The Rose: Symbol of Socialism

I was asked today about DSA's synbol--two hand shaking holding a rose. The question was specifically about the rose, so I'll answer the two hands another day.  It's an American symbol.  The rose, on the other hand, is the most widely used symbol by democratic socialist, social democratic, and labor parties.

Here is an explanation from the Social Democratic Party of Denmark who have a nice site in English.

No complete consensus rests among Social Democrats regarding what our rose symbol really represents. There are, however, a number of tenders:

• community (the flower’s petals)
• socialism (its red color)
• taking care of those who are less able to compete (the fragility)
• the struggle (the thorns)
• growth (growing potential)
• plurality (the flower’s form)
• respect for nature (a plant) and
• cultural life (beauty)

Historically speaking, the red rose became the party’s emblem during the nineteen-seventies, when the Danish Social Democrats “annexed” the French Socialist Party’s logo.
For purposes of standing apart - symbolically and ideologically - from the larger Communist Party’s hard-line socialism, the French Socialists placed a red rose into the clenched fist. The intention was to signify “socialism with a human face”.

Later on, as a consequence of certain copyright-related considerations, the Social Democratic Party in Denmark was compelled to remove the fist from its logo. But the rose was preserved, albeit in a new rendition. More recently, the stems and the leaves also vanished, with the result that only the petals remain intact in the party’s emblem at the present time.

However, as has been mentioned: nobody can put forth an unequivocal explanation for what the rose symbolizes today. But all Social Democrats agree that the red rose embodies one or more stories that should not be forgotten. There is one patently evident community that has gathered around the rose. And as we all know, communities come into being around stories that we share in common, around stories about which we can agree.

If you take an even closer look at what the rose symbolizes on the basis of a universal kind of interpretation, it soon becomes quite clear that above and beyond any other association it might possess, the rose is perceived as a symbol of love. In this connection, we can cite – by way of example – from Hans Biedermann’s symbol encyclopedia:

“Adonis was Aphrodite’s (Venus’) lover, and in the myth about Adonis’ death, the very first red roses are said to have sprouted forth from his blood. Accordingly, the roses became a symbol of the love that transcends death...” “... In Christian symbolism, the rose is symbolic of the crucified person’s blood and, as such, a symbol of heavenly love. On the other hand, the troubadour’s lyrics saw in the rose a tangible symbol of earthly love, and as a symbol of love, the rose continues to thrive in our own time...”

Complete run of Labor Action on-line

Workers' Liberty reports

David Walters has announced the completion of a major milestone for the Left Opposition Digitization Project for the Marxist Internet Archive: the complete run of Labor Action, the newspaper of the Workers Party (U.S.) and Independent Socialist League from 1940 through the Autum of 1958.

Writers for this paper included, among others, Max Shachtman, James T. Farrell, C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, Hal Draper, and Irving Howe. The 19 years of Labor Action represents approx. 1,000 issues published, over half of which are full broadsheet in size. Presented in beautifylly digitaly optimized PDFs, the work was a joint project between the Riazanov Library Project and the Holt Labor Libary. Walters says: "We encourage the free and widespread distribution of this historic archive".

Click here to visit the archive.

Cinco de Mayo: an American Tradition

The Cinco de Mayo holiday dates from the Civil War era and was first embraced in California. UCLA professor David Hayes-Bautista is the author of "El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition."




 In Spanish


 

 According to a news release from UCLA

In the process of extracting Latino demographic data from nearly a dozen Spanish-language newspapers published in California since the 1850s, UCLA professor David Hayes-Bautista stumbled upon the answer to a question that for years had puzzled scholars and amateur historians alike: Why is Cinco de Mayo — a holiday commemorating the Mexican victory over the French at the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862 — so widely celebrated in California and the United States, when it is scarcely observed in Mexico?

As Hayes-Bautista explains in "El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition" (University of California Press), his new book on the origins of the holiday, which publishes May 5, Cinco de Mayo isn't Mexican at all.

Rather, it is an American holiday, rooted in the Civil War era and commemorated today because a network of Latino groups in California known as the juntas patrióticas mejicanas (Mexican patriotic assemblies) deliberately created a public memory of it

Ted Koppel Channels Alan West

Ted Koppel is a widely respected newsman, but this week in an NPR interview he channeled crazy right-wing Congressman Alan West who has been widely ridiculed for claiming that 80 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are members of the Communist Party. The standard form of this smear has been to claim that members of the Progressive Caucus are members of the Democratic Socialists of America.  Again and sadly, untrue. The inability of the far right to distinguish between liberals, progressives, democratic socialists, and Communists is a habitual deficiency that is, I suspect, scoffed at by the elite media like Koppel and NPR.

Koppel was talking about Sunday's French Presidential election, but he showed a similar ignorance of French politics. Here is what Koppel said, after a week in France preparing for a special report for NBC.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is the communist, who runs the leftist front way on the fringes - huge rallies, Neal, with tens of thousands of French communists who are coming out there.

Melenchon, however, is not a Communist. He is not even a former Commununist. He is a former member of the French Socialist Party. He was a Minister of Vocational Education is a Socialist government and former Socialist Senator. In 2008, Melenchon and others on the left the SP, exited and formed the Left Party, which is democratic socialist in its orientation. The Left Party has formed an electoral alliance with the much diminished Communist Party and other smaller groups.  That does not make Melenchon a Communist and it does not make the hundreds of thousands who have attended his rallies Communists. It should also be added that there are at least two Presidential candidates more on the left fringe than Melenchon.

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International Women's Day: The Dream of Equality

Rannfrid Thelle, co-chair of Wichita Democratic Socialists, discusses the origins of International Women's Day and the history of womens' movements to achieve equality. In case you wondered, this program was on March 7, 2012--a day before IWD.

Carl Finamore's Egyptian revolution photos

Bay area union activist Carl Finamore is just back from his second trip to Egypt. The first was a year ago; he arrived the same day that Mubarak was deposed. He has written a number of reports on Egypt, the working class and unions in Egypt for Talking Union, most recently Generals Still in Charge Tough Days Ahead in Egypt

Carl took lots of great photos on his last trip, here they are.


               

JLC President Stuart Appelbaum's Brave Speech on the Middle East

Earlier this week, the Jewish Labor Committee had their annual fundraising dinner. JLC President Stuart Appelbaum gave a brave and on target speech that addressed the Middle East, as well as the progressive role of the JLC on the America scene.

 According to the Jewish Week, Israel's deputy consul general walked out of the speech. 

Here is what Appelbaum said about the Middle East.

$100 Billion

Could the NDP win the Canadian election?

The social democratic New Democratic Party has played an important role in Canadian politics, forming provincial governments and often shaping the national debate. NDP leader  Tommy Douglas has been named the greatest Canadian in a nationally televised contest organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2004.  Canada's national health system is largely due to the influence of the NDP and its predecessor, the  Cooperative Commonwealth Federation.

But prior to this year neither the NDP nor the CCF have ever been a serious contender for national power. 

With a national Canadian election coming up soon (May 2), it looks like the NDP may make a breakthrough.

Kathleen Harris reports in the National Post

The NDP has steamrollered over the Liberal party to land in second place nationally behind the front-running Conservatives, results of a new poll suggest.

The EKOS-iPolitics.ca survey of more than 3,000 Canadians finds 28% of decided voters now support the NDP, compared with 23.7% who plan to vote Liberal. The Conservatives hold less than a six-point lead, sitting with 33.7% support, with just one week to go before election day.

Pollster Frank Graves calls it an unprecedented turn and “astonishing shift” for the NDP, which has traditionally trailed the two other main federal parties. Leader Jack Layton’s popularity is climbing most dramatically in Quebec, but building momentum in all regions of the country, according to the poll’s results.

“We have seen almost from Day 1, a slow, steady and now a dramatic rise where the NDP has gone from 14 points in a pre-writ poll to 28 points,” Graves said. “That is a doubling — I’ve never seen anything close to that.”

Results of the poll — the first of the campaign to show the NDP running in second place — show the Green party with 7.2% support, the Bloc Quebecois at 6.2% and other parties with 1.2%.

While numbers could still change significantly in the final week of the campaign, Graves said current figures suggest the NDP could take a “breathtaking” 100 seats. With that count, the once-unthinkable scenario of a Layton-led coalition with the Liberals begins to emerge, he said.