Leon Trotsky’s 1917 stay in New York City

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“Trotsky in New York 1917, A Radical on the Eve of Revolution,” by Kenneth D. Ackerman. (Berkeley, Calif., Counterpoint 2016), $30. O Spanish passenger vessel SS (or Vapor Correo) ne hundred years ago, on Jan. 13, 1917, the small Montserrat (Vapor is Spanish for steamship, Correo for mail) arrived in the harbor of New York City after a 17-day voyage from Barcelona, Spain. According to official records, the passengers disembarked on Mon­ day, Jan. 15. Most of the passengers—hundreds—were Spanish immigrants to the United States, traveling in steerage, the maritime equivalent to the basement.

Also on board was a Russian family traveling in first class, courtesy of the Spanish government. Leon Trotsky, his wife Natalia Sedova, and their two chil­ dren sailed on the SS Montserrat because they were being unwillingly deported from Europe at the insis­ tence of the Tsarist government.

Writing in 1930, Trotsky recalled his first reaction: “We are nearing New York. At three o’clock in the morning, everybody wakes up. We have stopped. It is dark. Cold. Wind. Rain. On land, a wet mountain of buildings. The New World!”

Leon Trotsky, of course, is a figure of continuing world-historic significance. It is commonly known that he spent a short time in New York City, but the only generally available account of his stay is one chapter in his 1930 autobiography, “My Life.”

Historian Kenneth Ackerman has now researched and written the first book on Trotsky’s experiences, “Trotsky in New York 1917, A Radical on the Eve of Revolution.” From his account, it appears Trotsky was far too modest in the recounting of his 10-week visit to the city, where, as he said, he left “with the feeling of a man who has had only a peep into the foundry in which the fate of man is to be forged.”

Trotsky was already a world famous figure when the SS Montserrat docked in January 1917. In 1905, the year of the first Russian Revolution, at age 26, he had been elected president of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers Delegates. (“Sankt Peterburg” was renamed “Petrograd” in 1914 so as to deflect attention from its original German name and the German birth of the Tsarina. Likewise, the British royal family renamed itself “Windsor” in lieu of its authentic Teutonic sur­ name of “Saxe-Coburg-Hesse,” prompting Kaiser Wil­ helm’s memorable quip that he was “looking forward to attending the next performance of ‘The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Hesse.’”)

The revolutionary struggle of the St. Petersburg workers, the arrest and suppression of the Soviet in December 1905, the trial of the leaders, and Trotsky’s electrifying speech to the Tsarist court riveted the at­ tention of the world. Trotsky continued to be a major international figure during the next 12 years as a po­ litical journalist and revolutionary activist.

His reception on his arrival in New York had the fla­ vor of late 20th-century rock-star celebrity. The city was home to a million and a half residents of Jewish origin, mostly immigrants from the Tsar’s dominions of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia, including 8 SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2017 many passionate socialists, and universally seething with hatred for the brutal and absolutist Romanov re­ gime.

Ackerman relates that “bounding down the gang­ way to the pier, Trotsky found himself the center of attention.” The front page of the daily German social­ ist newspaper New Yorker Volkzeitung headlined that morning: “Leon Trotzki Kommt Heute!” (Leon Trotsky Is Arriving Today!). All the English language dailies reported similarly: “Expelled from Four Lands” (The New York Times) and ”With Bayonets Four Lands Ex­ pel Peace Advocate” (New York Tribune).

“The New York Herald touted Trotsky’s four years in Russian prisons and his battle with long-arm Tsar­ ist harassment even in France … Another Englishlanguage (daily) paper, the (socialist) New York Call, described Trotsky as ‘pursued with particular vindic­ tiveness by authorities of the capitalist order,’” writes Ackerman. “Within two days at least six New York newspapers with more than half a million readers would announce Trotsky’s arrival in the city.”

And then there was the 200,000-circulation Yiddishlanguage socialist daily Forwerts (“Forward”), which put Trotsky’s photo on the front page. “The Forward in 1917 operated from a beautiful new ten-story building in Lower Manhattan … displaying bas-relief portraits of Marx, Engels and Ferdinand La Salle” (page151).

Trotsky immediately plunged into intense antiwar agitation, and began working on the staff of the Rus­ sian-language socialist daily Novy Mir (New World, with 8000 daily circulation) located at 77 St. Marks Place (extant), along with exiled Bolsheviks Nikolai (Left) Building at 77 St. Mark’s Place housed the offices of Novy Mir, where Trotsky worked with other exiled Russian revolutionaries. (Far left) Leon Trotsky in 1918. (Bottom) Yiddish-language N.Y.

Forward with Trotsky’s photo.

Bukharin and Grigorii Chudnovsky. “In early February, Trotsky addressed packed crowds at the Brooklyn Lyceum, Manhattan’s Beethoven Hall, the Labor temple near Union Square and similar venues. His articles ran three or four times each week in Novy Mir. At least four appeared in Yiddish translation in the Forward, with others in German in the New Yorker Volkzeitung and the so­ cialist Die Zukunft” (“The Future”) (p. 117). Trotsky also lectured in Philadel­ phia and other nearby cities, speaking in Russian and German.

And then, on March 3, over 10,000 workers at the giant Putilov Works in Petrograd went on strike, led by the Bolsheviks. On March 8, International Women’s Day, they were joined by strik­ ing female textile workers. That night Eugene Debs spoke to a mass rally at New York’s historic Cooper Union. He asked Trotsky to join him on the stage. “Speaking for myself,” Debs shouted, “I shall absolutely refuse to go to war for any capitalist government on this earth. I would ... rather be lined up against a wall and shot for treason to Wall Street than to live as a traitor to the working class” (p. 180). In Petrograd the strike wave continued to swell, and on March 15, the Tsar abdicated.

On March 20 New York socialists or­ ganized a giant rally at Madison Square Garden, with 10,000 (according to The New York Times) or 15,000 (New York Call), and thousands who couldn’t get in assem­ bled outside to celebrate the overthrow of Tsarist absolutism. Russian socialists in New York organized another meeting.

Ackerman does make a small mistake here. He reports that “James P. Cannon of Kansas City” spoke on the platform of the March 20 meeting at the Garden, citing The New York Times, March 21: “Joseph Kennon, former Socialist Candidate for United States Senate,” and privately in response to my inquiry, cit­ ing the New York Call, March 21: “Joseph D. Cannon and many others prominent in So­ cialist and working-class activities,” and ob­ viously presuming that Jim Cannon’s name had been misspelled or otherwise rendered incorrectly. Leaving other sources aside, such as Brian D. Palmer’s 2007 biography of the early years of James P. Cannon, “Joseph D. Cannon” was a real person, verifiably the Socialist Party candi­ date for United States Senate from New York.

“All that week,” Ackerman writes, “Trotsky carried the same message of incomplete revolution through a blizzard of newspaper columns and speeches. He appeared before audiences almost every night … with thousands packing the halls” (p. 194).

On March 27, after the provisional Kerensky gov­ ernment had declared an amnesty for political ex­ iles, Trotsky and his family and a few other Russians embarked from New York on the Norwegian vessel Christianiafjord, seeking a prompt return to revolu­ tionary Russia. They were illegally detained at Halifax, Canada, by British authorities for a month before they were released to continue their voyage.

Ackerman has done fine research in British archives for sources illuminating the machinations behind the detentions of Trotsky and his companions. But there is a rich account of all that in Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution,” and in the interests of brevity, that account and the story of further events can be sought there.

Kenneth Ackerman is not a revolutionary socialist historian. Nonetheless, he has assembled an impres­ sive amount of original research and cogent narration on Trotsky’s seminal 10 weeks in New York.

The real strength of the book is the new window it opens on the bubbling caldron of socialist and antiwar agitation and action in New York in the early months of 1917, and the brief but central role Trotsky played in it as revolutionary journalist and agitator. n

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... A watershed election (continued from page 7: “A watershed election for U.S. ruling class”) government has been involved in more actions to sub­ vert foreign governments and their elections than the United States.

The Obama legacy To restore some level of confidence, especially for the Democratic Party, we have also witnessed the launch­ ing of an over-the-top campaign to burnish Obama’s lackluster, eight-year, presidential legacy. Typical of the tone is New York Times columnist David Leonhardt’s claim that: “Obama leaves office as the most successful Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt.”

On the index of income inequality, the Obama eight years saw essentially no reduction in the enormous gap between the one percent and the rest of society. In the eight years of the Obama administration, 95 percent of households have not seen their incomes regain 2007 levels. Income inequality in the United States continued to far exceed anything seen in other advanced nations.

In new data just released by the World Economic Fo­ rum, the United States ranked 23rd out of 30 advanced economies in wage and non-wage compensation, and it ranked last in social protection. And lately things have hardly gone in the right direction. On Jan. 27 the govern­ ment reported that the economy grew by only 1.6 per­ cent in 2016, a significant reduction from around 2.5 per­ cent in both 2015 and 2014. Many of the white working class, who voted for Trump, voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, some no doubt despite holding racist views. Obama ran as the “change” candidate who they hoped would provide some relief in their desperate economic and social situation. They got eight more years of the same.

But the most telling part of Obama’s legacy is how much his administration has prepared the ground for Trump’s reactionary, extreme right-wing program. Trump in his promise of mass deportations, inherited a well-oiled deportation infrastructure from the Obama administration, which has deported 2.5 million peo­ ple—more than every single U.S. president of the 20th century combined. In the spring of 2014 the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino advocacy organization, which had previously supported Obama, could no longer remain silent. NCLR President Janet Murguía delivered a speech lambasting Obama’s deportation policy: “We consider him the deportation president, or the Deporter-in-Chief.”

In 2007, before taking office, Obama assured the pub­ lic that he would oversee the nation’s extensive surveil­ lance program without “undermining our Constitution and our freedom.” Once in office, however, the Obama White House failed to meaningfully scale back surveil­ lance practices established by Obama’s predecessor, in­ cluding the unlawful bulk collection of Americans’ do­ mestic phone call records. Michael Hayden, the former director of the U.S. National Security Agency, praised Obama explaining that surveillance programs have “ex­ panded” during Barack Obama’s time in office and said the spy agency has more powers now than when he was in command under President Bush.

Expansion of dangerous surveillance rules continued right up to the end of the Obama administration. With mere days left before President-elect Trump took office, Obama finalized new rules to make it easier for the na­ tion’s intelligence agencies to share unfiltered informa­ tion about innocent people.

The Trump administration certainly plans to build on the already expanded surveillance program he inher­ ited from Obama. Trump also promises to dramatically increase bombing in the Middle East and expand it to target family members of those he concludes are terror­ ists. Obama did not begin the drone-killing program but he did greatly expand it and greatly loosened its rules. Under Obama’s approach many aspects of his targeted killing policy are, to say the least, on dubious legal foot­ ing, which have set hugely dangerous precedents. ...

The Obama administration asked Americans to believe not only that it was empowered to kill an American in secret; but that after the fact courts should refrain from judging whether such killings violated the right to life of the target. Thanks to Obama’s actions, Donald Trump is inaugurated into an office that presumes the authority to secretly order the extrajudicial killings of American citizens.

Trump will also be inaugurated into an office that con­ strues its mandate to kill with drones broadly, encom­ passing strikes in countries with which America is not at war and targeting groups and individuals that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In effect, Obama has construed the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force so broadly that it’s now hard to discern any meaningful limit. ...

How can we successfully fight Trumpism?

What is the political nature of Trumpism? Does it constitute a burgeoning fascist movement? The truly massive and uncontested anti-Trump demon­ strations in dozens of cities throughout the na­ tion, the day following his inauguration gives the answer to that. Where were Trump’s fascist “brownshirts?” The best Trumpism could do was a few dozen “Hell’s Angels”-type motor­ cycle gangs that didn’t even make themselves visible.

However, this does not mean that Trump is just another right-wing Republican in the mold of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, or George W. Bush. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States is a deeply dangerous devel­ opment that dramatically escalates the threat to America’s middle-class/working class. It is a decisive shift, representing the growing failure of center-right and center-left parties not only here but in all the advanced capitalist countries. What makes it particularly dangerous for the U.S. middle-class/working class is the complete absence here of any mass working-class party that could present a fighting alternative....

In her penetrating article, “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,” Michelle Alexander at­ tempts a balanced evaluation of Senator Bernie Sand­ ers and his call for a political revolution. Alexander con­ cludes: “The biggest problem with Bernie, in the end, is that he’s running as a Democrat. … I hold little hope that a political revolution will occur within the Democratic Party without a sustained outside movement forcing truly transformational change. I am inclined to believe that it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself.”

Alexander expresses considerable political wis­ dom here. It would be easier to build a new party, as dif­ ficult as that certainly would be, than to save the Demo­ cratic Party. All the evidence, especially the recent his­ tory, demonstrates there is no “saved” Democratic Party that can successfully fight Trump. It is the dual parties of capitalism, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party together, that have created the conditions that gave rise to Trump. It’s not irrelevant that Trump, for his entire life, has supported and participated in both these parties.

This of course does not mean that the fight against Trump should wait on the creation of a new alternative political party. The fight against Trump has already got­ ten off to a pretty good start—the really massive antiTrump demonstrations and the Women’s Marches in the streets that took place immediately following his inauguration. And this is certainly only the beginning. Trump sells himself as a “man of action,” and to bol­ ster that image and his ego, he will quickly attack Black youth, immigration, the woman’s movement, Muslims, the labor movement, Latinos, Roe v. Wade, the environ­ mental movement, and anyone who challenges him. His administration will be one that constantly provokes and energizes more people into opposition.

The mass demonstrations following Trump’s inaugu­ ration were not initiated by the Democratic Party; rath­ er, they were initiated independently by a small group of women activists. Trump was obviously stunned by their size and breath, but you can also be sure the Democrat­ ... Immigrants (continued from page 4: “Crackdown on Muslims: Trump makes Obama’s program worse”)

the racist scapegoating of Mexican workers.

Trump’s orders, like those of his predecessors, are not intended to stop the flow of immigrant labor into this country, but merely to regulate it. Many U.S.

industries profiting from exploitation of immigrant workers fear Trump’s new orders will force their workers back to Mexico and require them to hire U.S. citizens at higher wages. They support a flow of “paperless” immigrants sufficient to allow their businesses to continue to profit.

Many liberals, including the reactionary labor union bureaucracy, readily join the crusade to scape­ goat Mexican workers—or immigrants from other Latin American countries who are lumped into the category of “Mexicans.” The privileged union bu­ reaucrats, who have demonized immigrants for years, now buy into Trump’s nationalistic “America First” and protectionist “Buy American” themes, promoting the rhetoric that these measures would help protect the jobs of native-born U.S. workers.

This approach is thoroughly racist, falsely paint­ ing the main problem as competition between U.S.

and Mexican workers, and aids ruling-class efforts to divide working people from each other. Actually, our struggle is one with that of Mexican workers in demanding that our capitalist governments pro­ (Above) “Senator from Wall St.” Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)

ic Party leadership was more than a little apprehensive about its independent nature, remaining largely out­ side of their control. They recall the anti-Vietnam War movement, which despite their best efforts remained independent, successfully resisting being incorporated into the Democratic Party electoral machine.

This is the essential political debate that will take place as the anti-Trump movement evolves—the fight to keep it independent of the Democratic Party. New York Senator Charles Schumer, who is replacing a dis­ credited Hillary Clinton as the principal spokesperson for the Democratic Party, is already pushing to channel the movement into Democratic electoral politics. It’s well to remember Schumer’s history and background. In his long political career he came to be known as “The Senator from Wall Street.”

He raises millions and millions of dollars from the fi­ nance industry, both for himself and for other Demo­ crats. In return, he voted to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 and voted to bail out Wall Street in 2008. In between, he slashed fees paid by banks to the Secu­ rities and Exchange Commission to pay for regulatory enforcement, and eviscerated congressional efforts to crack down on rating agencies.

Schumer voted for the Patriot Act in 2001, and spon­ sored its predecessor, the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995. During a Senate hearing, Schumer ex­ plained that “it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.” Schumer also de­ fended the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims across the region, which Trump has cited as a national model.

Returning to Michelle Alexander’s perceptive quote, she describes what she believes would be necessary to accomplish a political revolution, “a sustained outside movement forcing truly transformational change.” That is what the anti-Trump movement which began with the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, should aspire to become. A placard I saw being carried at the Washing­ ton March was prophetic, “FIGHT TRUMP—THE DEMS WON’T.” n vide good jobs and union rights for all, regardless of which side of the border we happen to live on.

Revolutionary socialists strive to build solidarity among workers everywhere. To fight against un­ employment and for good paying jobs, we demand government-funded works programs. These can re­ build badly needed infrastructure and build things we need—like housing and schools—and put mil­ lions of unemployed back to work at union wages.

An effective working-class program gives special attention to the plight of immigrants. It demands an end to deportations, ICE raids, and all forms of ha­ rassment and racist scapegoating. It demands that immigrants receive full “legal protections” afforded to other citizens.

Marxists, as internationalists, call for open borders. Borders and immigration controls give employers power over migrants beyond what they can exert over native workers. The capitalists put forward the policy of “secure borders” as a way of whipping up national chauvinism, encouraging workers to op­ pose, mistrust, or ignore workers living elsewhere.

What do socialists answer? The First International of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels put it this way: “The poor have no country; in all lands they suffer from the same evils; and they therefore realize that the barriers put up by the powers that be, the more thoroughly to enslave the people, must fall.”

NO to Deportations and Raids! Equal Rights for All Immigrants! Open the Borders! n SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 2017 9