SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

This short (63 pg) collection of material details one of the best satires and practical jokes of the czech anarchist Jaroslav Hasek. Along with a group of his anarchist friends, he formed a party to participate in the 1911 Austro-Hungarian elections for a district in Prague called Vinohrady. Hasek of course never meant it to be a serious party, it's purpose was to mock and satirize elections and the politicians who run in them. Thus he even gave the party a satirical name, mocking the cowardice, and hypocrisy of the popular parties: The Party of Moderate Progress within the bounds of the Law.

This short book (131pg) by the russian/french Communist Victor Serge was written while Serge was still in the Soviet Union and had access to the very recently discovered archives of the czarist secret police. Written to help revolutionaries abroad deal with reactionary repression, it details the workings of the Okhrana (czarist secret police) as well as others: its handling and use of informers, its records and quasi-academic approach to compiling extensive information about revolutionary organizations, etcetera. Yet it also delves into the issues of revolutionary repression, and other tactical and political issues that face a revolutionary movement.

This book (127pg) discusses a very important, but often ignored event in history: the wholesale slaughter of communists and working class sympathizers in Indonesia. The name of the book "Constructive Bloodbath in Indonesia" is the authors sarcastic way of pointing out this lack of interest in what can only be described as a horrible, inhuman massacre. Started by the military, with the support, backing, and encouragement of amerikkka and britain, the massacre was carried out by different elements of society, all with clear instructions from the top and under the general control of the military. The main perpetrators besides the military itself were nationalist youth groups and reactionary islamic groups, both of whose political philosophies to this day focus an inordinate amount of hatred towards communists.

This book (79pg) by Marek Edelman was written just after the end of WWII, in 1945. It is an account of the heroic armed struggle of Jewish groups and individuals inside the Warsaw Ghetto against the fascist, occupying Nazi murderers. Marek Edelman was the highest leader of the ŻOB (The Jewish Combat Organization, the organization which united and directed Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis inside the Warsaw Ghetto) to survive the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He was a member of the Jewish Labor Bund in Poland before and during the war, and later was a prominent supporter of the Solidarnosc movement against the stalinist government of Poland. The Jewish Labor Bund was a socialist, anti-zionist group and they advocated staying in Poland and fighting for socialism and equality. Edelman himself was radically anti-zionist, and viewed himself as a Polish Jew who would thus obviously stay in his home country Poland, which he did after WWII.

This is the first book (120pg) written by Sengalese communist Sembene Ousmane. He wrote it in 1956 in France, where he was working as a docker in Marseilles and was also actively involved with the CGT and the French Communist Party. This book is written against the strong and disgusting racism that the French directed against the "colonial" immigrants in France at that time (and of course this racism continues to this day), and the economic oppression of these immigrant workers which went hand in hand with it.

Distribution of People's Property
In the Thieves' Market
by Roque Dalton

They've told us that the Executive Power
is the First Power
and that the Legislative Power, which was divided up by
a bunch of crooks, fractioned off into "government" and
"opposition"
is the Second Power
and that the prostituted (but ever Honorable)
Supreme Court of Justice
in the Third Power.

The newspapers, radio, and TV of the rich
have designated themselves the Fourth Power and of course
march hand in hand with the first three powers.

Tell Me News
by Sipho Sepamla

Tell me of a brother
who hanged himself in prison
with a blanket
was he punchdrunk

Tell me of a brother
who flung himself to death
from the ninth floor of a building
did his grip fumble with the loneliness up there

Tell me of a hooded man
who picked out others of his blood on parade
was his skin beginning
to turn with solitude

Oh, tell me of a sister
who returned home pregnant
from a prison cell
has she been charged under the Immorality Act

Tell me of a brother
who hanged himself in jail

Passing Truck
by Roque Dalton

I read on the side of a passing truck
filled to bursting with soldiers:
"Armed Forces of El Salvador."

If it's true it's force
why the need to be armed?

Or is it that its only strength
is that of being armed?

Or is it that the term "armed"
is the adjectivization of the verb to arm or to assemble
currently in use
when we refer to Westinghouse refrigerators
RCA televisions
and so many other appliances
that North Americans
assemble in their local
cheap labor installations?

Liberation:

Passing Truck - Roque Dalton.pdf

On Fear
by Sipho Sepamla

for days
we were run on fear
a fear of the unknown
we would turn day and night around
only to find
fear stares us in the eye
those were the days
when we walked through dense suspense
fearing the rustle of trees even
for leaves have been known to be ears
those days
fear spun us around her finger
unleashing us at will
tightening the grip unfeelingly
at night
each footfall in the yard
was a cold treading on our souls
each knock on the door
a hammering on our spirits
at the height of the detentions

To Poetry
by Roque Dalton

I welcome you poetry
grateful because meeting you today
(in life and in books)
you don't exist merely for the dazzling
great adornment of melancholy.

Moreover you can improve me today
by helping me serve in
this long and difficult struggle of our people

Now you are in you element:
no longer the splendid alternative
that divided me from my own place

And you keep on being beautiful
comrade poetry
among beautiful real arms burning under the sun
between my hands and upon my shoulder

You keep burning close