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Here’s why:A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.The Declaration of Causes of Seceding StatesAnd here:Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal UnionWe affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.Also here:A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.Or maybe here:The new constitution [of the Confederate States of America] has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”Our new government [of the Confederate States] is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, March 21, 1861“Corner Stone” SpeechI could go on, as there are many more examples, but I think the point is made.People don’t believe Southerners when they say the Confederacy seceded over states’ rights because nobody said that until years after the Civil War was over. The idea that it was about States’ Rights was an example of Post-Civil War revisionist history on the part of Southern leaders; it’s commonly known among historians as “the Myth of the Lost Cause”, and was a (highly successful) attempt to recast the cause of the war as a noble struggle that had little or nothing to do with slavery.It is also absolutely and utterly without historical evidence from before and during the war to support it. The South was not shy about why it was seceding, as the excerpts from the documents I’ve posted above indicate.In fact, rather than violating the rights of the states, many of the Southern states accused the federal government of not doing enough to rein in the behavior of the Northern states, specifically in regard to the recovery of fugitive slaves. Here’s another excerpt from South Carolina’s declaration of secession, which I have already quoted from above:The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States [the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850]. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress [the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850] or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.The target of South Carolina’s anger is not the federal government, except insofar as it was too weak to stop the non-slaveholding states from resisting the return of fugitive slaves to the South. In fact, you can’t find anything in South Carolina’s declaration of secession that points to specific actions by the federal government infringing on the rights of the Southern states at all. It was the non-slaveholding states they were angry at.EDIT: The section of South Carolina’s declaration I quoted above is referring to something called the Personal Liberty Laws, which were laws passed by Northern states to provide legal protection for blacks living in the North who were accused of being fugitive slaves. Under the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, all that was required to prove someone was a fugitive slave was a written or verbal statement from their alleged owner, or a representative appointed by the owner (such as a slave hunter) that the person in question was an escaped slave. Personal Liberty Laws required anyone seeking to reclaim an escaped slave in a free state to first obtain a warrant from a state judge, which could be denied with insufficient evidence that the person in question was in fact the fugitive being sought. They also provided some opportunity for the accused fugitive to face their accusers in court, which the federal acts expressly denied. This was a source of great controversy between the Northern and Southern states, and from the Southern perspective was evidence that the federal government was too weak to defend their interests, rather than so strong that it was infringing on their rights. Other states mentioned this in their declarations of secession as well.Here’s Texas:The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.The Supreme Court actually ruled Personal Liberty Laws unconstitutional, as a violation by the Northern States of the federal government’s authority to determine how the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution (Article IV Section 3) would be enforced. This ruling was handed down in 1844 in the case of Prigg v Pennsylvania, but Northern states continued to pass and enforce Personal Liberty Laws after that ruling.Personal Liberty LawsPrigg v. PennsylvaniaThe Southern States were angry because the Northern States were sheltering escaped slaves, in defiance of federal law, as part of what they saw (correctly) as a larger effort to undermine the institution of slavery in the South. The problem they had with the federal government was not that it was taking their rights away, but that it was not doing enough to stop this behavior by the Northern states. In other words, rather than being tyrannical, they saw the federal government as largely ineffective. Added to this was their concern with Lincoln’s election that the federal government would now join the Northern states in their effort to undermine slavery, specifically by limiting it to those states in which it already existed, while barring slavery from the vast territories acquired from France in 1803 and Mexico in 1848. This would ensure the slaveholding states would become a small minority of the overall nation, placing (it was thought) slavery on a path to eventual extinction. The South wanted to prevent this from happening.So in response to the question, people do not believe it, because it is not true.

SJW, or “Social Justice Warrior” is a pejorative term used to describe socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism,[1][2] as well as identity politics.[3]The accusation that somebody is an SJW carries implications that they are pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction,[4] and engaging in disingenuous arguments.[5]The phrase originated in the late 20th century as a neutral or positive term for people engaged in social justice activism.[1] In 2011, when the term first appeared on Twitter, it changed from a primarily positive term to an overwhelmingly negative one.[1][1]SJW offended againThere are also people on the left who promote socially progressive ideas and are not SJW’s.So what is the difference? It is not merely believing in socially progressive ideals. Otherwise the entire left would be SJW’s, and they are not, despite what Jordan Peterson says with his ridiculous “Cultural Marxism” claims. There is no such thing as “Cultural Marxism.” Peterson is confusing traditional Marxism with the SJW movement, which is rooted not in Marxist philosophy but in postmodernism.The focus of modern liberal progressivism is keeping capitalism but making it more socially just. So instead of getting rid of capitalism liberal progressives want to promote feminism, affirmative action, identity politics, etc. to make it less hostile to these groups and more inclusive. But this doesn’t make you a SJW.SJW’s are liberal progressives that act in an obnoxious and reactive manner, shouting down speakers at colleges, freaking out on people for microaggressions, for being insulted at a variety of different things like Chief Wahoo or the Redskins mascots, etc. Or they are those who become class enemies. Hillary Clinton supporters who cared more about electing a woman based on identity politics than trying to do right by everyone by supporting Bernie Sanders were classic SJW’s. Connie Schultz, wife of Sherrod Brown, summed it up when she said that she didn’t give a damn about the poor or anyone else because it was “a woman’s turn” to become President.Jordan Peterson is wrong. There is no neo-Marxism. There is simply Marxism. Most Marxists believe in equality of the sexes, equal rights for members of the LGBTQ+ community, and tolerance of different kinds of people. There may be some Marxists who are opposed to these things, but I have yet to actually meet one. Marxists don’t focus on identity politics because this only makes sense in a world of capitalism, which Marxists are trying to tear down. In a Marxist society people would pursue an education independent of their ability to pay, but based on hard work, and career promotion would be based on one’s skill, length of service, and educational credentials, without discriminating based on race, sexual identity, etc. Marxists do care about the plight of these people, but their struggle is bound up with class struggle, so those aren’t major focuses as one will take care of the other. This does not mean that Marxists are against social justice issues. To the contrary.My problem with SJW’s is that they often take sides with the corporate Democrats against Marxists and socialists. Usually this is indeed self serving. They want good jobs and to succeed in a capitalist society, the poor and others be damned. Fuck that. Often this means they become class enemies more than friends, as much as the bourgeois elites.Non SJW anti-Marxist LeninistsIn the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests tirelessly propagated anticommunism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.Genuflection to OrthodoxyMany on the U.S. Left have exhibited a Soviet bashing and Red baiting that matches anything on the Right in its enmity and crudity. Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about “left intellectuals” who try to “rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements” and “then beat the people into submission. . . . You start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn’t lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the right. . . . We’re seeing it right now in the [former] Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising Americans” (Z Magazine, 10/95).Chomsky’s imagery is heavily indebted to the same U.S. corporate political culture he so frequently criticizes on other issues. In his mind, the revolution was betrayed by a coterie of “communist thugs” who merely hunger for power rather than wanting the power to end hunger. In fact, the communists did not “very quickly” switch to the Right but struggled in the face of a momentous onslaught to keep Soviet socialism alive for more than seventy years. To be sure, in the Soviet Union’s waning days some, like Boris Yeltsin, crossed over to capitalist ranks, but others continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves, many meeting their deaths during Yeltsin’s violent repression of the Russian parliament in 1993.Some leftists and others fall back on the old stereotype of power-hungry Reds who pursue power for power’s sake without regard for actual social goals. If true, one wonders why, in country after country, these Reds side with the poor and powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves, rather than reaping the rewards that come with serving the well-placed.For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the United States have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist Left.Adam Hochschild: Keeping his distance from the “Stalinist Left” and recommending same posture to fellow progressives.Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they “weaken their credibility” (Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in the Cold-War condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of communists so that it not be accused of being communist (Guardian, 3/16/83). If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchhunters. Purging the Left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1949 some twelve unions were ousted from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1.7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late 1940s, to avoid being “smeared” as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations.The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those on the Right. Then and now, many on the Left have failed to realize that those who fight for social change on behalf of the less privileged elements of society will be Red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communists or not. For ruling interests, it makes little difference whether their wealth and power is challenged by “communist subversives” or “loyal American liberals.” All are lumped together as more or less equally abhorrent.Even when attacking the Right, the left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that “when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, [Reagan] will change not his mind but the facts.” While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism “both of the Right and Left,” individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote.A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual’s point of view is really dangerous” (Monthly Review, 5/83). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish–while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).Slinging LabelsThose of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anticommunists as “Soviet apologists” and “Stalinists,” even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society. Our real sin was that unlike many on the Left we refused to uncritically swallow U.S. media propaganda about communist societies. Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways. This claim had a decidedly unsettling effect on left anticommunists who themselves could not utter a positive word about any communist society (except possibly Cuba) and could not lend a tolerant or even courteous ear to anyone who did.Saturated by anticommunist orthodoxy, most U.S. leftists have practiced a left McCarthyism against people who did have something positive to say about existing communism, excluding them from participation in conferences, advisory boards, political endorsements, and left publications. Like conservatives, left anticommunists tolerated nothing less than a blanket condemnation of the Soviet Union as a Stalinist monstrosity and a Leninist moral aberration.That many U.S. leftists have scant familiarity with Lenin’s writings and political work does not prevent them from slinging the “Leninist” label. Noam Chomsky, who is an inexhaustible fount of anticommunist caricatures, offers this comment about Leninism: “Western and also Third World intellectuals were attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.” Here Chomsky fashions an image of power-hungry intellectuals to go along with his cartoon image of power-hungry Leninists, villains seeking not the revolutionary means to fight injustice but power for power’s sake. When it comes to Red-bashing, some of the best and brightest on the Left sound not much better than the worst on the Right.The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern EuropeAt the time of the 1996 terror bombing in Oklahoma City, I heard a radio commentator announce: “Lenin said that the purpose of terror is to terrorize.” U.S. media commentators have repeatedly quoted Lenin in that misleading manner. In fact, his statement was disapproving of terrorism. He polemicized against isolated terrorist acts which do nothing but create terror among the populace, invite repression, and isolate the revolutionary movement from the masses. Far from being the totalitarian, tight-circled conspirator, Lenin urged the building of broad coalitions and mass organizations, encompassing people who were at different levels of political development. He advocated whatever diverse means were needed to advance the class struggle, including participation in parliamentary elections and existing trade unions. To be sure, the working class, like any mass group, needed organization and leadership to wage a successful revolutionary struggle, which was the role of a vanguard party, but that did not mean the proletarian revolution could be fought and won by putschists or terrorists.Lenin constantly dealt with the problem of avoiding the two extremes of liberal bourgeois opportunism and ultra-left adventurism. Yet he himself is repeatedly identified as an ultra-left putschist by mainstream journalists and some on the Left. [Notably Chris Hedges, accused him often of “highjacking the revolution”, whatever that means.—Eds) Whether Lenin’s approach to revolution is desirable or even relevant today is a question that warrants critical examination. But a useful evaluation is not likely to come from people who misrepresent his theory and practice.Left anticommunists find any association with communist organizations to be morally unacceptable because of the “crimes of communism.” Yet many of them are themselves associated with the Democratic Party in this country, either as voters or members, seemingly unconcerned about the morally unacceptable political crimes committed by leaders of that organization. Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of innocent life; the FBI was given authority to infiltrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist Party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a “national emergency”; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political associations and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witchhunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic that worked in favor of Franco’s fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated. And for the better part of a century, the Congressional leadership of the Democratic Party protected racial segregation and stymied all anti-lynching and fair employment bills. Yet all these crimes, bringing ruination and death to many, have not moved the liberals, the social democrats, and the “democratic socialist” anticommunists to insist repeatedly that we issue blanket condemnations of either the Democratic Party or the political system that produced it, certainly not with the intolerant fervor that has been directed against existing communism. [And the Democrats are full responsible, as integral parts of the imperialist machinery, for all the crimes of the US empire in at least a century of continuous expansion, crimes detailed by many scholars, and compiled—inter alia—in books such as Rogue State (Bill Blum).—Ends]Pure Socialism vs. Siege SocialismThe upheavals in Eastern Europe did not constitute a defeat for socialism because socialism never existed in those countries, according to some U.S. leftists. They say that the communist states offered nothing more than bureaucratic, one-party “state capitalism” or some such thing. Whether we call the former communist countries “socialist” is a matter of definition. Suffice it to say, they constituted something different from what existed in the profit-driven capitalist world–as the capitalists themselves were not slow to recognize.First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West [even more so when compared with today’s grotesque compensation packages to the executive and financial elites.—Eds], as were their personal incomes and life styles. Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess. {Nor could they transfer such “wealth” by inheritance or gift to friends and kin, as is often the case with Western magnates and enriched political leaders. Just vide Tony Blair.—Eds]The “lavish life” enjoyed by East Germany’s party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety). Nor was the “lavish” consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy.Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth from their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.Third, priority was placed on human services. Though life under communism left a lot to be desired and the services themselves were rarely the best, communist countries did guarantee their citizens some minimal standard of economic survival and security, including guaranteed education, employment, housing, and medical assistance.Fourth, communist countries did not pursue the capital penetration of other countries. Lacking a profit motive as their motor force and therefore having no need to constantly find new investment opportunities, they did not expropriate the lands, labor, markets, and natural resources of weaker nations, that is, they did not practice economic imperialism. The Soviet Union conducted trade and aid relations on terms that generally were favorable to the Eastern European nations and Mongolia, Cuba, and India.All of the above were organizing principles for every communist system to one degree or another. None of the above apply to free market countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Germany, or the United States.But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history. It compares an ideal against an imperfect reality, and the reality comes off a poor second. It imagines what socialism would be like in a world far better than this one, where no strong state structure or security force is required, where none of the value produced by workers needs to be expropriated to rebuild society and defend it from invasion and internal sabotage.The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundamentals as to leave little room for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism–not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience–could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the “nature” of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this “nature” come from? Was this “nature” disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? . . . Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of “socialism” and the negative of “bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny” interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life. (Carl Shames, correspondence to me, 1/15/92.)The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic’s own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe–and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them–all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. . . .These leaders weren’t in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make]. (Guardian, 11/13/91)To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.Decentralization vs. SurvivalFor a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872-73 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta),” Engels writes. “[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces].” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.”Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency–which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack. One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government.The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus. Thus, in May 1921, the same Lenin who had encouraged the practice of internal party democracy and struggled against Trotsky in order to give the trade unions a greater measure of autonomy, now called for an end to the Workers’ Opposition and other factional groups within the party. “The time has come,” he told an enthusiastically concurring Tenth Party Congress, “to put an end to opposition, to put a lid on it: we have had enough opposition.” Open disputes and conflicting tendencies within and without the party, the communists concluded, created an appearance of division and weakness that invited attack by formidable foes.Only a month earlier, in April 1921, Lenin had called for more worker representation on the party’s Central Committee. In short, he had become not anti-worker but anti-opposition. Here was a social revolution–like every other–that was not allowed to develop its political and material life in an unhindered way.By the late 1920s, the Soviets faced the choice of (a) moving in a still more centralized direction with a command economy and forced agrarian collectivization and full-speed industrialization under a commandist, autocratic party leadership, the road taken by Stalin, or (b) moving in a liberalized direction, allowing more political diversity, more autonomy for labor unions and other organizations, more open debate and criticism, greater autonomy among the various Soviet republics, a sector of privately owned small businesses, independent agricultural development by the peasantry, greater emphasis on consumer goods, and less effort given to the kind of capital accumulation needed to build a strong military-industrial base.The latter course, I believe, would have produced a more comfortable, more humane and serviceable society. Siege socialism would have given way to worker-consumer socialism. The only problem is that the country would have risked being incapable of withstanding the Nazi onslaught. Instead, the Soviet Union embarked upon a rigorous, forced industrialization. This policy has often been mentioned as one of the wrongs perpetrated by Stalin upon his people. It consisted mostly of building, within a decade, an entirely new, huge industrial base east of the Urals in the middle of the barren steppes, the biggest steel complex in Europe, in anticipation of an invasion from the West. “Money was spent like water, men froze, hungered and suffered but the construction went on with a disregard for individuals and a mass heroism seldom paralleled in history.”Stalin’s prophecy that the Soviet Union had only ten years to do what the British had done in a century proved correct. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, that same industrial base, safely ensconced thousands of miles from the front, produced the weapons of war that eventually turned the tide. The cost of this survival included 22 million Soviets who perished in the war and immeasurable devastation and suffering, the effects of which would distort Soviet society for decades afterward.All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of “suspect” nationalities.The transforming effects of counterrevolutionary attack have been felt in other countries. A Sandinista military officer I met in Vienna in 1986 noted that Nicaraguans were “not a warrior people” but they had to learn to fight because they faced a destructive, U.S.-sponsored mercenary war. She bemoaned the fact that war and embargo forced her country to postpone much of its socio-economic agenda. As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola and numerous other countries in which U.S.-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmlands, villages, health centers, and power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousands–the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib or mercilessly bled beyond recognition. This reality ought to earn at least as much recognition as the suppression of dissidents in this or that revolutionary society.The overthrow of Eastern European and Soviet communist governments was cheered by many left intellectuals. Now democracy would have its day. The people would be free from the yoke of communism and the U.S. Left would be free from the albatross of existing communism, or as left theorist Richard Lichtman [pictured right] put it, “liberated from the incubus of the Soviet Union and the succubus of Communist China.”In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe seriously weakened the numerous Third World liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with U.S. global counterrevolutionaries around the globe.In addition, the overthrow of communism gave the green light to the unbridled exploitative impulses of Western corporate interests. No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years. Now that the free market, in its meanest form, is emerging triumphant in the East, so will it prevail in the West. “Capitalism with a human face” is being replaced by “capitalism in your face.” As Richard Levins put it, “So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay” (Monthly Review, 9/96).Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don’t get it.[2]Footnotes[1] Social justice warrior - Wikipedia[2] Left Anticommunism: The Unkindest Cut - Global Research

A window into man's digestion system- literallyAlexis St. Martin: The Man With A Hole In His StomachThe history of medicine isn't pretty. It's full of grisly accidents, inhumane behavior, and ambiguous ethics. The story of Alexis St. Martin and Dr. William Beaumont hits all of those low points, but it completely changed the world of medicine.In 1822, Alexis St. Martin was working as a voyageur[1] — a boatman who shipped furs from port to port — for the American Fur Company.[2] St. Martin and his mates navigated heavily laden canoes through the chilly Canadian waterways, transporting furs and other goods to trading posts along the way. By day, voyageurs paddled for 15 backbreaking hours, negotiating whitewater rapids, and transpirting thousands of pounds of cargo.[3] At night they made camp, filled their bellies, and slept beneath their canoes.The 28-year-old French Canadian was standing in the company store on Mackinac Island in Michigan when the accidental discharge of a shotgun from less than three feet away pierced St. Martin in his lower ribs on the left side.[4] It was a gruesome scene, leaving a gaping hole where fractured rib bones, burnt bits of lung, and stomach tissue protruded.[5] The wound was so bad that his breakfast couldn't even stay in his stomach; it came out of the hole along with everything else.American Fur Company on Mackinac Island where Alexis St. Martin was shot. (American Fur Company - Wikipedia)His companions dressed his wound and called for Dr. William Beaumont, an Army surgeon stationed at Fort Mackinac to the scene.[6] Beaumont, a Connecticut native, never attended medical school and had no background in experimental science but had been apprenticed in Vermont and joined the American Army, where he fought in the 1812 War against Britain as a surgeon’s mate.[7] He was eventually sent to Mackinac Island, a frontier outpost in Michigan, at the lowly rank of Assistant Surgeon.Beaumont after examining the hand-sized wound with the edge of a burnt lung protruding from it, initially decided that treatment was futile. He cleansed the wound, clipping off a bit of a rib with his penknife to ease the lung back inside, then applied a poultice.[8] Beaumont predicted the man wouldn't survive more than 36 hours.[9]I was called to him [St. Martin] immediately after the accident. Found a portion of the Lungs as large as a turkey’s egg protruding through the external wound, lacerated and burnt, and below this another protrusion resembling a portion of the Stomach, what at first view I could not believe possible to be that organ in that situation with the subject surviving, but on closer examination I found it to be actually the Stomach, with a puncture in the protruding portion large enough to receive my fore-finger, and through which a portion of his food that he had taken for breakfast had come out and lodged among his apparel. In this dilemma I considered my attempt to save his life entirely useless.~William Beaumont, Fort Mackinac Post Surgeon (1822)[10]Miraculously, St. Martin did survive, despite pneumonia and a dangerously high fever. In the weeks that followed, St. Martin was subjected to repeated cycles of bleeding, followed by cathartics, which spilled out the hole in his stomach.[11] Attempts to feed the patient had similar results, forcing aides to feed St. Martin through anal injections for two weeks[12] , until the wound is healed enough for the hole to be bandaged.With every subsequent doctor's visit, St. Martin recovered and in about 10 months, the wound was healed — mostly. Despite multiple surgeries, the hole wouldn't close. Instead, the tissue healed back on itself to form a fistula.[13] That made it difficult for St. Martin to eat since food easily escaped from his stomach.Alexis St. Martin - WikipediaBut for Beaumont, that hole presented a window into human digestion.. At the time, there were two competing theories about how digestion worked. On one side, digestion was mechanical- food was literally ground up in the stomach. On the other, it was chemical- food was dissolved in the stomach with some sort of gastric juice.[14]For Beaumont, St. Martin's hole presented a window into human digestion literally. Until he published his observations “Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion,” most scientists believed digestion was either mechanical or chemical.[15] The first attributed digestion to a grinding in the stomach, the latter to the solvent properties of gastric juice.[16]To determine the mechanisms of digestion, Beaumont used St. Martin as a human guinea pig, observing human digestion through the open hole in St. Martin's stomach. Vegetables were spooned into the hole, left it there for a while, then siphoned out.[17] Beaumont tied bits of meat to pieces of string and dangled them in the stomach like a fishing lure, pulling them out after various periods of time to see how the meat changed.[18]Digesting The Past | PLOS ECR CommunityHe kept careful records of everything that went into and came out of St. Martin's stomach, and even sent samples of his gastric secretions for analysis — a task that sounds routine these days, but was unheard of at the time.[19] In the end, Beaumont was able to prove that digestion was chemical, due to gastric juices made up primarily of hydrochloric acid.[20]While St. Martin’s gastric fistula was not the first recorded in history, it was the first time one was exploited for scientific research.[21] With encouragement through letters from his friend, Army Surgeon General Joseph Lovell, Beaumont continued to experiment on and in St. Martin’s stomach on Mackinac Island through 1824.[22] Experiments continued intermittently for the next 10 years, at his posts in New York, Wisconsin and Washington D.C.Beaumont demonstrated once and for all that digestion in the stomach was chemical—a product (mostly) of the gastric juice itself which Beaumont surmised, correctly, was composed largely of hydrochloric acid.[23] The discovery lifted the doctor from obscurity, and he became seen as the father of American gastric physiology.[24] The fact that Beaumont made these findings with the barest nuts-and-bolts medical background, in frontier conditions, and with no scientific training is a testament to his keen mind.This Man's Gunshot Wound Gave Scientists a Window Into DigestionWhile examining a patient and recording observations is routine in medicine today, it was uncommon during Beaumont's time. Doctors would often diagnose patients without ever laying eyes on them.[25] Despite being the 1800s, many physicians continued to diagnose patients on the 1,600-year-old medical treatises of the ancient Greek physician Galen.[26]However, a steadily increasing number of scholars and doctors began to realize that observational medicine was a revolutionary approach to syccessful physiology and medicine. Essentially, data was collected on the clinical patient and then diagnoses were based on the physician's conclusions.Dr William Beaumont (Alexis St. Martin: The Man With A Hole In His Stomach)One thing in particular that clouded Beaumont’s rising reputation was his callous insensitivity toward St. Martin. While typical of the age, an 1843 letter from St. Martin to Beaumont explains his unwillingness to travel and reveals, perhaps, the patient’s attempt to remind the doctor of his human condition. “I have not forgot you. I have had some sickness in my family, and lost two of my children, and was unwell myself for the best part of a year.”[27]The doctor showed little concern for St. Martin’s physical or emotional well-being throughout the experiments, which often left St. Martin lightheaded, nauseous, constipated and with a headache.[28] Who knows what other sicknesses the Quebecois’ amazing immune system stanched, as Beaumont freely placed objects of questionable sterility, including thermometers and spoons, into the hole.[29] We know, too, that St. Martin was ridiculed by his peers over his freakish stomach, as his brother, Etienne, also a voyageur, once stabbed another voyageur for taunting St. Martin.[30]It's questionable how much consent St. Martin authorized Beaumont to experiment on his body. Beaumont kept St. Martin a virtual prisoner in his own home, feeding and clothing him for years, but also preventing him from leaving to visit his wife and children.[31] In Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Beaumont housed St. Martin, as well as his wife, Marie, and children.[32] The family was treated as hired hands, and St. Martin was paid as such. Later, Beaumont arranged to have St. Martin enlisted in the army so he could receive a stipend to live on—although St. Martin’s only duty was to present his stomach to Beaumont.[33]A Gutsy Life:By 1834, St. Martin had successfully extricated himself from the doctor. The two never saw each other again, although over the course of the next two decades, Beaumont tried unsuccessfully to lure St. Martin to his home in St. Louis (where he eventually settled) for more experiments.[34] Once, Beaumont sent his son, Israel, to Quebec as an envoy.[35] But Beaumont and St. Martin could never come to terms. St. Martin wouldn’t visit without his family. Beaumont didn’t want the family, and even when he or St. Martin relented on that point, the doctor wouldn’t advance enough money to make the visit happen, for fear the “irresponsible” St. Martin would squander the funds along the way.[36]Although a world apart, the men’s odd relationship haunted both to the end of their days. In 1840, Beaumont was called in as one of several physicians to assist the publisher of a St. Louis newspaper who’d been struck on the head with an iron cane by a politician who his newspaper had maligned.[37] Beaumont performed a trepanning operation—cutting a hole in the patient’s skull to remove the pressure. The publisher died, and the politician went on trial for murder. In their defense, his lawyers accused Beaumont of drilling the hole in the man’s head just to see what was inside, just as he’d left the hole in St. Martin’s side. The politician got of with a $500 fine.[38] While Beaumont then and at other times has been accused of not closing a hole after the wound healed so he could exploit it, many scholars and physicians believed the doctor lacked the means or the knowledge to do so.Beaumont’s later life in St. Louis was comfortable. He was happily married and had three children he adored.[39] While Beaumont’s book never made him much money, it brought him prominence, which translated into a busy physician’s practice.[40] Beaumont died in 1853, about a month after he hit his head on an icy step after visiting a patient.[41]Alexis Bidagan St. Martin (1802-1880) - Find A...St. Martin outlived his doctor by 27 years. In 1856, a charlatan, going by the name of Bunting and masquerading as a doctor, toured St. Martin around 10 cities, treating him like a circus freak.[42] While in St. Louis, the pair visited Beaumont’s widow and son, Israel.[43] Presumably, St. Martin made some money from the tour, but it wasn’t enough to lift him out of poverty in his old age.When St. Martin died in 1880, his family purposely left his body out to decompose in the sun before burying him in an unmarked grave—eight feet deep with rocks on the casket—all to keep the curious from exhuming it.[44]In 1962, St. Martin finally got his due when the Canadian Physiological Society decided it was time to mark his grave.[45] The society’s sleuthing turned up the fact that St. Martin was 28 at the time of the accident, not 18 as had been believed for 140 years—largely because Beaumont recorded it that way. Beaumont, who knew every nuance of St. Martin’s stomach, apparently never bothered to check his subject’s age.Footnotes[1] Definition of VOYAGEUR[2] American Fur Company[3] A Gutsy Life: Reboot[4] Alexis St. Martin Becomes Living X-Ray | History Channel on Foxtel[5] Probing the Mysteries of Human Digestion[6] If You're Going to Mackinac Island, You Have to Visit the Forts – MyNorth.com[7] Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal[8] Frontier Doctor[9] The Canada Medical Record[10] The William Beaumont Papers: A Life in Letters[11] Before Bioethics[12] History and Animal Nutrition and Digestion[13] Intestinal Fistulas[14] Probing the Mysteries of Human Digestion[15] An Elementary treatise on human physiology[16] Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice, and the Physiology of Digestion[17] An Elementary treatise on human physiology[18] DR. WILLIAM BEAUMONT HAD THE STOMACH FOR THE JOB[19] The Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery[20] How Powerful Is Stomach Acid?[21] This Horrifying Experiment Led to Our Understanding of Human Digestion[22] Source Materials and the Library: The Dispersion of the Beaumont Papers[23] ‘Open Wound’ Book Review - Doctor and Patient, Bound Together[24] Dr. William Beaumont: The Accidental Father of Gastroenterology[25] Man With Hole in Stomach Revolutionized Medicine[26] The Doctor's White Coat: An Historical Perspective[27] Alexis St. Martin (1794-1880): The Intrepid Guinea Pig of the Great Lakes[28] Digestive System - Alexis St. Martin's Stomach[29] Medical Sentinel[30] The Journal of the American Medical Association[31] Man With Hole in Stomach Revolutionized Medicine[32] William Beaumont Publishes the First Great American Contribution to Physiology[33] Working Ethics: William Beaumont, Alexis St. Martin, and Medical Research in Antebellum America[34] St. Martin And Beaumont[35] Alexis St. Martin collection 1879[36] Full text of "Life and letters of Dr. William Beaumont, including hitherto unpublished data concerning the case of Alexis St. Martin"[37] Frontier Doctor[38] Guinea Pig Zero[39] William Beaumont Biography[40] Dr. William Beaumont's Life and Work[41] William Beaumont Biography[42] All the Guts, None of the Glory: The Story of Alexis St. Martin[43] This Man's Gunshot Wound Gave Scientists a Window Into Digestion[44] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS014067361260498X.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi3t5OYn6LlAhWSd98KHf1DAxAQFjAgegQICxAB&usg=AOvVaw28bH2a_a6Osl16SO9Ie1EK[45] Alexis Bidagan St. Martin (1802-1880) - Find A...