A Strategy For Seeking A National Single-Payer Healthcare System That Will Cover Everyone In The United States

A Strategy For Seeking A National Single-Payer Healthcare System That Will Cover 

Everyone  In The United States
by Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW

"Let’s be realistic; let’s do the impossible." 

- Che Guevara 

“The Time is Now.” said Congressman John Conyers to the Healthcare-NOW national strategy meeting, November 12, 2006, in Chicago. Conyers and 60 Healthcare-NOW organizers from 16 states joined in thinking about how to push forward for a single-payer national healthcare system in the United States in a marathon 10-hour strategy session. Healthcare-NOW is a bottom up movement organization, so the strategies evolved throughout the day came from very few speeches and a lot of discussion. Conyers's bill H.R. 676 will provide healthcare for everyone in the United States by eliminating the profits of the insurance companies and negotiating drug and other treatment costs. It will be paid for on a sliding scale by all of us together. We will have no bills, co-payments, deductibles, denials, or bankruptcies. And we will be paying less than we are now.

Conyers told the organizers, “It is a great thing to look back on your life and see the opportunities to make history. It is a wonderful way to live.” He spoke of his first decision to run for Congress as a young lawyer. He won by 128 votes! He has been key to many investigations, impeachments, forward-looking and controversial legislation including the Martin Luther King Holiday, and visionary leadership. Now, as he becomes the leader of the House Judiciary Committee, he will have jurisdiction over many areas, including “bankruptcy.” As we look into the future, bankruptcy hearings will be able to uncover the reasons why 50% of the personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by healthcare crises. Healthcare-NOW can help provide the testimony. That is just one example of why we feel hopeful for this coming period.

The Current System

Some people say, "Why don't they just get a job?" Surprisingly,80% of the people who have no healthcare coverage in the U.S. are in families with jobs, sometimes two and three jobs. 

The healthcare system is probably the most devastating factor in the failure of our economic system, particularly for families. Almost 50 million with no coverage; another 50 million with inadequate coverage; and another 50 million in fear of losing their jobs or their coverage.

But, family budgets are not the only budgets affected:

• Labor unions are no longer able to get raises and better working conditions for workers because their negotiations are virtually all about health benefits; Workers are afraid to move on to better jobs because they might lose what’s left of their benefits and encounter a terrible healthcare crisis in their family;

• Businesses, large and small, are laying off employees, outsourcing jobs, and cutting other investments in the U.S. economy;

• Non-profit organizations , foundations, and faith-based organizations, are hard-pressed to continue their mission at a normal level because of insurance costs for their staffs;

• Doctors and nurses are daily faced with a patchwork system that curtails their responsibility to make good medical decisions and rejects the needs of almost 50 million people every day;

• Children, the elderly and those who are disabled suffer many healthcare denials with even fewer resources than most people.

A New Organizing Strategy

Healthcare-Now believes that we have come to a crossroads, as a nation, on this issue. Our national effort to get universal health care was lost fourteen years ago for many reasons, not the least of which was the stranglehold of the insurance industry in control of the media and the U.S. Congress.

Instead of a healthcare crisis, we have a Greed Crisis. The profits of insurance and pharmaceutical drug companies have multiplied during the same period that people’s healthcare has become less comprehensive and less affordable.

Special Interest money has turned health care into an incredibly profitable business, ranking second only to the military-industrial-congressional complex. Another word for our healthcare crisis might be a "Profiteer Crisis." Over $2 trillion each year is at stake in the healthcare industry. But all of that could be changed fairly quickly if we cut the profits of the profiteers and put that money into real healthcare.

What Is the Difference This Time?

There is a movement building to change the system. Many more people are beginning to realize that our country is at an economic disadvantage under this economic drain. Every other advanced nation in the world has a national health care system for all. Try asking a crowd of people if they know anyone in Europe who doesn’t have health care coverage. Or in Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Malta, Costa Rica, Cuba or dozens of other countries in the world.

Healthcare-NOW has a new set of strategies that can help build on the overwhelming sentiment for universal healthcare nationwide. (65% of the people). We have begun by building a new partnership between:

• faith-based groups—charged by policy and by scripture with the role of caring for the sick;

• doctors whose Hippocratic oath brings them to the campaign for an humane national system,;

• labor unions who have always led this struggle for worker rights and healthcare for all across the world and who know they can not go it alone in the face of this system.

Healthcare-NOW is building a foundation that will lead this effort to build a huge movement, and to secure a healthier and more responsive Congress that will hear our demands in 2007 and 08 and 09 for a single payer national healthcare system. What we want is a privately administered, publicly funded system, an American-style system that provides for people to choose their own private doctors to administer the health care that is needed, without having to seek permission from insurance company clerks whose main interest is profits. Our system would be publicly funded using the same money we are now spending. Everyone would pay less money than we are now paying. (See HR 676 as a basic model for this effort, or our website for a summary).

How Can We Do This? - A Publicly 

Funded/ Privately Administered 

System with Freedom of Choice

Healthcare-NOW is building a movement similar to the movement for voting rights in this country in the 1960's. At the time, we were told that we were moving too fast and demanding too much, that the times were changing and that civil rights would come in due time if we just kept waiting patiently. We refused to wait then and we must refuse to 

wait NOW.

The Economic Case

The U.S. economy is in its worst shape in many years. Oil prices are at the highest level ever. Many people need not apply for healthcare insurance because they are banned – pre-existing conditions and low income level make it impossible.

We are convinced that the success of this campaign could change the economics in this country, that working to cure the healthcare crisis has the possibility of opening up a new deal for our citizens in the health care sector and other sectors if we win this one.

Our plan would not only provide health care for everybody. It is a very conservative plan, and it would save hundreds of billions of dollars. We would move a huge portion of the federal budget into the public sector, providing the opportunity for people to make their own decisions about spending their own money.

Families would have more money in their pockets to spend on their other needs if we passed a single payer healthcare plan. People would have more choices and the economy would flourish with a new infusion of consumer capital and consumer confidence. Our people would be healthier in body and in spirit.

Jobs would be created in the health care industry because there will be almost 100 million more people eligible to receive the health care they need. People who need dental and optical care, mental health care, drug treatment, physical therapy, prescription drugs, and long term care, all of these and more would be covered and we will need healthcare professionals to respond. 

How the goal can be reached

The 30,000 people on the Healthcare-NOW email list probably played a role in electing a “healthier Congress” November 7, 2006. Those who voted for the Healthcare Congress deserve to have a heads-up on what is coming next. We may never have a better possibility of pushing forward for a national healthcare system than right now, during the 

next few months. If not now, when?

1. The bill will be reintroduced in January. We will probably have the same bill number, H.R. 676.

2. Before January, we want you to seek endorsement from all of the new Members of Congress, those whom we’ve signed on during the past 18 months and all others –Republicans, Democrats and Independents, Senators and House Members. Get the Senators to commit to join with others in introducing a companion Senate bill. The task for you is to visit your Members of Congress NOW before the end of the year. Take an influential delegation with you – a labor leader, a doctor or nurse, a faith leader and others;

3. Take Healthcare-NOW’s pamphlet with you so the Members will begin to understand the issue and the solution;

4. Get your City Council, your union, your church, your community group, your peace group -- all to endorse H.R. 676 and to become members of Healthcare-NOW. See ENDORSE on our website.

5. Plan new Public Congressional Hearings on the Healthcare Crisis in your city. We debated the name for these hearings, but the idea is to be creative and to keep the pressure on your member of Congress. We plan to do 1,000 of these hearings including one very large one in New Orleans.

6. Get ready to send postcards and engage in call-in days. We might try to organize these on the 6/7th of each month to make it easy to remember since we are organizing for 676.

7. Plan to create or be involved in one of thousands of events on April 4th or that weekend (the 6th and 7th) in your town. That is the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Healthcare for everybody was a major passion of his. This 40th anniversary will be a day to call attention to his leadership and to assume the responsibility of leadership ourselves.

8. We will do a teach-in in Washington at a pre-arranged date together with major members of Congress.

9. Healthcare-NOW is becoming a membership organization. $25 for individuals and $50 for organizations. Of course we will not turn anyone away, but we really need your commitment to help us escalate this work. Contribute through our website “Donate NOW”.

10. In addition to the positive message “Support H.R. 676,” be sure to challenge any plan that is being proposed by Congress that would add more money to insurance companies’ profits. They make hundreds of billions in profits – It is the biggest factor in denying healthcare for everybody in the United States. We don’t need insurance companies; we just need healthcare. Oppose any Congressional plan that keeps them in control of our healthcare system. Maybe we should have a new slogan or button, “No insurance companies; just health.”

11. The Older Women’s League will be celebrating Mother’s Day next spring with its campaign for H.R. 676. We’ll be able to get their Mother’s Day cards and more of their great materials. We want to do lots of media work. We have a critical message.

Virtually every candidate who was elected had something to say about healthcare. They know that the voters want them to take a stand for healthcare. Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times, “Now, they say, they have to produce – to deal with long-festering problems like access to affordable healthcare, loss of manufacturing jobs, and an exit strategy from Iraq. There is a strong populist tinge to this class.” 

Be in touch with Healthcare-NOW for materials, for contacts in your area, to let us know what you are doing, and to participate on the conference calls with the organizers if you are planning to organize a Community Congressional Hearing on Healthcare. Now is the Time. 

This is the introduction to a series of articles on a A National Single-Payer Healthcare System That Will Cover Everyone In The United States.

The preceding was compiled from information written by Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW. Click here to contact Ms. Clement and Healthcarde-NOW or telephone: 800 453-1305.

Click here to read any of the articles in this special BC series on Single-Payer Healthcare.

The Revolution Will ‘Raise Itself up Again Clashing,’ and to Your Horror It Will Proclaim to the Sound of Trumpets: I Was, I Am, I Shall Be

Rosa Luxemburg: “The Revolution Will ‘Raise Itself up Again Clashing,’ and to Your Horror It Will Proclaim to the Sound
of Trumpets: I Was, I Am, I Shall Be”
 

 Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

 

 

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing...
-Albert Einstein

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-Voltaire

For the worker committed to justice and revolutionary change, desks in private spaces are hard to come by. Work is dome in cramped apartments or in a prison cell. It is done on the run, sometimes underground. For Marxist theorist and activist Rosa Luxemburg, it is done in spite of the bourgeoisie’s interests in maintaining its relationship to the privileged power because it is the work that articulates the demands of the poor and working class that, to this day, represents a subversive activity.

Consequently, when the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) dismissed Rosa Luxemburg’s work, the SPD did so because, as Luxemburg documented in “Social Reform or Revolution” and in “Theory and Practice,” (The Rosa Luxemburg Reader), its leadership had already begun to “revise” Marxism in such a way as to inform the working class that its demands and strategies for protest were either inappropriate or illogical. It is not inappropriate or illogical for the SPD to endorse an imperialist war, however.

The imperialist war and the SPD leadership’s support for it nearly broke Luxemburg. In Germany, conditions for workers and soldiers were grim. Working class families spent 52 percent of their income on food and 33 percent on necessities such as housing, heating, lights and clothing. Whatever was left went to school fees for the children, church, social and intellectual life, health, insurance, debt, and savings” (“Economic and Social Development,” Imperial Germany 1871-1918). [1] By May, 1916, Luxemburg received word that her friend and comrade, Karl Liebknecht, has been arrested:: “I tried with all the might of my fist to “free” him [when he was seized] and I pulled at him and at the policemen all the way to the police station, from which I was unceremoniously expelled” (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Sudende,] May 12, 1916, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg). [2] By August 1916, she was on the verge of suicide (The Reader).

That same month, she decides to organize a meeting in her apartment in opposition to the socialist “capitulation to imperialist war” and worsening conditions for citizens in Germany. Karl Liebknecht, who also opposed the war, (The Reader), joins the group. For this meeting on the evening on August 4th, Luxemburg had one goal: to think about how to disassociate socialism from “the betrayal” of the SPD.

By the end of this meeting, Luxemburg and Liebknecht and others had formed the Die Gruppe Internationale and the Die Internationale journal. It was this crucial event that “helped galvanize antiwar sentiment and led a year later to the formation of Spartacus Group.” Luxemburg breaks from “the political legacy” of the SPD and the editors of Vorwarts and New Zeit. She and Karl Liebknecht, are arrested and imprisoned, but the Die Gruppe Internationale, now the Spartacus League, moves underground and continues to find creative ways in which to wage an “illegal campaign” against the war, distributing pamphlets, many of which were written by an imprisoned Luxemburg.

What I am in favor of, in general, is that things should proceed slowly and thoroughly rather than hastily and superficially. It is an entire process of political schooling that must be gone through by the masses of our people, and that requires time. In such times of transition, patience is the duty of a political person and a leader, even if it is not a pleasant duty. Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Sudende,] March 9, 1916, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg).

With the German Revolution now in full swing by November 1918, enlisted soldiers and masses of workers take to the streets, for the soldiers and workers knew, writes historian Gordon Craig, that “the war had been lost” (Germany 1866 - 1945). Radical workers’ groups emerge in the manufacturing centers of Berlin, Bremen, Braunschweig, Stuttgart, and Hamburg (The Reader); these groups are inspired by the Spartacus Group. While the war continues to drain the country’s resources, more workers form workers’ councils.

In the streets, 300 workers in the Maybach motor construction plant in Friedrichshafen, Wurttemberg chant “‘The Kaiser is a scoundrel’” (Germany). At Kiel and in the capital of Bavaria, enlisted men form “sailors’ councils” at the navel base (Germany). As they react to the “crisis,” their uprising spreads throughout Germany. Prince Max dispatches Majority Socialist Gustav Noske to Kiel with orders to restore order!

And he does! Noske becomes the workers’ savior by proclaiming himself chairman of the sailors’ council at Kiel! Of course, Noske fulfills the workers most immediate demand: he releases their “imprisoned comrades” (Germany). Cheers to Noske! At the Imperial Palace, Noske is a hero too! Outmaneuvering “the most radical elements in the sailors’ movement,” (Germany) - how could he not be a hero to the New Order in Berlin!

But other workers persisted. “Within days there were the red flags of communism all over German cities. Revolutionary councils formed and radical slogans, displayed, all inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia," historian Michael Strurmer writes in The German Empire).

On November 5, 1918, workers at Germany’s largest navel base at Wilhelmshaven formed a sailors’ council and marched on the Rathaus in Hamburg. In Bavaria, Socialist journalist Kurt Eisner (previously the editor of Vorwarts - 1898-1905) overthrows the monarchy and occupies the seat of “power.”
Eisner sets up a cabinet of Independent and Majority Socialists, retaining the posts of Prime Minister and Foreign Minister for himself, promised that in due course a National Assembly would draft a constitution, and assigned the task of maintaining public order to councils that would be elected in the barracks, workshops, and villages. (Germany 1866-1945)

But “radical” Eisner is not the “law and order” Noske! [3]
 
By November 9, with continual outbreaks of workers in the streets, Prince Max resigns and acknowledges that the Emperor, too, and the Crown Prince intends to relinquish their right to the throne (Germany). The head of the Social Democratic Party, Friedrich Ebert, is to be named Reich Chancellor, “charged with the task of calling a Constituent Assembly to determine the form the new state should take.”

Ebert, according to Craig, initially opposes the formation of a republic but event are moving along too quickly. By that afternoon, Philipp Scheidemann, ranking member of the Majority Socialist executive, shouts: “Long live the great German Republic!” (Germany). Ebert and Scheidemann agree on one thing: Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and the Spartacus League are enemies of the new order just as they were enemies of the old order! As Gordon writes, the newly formed government recognized that of all the emerging workers’ organizations, the Spartacus League posed “a more serious threat for it possessed two outstanding leaders” in Luxemburg and Liebknecht (Germany). And Rosa Luxemburg knows why! In a letter to Clara Zetkin, [4] dated January 11, 1919, Luxemburg explains that “the ‘Spartacists’ are for the most part a fresh new generation, free of the stupefying traditions of the ‘grand old party, tried and true’” (Letters).

For the workers and, particularly Luxemburg, Ebert, appointed SPD head after Bebel died in 1913, as Luxemburg writes, was “the quintessential party man…as the enemy” (Germany). A former student of Luxemburg, he becomes one of the leaders of the SPD and a strong advocate against the rule of the workers - and of Rosa Luxemburg’s conviction to revolutionary change. [5]
 
How much I would prefer to travel to visit you! But that is out of the question, because I am chained to the editorial office, and every day I am there until midnight, at the printing presses to oversee the making up of the issue, and besides in these disturbed times the most urgent information and instructions that must be given still come in at 10 or 11 at night, and they must be responded to immediately. On top of that almost every day, from early in the morning, there are conferences and discussions, and public meetings in between, and as a change of pace every few days there come urgent warnings from ‘official sources’ that Karl and I are threatened by gangs of killers [Mordbuben], so that we are not supposed to sleep at home but must seek shelter somewhere else… (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25, [1918], The Letters)

Luxemburg, released from prison in November 1918 once the German Revolution was underway, writes several keys works, mostly in Die Rote Fahne, (Red Flag), the Spartacus League publication. “What Does the Spartacus League Want?” (The Reader) is a document that articulates the workers’ demands rather than request from the Ebert-Scheidemann regime anything that it cannot and will not grant.

On November 9, workers and soldiers smashed the old German regime. The Prussian saber’s mania of world rule had bled to death on the battlefields of France. The gang of criminals who sparked a worldwide conflagration and drove Germany into an ocean of blood had come to the end of its rope. The people - betrayed for four years, having forgotten culture, honesty, and humanity in the service of the Moloch, available for every obscene deed - awoke from its four-year-long paralysis, only to face the abyss.

On November 9, the German proletariat rose up to throw off the shameful yoke. The Hohenzollerns were driven out; workers’ and soldiers’ councils were elected. But the Hohenzollerns were no more than the front men of the imperialist bourgeoisie and of the Junkers. The class rule of the bourgeoisie is the real criminal responsible for the World War, in Germany, as in France, in Russia as in England, in Europe as in America. The capitalists of all nations are the real instigators of the mass murder. International capital is the insatiable god Baal, into whose bloody maw millions upon millions of steaming human sacrifices are thrown. (“What Does the Spartacus League Want?”)
What do the people want?

• Disarmament of the entire police force and of all officers and nonproletarian soldier; disarmament of all members of the ruling classes…
  

• Abolition of all principalities; establishment of a united German Socialist Republic…
  

• Elimination of all parliaments and municipal councils, and takeover of their functions by workers’ and soldiers’ councils and of the latter’s committees and organs…
  

• Confiscation of all dynastic wealth and income for the collectivity…
  

• Election of enterprise councils in all enterprises, which, in coordination with the workers’ councils, have the task of ordering the internal affairs of the enterprises, regulating working conditions, controlling production and finally taking over direction of the enterprise…
  

These are but a few of the demands listed in “What Does the Spartacus League Want?” But also on November 9, 1918, the new Reich Chancellor and his generals have already begun to respond. They do not need a list of demands from workers - the privileged power already knows what threatens its survival.

The new Reich Chancellor receives a call from General Wilhelm Groener. The military was at the disposal of the new Chancellor. We are here and ready to do battle, to crack heads, arrest, torture, and to imprison, and to kill. We are ready to restore order! And Ebert detested violence! But not the violence of the State! That violence necessary to tame the workers into obedient slaves is at the disposal of the new Reich Chancellor! The imperialist regime, Craig writes, was determined, above all, that the scenes of violence and civil war that had accompanied the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia should not be repeated in Germany, and in order to prevent that he wanted to end the tumultuous transitional state into which Germany had fallen on 9 November by an act that would legitimize authority and restore the public law (Germany)
Ebert hesitates - but momentarily. [6]
 
In “peace,” when workers are obedient and slavish, willing to be exploited and to remain faithful to the capitalist rule, a capitalist crisis is averted. Law and order effectively controls potential “threats” with a little theorizing of its own in which the masses are “educated” to accept atrocities inflicted on others as business as usual. The normalization of murder and its cover up (Trayvon Martin, Rakia Boyd, and Kenneth Chamberlain) are isolated misunderstandings, if not provocations committed by the victims. Jackboots are ever present - for those who can see and who refuse to remain faithful to the narrative of authority and who are no longer fooled by the “change” only in the person sitting in the seat of “power.” Because then, when the masses see the corruption and atrocities at home and the waging wars of drones abroad, does the government declare a crisis afoot and demands the speedy and thorough disbursement of the jackboots in every nock and cranny of our social, political, and cultural environment.. And the people wonder then why they had not seen them before!

The government’s attempt to restore order (tyranny and fear) is a given. But what do we want?

It is the last week of Malcolm’s life, the last year of Dr. Martin L. King’s. It is Luxemburg’s last days on Earth. There is Malcolm’s unification and internationalism campaign and later King’s anti-war stance and promise to bring thousands of the nation’s workers and poor to Washington D.C. Rosa Luxemburg’s determination to organize and educate the masses. [7]
 
Tuesday! And now yesterday [that is, on December 25 during the day - this letter written around midnight at the end of Christmas] there was of course a ‘revolutionary disturbance’ again. There was an enormous demonstration [8] [and march] to the Imperial Palace, and then a section of the demonstrators spontaneously headed for the Vorwarts building and occupied it! An armored car and 18 machine guns were found inside! I was then called in a hurry to a session and didn’t get home here until 11:30 p.m. tonight. Today [on December 26] I have to go back into the city right away. And that’s how it’s been all these days. It remains that way, at least as I am writing this hasty greeting. (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25 [1918], The Letters). [9]
 
In response to Ebert’s appointment to Reich Chancellor and Noske’s effect program to pacify the soldiers and workers, Luxemburg and Liebknecht formed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in January 1919. “The party is in complete disarray - Strobel, Haase, Bock (!), and Freiheitare openly demanding that a ‘line of demarcation be drawn against the left,’ which means against us…in the provinces the merger between the USPD and the Scheidemanns is in full swing” (Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin,] December 25 [1918], The Letters).

At the founding conference of the German Communist Party, December 31, 1918, [10] Luxemburg delivers a speech in which she reminds the organizers that “revolution which will crown our work” does not happen overnight. Attention must be focused on fighting “step by step, hand-to-hand, in every province, in every city, in every village, in every municipality in order to take and transfer all the powers of the state bit by bit from the bourgeoisie to the workers’ and soldiers’ councils” (“Our program and the Political Situation,” The Reader). But Luxemburg adds, before we can proceed to impose the power of the workers, the members of our own Party and the proletarians in general must be educated. Even where workers’ and soldiers’ councils already exist, there is still a lack of consciousness of the purposes for which they exist. We must make the masses understand that the workers’ and soldiers’ council is in all senses the lever of the machinery of state, that it must take over all power and must unify the power in one stream - the socialist revolution.

She further warns:

The masses of workers who are already organized in workers’ and soldiers’ councils are still miles away from having adopted such an outlook, and only isolated proletarian minorities are clearly conscious of their tasks.

By mid-January, the Weimar Republic is formed:

The delegates who had been elected to the National Assembly in mid-January [1919] assembled a month later in Weimar, the home of Goethe and his patron Carl August and of the mighty poet who had sought to teach his countrymen that greatness should be defined not in terms of material power but of moral stature and devotion to liberty. (Germany)

Those in power play the familiar game of musical chairs. Ebert becomes Reichsprasident, Scheidemann, chancellor, and our “community activist” in Kiel, Gustav Noske, takes over the Ministry of Defense. What follows? - something very familiar to us in the 21st Century after the events of September 11, 2001. Article 48 of the Weimar constitution!
‘Should public order and safety be seriously disturbed or threatened, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public order and safety; in case of need, he may use armed force…and he may, for the time being, declare fundamental rights of the citizen to be wholly or partly in abeyance.’ (Germany)

The “Socialists” in power now declared the socialists / communists “evil doers,” agitators of the workers. Ebert and Noske called upon the Supreme Command to cleanse the Republic of the disease of liberty. Noske said he was up to the task. He turned to General Ludwig von Maercher, who in turn sent a memorandum to “former officers”: recruit volunteer forces!” Freedom-loving officers [11] and fellow citizens from “demobilized lieutenants and N.C.O.s who found it difficult to adjust to civilian life,” to university students, to adventurers, patriots and drifters (Germany) responded, swelling the ranks of the free corps (Freikorps).

To Luxemburg’s horror, not a few were pulled from the soldiers’ councils!
The sore spot in the revolutionary cause at this moment - the political immaturity of the masses of soldiers who, even now, are still letting themselves be misused by their officers for hostile, counterrevolutionary purposes (“Order Begins in Berlin,” The Reader).
This development, she continues, is “proof that a lasting victory of the revolution” is “not possible in this encounter.”

The Freikorps and the army under the command of the Ebert-Scheidemann government are crushing the Spartacus Uprising. Four days before she and Karl Liebknecht are captured, Luxemburg writes to Clara Zetkin about what she observes among the workers. Unfortunately, she declares, the workers are not sufficiently prepared for the brutality of the government’s armed thugs. But “the severe political crisis that we’ve experienced here in Berlin during all the past two weeks or even longer have blocked the way to the systematic organizational work of training our recruits” (January 11, 1919, The Letters). Nonetheless, she adds, “these events are a tremendous school for the masses.” [12]
 
White Terror! White Terror!

As Luxemburg acknowledges, the brutality of the Ebert-Scheidemann regime is a “shameless provocation,” and it may hand the revolution a defeat - but, she adds, without these “defeats” from “which we have drawn historical experience, knowledge, power, idealism,” where would we be today. There are lessons to be learned in defeat!

We gather as survivors and students and continue the Struggle - even while the middle class cheer on the counterrevolution’s reign of “white terror”!

But when the word “defeated” becomes a visible brand we sear onto our foreheads, and when we restore ourselves to sheephood, it is because our attention has been diverted, and we have begun to anticipate “Order reigns in Berlin,” “Order reigns in the U.S,” and we can no longer hear ourselves chanting”‘Down with Ebert and Scheidemann!” Down with capitalists thieves and liars! Because we are not chanting anything anymore.

‘Order reigns in Berlin,’ is the triumphant announcement of the bourgeois press, of Ebert and Noske, and of the officers of the “victorious troops,’ who are being cheered by the petty-bourgeois mob in the streets, waving their handkerchiefs and shouting hurrahs. The glory and the honor of the German Army has been saved in the eyes of history (“Order Reigns in Berlin,” The Reader).

Okay - order reigns! Peace is on the way!

“Revolutionary struggles are the direct opposite of parliamentary struggles,” Luxemburg warns. Although “revolutions have brought us nothing but defeat until now…these unavoidable defeats are only heaping guarantee upon guarantee of the coming final triumph. On one condition, she writes,

the question arises, under which circumstances each respective defeat was suffered: whether it resulted from the forward-storming energy of the masses being dashed against the barrier of the lack of maturity of historical presuppositions, or, on the other hand, whether it resulted from the revolutionary action itself being paralyzed by incompleteness, vacillation, and inner frailties.

What has brought about defeat in this “so-called Spartacus Week”? “Was it a defeat due to raging revolutionary energy and a situation that was insufficiently ripe, or rather due to frailties and halfway undertakings?” (“Order Reigns in Berlin,” The Reader)

It was both, Luxemburg answers: “The divided character of this crisis, the contradictions between the vigorous, resolute, aggressive showing of the people of Berlin and the indecision, timidity, and inadequacy of the Berlin leadership is the particular characteristic of the latest episode.”

But the masses, she argues, must create their leadership. The masses are the “rock on which the ultimate victory of the revolution will be built.” The people “fashioned” this defeat “into a part of those historical defeats which constitute the pride and power of international socialism. And this is why this ‘defeat’ is the seed of the future triumph.”

The cleansing pogrom continued until May, 1919, when, as Craig writes, the great Sauberrungsaktion reached its climax (Germany). Thousands were killed during this reign of terror, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, captured and executed on January 15, 1919 by Freikorp officers. In time, a short time, millions will be tortured and killed.

Just as there have been other reigns of terror, there have been other uprisings…

“Order reigns in Berlin!’ You stupid lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. The revolution will ‘raise itself up again clashing,’ and to your horror it will proclaim to the sound of trumpets: I was, I am, I shall be.
“I embrace you a thousand times, your R.”

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

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[1] Author, Brett Fairbourn.

[2] The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, editors Georg Adler, Peter Hudis, and Annelies Laschitza, 2011.

[3] Eisner is eventually shot dead on February 21, 1919 as part of the purge of communist/socialist thinkers and activists by the Ebert- Scheidemann regime.

[4] Luxemburg instructs Zetkin to prepare to write about women in the newly formed Die Rote Fahne.  “As soon as you are back to normal we will talk about the work.  We here are in the process, among other things, of laying the basis for the work with women and for educational work” Letter to Clara Zetkin, [Berlin, December 1918], The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.

[5] “It is worth noting in passing,” Craig writes, “that many of the praetorians who combated the Spartacus Union in 1919-and this number included Pfug-Hartung [murders  Liebknecht]and Vogel [murders Luxemburg], and Pabst, Faupel, and Reinhard-ended their careers as enthusiastic servants of Adolf Hitler” (Germany 1866-1945).

 

[6] Craig writes that it is “unlikely that he [Ebert] would have followed a different policy than the one he chose.”

 [7] See The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, editors Peter Hudis and Kevin Anderson, 2004. Between November 1918 (when she is released from jail) and January 1919 (she is murdered), Luxemburg pens four articles, including “What Does the Spartacus League Want” (December 14, 1918) and “Order Reigns in Berlin” (January 14, 1919).

[8] Workers gathered in Tiergarten Park.

[9] At the rally, “speakers for the Spartacus League, including Karl Liebknecht, for the Revolutionary Shop Stewards, and for the People’s Naval Division denounced the counterrevolutionary machinations and called for the formation of a Red Guard and workers’ militia, and for the disarming of officers and NCOs active with the counterrevolution” (n.797, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader).

[10] German Communist Party (KPD), founding congress held December 30, 1918 - January 1, 1919.

[11] Col. Wilhelm Reinhard, free corps commander, was asked by a journalist if he had not be heard calling the “government a rabble and the new flag a Jewish rag.” Of course, he responds, “cheerfully.” “I make no bones of the fact that I am a monarchist. My God! When one has served his King and his country faithfully for thirty years, he can’t suddenly say, ‘Starting tomorrow, I’m a republican!’” (Germany 1866-1945).

[12] On January 4, 1919, a member of the “left wing of the USPD, Emil Eichhorn, was dismissed as head of the Berlin police. Workers and soldiers respond with mass rally in Berlin, and proceed to “arm themselves for an uprising for which they were largely unprepared. The uprising is quickly crushed (n.802, The Letters).

Stuck on Stupid Supporting Democrats and Republicans

Stuck on Stupid Supporting Democrats and Republicans Keeping it Real -- By Larry Pinkney BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity...They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.” -Frantz Fanon Albert Einstein correctly noted that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” and yet the masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the United States have been systemically duped into doing precisely this, as it relates to the Democratic and Republican parties. This is insane. The power brokers of the corporate-owned Democratic and Republican parties have, together, contrived a system wherein they, and only they, control the reigns of political power, which translates into economic power over the lives of everyday people. On the one hand the Democrats co-opt the rhetoric of “change” and “reform,” while on the other hand, the Republicans utilize the rhetoric of restraint and so-called conservatism. Together, these parties keep the people of this nation trapped in a perpetual cycle of control, powerlessness, and concomitant insanity. Change has incorrectly come to be perceived as somehow automatically a positive or a negative thing, when in fact, it is not necessarily either. But this is a deliberately systemically perpetuated misperception of “change” that keeps the everyday people of this nation swinging back and forth between the symbiotic Democratic and Republican parties - who rely upon each other to maintain the corrupt system - and in so doing, perpetuate their own power at the horrible expense of the ordinary people. It is not that the people of this nation are stupid. They are not. Rather, they are stuck on stupid because they have been incessantly programmed and are mired deeply in the systemically maintained insane cycle of the back and forth pendulum of supporting Democrats and Republicans in a system that is completely rigged against their own needs and best interests. Notwithstanding, the unceasing misleading rhetoric of both the Democrats and Republicans serve, first and foremost, corporate interests - not the people’s interests. Thus, what Democrats and Republicans fallaciously depict as compromise is nothing of the kind. It is their joint complicity in the maintenance of a corrupt, filthy, unjust, hypocritical political system - plain and simple. For example: To say the reason that the predator drone missile president Barack Obama, 1)supported the trillion dollar criminal bail out to Wall Street, 2) bombed Libya, North Africa, 3) signed into law the NDAA / indefinite detention law (of 2012) that calls for the disappearing and detaining in the United States of U.S. citizens without charge, trial, judge, jury, legal defense, etc. in an effort to appease and compromise with the Republicans, is akin to an admitted, unrepentant murderer seeking to justify and defend his or her act of murder, by stating that it was done in an effort to appease and compromise with other murderers. Such an argument would be correctly viewed as both absurd and insane. Yet, this is precisely the kind of ridiculous rationalization that supporters of Barack Obama and the Democrats attempt to make. Of course, the Republicans are absolutely no better, albeit they are often more brazen and obvious in their own forms of systemic insanity. When it comes to the Democrats and Republicans, there is no such thing as the so-called lesser of the evils. That nonsense is nothing more than a long perpetuated systemic myth designed to keep people perpetually enslaved to the systemic, corporate-owned Democrats and Republicans. They are both systemically and treacherously evil. At this point and time in the year 2012, it is the stealthy Barack Obama and the Democrats who, particularly on the national level, act as the more insidious and thus more effective evil of the systemically and symbiotically-joined Democrat and Republican parties. Nevertheless, the Republicans are always waiting in the wings to carry out their treachery against ordinary everyday people, for that is the way the system is designed. So what must everyday people do? We must unequivocally reject both the Democrats and the Republicans and struggle to collectively bring about real systemic change. We must understand that “change,” in and of itself, is utterly meaningless if it is not serious and real systemic change. It is time to break free from repeating “over and over again” the insanity of supporting either the Democrats or Republicans. It is time to support the everyday people of this nation and this planet of Mother Earth! Stop expecting the corporate-stream ‘news’ media to honestly inform you and tell you the truth. It will not! It exists to serve the interests of its corporate masters, just as the Democratic and Republican parties do. Stop confusing “reform” with progress. Re-forming a rotten, poisonous systemic pie does nothing whatsoever to improve the pie. It remains a rotten, poisonous systemic pie and it must be discarded, and an entirely different one created. We don’t have to be stuck on stupid. Systemic change will only be brought about by we, the everyday ordinary people, not by the systemic, corporate-owned, opportunist, blood-sucking, Democratic or Republican parties. Let us collectively and creatively organize, agitate, educate, and organize some more! No matter what Democrats or Republicans are installed in the upcoming national corporate controlled (s)elections of 2012, our task is to stay focused on bringing about real systemic change, and absolutely nothing less. Nothing less will suffice for the peoples of this nation and world who hunger and thirst for social, economic, and political liberation. Nothing less will do! Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward. BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

More on the handcuffing and jailing of the 6-year old black Georgia kindergartener

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. - Milledgeville's acting police chief, (ACTING POLICE CHIEF - very interesting, what happened to the former police chief?  I guess he was an acknowledged worthless piece of shit and leaves behind a department populated by other, similar, worhtless pieces of shit) Dray Swicord, said Tuesday that he stands by an officer's decision to handcuff an elementary school student for safety Friday after she allegedly threw a tantrum  (I'm thinkin' Dray Swicord is not plannin' on runnin' for Police Chief of Milledgeville, GA, any time soon!).

Swicord said the arresting officer is not under investigation for his actions. (IN other words, he did everything by the book?) 

Meantime, the girl's parents are trying to rally community support.   (This ought not to be any great problem.)

The parents said they're meeting today with local activists and ministers. Oscar Davis Jr., who identified himself as a community activist, (God bless all you gentle activists, and you  not so gentle activists also!) said they plan to get attorneys involved and they plan to contact activist Al Sharpton.

According to the police report, kindergartner Salecia Johnson is accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing furniture.   (What happened to the part where she assualted the principal?)

 

She was crying in the principal's office at Creekside Elementary before police arrived Friday. The report says the girl knocked over a shelf that injured the principal. It also says she was seen biting the door knob of the office (Sounds like she was trying to escape, and, BTW - just how do we know that the principal did not try to molest her?) and jumping on the paper shredder. And, it says, she attempted to break a glass frame above the shredder.

The report says when the officer tried to calm the child, she resisted and was cuffed. (She resisted his "calming efforts?"  What was she doing before he attempted to calm her?) 

"Our policy is that any detainee transported to our station in a patrol vehicle is to be handcuffed in the back. There is no age discrimination
(don't bet on that -- wait, wtf, now he is the Chief of police?  I thought that before he was merely the ACTING CHIEF OF POLICE!  How can you have it both ways?) on that rule," said Milledgeville Chief of Police Dray Swicord.

They took the child to the police station where she was charged with simple assault and damage to property. Because of her age, she will not be prosecuted.  (Oh crap, to be young enough again to do the criminal things I do now but to not be prosecuted for them - only IF, not WHEN, I get caught!)

Her mother, Constance Ruff. says her daughter was suspended and cannot return to school until August.

"She has mood swings some days, which all of us had mood swings some days. I guess that was just one of her bad days that day," said Constance Ruff. (You mean the school didn't know about the mood swings?  This was the first one they ever saw? Or they DID know about the mood swings, but just got tired of dealing with them?  Why is she in the principal's office?  She should have been in the NURSE'S office!!

"She might have misbehaved, but I don't think she misbehaved to the point where she should have been handcuffed and taken downtown to the police department," said her aunt, Candace Ruff.  (Well, she WAS charged with a crime for which she won't be prosecuted, making her, what, INNOCENT!)

Johnson's parents told 13WMAZ's Judy Le Tuesday morning they have no further comment today. They did say that their daughter has been having nightmares since being taken from school last Friday and they plan to talk to a doctor about that. (Get that kid some DAMN GOOD TALK THERAPY and the sooner, the better!)

13WMAZ spoke with several other Central Georgia police and sheriff's departments. None of them could remember handcuffing a child that young. They say the use of handcuffs would be at the officer's discretion and based on whether the child is a threat to herself or others.

"A 6-year-old in kindergarten. They don't have no business calling the police and handcuffing my child," said Earnest Johnson, Salecia's father. You sure got that right, dad!

"Call the police? Is that the first step? Or is there any other kind of intervention that can be taken to help that child?" asked Candace Ruff. (Q:  Is the mother's name Candace or Constance?)

Police say they tried to contact Johnson's mother but weren't able to reach her. (WELL, SOMEHOW she found out about it!  Tried to contact her twice?  For just how long was this child held?  Why in the fuck didn't they try to contact her father?  Enquiring minds WANT TO KNOW!)