publishers to promote the countless railroad towns that had been planned and parceled by the railroad companies across the country, with the aim of luring enough gullible settlers with wildly exaggerated stories of fertile soil and prosperity to trigger real estate booms—all so that railroad insiders could make easy money offloading overpriced dirt lots on the hapless settlers.
Dutch investors were heavily involved in several railroad lines in the North Texas area, including the Fort Worth and Denver Railway Company, which had spawned Quanah in 1887 and owned just about all the land in town. County records show Harry provided advertising services and worked directly for the Fort Worth and Denver for nearly 20 years, sometimes receiving payment in the form of land transferred directly from the legendary railroad builder Grenville M. Dodge, who helped lay the Union Pacific and more than a dozen other lines across the country.
Harry bought up two of the town’s newspapers, apparently with his own money, merged them into the Quanah Tribune-Chief, and began printing beguiling stories of Western prosperity.
When Harry moved to Quanah, it was little more than a dusty settlement with a patchwork of dirt lots, a few rudimentary buildings and a railroad platform—a get-rich-quick scheme laid out on paper. It was his job to create the demand, bring people in and make the town a reality. He ran his paper like a chamber of commerce newsletter, cramming it full of stories about growth, expansion and the limitless possibilities of life on the frontier. He helped inflate a real estate bubble that, along with the presence of the railroad, nearly quadrupled the county’s population to more than 11,000.
Harry Koch worked hard to bring a number of railroad spurs to Quanah, and helped make it a major transportation hub by the early 1900s. He acquired stakes in local businesses, got into the oil business and boosted for notorious railroad barons like Jay Gould. As the town grew, so did Harry’s fortune. He amassed substantial real estate holdings in and around Quanah, which allowed him to cash in on the real estate boom he had helped to create.
Harry enjoyed his success. He got married, had two sons, traveled regularly to New York and Europe, and was proud of having crossed the Atlantic nine times. He even described being in Berlin, caught in a huge crowd that had gathered to hear “der Fuhrer” make a speech.
The best way to understand railroads, writes Richard White in Railroaded, “is to regard them not as new businesses devoted to the efficient sale of transportation but rather as corporate containers for financial manipulation and political networking.” And in that sense Harry Koch was very much of the club.
By the time he retired, Harry Koch was not just a respected newspaper publisher in Texas, but a powerful and highly connected regional business player. He was also extremely well liked. “There is no more popular member of the Association than Harry Koch,” read his bio by the Texas Press Association, where he served as president in 1918.
But the bustling city he helped create was mostly made of hype. Today, Quanah’s population has sunk back to 1890 levels and has little industry left. A gypsum plant on the outskirts of town is the only major employer, and it happens to be owned by the Koch family.
Harry Koch’s rise from immigrant small-town newspaper publisher to entrenched business heavyweight might seem like a classic coming-to-America story, confirming that through hard work, perseverance and luck, anything is possible. But that narrative would be misleading. Harry may have lived among settlers who struggled to eke out a living on the frontier, but he was never really one himself. The difference was right there on the surface for everyone to see: While Harry Koch prospered, most everyone else in North Texas descended into poverty.
Towards the end of the 18th century, 100,000 poor white farmers streamed into Texas every year to escape the brutal peonage of the sharecropping system of the South. But despite the stories of success and security spun by railroad companies and boosters like Harry Koch, newcomers found themselves facing a grim reality, and the same monopolistic big money forces conspiring to keep them enslaved in extreme poverty and debt. On top of the crippling boom-and-bust cycles that gripped the country from the 1890s through the late 1920s, settlers low agricultural prices, monopolistic railroad practices, outrageously high interest rates, and inflated real estate prices that made it impossible for new farmers to afford land.
The misery and hopelessness of frontier life sparked a powerful new grassroots populist movement, which sought to reform and curb the worst of corporate abuses. Harry Koch was not sympathetic to the cause.
In 1897, while the country was still in the grips of one of the worst economic depressions in its history, Harry Koch penned a long, gushing account of a luxurious trip to a National Editorial Association convention in Galveston, a multi-day affair thrown for boosters and businessmen. Between detailed descriptions of all the oysters eaten and champagne bottles emptied at the swanky parties, he took jabs at organized labor in response to a strike organized by street railway workers on the day of the convention. Koch was furious, calling the strike “disagreeable surprise” that marred an otherwise perfect outing, forcing guests to walk on foot to the next segment of their entertainment. Luckily, disaster was averted when “Santa Fe officials took pity on the suffering newspaper men and made up a train to Woolman’s lake where the oyster roast was to be held,” Koch wrote approvingly.
In a series of early editorials, scoffed at the idea that land rents should be regulated, and ridiculed the plight of heavily indebted farmers, writing that while they might find indebtedness unpleasant, a much bigger problem was their laziness and inability to take care of the farm equipment they had purchased on credit. He patronized Quanah farmers with platitudes about honesty and success: “Be honest. Dishonesty seldom makes one rich, and when it does riches are a curse. There is no such thing as dishonest success.” He delighted in the fact that unlike other cities and towns across America—filled with strikes, riots, political agitation and violent unrest—the people of Quanah largely steered clear of politics, concerning themselves with what they understood best: hard, honest labor. “A very commendable trait among western people,” Harry wrote, “is that they have no time to give to politics.”
To Harry, regular Americans had no place in politics, a domain of capitalists, railroad men and progressive boosters like himself. Democracy itself was an abomination, a dangerous idea that needed to be constrained and restricted to the upper classes of society. In fact, he considered laws to be overrated. “If we depended upon laws to make us perfect the United States should be a near Utopia and Texas would be the most heavenly spot on earth,” he editorialized [archive.is/zLozH].
[...]
IN THE 1930S, corporations were forced to ramp up their pro-business public relations campaigns to deal with the violent backlash in public opinion caused by the Great Depression. “With tens of millions of jobless and hungry, business was initially stunned by the intensity of public hostility,” Alex Carey writes in Taking Risk out of Democracy. “For the first time American business’s ideological hegemony over American society was temporarily broken.” With the free-enterprise system under threat, American business, led by lobby groups like the National Association of Manufacturers, launched a blitzkrieg propaganda campaign that used news articles, editorials, radio speeches, advertising, cartoons and even films. The campaign was “skillfully coordinated so as to blanket every media,” and “it pounds its message home with relentless determination,” according to the president of NAM. The organization still openly talks about this campaign in its publicity material:
“In 1934, concern over many of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal proposals and key labor issues prompted the NAM to launch a public relations campaign “for the dissemination of sound American doctrines to the public.”
Not surprisingly, Harry Koch was right there along with them, rolling out an aggressive multi-year attack against the New Deal at exactly the same time. And while there is no evidence linking Harry Koch to NAM, the Tribune-Chief seemed to hit all the same points: The paper slammed public pensions, regulations, tariffs, unions, muckrakers, labor laws and deficits, and filled its op-ed space with pro-business opinion pieces delivered fresh from New York lobby groups like the American Bankers Association, whose president, R.S. Becht, wrote to assure Quanah readers that there was no need for the government to regulate banks. Industry self-regulation—or “voluntary self reform,” as he called it—would be enough.
[...]
His editorials contained the same familiar right-wing claims that we hear today: that there is not enough money to support “entitlement” programs, that government will tax industry into ruin, that similar programs in other countries have failed, that regulation is unconstitutional and workers, given the opportunity, will quit en masse and live off government charity. And just like modern pundits, Harry Koch didn’t shy away from whipping up racist fervor to turn poor whites against pension legislation, and against their own interests. In 1935, Koch published a bizarre editorial [archive.is/tMn6N] about a rumor that spread “among Quanah’s colored population that the Tribune-Chief contained a request from the government that every man past sixty should report as an applicant for an old age pension” that soon had “every elderly negro in town” cramming into Tribune-Chief‘s offices. It was proof positive that African-Americans, who had been depicted in the paper as “partly civilized” and unable to observe “laws made by and for white people,” were clearly already scheming to tap into the programs.
democracy's problem
In a 1934 editorial titled “Democracy’s Problem” [archive.is/eSoSJ], Harry rejected “mobocracy,” which had “been discarded as undesirable, even if attainable.” Mobocracy was the right’s popular name for “tyranny of the majority,” and remains a favorite whipping horse of Koch-funded libertarians, who increasingly promote the idea that America is not a democracy and was never intended to be one. Here’s Steve H. Hanke, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, writing in a 2011 editorial: “Contrary to what propaganda has led the public to believe, America’s Founding Fathers were skeptical and anxious about democracy. They were aware of the evils that accompany a tyranny of the majority. The Framers of the Constitution went to great lengths to ensure that the federal government was not based on the will of the majority and was not, therefore, democratic.”
Following NAM’s lead, which had described government programs like social security as the “ultimate socialistic control of life and industry,” the Tribune-Chief kept upping the Communist threat all through the 1930s. He equated all proposals to tax the rich and help the less fortunate with a slippery slope to a Bolshevik takeover of the United States, and joined up with the rest of the country’s pro-business press to smear Democratic Senator Huey Long, a wildly popular freshman from Louisiana and presidential contender who could threaten FDR from the left wing of his own party. Violent editorials constantly appeared in the Tribune-Chief, pegging Long as a covert Bolshevik for his “Share Our Wealth” program, which sought to put a cap on net worth and set up a comprehensive welfare system. After the Senator was shot and killed by a lone assassin in 1935, Koch issued a tacit endorsement of the murder, remarking that it was “not unexpected.”
But the constant fear mongering and red baiting was just another calculated public relations technique, used selectively against political enemies.
What few of his readers knew was that at the same time Harry screamed about the Red Menace, his youngest son, Fredrick C. Koch, was in the Soviet Union working for the Bolsheviks, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure. Fred even hosted a delegation of Soviet planners in his company headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. Fred’s Soviet contract to build 15 refineries personally netted him $500,000, a huge sum of money in the 1930s, but he continued his father’s cynical red menace attack strategy, and took it to a whole new level after he became one of the founders of the far-rightwing John Birch Society, which tried to convince the American people that unions, colored people, Jews, homosexuals, President Kennedy and even Dwight D. Eisenhower were all Soviet agents plotting to overthrow the U.S. through higher taxes and safety net programs. [end excerpt]
---
* "The Makhno Myth: Anarchists in the Russian Revolution" (2007-05, isreview.org) [archive.is/OhOC] modified slightly to include footnotes within the text [begin excerpt]:
STARTING IN the 1970s, a new consensus emerged among serious scholars of the Russian Revolution. Instead of seeing the rise of Stalinism as the predetermined outcome of Leninism or workers’ power, “revisionist” historians looked instead to the devastating effects of civil war and international isolation. They discovered that the early years of the workers’ state were far more complicated and rich than the standard right-wing inevitable-march-to-totalitarianism version. In its broad outlines, their work confirmed that material conditions, rather than Bolshevik original sin, transformed a mass, popular revolution into its opposite, Stalinism.
However, anarchists continue to maintain that the degeneration of the Russian Revolution was the inevitable result of the Bolsheviks’ authoritarianism. According to their narrative, once in power via a devious coup, the Bolsheviks wasted no time in destroying their opponents, in particular, the anarchists, whom they saw as a threat to their “statist” desires. Anarchists point chiefly to the example of anarchist Nestor Makhno and the Makhnovists in the Ukraine as a positive example of a libertarian alternative to Leninism. [...]
When occupying cities or towns, Makhno’s troops would post notices on walls that read:
"This Army does not serve any political party, any power, any dictatorship. On the contrary, it seeks to free the region of all political power, of all dictatorship. It strives to protect the freedom of action, the free life of the workers against all exploitation and domination. The Makhno Army does not therefore represent any authority. It will not subject anyone to any obligation whatsoever. Its role is confined to defending the freedom of the workers. The freedom of the peasants and the workers belongs to themselves, and should not suffer any restriction."
But left in control of territory that they wanted to secure, the Makhnovists ended up forming what most would call a state. The Makhnovists set monetary policy. From a Makhnovist bulletin: “Soviet and Ukranian currencies are to have the same value as other currencies. Those who violate this disposition are to be liable to revolutionary sanction [i.e., execution].”
They regulated the press. Alexander Skirda recounts one case of a Bolshevik paper being repressed because it was critical of the Makhnovists, in "Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine, 1918–1921" pg. 92. Malet reprints the full order, including the army’s right of censorship on military reports, in "Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War" pg. 176.
They redistributed land according to specific laws they passed.
They organized regional legislative conferences. These bodies supposedly had no decision-making authority. They were only allowed to carry out the congress’s decisions. In the fast moving situation of the civil war, it seems certain that these bodies had to make decisions in the light of changing circumstance. Regardless, one “congress of the front” in early 1919 passed a set of regulations on military organization. According to Skirda, “All detachments refusing to acknowledge its authority were to be disarmed and their commanders brought before a general tribunal of the insurgents.”
They controlled armed detachments to enforce their policies. Malet writes, “Despite assurances that the town commandants did not interfere in the civil life of their cities, they did have a lot of power. Klein at Olexandrivske complained that all he did was sit at a desk and sign bits of paper, while Lashkevich at Katerynoslav threatened to shoot the local Bolsheviks if they tried to take over civilian power in the city. Skaladytsky in Nykopil ordered that anyone who did not allow free exchange of the various currencies would be dealt with as a counter-revolutionary”.
To combat epidemics, they promulgated mandatory standards of cleanliness for the public health. Malet describes how, responding to a typhus epidemic, they had to “threaten punishment to all who did not keep their places clean.”
Except for the Makhnovists, parties were banned from organizing for election to regional bodies.
They banned authority with which they disagreed to “prevent those hostile to our political ideas from establishing themselves.”
They delegated broad authority to a “Regional Military-Revolutionary Council of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents.” The Makhnovists used their military authority to suppress rival political ideas and organizations. From a Makhnovist bulletin: “…the cultivation, organization and erection by constraints on their part of any political authority hostile to the laboring people—which has nothing to do with the free expression of ideas—will in no ways be tolerated by the revolutionary insurgents.” Makhno’s supporters point to his allowing the freedom of the press. At various points, Bolsheviks and others were allowed to publish newspapers, but if they advocated specific policies with which the anarchists disagreed, they would be shut down. Whether one thinks this is valid is less important then recognizing that this behavior is “authoritarian” and “statist.”
The anarchist historian Paul Avrich notes, “the Military-Revolutionary Council, acting in conjunction with the Regional Congresses and the local soviets, in effect formed a loose-knit government in the territory surrounding Guliai-Pole.”
[end excerpt]
* "Kontrrazvedka: The story of the Makhnovist intelligence service" (by Vyacheslav Azarov) (.pdf) [http://is.gd/EcQBkT], Study of the Makhnovists' intelligence service during the Russian civil war, the Kontrrazvedka.
* The Nestor Makhno Archive [nestormakhno.info/english] [http://is.gd/lCIlds]
* "The Makhno Movement 1917-1921" (colindarch.info) [archive.is/ZOTdt]
* "Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War" (1982, by M. Malet; Macmillan Press) [begin excerpt]:
One civilian problem which the Makhnovists did not know how to handle at all, for reasons to be shown, was that of money, especially on a large scale and in the towns. Peasants could produce much of the food they needed for themselves, even if the farm gates and machinery deteriorated through lack of spare parts, and there were shortages of basic commodities like salt, paraffin, and matches. They could largely do without money if they had to. A worker, however, must have money before he can buy food. In the chaotic transport conditions of late 1919, regular barter was no answer. In the anarchist society, money would be abolished, but that was not yet. The Makhnovists, elated by their military successes, felt the third revolution was just round the corner, and so their attitude to the workers' sufferings was rather cavalier.
The problem of inflation became worse as the civil war progressed, and more and more paper money was issued by the various contenders for power in nominal settlement of their debts. It is not certain whether Makhno printed any: one account suggests that he did so, stating on the back that no-one would be prosecuted for forging it! This would certainly be in character: it was the usual practice-rather tiresome for the ordinary inhabitants-for each regime to declare illegal all currencies except its own, but Makhno was an exception. A proclamation at Nykopil said that 'Cash and credit notes - Romanov, Kerenski, Soviet, Ukrainian, Duma, Don - coupons of all sorts, are exchangeable. Those guilty of not fulfilling this order will be treated as counter-revolutionaries'.
This was put into practice, as the contributions levied on the bourgeoisies of Olexandrivske, Katerynoslav, Berdyansk and Nykopil were paid in all types of money. Bolsheviks point out that Makhno helped himself also to whatever was in the banks, especially in Katerynoslav. Volin summed up the Makhnovist and anarchist attitudes, and their blissful ignorance of their effect on the workers, particularly the vicious cruelty of high-rate inflation, when he averred: 'Should the people not really decide the financial question, since they possess such huge amounts of notes?'
Despite this, there was preference in what the Makhnovists gave out, if not what they took in. Currency values fluctuated wildly with the military fortunes of the issuing authority: thus, towards the end of the occupation of Katerynoslav, the rating of Soviet money improved in expectation of the return of the Red Army. However, for most of the occupation RVS policy was to hand out Soviet money when Don-Denikin money was appreciating.
There are no estimates for money given out by the insurgents in Olexandrivske; figures for Katerynoslav vary between 3 and 10 million roubles. Even given the prevailing rate of inflation, the former figure would feed 4000 families for a month. Something like a department of Social Security was set up, although their contemporary counterparts might balk at the comparison. The recipients -mainly poor local people, released prisoners, families of Red Army men -were let in one at a time, their passports scrutinised, extent of the need asked, the grant decided: this, and the name of the applicant were written down, and the money handed over from a pile on the floor, no receipt being asked for. Women, widows of workers and others in pressing need could receive up to 1000 roubles: a typical amount might be 500 roubles, which would certainly keep the wolf from the door for up to three weeks.
A large amount of food, including flour, salt, and sausage was also disbursed: the handout continued right up to the last day of the occupation. On the other side of the coin, a confiscation order was made against all the Katerynoslav pawnshops, presumably on the grounds that their owners were fleecing the holders of pledges. The order was reversed after a general outcry led by the Bolshevik paper `Star'. The Makhnovists had simply forgotten that the poor holders would be worst affected of all by the order. Nor did the Makhnovists attempt to control prices. White bread, 18-20 roubles under Denikin, rose to 25 under Makhno, down to 12-16 under the Soviet regime - but these are Soviet figures.
If the Makhnovists helped to create confusion by their attitude to finance, they also alleviated it by generous grants to those in need, with a minimum of red tape, something few other administrations then or since can boast of. Whether such a policy was viable in the longer term is a completely different question. [end excerpt]
The note is stamped with a proclamation stating that death will come to those who don't accept this money. Signed: First Revolutionary Army of Ukraine.
* "Nestor Makhno- My Visit To The Kremlin" pamphlet review [http://is.gd/ox9epN], pamphlet cover image [archive.is/t2ECl]: When the Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine in January 1918 they were assisted by the anarchist forces of Nestor Makhno (1888 – 1934). However, In March 1918, the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which as well as ending hostilities with the central powers also ordered the surrender of large amounts of territory (including Ukraine).
In April 1918 a conference of Ukrainian anarchists delegated Makhno to travel to Russia to contact other anarchist groups and determine the Bolsheviks’ attitude towards anarchist activity in Ukraine .
Following a harrowing 2 month journey Makhno arrived in Moscow at the beginning of June, and met with leading anarchists and representatives of other political factions. Makhno was impatient with the attitude he encountered in Moscow . He felt that much revolutionary work remained to be done in Ukraine, where the old order still held sway. He wrote of the ‘paper revolution’ of the Russian intellectuals as opposed to the vigorous anarchist movement he expected to evolve in Ukraine.
In Moscow Makhno was able to meet with two leading Bolsheviks:
- Yakov Sverdlov (1885 — 1919), chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets (technically the head of the Soviet state) and General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party.
- V.I. Lenin (1870 – 1924), Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and Leader of the Bolshevik Party.
This is Makhno’s account of these meetings.
Makhno did not meet Trotsky during his stay in Moscow, as Trotsky was too busy working on the organisation of the Red Army.
The Bolsheviks ensured Makhno’s safe return to Ukraine, hoping that he would work as an agent for them, but they were opposed to any form Ukrainian autonomy, and Makhno’s activities were deemed counterrevolutionary.
* "After Makhno (Hidden histories of Anarchism in the Ukraine)" pamphlet review [archive.is/A9Cve]: Nestor Makhno, the great Ukranian anarchist peasant rebel escaped over the border to Romania in August 1921. He would never return, but the struggle between Makhnovists and Bolsheviks carried on until the mid-1920s. In the cities, too, underground anarchist networks kept alive the idea of stateless socialism and opposition to the party state.
New research printed here shows the extent of anarchist opposition to Bolshevik rule in the Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s.
* "Memories of a Makhnovist Partisan" (by Ossip Tsebry) [http://is.gd/nqntmw]
---
* "Onward to the Shining Future: War Chronicles" (1939, directed by Dmitry Babichenko) [www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWLsQWENlDY]. The story of the invasion of Russia, during the revolution, by foreign troops from the United States, Canada, the U.K., Japan, Czechoslavakia and Poland. Original sound in poor condition and had to be restored.
---
* "Review of Grover Furr’s 'Khrushchev Lied' " (2014-01-12, theredphoenixapl.org) [archive.is/YMmTT]
* "Khrushchev Lied, But What Is the Truth?" (2011-11-23, mltoday.com) [archive.is/UiZML], with a response by Prof. Grover Furr to this critical review of his book [archive.is/M8Qvx].
* "The Lie of the 'Lenin Testament' " (1994, by Hari Kumar) [archive.is/YKBqN]
* "The Forgery of the 'Lenin Testament' " (by V.A. Sakharov) [archive.is/adSyq]
* "Trotsky - Nazi Capitalist Thug (documental proof)" debate with source materials for and against the headlined assertion [archive.is/0YpfO]
---
* "People's Leaders of Nations" (1950, People's Republic of China), a poster honoring Communist heads of state, heads of government, and party leaders from all over the world.Listed top to bottom:
1st row: Joseph Stalin (USSR) and Mao Zedong (China)
2nd row: Maurice Thorez (France), Palmiro Togliatti (Italy), Kim Il-Sung (DPRK), Bolesław Bierut (Poland), and Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam).
3rd row: Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (Romania), Valko Velev Chervenkov (Bulgaria), Klement Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Mátyás Rákosi (Hungary), and Wilhelm Pieck (DDR).
4th row: William Edward Foster (United States), Kyuichi Tokuda (Japan), Enver Hoxha (Albania), and Khorloogiin Choibalsan (Mongolia)
5th row: Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez (Spain) and Harry Pollitt (UK).
---
* Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, 1985 calender, USSR:
* 2.2 million Jewish people escaping fascist Europe, most of them not communist, were given sanctuary by Stalin, and settled in Uzbekistan. After the War ended in May, 1945, all of them received safe passage for a return home. The Committee for the Study of History & the Current Context has a page with newspaper articles and photos from 1941 to 45 documenting this. Yet, many are lead to believe Stalin and the USSR were "anti-jewish"... Stalin's "anti-Semitism" had more to do with the struggle against fascist Zionism which, as a movement, was lead by anti-Communists who were against atheism and the assimilationist tendencies of international socialism. The following article [archive.is/erXXW] shows documentation about a particular financial figure, and staunch Zionist, funding Hitler in the years before he becomes dictator... Why? To Protect Private Property from the Communists, in the context of world capitalism's support for the Holocaust, to be rid of the "curse of jewish communists" or whatever else they said to eachother behind closed doors.---
* "What the untold Soviet history of “Red Africa” reveals about the racism of modern Russia" (2016-03-04, newstatesman.com) [archive.is/0Btvw] [begin excerpt]: But there was once a time when Russia was ahead of the rest of the world in welcoming migrants, and its attitude towards Africans and African Americans. Overshadowed by the Western preoccupation with the Cold War in Europe, the USSR’s relationship with Africa is a forgotten piece of Soviet history.
“Four or five thousand black people came in the Twenties and Thirties to the Soviet Union per year,” he adds. “A number of them stayed because they were equal citizens and they had equal rights, which they didn’t have in the States until the Sixties. The official ideology was really anti-racist.”
“The history of the relationship between the Second World – the Soviet bloc – and Third World has been forgotten or downplayed over the last 20 plus years,” says Moscow-born artist Yevgeniy Fiks, whose latest project focuses on the depiction of Africans and African Americans in Soviet propaganda.
“Unfortunately, the last two decades have seen a process of slowly undoing whatever had been achieved. It looks like a sense of solidarity among peoples is crumbling and prejudice and intolerance are creeping in [in Russia].” [end excerpt]
---
North Korean poster featuring a North Korean revolutionary, backed by comrades from the Third World, striking down the American imperialists from the Korean peninsula.
On this anniversary, people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea look back upon the tireless efforts
President Kim Il Sung made to enforce the historic agrarian reform in the country after Korea's liberation from the Japanese colonial rule.
He set the agrarian reform as the first task for overall democratic reforms in the liberated country so as to put an end to the outdated feudal land ownership and satisfy the peasants' cherished desire for their own land.
To that effect, he visited local areas, including Taedong County, South Phyongan Province, to acquaint himself in detail with actual situation of rural communities. During the visits, he pondered over the objects of land confiscation and the way of land confiscation and distribution, hardening his determination to abolish the tenant-farming system for good.
On March 5, Juche 35 (1946), he promulgated the "Law on Agrarian Reform in North Korea" to meet the Korean peasants' cherished desire to do farming on their own land.
The reform was successfully carried out in nearly 20 days since the law was promulgated. The land, owned by Japanese imperialists and pro-Japanese elements including traitors and landlords, were confiscated and distributed to peasant households free of charge.
Later, he took a measure to turn the household farming into socialist cooperative.
He made public the celebrated work "Theses on the Socialist Rural Question in Our Country", which deals with all problems arising in successfully building socialist rural communities in the country. He also created the Juche farming method, which is suitable to geographical conditions of Korea.
His feats performed to settle the socialist rural question had been creditably carried forward by leader Kim Jong Il.
Thanks to Kim Jong Il's wise guidance, cultivated lands in Kangwon, North and South Phyongan and South Hwanghae provinces and Pyongyang City were readjusted as large-standardized fields.
Kaechon-Lake Thaesong and Paekma-Cholsan waterways, the biggest ones in the country, were splendidly built as edifices in the Songun (military-first) era.
---
* "Germ Warfare Atrocities Committed by U.S. Imperialists in Korea, part 3: U.S. Germ Warfare Atrocities Condemned Worldwide" (2016-03-05, rodong.rep.kp) [archive.is/Kjugv]: The germ warfare atrocities committed by U.S. imperialists during the Korean War lashed world people into great fury and aroused their indignation.
The DPRK issued a government statement and reports exposing the germ warfare atrocities committed by the U.S. imperialists in Korea and calling for severely punishing them according to the international law.
1952, personages of international organizations and bodies including the fact-finding team of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a delegation of the World Peace Council came to Korea to find out the real facts.
They toured different parts of the northern half of Korea to investigate germ warfare atrocities committed by the U.S. imperialists and their damage and published reports on results of the investigation.
The fact-finding teams of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the international scientists in their reports clarified that they confirmed on the spots the U.S. had used unethical bio-chemical weapons in Korea in wanton violation of the international law.
The World Peace Council in its appeal said that the U.S. germ warfare atrocities were heinous crimes equivalent to casualties of the U.S. nuclear bombing on Hiroshima which killed hundreds of thousands of people in a moment.
An international democratic body scathingly lashed out at the U.S. brutalities, saying that its misdeeds were all crimes from their planning to beginning and practicing.
Meanwhile, voices protesting against the U.S. use of germ weapons grew stronger in the then Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Vietnam, India, Italy, France, Britain, Australia and many other countries.
Protest rallies took place in all parts of the world and governments, political parties and organizations and personages of many countries sent written protests, statements and letters to the United Nations and other international bodies to express their surging wrath.
World progressive media also carried articles and statements condemning the U.S. germ warfare atrocities and calling for punishing them.
But the U.S., heedless of the worldwide protests and denunciation, continuously committed horrible germ warfare atrocities even after the ceasefire.
Various kinds of viruses greatly menacing the destiny of mankind today are not the autogenetic ones but biological weapons of mass destruction the U.S. made in a bid to realize its ambition of world hegemony.
After the ceasefire, the U.S. turned south Korea into a test ground of germ weapons, a test base of living bodies and committed such criminal acts as using south Koreans as guinea-pigs of bio-chemical weapons while introducing and stockpiling them in S. Korea in collusion with the s. Korean puppet group.
A large number of south Korean inhabitants died from the aftereffects of their tests. Typical instances of them were cases of virulent diseases that broke out in north and south Kyongsang provinces and North Jolla Province in 1980, 1981 and 1984.
Last year, it was disclosed that the U.S. secretly introduced active anthrax germ known as "white powder of horror" and “weapon of devil” into S. Korea and made their experiments, sparking off towering resentment from the Korean nation and the world people.
The above facts are no more than a chip of the U.S. atrocities.
Besides, countless are bio-chemical warfare atrocities the U.S. has perpetrated in south Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world.
The world people should turn out in the struggle to punish the U.S. imperialists, the mastermind of bio-chemical warfare and the most heinous enemy of mankind, and turn the world into a peaceful and stable one where there is no aggression and war.
* "Germ Warfare Waged by US during Korean War" part 3 (2016-02-14, kcna.co.jp) [archive.is/HYCy6]: The U.S. use of germ weapons in the 1950-1953 Korean War had lashed the whole world into great fury.
At that time, the protest against the U.S. germ warfare was growing stronger in the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Vietnam, India, Italy, France, UK, Australia and many other countries and international bodies.
Protest rallies took place one after another and many governments, political parties and organizations and personages of different social standings sent written protests, statements, letters and telegrams to the United Nations and other international bodies to express their surging wrath.
World media carried articles and statements condemning the U.S. germ warfare and calling for punishing the U.S. imperialist cannibals.
In March 1952 the World Peace Council in its appeal said that the U.S. germ warfare was a heinous crime equivalent to the U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima, which killed hundreds of thousands of inhabitants in some seconds.
The world public branded the U.S. barbarians as the enemy of humankind, contending that they far surpassed the Hitler fascists in brutality and inhumanity.
In March 1952 the International Association of Democratic Lawyers' fact-finding team announced a communique on the criminal germ warfare of the U.S. imperialist aggression army and then a "report on the U.S. crimes in Korea" after its two-week investigation.
This report, which involved delegates from various countries and even the U.S. allies taking part in the Korean War, clearly went to prove that the U.S. used germ and chemical weapons in the war in breach of international conventions.
No statue of limitations is applicable to this crime committed by the U.S. in the war.
The U.S. is sure to be brought to the court of history, and anyone attempting to deny or cover up this stark fact will be regarded as the enemy common to humankind.
---
* "Czarism and Revolution: From the Past to the Future of Russia" (1931, by Arsene de Goulévitch; translation by N. J. Couriss, published 1962): The author served with the Air Force in the Russian White Army in 1918, was imprisoned by the Gestapo in France during the German occupation, and founded the Freedom International, the catalyser of anti-communist elements on both sides of the Iron Curtain in 1947. Originally printed in French in 1931, and translated by N. J. Couriss, this book found readership among the far right and emigré communities for its anti-communist, pro-czarist stance.
---
* "Oil in the East Stirs Hornet's Nest Anew; France, Imperialistic, Militaristic, Seeks to Subjugate Syria in Absolute Violation of Every Pledge Made by the Allies" (1921-12-10, by George D. Herron, for the Dearborn Independent newspaper, published by Henry Ford):
Professor Herron is an American publicist of wide repute. Throughout the war he was the confidential agent of our State Department. Later he was attached tot he American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. Profoundly disappointed by the results of the Paris Conference, he has exposed its blunders and betrayals in "The Greater War," his latest book.
STAGED and managed by the Parisian Junta. and as pitiless as it is cynical, the devil's lewd comedy of nations continues. Today, it is in Silesia the chief scene is laid. The officer in charge of the British troops resigned his command rather than participate in what was really the French subjugation of German Silesia under the ostensible expedition of Korfanty [archive.is/LLZ5r]. Tomorrow, the scene will be laid in Asia Minor. And no man can today tell how vast the scene will be—how terrible a tragedy to Asian peoples may be enacted. The policy of Britain has been to separate the Arabs from the Turks, and to keep the Arab race under British protection. Incidentally, the road to India is in question; but fundamentally, it is a question of oil. Britain is in Mesopotamia and Persia and Palestine for oil. The Arab Kingdom of Irak (Mesopotamia), the Zionist Commonwealth in Palestine, the Independence of Persia - each of these is sheerest fiction. No such thing as a Zionist Commonwealth or a Jewish State exists; no such thing as an Arab Kingdom exists; no such thing as an independent Persia exists.
Again, the French occupation of Syria is involved. And nothing more flagrant, more savage or shameless, has grown out of the war than this French seizure of Syria. Nothing has been more rooted or organized in lies than the Syrian conquest - for it was a conquest, in absolute violation of every pledge made by the Allies.
The Exploitation of Syria -
I KNOW the people of Syria. I have been among them oh foot and on horseback, and as a tent-dweller in the regions beyond Damascus. The Lebanon Syrians are among the most intelligent, beautiful and capable people of the world. I say without hesitation that they are more capable of actual self-government than the citizenry of interior France. I know, more-over, that not a man among them, either Christian or Moslem, unless bought and a traitor to his own people, wanted the unqualified corruption and administrative anarchy inevitably attendant upon French occupation and Jewish exploitation. Yet if now France and England, each of which has been diplomatically fighting the other in Asia Minor, come to an agreement to recognize the Angora Government of Kemal. it will be but a temporary success the two governments thus achieve. The day of the European exploiter of Asia is already near unto its dusk. Its day will soon be done.
Yesterday, it was in Hungary the scene was laid. But the genesis thereof went back to the middle of the war, and to subsequent intrigues reaching from Paris to Berne. One of the managers of the recent Hungarian scene was a Hapsburg agent in Switzerland in 1918. And, though France and Austro-Hungary were at war, this Magyar magnate was persona grata at Paris, and traveled back and forth with the freedom of a French diplomatic agent. The next preparation for the Hungarian scene was the presence of Bela Kun in Budapest. English and American workers are still obsessed by the notion that Bela Kun represented an uprising of Hungarian Socialists. He rep-resented nothing of the kind—for by his regime the Socialists were exiled, imprisoned, or assassinated. Not by Hungarian Socialists, but by agents of Parisian concessionnaires accompanying the French Army of Occupation, was Bela Kun placed in power. It was Paris that kept Bela Kun in Budapest for so long a time, despite the protests of Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia and Rumania; and the fabled Soviet regime, deluding Hungarian workers as it did, was a French preparation, first for rich concessions in the Banat, and then for a French conducted return of the Hapsburgs.
France Wants Hapsburgs -
THE knowledge that France has steadily intrigued for the Hapsburg return, that she heavily financed the restoration of Charles, is now public property in Europe—just as it is public property that she is financing the Wittelsbach propaganda in Bavaria. with a view, to dividing Germany and establishing a South German power under virtual French protectorate. The French munition factories have worked day and night to supply the war materials with which the boundaries of Hungary are now bursting. Whence Hungary is a French barracks, a French military satrapy, where new wars are preparing : where, also, needy Hungarian magnates, lapping gold from French hands, have been preparing the way of King Charles. So Charles stole from Lake Geneva to Strasburg - a French city, remember... Whence French agents started him on his way to Budapest, Charles naively blurted the truth to Admiral Horthy: "I came here with M. Briand's knowledge and consent, he had proposed to me that I should make a fait accompli, which Europe would accept." Yet all did not fall out as was planned. Even with Hungary as a French protectorate, both domestic opposition and foreign obstruction unexpectedly balked the Hapsburg adventure. The able Hungarian Socialists - whose ranks were first decimated by the Bolshevists and then by Admiral Horthy - suddenly manifested a voice and a vigor not predicated by the agents of the French Government. Again, the resolution of Italy to fight rather than consent to a Hapsburg restoration, together with the resolute action of the British High Commissioner in Budapest and the ultimatum of the Little Entente, arrested the Franco-Hapsburgian march. Moreover, Admiral Horthy, even if subsidized by France, manifested sudden royal ambitions of his own that cooled his ardor for Charles. Came now the climax of the fiasco. From Paris went abroad the news that France was unalterably opposed to a Hapsburg restoration! Yet, even so, the opposition was tempered with qualifications. The first was the anxiety of France - an anxiety widely advertised - as to vast quantities of munitions left in Hungary by the Germans. (The munitions shipped from France suddenly became the munitions left by Von Mackensen's Army!) Next, there was the greater French anxiety lest an English prince be placed upon the throne of Saint Stephen. Third, was the French fear that Italian intrigues in Hungary would result in new dissensions in the Balkans - though these dissensions as everyone familiar with the European situation knows, were the creation of diligent Balkanese agents whom France had subsidized. Finally, though Charles started to Budapest from a French city, where he was indirectly commissioned by the agents of the French Foreign Office, the world was informed - and especially was America informed - of how Hungary was saved from the Hapsburgs by the instant and fervent intervention of France, true to her "historic mission to preserve public order in Europe!"
Always Demands Spotlight -
THE Hungarian scene was precisely the same as that displayed before the international public at the time of the Polish invasion of Russia. When Pilsudski's armies had reached Kief, it was France, so Paris proclaimed abroad, that had alone championed the Polish cause; France that had supplied and trained the Polish armies; France that had accomplished the near overthrow of Moscow; France that thus deserved the gratitude of "the great democracies, America and England." But when the marauding Poles were hurled back to Warsaw, and during the days when the fate of Poland was in the balance, then the news went forth from Paris that it was France that had steadfastly protested against the Polish adventure, and that the peril of Poland was now due to the refusal of Warsaw to listen to the French military advisers as well as to the French Government. But, lo! when the Russians were turned back, and the Poles had their 'French peace, it was again France - and France acting alone - that had saved Poland - had indeed saved Europe - from the Red armies; and Pilsudski had all along acted under orders from Paris.
THE Hungarian scene was precisely the same as that displayed before the international public at the time of the Polish invasion of Russia. When Pilsudski's armies had reached Kief, it was France, so Paris proclaimed abroad, that had alone championed the Polish cause; France that had supplied and trained the Polish armies; France that had accomplished the near overthrow of Moscow; France that thus deserved the gratitude of "the great democracies, America and England." But when the marauding Poles were hurled back to Warsaw, and during the days when the fate of Poland was in the balance, then the news went forth from Paris that it was France that had steadfastly protested against the Polish adventure, and that the peril of Poland was now due to the refusal of Warsaw to listen to the French military advisers as well as to the French Government. But, lo! when the Russians were turned back, and the Poles had their 'French peace, it was again France - and France acting alone - that had saved Poland - had indeed saved Europe - from the Red armies; and Pilsudski had all along acted under orders from Paris.
Meanwhile, France ever higher and more brazenly builds her besotted "reparations" figures. And her juggling is not confined to the astronomical sums demanded from Germany. It is illustrated by every French presentation to the world - never more aptly than in M. Stephen Lauzanne's article in the North American Review. He tells his American readers of the vast increase in amounts paid to Germany's public servants, as compared with the number of public servants and the amounts paid under the Empire - confirming Napoleon's adage that nothing lies like the truth. The immense increase in the German public service is due, as M. Lauzanne perfectly well knew, to the fact that Germany is now a Socialist state in process of evolution. The workers who were employed by industrial owners under the Empire are now to a considerable extent employees of the state. What was private industry under the Empire is now public. Every coal miner of Germany, for instance, is now in the way of becoming a public servant. And from all this socialization comes, in large part, the increase of which M. Lauzanne speaks. Again he names the increased quantity of champagne bought and consumed in Germany. But he does not tell you how largely this champagne is bought and consumed by foreigners, and especially by officers of the Army of Occupation. He also tells the phenomenal increase in the amount of betting at the Berlin races. He does not tell you - though it is a notorious ' fact - of how greatly this betting is by the foreigners crowding Berlin, and of how the gambling and luxury of these foreigners is sorely deplored by the Germans themselves.
Profiteering and Restoration -
NOR does M. Lauzanne tell you what the better French publicists all declare, how large a part of the money ostensibly used for the devastated regions has passed into the hands of contractors, some of whom have as yet no restorations to show to their credit. Nor does he tell you that, over and over again, Germany has offered to restore by her own labor and materials the devastated regions, and put them in more perfect order than that which prevailed before the war. And that, furthermore, the French Union of Contractors, or Constructors - of which union M. Loucheur, the French Minister of Finance, is a member - has steadily fought the German restoration of France - because it would interfere with their own profits. In other words, these restorations, which would give back their homes and farms to hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen, are refused in the interest of French profiteers. French peoples of the devastated regions are sacrificed, are deprived of their homes, in order that the French contractors may add peace-profits to war-profits. Such is the quality of French figures, such the quality of French truth, wherever and whenever, it today officially appears.
NOR does M. Lauzanne tell you what the better French publicists all declare, how large a part of the money ostensibly used for the devastated regions has passed into the hands of contractors, some of whom have as yet no restorations to show to their credit. Nor does he tell you that, over and over again, Germany has offered to restore by her own labor and materials the devastated regions, and put them in more perfect order than that which prevailed before the war. And that, furthermore, the French Union of Contractors, or Constructors - of which union M. Loucheur, the French Minister of Finance, is a member - has steadily fought the German restoration of France - because it would interfere with their own profits. In other words, these restorations, which would give back their homes and farms to hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen, are refused in the interest of French profiteers. French peoples of the devastated regions are sacrificed, are deprived of their homes, in order that the French contractors may add peace-profits to war-profits. Such is the quality of French figures, such the quality of French truth, wherever and whenever, it today officially appears.
So the spiritof France of today is being manifested in innumerable ways - without one spark of magnanimity or decency in international relations; without fidelity to a promise. The diplomacy of loot and lies, the fountain whereof is the Parisian Junta, is now supreme in Europe. Any peace made in Europe under the French domination will be purely a peace of plunder. Even the things which call for some decency, if not chivalry, are not to be found. Take the cynical and brutal violation of the ancient treaties regarding the zones upon which the economic life of Geneva and French Switzerland depend. Or take an instance like the following, furnished me by a publicist of international authority, who was himself Franko-phile during the war. "On the occasion of the exposition at Lyons in 1914, the municipality of that city requested the trustees of the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt to lend the exhibition committee some objects belonging to this collection. With this request they gladly complied and sent to Lyons a considerable number of objects, among them the original portrait of Goethe painted by Colbe, some statues, silhouettes, manuscripts and the original edition of 'Faust' illustrated by Delacroix [archive.is/SPq18]. The Grand Duke of Weimar lent for the same purpose his special set of the great Weimar edition of the works of Goethe. In the meantime the war broke out, and the exhibits were kept back in France. All endeavors on the part of Professor Dr. Heuer, the chief conservator of the Goethe Museum, to get them back through the mediation of neutral savants, proved ineffectual. As a final means. Professor Heuer addressed himself directly to President Millerand, pleading that there are things which ought to be considered as being beyond the strifes of nations, such as relics of great poets and thinkers, like Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe or Moilire. To this President Millerand replied that he had passed the letter on to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Now the news has come from France that the French Government refuses to restore the objects in question. Comment is unnecessary."
Million for Propaganda -
SO THE comedy continues, with French millions spent in an American propaganda, even while France is bankrupt. Yet the France that M. Viviani represented at the White House, the France that is still bestirring American public opinion anew against the dangers of a fabled pro-German propaganda, is the France that is but augmenting the world-ruin which Prussia began. The material devastations of France by the Germans, appalling as they were, are indeed trifling, as far as their evil results are concerned, as compared with the moral devastations of France by the French financiers themselves. And France, moreover, now openly fights - and fights with all the weapons in the arsenal of the powers of evil - for the continued government of the world by fraud and violence. It is the France that stands, as no modern power except Prussia has stood, against every approach of that peace and good will which go forth from Christ for the healing of the nations. [end article]
Under the Ottoman Empire, the name Palestine referred to a geographic region, not to an administrative unit.
* The political divisions of northern Arabia peninsula's Mediterranean Sea coast ("Palestine") under the Ottoman Empire [archive.is/TVhra] [archive.is/XlZxB], and after their partition by the Empires of France and British [archive.is/ksM3A].
* Quote found in "Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict", by Doreen Ingrams, p. 26:
Zionist researchers have shown how the majority of those inhabitants of modern Palestine were workers immigrating to the coast for jobs being afforded under the administration of the British Empire's Mandate of Palestine. Yet, before the immigration mentioned of the 1920s, the land was still a majority Arab and Muslim.
* "Where did the Palestinians of today come from?" [archive.is/Veyvg]
* "The Truth about "Palestinian" Arabs A.K.A. Arab immigrants' children, grand children & the vastly vacant desolate land prior to the rise of Jewish return" [archive.is/77UeZ]
===*===*===
SO THE comedy continues, with French millions spent in an American propaganda, even while France is bankrupt. Yet the France that M. Viviani represented at the White House, the France that is still bestirring American public opinion anew against the dangers of a fabled pro-German propaganda, is the France that is but augmenting the world-ruin which Prussia began. The material devastations of France by the Germans, appalling as they were, are indeed trifling, as far as their evil results are concerned, as compared with the moral devastations of France by the French financiers themselves. And France, moreover, now openly fights - and fights with all the weapons in the arsenal of the powers of evil - for the continued government of the world by fraud and violence. It is the France that stands, as no modern power except Prussia has stood, against every approach of that peace and good will which go forth from Christ for the healing of the nations. [end article]
Under the Ottoman Empire, the name Palestine referred to a geographic region, not to an administrative unit.
* The political divisions of northern Arabia peninsula's Mediterranean Sea coast ("Palestine") under the Ottoman Empire [archive.is/TVhra] [archive.is/XlZxB], and after their partition by the Empires of France and British [archive.is/ksM3A].
* Quote found in "Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict", by Doreen Ingrams, p. 26:
Zionist researchers have shown how the majority of those inhabitants of modern Palestine were workers immigrating to the coast for jobs being afforded under the administration of the British Empire's Mandate of Palestine. Yet, before the immigration mentioned of the 1920s, the land was still a majority Arab and Muslim.* "Where did the Palestinians of today come from?" [archive.is/Veyvg]
* "The Truth about "Palestinian" Arabs A.K.A. Arab immigrants' children, grand children & the vastly vacant desolate land prior to the rise of Jewish return" [archive.is/77UeZ]
amazing thanks for sharing and posting this amazing article .
ReplyDeleteالموقع المفضل لدى ماهر هو موقع al3ab66