Stalinists Call to Rehabilitate Old Bolshevik

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La few columns of news- •I orcea colectvisation print. and ultra left attacks on Nickolai Bukharin was a social democracy interMarxism and a leader of the Bukharin's theories, and 'theory' of 'socialism in one appeared in the third and country' and became assoc- last of the great Moscow of the New Economic embodiment of the violent Policy by calling on the break by Stalin's bureaumore well-off peasants to cracy from all the traditions active opponent of the Left enormous range of preposOpposition led by Leon terous and impossible The Rastafarian movement started in the slums of Kingston where its appeal amongst the poor grew in response te its theme of the black man returning to Africa.

At this time Jamaica was like most of the capitalist world, in the throes of the Great Depression and the Rastafarians offered black Jamaicans dreams of escape from this.

Indeed, Howell, in order to raise finances for an island-wide evangelical campaign sold pictures of Haile Selassie as passports to Africa.

In December 1933 Howell at an open air meeting advocated six principles of Rastafarianism:

1) Hatred of the white race.

2) Complete superiority of the black race.

3) Revenge on whites for their wickedness.

4) Negation, persecution and humiliation of the government and legal bodies of Jamaica.

5) •Prepare to return Africa.

6) Acknowledgement of Emperor Haile Selassie as the Supreme Being and only ruler of black people.

Within weeks of making this speech Howell was arrested and charged with sedition. He was convicted and jailed for two years.

The state then very quickly moved to arrest the forced to continue in secret and on his release from prison Howell established a cult_commune, known as the Pinnacle, in the hills of St. Catherine, overlooking Kingston.

It was during this period in the hills that the smoking of ganja (marijuana) became one of the rituals of the Rastafarians.

Chalice

Biblical references to herbs and weeds were used as the theological basis for adopting this ritual and Rastafarians communally smoked ganja from a pipe (chalice) before meditation or prayer.

The commune was run in the style of the Maroons (slaves who had run away and forced the colonialists to accept their independence from slave society).

Howell took 13 wives and the neighbours were instructed to pay their taxes to the commune and not to the government.

"Dread locks"

At this point the police raided the commune, arresting 70 Rastas, of whom 28 were imprisoned. Howell escaped the raid but was finally caught and given a second two year prison term.

By 1953 the commune was re-established and it is from this period that the Rastafarians began to grow their hair long. movement had developed an extensive set of beliefs, rituals and symbols.

Central to the faith were six basic beliefs.

1) Haile Selassie is the living God.

According to Rastas, Jesus was Haile Selassie transformed into a white man for the Christians. The white God is in fact the devil and Haile Selassie since his death in 1975, lives on in spiritual form.

2) The black person is the reincarnation of Israel who at the hands of the white man has been exiled to Jamaica (Babylon).

"Inferior"

This exile was a punishment by God through the form of slavery. God has long since pardoned the blacks but they are kept in Babylon through the trickery of the whites.

3) Whites are inferior to blacks.

4) Jamaica is a hopeless hell but Ethiopia is heaven.

5) The Emperor of Ethiopia is arranging for the return of the blacks.

6) In the near future the blacks will rule the world.

The Rastafarians also oppose the eating of meat, especially pork, and the drinking of alcohol. They oppose the use of physical violence and the causing of injury to any person.

They also regard the role of women as being subordinate to that of the The appearance in the Italian Stalinist paper Unita on 16 June of an article on. The Bukharin Case' by the historian Paolo Spirano has a political and historical significance out of all proportions to long-standing • member of the Bolshevik: Party, a major theorist and populariser of Russian Revolution.

It was Bukharin during the 1920s who invented the iated with the continuation 'enrich yourselves'.

Bukharin was also an Trotsky, and of their calls for revolutionary internationalism and for the need for a drive to industrialisation.

He thus played a part in the building of the bureaucratic clique under the leadership of Stalin, which after 1928 moved sharply to the left with the policies -f -. 11 nationally.

This bureaucracy then had no further need of abandoned him.

Show trials In March 1938 Bukharin show trials, the literal of Bolshevism.

He confessed' to an crimes including a plot to murder Lenin. He was found guilty and immediately shot.

Though at his trial Bukharin, who had been under arrest for thirteen months, pleaded guilty to everything, as his script no doubt dictated, he denied virtually every detailed charge. aborar He also left a testament' with his widow addressed To Future Generation of Party Leaders' in which he expressed his helplessness before a hellish machine which ... has acquired gigantic power, fabricates organised slander, acts boldy and confidently. The police were now 'a degenerate organisation of bureaucrats, without ideas, rotten, well paid"

In appealing , to future generations to 'sweep the filth from my head' Bukharin concluded with the words, "Know,

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SOCIALIST PRESS, sday 12 July 1978 Wea «The Foundation of the Rastafarian Movement"

This programme proclaimed the Rastafarians as:

... the most advanced, determined and uncompromising fighters against discrimination, ostracism and oppression of Black people in Jamaica., Sovereignty The Rastas, he argued, stood for the recovery of the dignity, self-respect and sovereignty of blacks; against white and brown (half caste) supremacy; against the political, social and economic exploitation of blacks and for a political movement to take power on behalf of the oppressed.

Despite proclaiming that "The Rastafarian is he who will never relinquish the fact that he is an African" the whole political programme was drawn up very much in the context of a black population destined to remain in Jamaica and therefore took as its starting point the need to change the conditions of the blacks within Jamaica itself.

But even at this level Rastafarianism is completely unable to offer a way forward to the Jamaican working class.

Lacking any real grasp of the political forces at work in Jamaican society the Rastas are now being cynically used by the Manley government in its attacks on the Jamaican masses.

The second major contributory factor to the growth of Rastafarianism was the physical destruction of their camps in the slum area of Kingston known as Back O 'Wall. In 1965 gang warfare, mischievously attributed to the Rastafarians, reached a high point.

The government decided to comrades, that on that banner, which you will be carrying in the victorious march to communism, is also my drop of blood"

Rehabilitation

His wife and young son, whose lives were the price that he probably paid for by participation in the show trial, have been fighting for his rehabilitation since 1961 not long after their own release from 20 years in prison camps.

Since that time, A.M.

Larina, Bukharin's widow, and Yuri Larin, his son, have addressed numerous appeals to 'political, legal and other bodies in the Soviet Union. In June 1977 there was finally a reply from an official of the Communist Party Central Committee who said that the charges still stood.

Following this, in March 1978, Yuri Larn adaressea - -- 11.a letter to Italian Communist Party General Secretary Berlinguer calling for him to support his father's rehabiliation. The Unita article of 16 June is perhaps a reply.

This is an important event, a confirmation of the battle of Trotskyists over three generations now to expose the lies and falsifications of the Stalinist Roots of terror However, the rehabilitation has not been made, and the campaign will not be complete until it goes to the roots of the terror directed against the Russian Revolution and particularly against the one person who fought to keep alive in the most nightmarish period the Black youth in Jamaica bulldoze to the ground three Rasta camps. The inhabitants who barely had time to save themselves from the bulldozers, lost everything-their homes, and what few possessions they had.

Forced out of the shanty towns they dispersed throughout the island, taking their dubious theology with them.

A year later on April 21 1966, a further impetus to the Rastafarian movement came with the visit to Jamaica of Haile Selassie ("the day Jah come").

His visit had nothing to do with the Rastas but 100,000 of them took over the welcoming celebrations at the airport and the government was forced to invite leading Rastas to the official reception at Government House. : *CA Bukharın traditions and ideas of that Revolution-Leon Trotsky.

During the monstrous trial of Bukharin, British Communist Party General Secretary Harry Pollitt wrote that it represented a "new triumph in the history of progress". Shortly afterwards; Jack Lindsay, who still contributes marginal notes to the Morning Star, wrote a letter to Tribune of 18 March 1938 hailing the trials as showing 'the power of the masses' over 'individualistic minds'.

Since Kruschev's 'secret' speech to the 20th Soviet CP Congress in February 1956 it is no longer necessary for Stalinists to maintain such outrageous opinions as these. Many of April 21 Holy Day.

In talks with leading Rastas Haile Selassie is reported to have said that they should not seek emigration to Ethiopia until they had liberated the people of Jamaica.

Since that period the slogan of the Rastafarians has been "Liberation before Migration" and this, has inevitably strengthened the political side of Rastafarian activity.

The Rasta movement has always comprised numerous sects and has never taken the form of a united movement with nationally acknowledged leader.

Consequently some of the purely religious groupBukharin's co-defendants have now been rehabilitated and it is possible to be a perfectly respectable Stalinist scoundrel of the ilk of Monty Johnstone and protest against 'mistakes' and the cult of personality' But what lies at the root of the murder of Bukharin?

Why was Bukharin but one of the whole generation of old Bolsheviks murdered, humiliated or driven to silence?

What social forces lay behind this terror system?

Why was the chief defendant always none other than Leon Trotsky, who was devoting his energies to settng up the Fourth International to take up the revolutionary struggle ings 'shun political activity and live • in the hills, immersed in religious ritual while other Rastafarian groups concentrate on pursuing political, social and cultural functions within Jamaican society and are particularly identified with radical politics.

The continuing popularity of Rastafarianism amongst young blacks today can be: attributed to the extreme poverty of the mass of black Jamaicans and the militant stance taken up by many of the top reggae singers who associate with the more political wing of Rastafarianism.

Reggae singers like Bob Marley built their reputations with songs whose themes were as much about revolution, social inequality and fighting for equal rights and justice as about Babylon, Africa and Black Star Liners.

"Rod of Such was the force of the Rastafarian movement that PNP leader Manley, on returning from Ethiopia with an ornamental rod presented by Haile Selassie, took what he called "this rod of correction" with him throughout his 1971 election campaign. The PNP won the election:

Manley subsequently expressed sympathy towards: the Rastafarians and in an attempt to head off growing militancy amongst the Jamaican poor, he adopted an increasingly left wing stance-in particular concerning relations with Cuba.

In the 1976 elections, prior to which the CIA and the JLP conducted a "destabilisation" campaign in an attempt to depose the left-talking Manley, the PNP won its biggest ever majority.

Since then Manley has replaced left talk with acceptance of IMF loan Stalin against the Stalinist cracy?

No Stalinist can answer these questions or ever will.

Spiranotakes up the 'case of Bukharin' in Italy at a time when the CP is in open alliance with the Christian Democrats in opposition to wage increases and democratic rights let alone revolutionary struggle.

A paper which openly takes part in the defence of capitalist 'order' can never fight against the degeneration of socialism in the international workers' movement.

Bukharin was the only other oppositionist of the 1930s besides Trotsky to build up an international following, a movement.

Supporters of the 'right opposition' were fairly numerous for a time in Germany and Lovestone in the United States kept a Bukharinite organisation going into the 1940s betore becoming a functionary of American imperialism-The International Trade Union Movement.

Although these moveconditions including wage controls and enormous price increases on basic items.

And the Rastafarians and reggae. stars have been involved by Manley in a campaign of "national unity" to boost production and put an end to the gang warfare that has been a predominant feature of ghetto life in Kingston for so long.

At a recent "peace concert" to celebrate the end of the gang warfare -claimed by the Rastas to be a result of their workslogans adorned the arena calling on Jamaicans to work harder and produce more.

Manley Rastafarians and reggae stars gave their support to "national unity" supposedly symbolised by Manley and opposition leader Seaga shaking hands on stage while Marley sang-not. "Get up, stand up, stana up lot your rights" , but 'One Love"!

The only reggae star to cut across this obscene spectacle was Peter Tosh who berated Manley at length for his failure to bring social justice to the poor.

but according to losh the solution to Jamaica's economic crisis lay in the legalisation of ganja and its Purge victim Rykov ments have long since disappeared, there has been in more recent years a recrudescence of interest in the theory and practice of Bukharin.

Not working The basis for this can partly be seen from the last appeal of Bukharin already quoted. This addresses itself not to the working class, or even to ordinary party members, but to party leaders. In other words, reform, regeneration, opposition to Stalinism can come from within the bureau¡cracy itself.

Thus many of those who pick up Bukharin's case now do so for their own purposes, to emphasise the view that the bureaucracy can be changed. The most rotten, counter-revolutionary bureaucracy in Western Europe, the Italian CP, takes up the cause of Bukharin in part at least to try to revive their own utterly compromised revolutionary traditions, in an effort to convince those around them that no matter sale for export in order to finance social equality.

If the "peace concert" revealed anything at all it was the complete bank= ruptçy of radical Rastafarianism.

'Babylon'-the State of Jamaica-is on a thin wire, the Rastas say. And indeed it is.

The number of killings may well have declined and the political tension that existed prior to the 1976 elections may to a certain extent have evaporated.

But the overwhelming majority of Jamaicans continue to live in grinding poverty under conditions which can only worsen as the world crisis of capitalism deepens and the monopolies launch fresh attacks on the conditions of Jamaican workers.

As workers begin to see clearly the real role of so-called "Democratic Socialist" Manley as a supporter and defender of the capitalist system, many youth may be tempted to turn to Rastafarianism for an answer.

But there can be no solution to the problems confronting workers and peasants in Jamaica in turning to a religious movement which rationalises the oppression of women, whose supporters spend much of their lives in a ganja-induced oblivion and which allows itself to be cynically used by the government in its attacks on the working class on behalf of imperialism.

The fight for a revolutionary party in Jamaica must therefore take place in implacable oppostion to Rastafarianism and everything it stands for.

how bad they seem, this bureaucracy can be 'reformed' The Italian Stalinists take from Bukharin not his good side, his years of propaganda for socialism, his symbolic importance as an old Bolshevik. Instead they take a man broken by a bureaucratic edifice whose first bricks he himself had built.

All efforts for the rehabilitation of Bukharin and every • other victim of Stalin's crimes against the working class must be supported. In the end, however, these crimes will only be avenged by those who fight politically against his counter-revolutionary successors.

The continuity of that struggle is the struggle for Trotskyism, and not for any form of compromise with capitalist exploitation or bureaucratic 'reform'.

By John Docherty

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NDUSTRAL NEWS The continuing strike to save jobs by 45 NUJ. members of the Richmond Herald, Surrey Comet and