NORMAN BETHUNE AND BLOOD TRANSFUSION: A GREAT CANADIAN LIE

     If you visit pretty well any Canadian government site, or one receiving its funding from the government, you will come across the claim that the Canadian Communist surgeon Norman Bethune founded the first mobile blood transfusion unit in the world during his brief stay in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. This claim was set forth by Bethune himself, and it has been repeated by such institutions as Library and Archives Canada, Parks Canada, The Canadian Encyclopedia and the National Film Board. The reality is quite different, and to their credit both Wikipedia and the Centre for Blood Research briefly mention the actual facts. What were they ? In Catalonia the reality is well known.

     On July 17, 1936 the Spanish Civil War began with a military rising against the government of the Republic. The government dithered and procrastinated. The Spanish working class and peasantry, however, responded with vigor, and the rising was soon defeated in the major industrial areas in Spain, in Catalonia, Valencia, Madrid and the north of the country, excepting Galicia. This resistance was the signal for a far ranging social revolution that was the most profound of the 20th century. The centre of this revolution was perhaps Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, where on July 19 the anarchosyndicalists of the CNT thoroughly defeated the uprising. Soldiers listened to the pleas of the people, and turned their guns on officers and recalcitrant units. Other desertions from the paramilitary forces followed, and the general in command of the rising, General Goded, flew from the island of Majorca to a speedy arrest.

     When the dust settled it was generally the workers of the socialist UGT and the anarchist CNT who held most of nonfascist Spain, excluding their allies amongst the nationalist Basques. Anarchist organized forces, with a minor contribution from the left communist POUM and an even more minor contribution from the communist controlled PSUC, set out for the Aragon front to attempt to recover the city of Saragossa, lost to the rising because of misplaced trust. Most of the advancing anarchist columns delayed by wasting time securing rural areas, and only the unsupported Durruti column ended up facing the fascists near to the city. The Aragon front was the most active in the early days, and fighting was chaotic and improvised on both sides. It is there that the story of front line blood transfusions began.

     In the rear of the anarchist front in Barcelona the Catalan doctor Frederic Duran i Jorda organized the first mobile refrigerated blood transfusion unit as an extension of a blood bank in Barcelona, the Barcelona Transfusion Unit. The first units of blood were carried to the Aragon Front in refrigerated trucks in September of 1936. All of this was organized under the dual influence of the CNT Syndicate for Sanitary Services, an outgrowth of the Syndicate of Liberal Professions, and the anarchofeminist Mujeres Libres who took a particular interest in health care. In Catalonia the anarchist doctor Felix Marti Ibanez became director of medical services and social assistance. Decisions about medical services were made by the plenary assembly of the Syndicate. Eventually the "informal leadership" of the CNT/FAI allowed Federica Montseny to become federal Minister of Health in the Madrid government.

     Despite the continued unwise compromises of the anarchists and efforts of sectarian control by the Communists that reduced efficiency and approached treachery the Catalan blood transfusion service remained operative and became, in essence, THE unit of Republican Spain. Communist attempts to control and actually subvert this system began early, even in Catalonia. Some hospitals ended up being controlled by the Communist front PSUC with help from their foreign network. In November of 1936 socialist members of the British Medical Unit resigned from their positions with the Communist controlled Spanish Medical Aid (British organization in supposed solidarity with Spain). They complained that the SMA was "entirely Communist in outlook", and cited the conspiratorial tactics of the Communists that poisoned the atmosphere of  the unit at the Aragon Front. Extreme coercion was applied to these non-communist socialists to join the PSUC Communist front. The resignees complained of several instances where this mania for control damaged the effectiveness of their unit. As if true-believer Communists could care.

     It was in this atmosphere that the late-comer Norman Bethune arrived in Spain in November of 1936. By this time the mobile blood transfusion units which he is credited with establishing were already a functional concern. Every innovation with which he has been credited by Canadian (and Stalinist) authorities was already in place. Mobile blood transfusion at the front - credit the Catalans. Refrigerated transport units - credit the Catalans. There is one thing where is was actually innovative, and I will deal with this soon. Aside from this his only idea was that the blood transfusion service should be "centralized". This is, of course, standard Stalinist procedure, but in Spain it came up against an improvised libertarian system that actually worked. It was also part and parcel of the favouritism that plagued the Spanish Republicans as Communist dominated units were allotted supplies that were denied to anarchist or independent socialist formations. This reached its apotheosis during the May events of 1937 and Lister's march through Aragon where anarchist units at the front saw their base destroyed by Communist controlled units that the Party thought could be better employed destroying its Republican opposition than in fighting fascists.

     The centralization option hardly lived up to its promise of efficiency. By the time he left Spain in July of 1937 Bethune had reduced the Spanish transfusion service to almost total chaos. This was not only because of his extremely unpleasant personality, attested to by pretty well all of his acquaintances before he left for China where he was hailed as a Saint by the Maoists. It was also because of his willing role as a Stalinist tool. His epigram to Spain was that "all those anarchist bastards should be shot". His party friends did their level best in the course of the civil war/revolution to carry this out, and they also added, or emphasized, dissident communists such as the POUM and "uncooperative socialists" who didn't see dictatorship as a sacred goal.

     Bethune had left the mess behind him, and despite the political reservations the central Spanish government had only one place to turn if they were to have a blood transfusion service that worked at all. Dr. Frederic Duran I Jorda of Barcelona, the originator of all that Bethune is credited for, became the director of blood services for the Spanish State. He continued in this function until the victory of Franco, and he later settled in Britain. His contributions were cited (with no mention of Bethune) by Dr. Janet M. Vaughan, the architect of blood services in Britain in WW2 in the British Medical Journal. Bethune got no mention because he deserved none. Stronger words such as saboteur might be appropriate.

     Where was Bethune's contribution unique, at least in the context of Spain ? It was the rather grim use of blood harvested from dead bodies for use in transfusions. Dr. Duran I Jorda was familiar with the technique which he dismissed as impractical and dangerous. His familiarity came from reading medical reports from the Soviet Union, and in 1937 he issued a pamphlet in which he stated that the reports from the USSR were heavily "political", and his objections to the real technical problems.

     The use of blood transfusion began in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, and was pioneered by Lenin's friend Alexander Boganov. Bogdanov died in 1928 of a "transfusion accident". Maybe. By 1930 his organization had expanded from Moscow to Leningrad, and another Soviet, Sergei S. Yudin, began the use of cadaver blood in 1930. Yudin published his results in 1936, though, as with anything from Russia at the time, the encouragement for "good news" was a life or death matter for the person involved. Yudin's work had been widely trumpeted in the Communist press and when Bethune visited Moscow in 1935 he may or may not have had first hand knowledge with the process  during visits to various Soviet hospitals and clinics. In any case in February 1937 in Spain he stated that he would "use the latest Russian-American methods of blood transfusion".

     Be that it may another Communist doctor from England, Reginald Saxton, was probably more of a driving force behind the use of post-mortem blood than Bethune was. It it hard to say because the records of the Madrid blood transfusion unit under the reign of Bethune are notable for their abscence. Saxton later in September 1937 published an article in The Lancet in whiuch he extolled the use of dead body blood "as described by S.S. Yudin". It never happened. By this time under the directorship of Duran I Jorda  the non-political, often fatal, problems of cadaver blood led to a recognition of reality despite the political sympathies of the Communists. In the meantime, however, under Bethune use of cadaver blood became routine via the practice of the American (Communist !) geneticist who joined Bethune's team in Madrid. This culprit left Spain in May 1937, but transfusion of blood harvested from corpses continued at least in the Madrid zone well into 1938. Its use elsewhere in Spain awaits further historical research given the opposition of Duran I Jorda and the routinely conspiratorial practices of the Communist Party.

     What can we glean from this ? First of all is that Bethune's "contribution" to the attempt of the Communists to centralize (and control !) the use of blood transfusion is rather a "contribution" that is entirely sectarian and not medical. Second the real technical "contribution" of imitating ghouls by draining dead bodies of blood would have been seen much earlier had it not been for sectarian politics. This practice continued despite the efforts of an opponent nominally in charge of the blood transfusion service. Credit conspiracy. Given the historical and present practice of harvesting organs for transplant from those whom the government in China executes one should wonder about the source of the cadaver blood used in both the Soviet Union and under Communist influence in the Spanish Civil War. Human life is, after all, cheap to those who wish to build the Marxist Utopia.

     Note in Proof: This will be followed by a longer (shudder) examination of Bethune in Spain with all the appropriate references. As I mentioned the true story is well known in Catalonia, but I only read Spanish, and I will have to ask for help in translation. I have no desire to comment much on Bethune's earlier career in Canada and the USA except as it relates to his Spanish myth. Nor do I wish to comment much on the later Maoist hagiography of him in China where he may or may not have achieved humanity. The purpose of this piece is to attack a pervasive state-sponsored myth in my own country, Canada, and to correct some widely held falsehoods about the status of Bethune. At this point I do not presume to know the political opinions of Duran I Jorge. All that is demonstrable is that he was not Communist. My own opinion is that he was a Catalan nationalist of liberal opinions. I stand to be corrected on this matter.
    

Other Losers of 9/11
To continue this thread, another of the losers who lost via 9/11 was the 'American Left'. By this I mean not the "liberal left" of neo-conservative "horror dreams" but rather the left in the USA extending from what would be called "social-democrats" in civilized countries, through more dogmatic socialists and into the eerie netherworld of Leninist sects and "left-over new leftists" ensconced in various parts of academia. I deliberately leave the anarchists for later, even though the rise of the modern American anarchist movement is intimately connected to the lost opportunity that the American left was a victim of.
Remember the time. It was a time when the events of Seattle 1999 were fresh in memory. Intelligent leftists such as Barbara Ehrenreich and many others were reaching out to this new generation of radicalism. Meanwhile the Stalinist and Trotskyist sects were pretty well moribund. Their potential for lasting another decade was remote.
Here's the astonishing fact. The American left "lost" by winning. The fact that what they had been saying to a diminishing audience for decades was getting further and further from reality was gradually dawning on them. many "protestants" had arisen to proclaim that the left should recover its connection with ordinary people. The birthing pains of American anarchism were only !! a part of this. The left stood poised to recover the commitment to such things as participatory democracy and a genuine populism that decades of identity politics had obscured. The Leninist left looked poised to finally fall into the trash-bin of history, a fall very much predestined with the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1989.
This didn't mean that the American left would likely become "anarchists", though it did mean that they would be more than willing to "steal from the anarchist kit of ideas", often giving a version more sensible than that of the originators. It meant that they could have reformed and abandoned so many of their practices that made them a running joke amongst those who had the misfortune of coming in contact with them.
What happened ? An out-of-control imperial crusade on the part of the American government suddenly breathed new life into the terminal patient of American leftism. The Leninists began to recruit again. The academics found a cause to escape the growing knowledge of their futility. The inevitable reckoning was put off- perhaps for decades.
The gift that the Bush presidency gave to a tiny minority of their opponents was a gift of inestimable value. "War" tends to focus the mind just as almost dying does. This focus,however, pushes other matters way into the periphery. The left will now coat-tail the more "loyal" liberal opposition and imagine that it is gaining success after success. The success will be entirely illusionary.
The left would have had a very important role to play in "remaking America". Now they have put all their eggs in the one basket and continued on with business as usual in other matters that are more important in the long term. They will ignore pressing matters just as much as the conservatives that they hate do.
The left has failed because it has missed an opportunity for reformation, for abandoning a lot of its very bad habits. The opportunity will come again, but at a less opportune time. Perhaps when the American public is mindlessly casting around for villains to blame for its defeat, a defeat for which hubris is far more responsible than so-called traitors.
Next installment: We finally go overseas in examination of the losers.
Molly

A tip of the hat to Larry Gambone (see his blog at http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com ) for posting news of a recent interview with the anarchist grandson of Che Guevara on the Any Time Now discussion group (see link to sign up). He posted a link that he originally found on the NEFAC website (http://nefac.net ) of an interview with Canek Guevara . The interview was originally published in the French anarchist newspaper 'Le Monde Libertaire' on the 29th of January, 2006. It can be seen at the website of the group of the Federation Anarchiste affiliate 'Ici et Maintenant' at www.avoixautre.be . The interview is in French.
There has been a previous interview with Canek Guevara in Spanish from the Spanish anarchist site Red Libertaria (http://red-libertaria.net ) . For the full text see http://red-libertaria.net/noticias/modules.php?name=News&file;=article&sid=1140 . An English summary of this earlier article can be accessed at the a-infos site (http://www.ainfos.ca ) at http://www.aifos.ca/ainfos336/ainfos16681.html .
As the Cuban dictator slowly dies the question of whether the dictatorship can outlast the dictator comes to mind, I presume even to the mindless minds of what is left of the Stalinist left. Should the dictatorship falls it is likely to be one more nail in their coffins. The fall of the Soviet system left very few countries for them to hang their displaced patriotism on. China, Vietnam, Laos are now frankly capitalist. North Korea is too bizarre and obvious for all but the most fanatic of fundamentalist Stalinists to have any sympathy towards- though I have seen occasional squeaks of this even amongst anarchists who should know much better. But mercifully only occasional squeaks. Cuba, however, never reached the heights of brutality that other Stalinist regimes did, even though it was just as bureaucratic as any, perhaps even more so than some. To say, however, that it is "socialist" is to deform the word beyond all recognition such that "socialism" is nothing more than the class rule of a managerial ruling class with a delusion self-justification that it rules "for the good of the people". Pretty well all ruling classes have the same ideological justification.
While researching this I came on a few items of Castro's family, though none of them appear to have become anarchists. But that will be left to a further post.

The Sadness of the Left
Many years ago I was in conversation with a bookseller in Saskatoon who had had a very lengthy history of activism in the USA. I was in "recruiting mode" selling the soap of anarchism, and his reply was basically even though he agreed with what I said he saw little point in putting out any effort because, "there isn't any movement anymore". He was right even at the time he spoke-the late 70s.
There is a "continental difference" between leftism today and what it was in the late 60s/early 70s. At that time the general "aura" was one of "hope". To a large extent this can be put down to better economic times, to the entry of working class youth into higher education and to more than a little dose of naivety. In terms of the later you have to search far and wide to find apologists for communist dictatorship amongst today's left. Even those who have no moral compunction whatsoever about mass murder such as the "reformed communists" or even some Maoist sects have learned the virtues of monastic silence. The avenging angel of the lord of public opinion will pass over them if they simply shut their mouths.
But "hope" and "despair" are the primary differences between the left that existed then and what exists now. At the time of the late 60s/early 70s there was a VERY widely accepted delusion that revolution was both possible and imminent. Of course it never was, and even the closest approaches such as France 1968 founded on the gulf between desire/hope and intelligent thought. The result was indeed a "revolution", but like all revolutions before it it benefited those who had NOT made the revolutions. In this case it was the social controllers, the government managers, the social workers and (in North America and later the rest of the world) the purveyors of privilege for social controllers disguised as "activists"-the social workers, the psychologists and the "beneficiaries" of campaigns against "isms". There was gold in them thar' hills, and the gold was indeed mined.
In the earlier time it was indeed possible that large segments, youth or otherwise, would join the "counterculture"(sic), the "revolutionary movement"(sic) or whatever it was called. At Times they did. Today......leftism, in its historical expressions, has failed and is seen RIGHTLY as the class interest of those whose social product is NOTHING but social control. At its "best" it will continue to pass more laws and restrict freedom more and more, all in the name of the "greater good" of course and in alliance with other more traditional segments of the bureaucracy in which it has found a place.
To my great pleasure anarchism has become the dominant force on the "extreme left " today. This is despite the occasional blips of orthodox Stalinism or Trotskyism in a few localities. It is despite the almost genetic aversion of present days anarchists to the traditional methods of organization that anarchism advocated, and, hence, the attraction of pseudo-organizations that attempt to resurrect the corpse of Leninism.
But still...there are many attempts at anarchist organization in the world today. Often they are quite successful such as the CGT of Spain. But they operate in a milieu of what is essentially despair. The grossest examples of this occur in North America where such perversions as "primitivism", "anti-oppression work" have replaced the view that anarchism HAS a future with the view that building a cult is "What is To Be Done". Of course those within the cult cannot comprehend how glorifying Maoist bank robbers as heroes or babbling about the "end of civilization" inspires nothing more than disgust in normal people. But in the world of despair building your own fantasy world becomes the only thing you can do.
There is a distinct possibility that anarchism has a future and that this is being pointed towards by the efforts of the European syndicalists, the platformists worldwide and others who can see anarchism in a realistic fashion rather than a cultish fashion.
Let us hope so.