Click on title to link to the Associated Press's pre-season Top 25 College Football team ratings.
Well, another season has come around. I usually have plenty to say about the college football scene but I am taking a page from the late gonzo "sportswriter' Hunter S. Thompson playbook. Thompson's premise was that once you have "run the board' on one football season (or any sporting event)you can basically live off the fat of the land thereafter. In the word processor/Internet blog age all you have to do is call up a previous year's work and slip it in. I do so here. Except to note that unless something strange happens (always entirely possible in college football, especially the very competitive SEC)Florida with ace quarterback Tebow should repeat. If they falter, then my real favorite Texas out of the Big 12 should prevail.
Below is the commentary from 2008. Thanks for the tip, Hunter.
"Commentary
This running commentary was started on August 29, 2008 and will continue until January 2009. Each week I am making my comments on the previous week and making my selections for the upcoming week in the comment section. Of course, using the power of the Marxist scientific method (or maybe dumb luck) to enlighten one and all on this earth shaking struggle.
Well, folks now is the lead-up to the first real weekend of college football and time once again for this unrepentant Marxist to use his materialist concept of history to predict the trends of the season. But let us back up for a moment to last year’s (yes, I know ancient history but with blog history available, such as it is in this case, it can be pulled up in an instant) zany season and this forecaster’s ill-advised choices. One knows things are not right when upstart Appalachian State takes Michigan in the first week. It went downhill from there. The next couple of paragraphs taken from a review of Hunter Thompson’s Hey, Rube and a postscript tell the tale when the deal went down.
A run through the ups and downs of Thompson's previous seasons' (2000-2003) gambling wins and loses, however, does not date well. Hell, I can barely remember last week's bets. But the real problem is that, as in politics, we listen to different drummers. I am a long time fan of `pristine and pure' big time college football and would not sully my hands to bet on the NFL so his whining about the San Francisco 49'ers or the Denver Broncos is so much hot air. However, I will take Ohio State and 3 points against LSU in the 2007 college championship game. That's the ticket. I miss Hunter and his wild and wacky writing that made me laugh many a time when I was down and needed a boost but not here. Enough said.
Postscript: May 15, 2008. Needless to say there is a strong difference between my uncanny powers of political prognosis and the rather mundane ability to pick college football champions. Obviously, only a fool would have bet on the Buckeyes of Ohio State against a real SEC team like those Cajun boys from LSU. Right?
...Obviously, at the end of this year’s football season I will have to make better use of the delete key. But all of that is so much hot air and ancient history. Today we start as fresh as new born babes. That, after all is the beauty of this kind of madness. Here goes.
A Democratic convention with a historic black candidate for a nominee. Ho hum. A Republican convention coming up with the same old same old. Yawn. Today, or at least the time it takes me to write up this commentary, all that ‘real’ news is so much hot air. Why? This weekend marks the first serious collegiate football Saturday and the time to make my predictions about who will win this year’s coveted national championship (Jesus, I better stick to politics, this line sounds like something out of the late legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice. Somebody please stop me if I start writing about the 'mythical' national championship). I admit that I got waylaid last year when LSU seemingly came out of nowhere at the end to deliver Ohio State its second consecutive national championship lost. But that was last year. This year is as fresh as the driven snow.
On the first weekend of September it would be pointless (and foolhardy, as well) to name the winner. One of the virtues of following the Top 25 in the college football ratings is that, more so than in professional sports, the most precise calculations can blow up in your face. Witness last year’s unlikely defeat of Michigan by Appalachian State. So with that precaution in mind here is my Top Four which reflects the strength of the top conferences in the scheme of things. Pac-10- Southern California (no-brainer out West). Big 10-Ohio State (here I finally like them so they probably will tank out on me). Big 12- Oklahoma (although I like that quarterback McCoy from Texas, if he ever stops throwing interceptions) and the home conference of last year’s national champion’s, the SEC- Georgia who came on like gang busters at the end of last season (no, no repeat for LSU. Yes, I like Florida's Heisman Trophy Tebow but is the team around him strong enough?). For all you Clemson(ACC) and/or West Virginia fans (Big East). Get real-again!
I promise to do better updating the weekly commentary. Hell, all there is as an alternative is this misbegotten presidential campaign so I should have plenty of time on my hands."
Saturday, August 29, 2009
*From The 1960s Folk Revival -Spider John Koerner-Music For The Long Haul From When First We Came Unto This Country
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Spider John Koerner performing at the "Plough And Stars" In Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2007. Sounds like about the right place for him to be, right?
CD Review
Stargeezer, Spider John Koerner, Red House Reords, 1996
Okay, Okay those of you who have been keeping tabs know that I have spend much of the last year, when not doing political commentary or book or movie reviews, reviewing many of the old time folk artists that, along with the blues, were the passion of my youth in the early 1960's. You might also know, if you are keeping tabs, that I have been attempting to answer a question that I have posed elsewhere in this space earlier about the fate or fates of various performers from that period. Spider John Koerner was a lesser known, but important, fixture on the Cambridge/Boston folk scene during that time, as well as later once the hubbub died down and he and a local stalwart, Mr. Bones, carried on the tradition in smaller venues and in front of smaller crowds.
The CD represents a later 1996 attempt to keep up with folk developments as well as the old traditions. I find the CD as whole a little uneven in quality but certainly his efforts on "Stewball", "Danville Girl" and "Casey Jones" rank with the best of his earlier work. I would make special note of his cover of the old popular tune "Stardust". That cover may be worth the price of the whole CD. He is coming from some very different place on that one, and it is a very nice place indeed.
WHEN FIRST UNTO THIS COUNTRY
Lyrics: Traditional
Music: Traditional
When first unto this country
A stranger I came
I courted a fair maid
And Nancy was her name
I courted her for love
Her love I didn't obtain
Do you think I've any reason
Or right to complain
I rode to see my Nancy
I rode both night and day
I stoled a fine stallion
From Colonel Charles Grey
I rode to see my Nancy
I rode both day and night
I courted fairest Nancy
My own heart's true delight
The sheriff's men they followed
And overtaken me
They carted me away
To the penitentiary
They opened up the door
And then they threw me in
They shaved off my hair
And they cleared off my chin
They beat me and they banged me
And they fed me on dry beans
'Til I wished to my own soul
I'd never been a thief
With my hands stuck in my pockets
And my cap set on so bold
My coat of many colors
Like Joseph's of old
When first unto this country
A stranger I came
I courted a fair maid
And Nancy was her name
CD Review
Stargeezer, Spider John Koerner, Red House Reords, 1996
Okay, Okay those of you who have been keeping tabs know that I have spend much of the last year, when not doing political commentary or book or movie reviews, reviewing many of the old time folk artists that, along with the blues, were the passion of my youth in the early 1960's. You might also know, if you are keeping tabs, that I have been attempting to answer a question that I have posed elsewhere in this space earlier about the fate or fates of various performers from that period. Spider John Koerner was a lesser known, but important, fixture on the Cambridge/Boston folk scene during that time, as well as later once the hubbub died down and he and a local stalwart, Mr. Bones, carried on the tradition in smaller venues and in front of smaller crowds.
The CD represents a later 1996 attempt to keep up with folk developments as well as the old traditions. I find the CD as whole a little uneven in quality but certainly his efforts on "Stewball", "Danville Girl" and "Casey Jones" rank with the best of his earlier work. I would make special note of his cover of the old popular tune "Stardust". That cover may be worth the price of the whole CD. He is coming from some very different place on that one, and it is a very nice place indeed.
WHEN FIRST UNTO THIS COUNTRY
Lyrics: Traditional
Music: Traditional
When first unto this country
A stranger I came
I courted a fair maid
And Nancy was her name
I courted her for love
Her love I didn't obtain
Do you think I've any reason
Or right to complain
I rode to see my Nancy
I rode both night and day
I stoled a fine stallion
From Colonel Charles Grey
I rode to see my Nancy
I rode both day and night
I courted fairest Nancy
My own heart's true delight
The sheriff's men they followed
And overtaken me
They carted me away
To the penitentiary
They opened up the door
And then they threw me in
They shaved off my hair
And they cleared off my chin
They beat me and they banged me
And they fed me on dry beans
'Til I wished to my own soul
I'd never been a thief
With my hands stuck in my pockets
And my cap set on so bold
My coat of many colors
Like Joseph's of old
When first unto this country
A stranger I came
I courted a fair maid
And Nancy was her name
Friday, August 28, 2009
*Listen Reds, So You Want Run For President- Read This -The Fight Against Bourgeois Electoral Cretinism- “Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics"
Click On Title To Link To “ Marxist Principles And Electoral Tactics” , An Article From “Spartacist” Spring 2009 The International Communist League’s English Language Theoretical Journal.
Markin Commentary
Although the latest bourgeois election cycle is now, mercifully over, and we probably have a few days left in the year 2009 before the major capitalist parties once again start full-bore (or is it full-boring?) on the next electoral cycle leading up to the 2012 presidential elections it is not a bad time for radicals and revolutionaries to reflect, once gain, on our relationship to the norms of the bourgeois electoral cycle. Although it may not seem to be apparent as a pressing issue for radicals and revolutionaries, given our other propaganda and agitational tasks around opposition to various American-led imperial wars, the fight against further atomization of the working class and the struggle for a workers party now is the time to be clear about where we have to head strategically. With that in mind I have linked to an interesting article put out by the International Communist League from “Spartacist” Spring 2009, their English language theoretical journal “Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics”.
I will state upfront that I am a recent convert to the view that radical and revolutionaries should not run for the executive offices of the bourgeois state. I wrote an entry in this space in 2008 during the last electoral cycle describing that “conversion”, the reasoning behind it and why it made sense to do so at the time. (PUT IN HERE ENTRY If elected …..) I, nevertheless, had some lingering questions and, frankly, leftover attitudes from my previous adherence to the old time orthodox left communist position of running for executive office with the explicit proviso that one, of course, if elected would refuse to serve. This article goes a long way toward answering at least some of those questions and providing an exhaustive background look at the history of the controversy in the international workers movement.
The most pressing question resolved, and I shutter to think that I was so cavalier about it, is the strategic communist attitude toward elections as a piece of the puzzle in putting together a revolutionary strategy. If nothing else this article should make those who think that we can just summarily throw up candidates helter-skelter for any office in order to serve our immediate propaganda purposes. As the article details many a socialist and communist has lost their way in incorrectly assuming that “controlling” the administrative offices of the bourgeois state or having a huge parliamentary fraction in some national assembly gave one a leg up on the revolutionary process. The most important sentence in the whole argument is the one where, while dismissing running for elective executive offices out of hand, it was stated that communist could serve in national assemblies, as oppositionists. That is the forgotten quality that had been missing in the movement and in my own take on this question. It is not a matter of how many or how big parliamentary political organization revolutionaries can build but how they can use the bourgeois institutions to overthrow them. If you undertake the task of administering the bourgeois state you will, one way or another, “pay the piper”.
Aside from honing in on that political perspective the other virtue of the article is that it gives a very detailed historical description of various attitudes and policies that evolved since the time of the revolutions of 1848 in the international movement. Clearly, if it were merely a matter of the weight of history then the ICL position as posed would be a minority one. Interestingly, even the great revolutionary organization, the Communist International, in its revolutionary days and the great Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky (and his American followers originally, during his lifetime, coalesced in the Socialist Workers Party has, at best equivocal positions, on this question. As I mentioned in that previous entry the power of precedent is not confined to the law. A powerful argument has to be made in order to justify a change of positions. While I still have some practical tactical questions around the implementation of this policy, for example, the effect that it has on the issue of critical support to other workers organizations that DO run for executive office and support to parliamentary fractions of workers organizations that attempt form coalition governments with bourgeois forced in order, in effect, to administer the bourgeois state this is an important contribution to Marxist theory of the state. As important as Lenin’s “State And Revolution”? No. But an important supplement to that work. Read, and re-read this article. Down With The Executive Offices Of The Capitalist State!
Markin Commentary
Although the latest bourgeois election cycle is now, mercifully over, and we probably have a few days left in the year 2009 before the major capitalist parties once again start full-bore (or is it full-boring?) on the next electoral cycle leading up to the 2012 presidential elections it is not a bad time for radicals and revolutionaries to reflect, once gain, on our relationship to the norms of the bourgeois electoral cycle. Although it may not seem to be apparent as a pressing issue for radicals and revolutionaries, given our other propaganda and agitational tasks around opposition to various American-led imperial wars, the fight against further atomization of the working class and the struggle for a workers party now is the time to be clear about where we have to head strategically. With that in mind I have linked to an interesting article put out by the International Communist League from “Spartacist” Spring 2009, their English language theoretical journal “Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics”.
I will state upfront that I am a recent convert to the view that radical and revolutionaries should not run for the executive offices of the bourgeois state. I wrote an entry in this space in 2008 during the last electoral cycle describing that “conversion”, the reasoning behind it and why it made sense to do so at the time. (PUT IN HERE ENTRY If elected …..) I, nevertheless, had some lingering questions and, frankly, leftover attitudes from my previous adherence to the old time orthodox left communist position of running for executive office with the explicit proviso that one, of course, if elected would refuse to serve. This article goes a long way toward answering at least some of those questions and providing an exhaustive background look at the history of the controversy in the international workers movement.
The most pressing question resolved, and I shutter to think that I was so cavalier about it, is the strategic communist attitude toward elections as a piece of the puzzle in putting together a revolutionary strategy. If nothing else this article should make those who think that we can just summarily throw up candidates helter-skelter for any office in order to serve our immediate propaganda purposes. As the article details many a socialist and communist has lost their way in incorrectly assuming that “controlling” the administrative offices of the bourgeois state or having a huge parliamentary fraction in some national assembly gave one a leg up on the revolutionary process. The most important sentence in the whole argument is the one where, while dismissing running for elective executive offices out of hand, it was stated that communist could serve in national assemblies, as oppositionists. That is the forgotten quality that had been missing in the movement and in my own take on this question. It is not a matter of how many or how big parliamentary political organization revolutionaries can build but how they can use the bourgeois institutions to overthrow them. If you undertake the task of administering the bourgeois state you will, one way or another, “pay the piper”.
Aside from honing in on that political perspective the other virtue of the article is that it gives a very detailed historical description of various attitudes and policies that evolved since the time of the revolutions of 1848 in the international movement. Clearly, if it were merely a matter of the weight of history then the ICL position as posed would be a minority one. Interestingly, even the great revolutionary organization, the Communist International, in its revolutionary days and the great Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky (and his American followers originally, during his lifetime, coalesced in the Socialist Workers Party has, at best equivocal positions, on this question. As I mentioned in that previous entry the power of precedent is not confined to the law. A powerful argument has to be made in order to justify a change of positions. While I still have some practical tactical questions around the implementation of this policy, for example, the effect that it has on the issue of critical support to other workers organizations that DO run for executive office and support to parliamentary fractions of workers organizations that attempt form coalition governments with bourgeois forced in order, in effect, to administer the bourgeois state this is an important contribution to Marxist theory of the state. As important as Lenin’s “State And Revolution”? No. But an important supplement to that work. Read, and re-read this article. Down With The Executive Offices Of The Capitalist State!
*The Controversy Over Revolutionaries Running For The Executive Offices Of The Capitalist State-Do You Really Want To Be In Obama's Shoes-Hell, No!
Click on title to link to an earlier entry in this space concerning my “getting religion” on the question of revolutionaries running for the executive offices of the capitalist state.
Markin comment:
As detailed in that entry I, for a very long time, had held to the classic communist view (including previously to their new turn, the International Communist League) that there was some propaganda value in running for such offices under the assumption that, of course, if victorious the office would be rejected. Even saying that last sentence now, in my post-conversion period, makes me realize just how absurd the old position honorably held or not, really was given our relationship to the capitalist state. The exchange below from the pages of “Workers Vanguard” and a reader only emphasize that problem. Like many a late “convert” I am now ‘more Catholic than the Pope’, as the old expression used to be put in my grandparents’ house. The reader’s argument is so, well lets’ say it straight, naïve (at best) that it is hard to believe that there would be any opposition to this particular line change among revolutionaries. Let’s just put it this way-”Down With The Executive Offices of the Capitalist State!”. Needless to say, down with the capitalist state as well.
Workers Vanguard No. 940
31 July 2009
On Executive Offices and the Capitalist State: An Exchange
(Letter)
To the editor:
You take the position in Workers Vanguard (No. 918 [1 August 2008]) that Socialists should not run for executive office. You argue “To run for executive office means to aspire to be the next Commander-in-Chief who decides who gets tortured, who gets bombed, who gets invaded.”
On the contrary, a Socialist President would have the torturers arrested and prosecuted, starting with those who authorized the torture, to wit, Bush and Cheney et al.
He would immediately end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring all the troops home. And he would do everything in his power to advance the struggle for Socialism and oppose Capitalism and U.S. Imperialism.
U.S. military bases around the world would be shut down and all U.S. forces returned home and demobilized. Guantánamo would be returned to Cuba and the embargo ended. U.S. support for right wing regimes and Israel would end. The Pentagon and CIA budgets would be reduced to close to zero and the money saved would be used to better the lives of the American people.
All Federal political prisoners would be pardoned and so called “enemy combatants” would be freed or tried in Federal courts. Military commissions would be abolished. Spying on Americans would be immediately stopped. The crimes and lies of the Bush administration and its predecessors would be brought to the attention of the public. The practice of rendition would be ended. Left wing attorneys would be nominated to the Federal Judiciary.
Obviously if a Socialist were elected to the Presidency it would mean a tremendous leftward shift in U.S. politics, brought on no doubt by an economic crisis of severe proportions. The workers would be looking to Socialism as the answer to their problems.
A Socialist President by himself could not bring about Socialism, but he would explain what Socialism is and what would be needed to bring it about.
He would propose nationalizing the key industries, services and banks and operating them under workers control. If these proposals were blocked by Congress, the executive powers of Eminent Domain could be used to take over key industries etc. without Congressional approval.
He would fight for and mobilize the workers to achieve: Single Payer National Health insurance, a 30 hour week at 40 hour pay, repeal of all anti-labor laws, an indefinite moratorium on home mortgage foreclosures, a ban on companies relocating outside the country, shifting the tax burden off the workers onto the wealthy and the corporations, free college education, a guaranteed job for all, etc.
Incidentally, you might recall that both Marx and Engels believed that at least in the case of the United States and England, because of their long democratic traditions, Socialism could be achieved electorally and peacefully.
However, should a workers revolution develop in the United States, wouldn’t its chances of success be far greater if the President, who is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, were a Socialist? Think about this.
Running for the Presidency gives Socialists a wonderful opportunity to educate the American people about Socialism.
And if a Socialist were elected President it would represent a giant step toward a Socialist America.
Yours truly,
Concerned Reader
WV Replies:
The starting point of the above letter, using the example of the American imperial presidency, is that the working class can utilize the existing state apparatus to implement beneficial policies and gain political supremacy. In fact, the tasks that the author proposes for a “socialist” president are hardly revolutionary. Such proposals on torture, spying, the economy and health care read like a liberal or social-democratic wish list, while the call for a ban on companies relocating abroad echoes the “Buy American” chauvinism of the Democrats and the trade-union bureaucracy. More fundamentally, the differences we have with the letter are not only over the question of running for executive offices but the very basis of our opposition to running for such offices: the nature of the capitalist state. As we wrote in our extensive article (to which we refer readers), “Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 61, Spring 2009):
“Behind the question of running for executive office stands the fundamental counterposition between reformism and Marxism: Can the proletariat use bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois state to achieve a peaceful transition to socialism? Or, rather, must the proletariat smash the old state machinery, and in its place create a new state to impose its own class rule—the dictatorship of the proletariat—to suppress and expropriate the capitalist exploiters?”
Bourgeois politicians, sociologists and academics have utterly distorted what the state is, presenting it as a body that stands above society with the purpose of organizing it and arbitrating its class antagonisms. In reality, as Marxist leader V.I. Lenin outlined in his 1917 work, The State and Revolution, “the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ which legalises and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between the classes.” In modern capitalist society, the state exists to defend the rule and profits of the bourgeoisie against the working class and oppressed. At its core, the state is made up of armed bodies of men and their adjuncts dedicated to that task: the cops, the military, the prisons, the courts.
The letter writer betrays huge illusions in bourgeois democracy. Such democracy is, in fact, for the bourgeoisie against the proletariat and oppressed. Lenin observed, “A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell…it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”
History has repeatedly demonstrated that the bourgeois state cannot be made to serve the interests of the proletariat and the oppressed. This was shown by the 1871 Paris Commune—when the Parisian proletariat held power for nearly three months before being crushed at a cost of over 20,000 lives. Lenin pointed out that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels found only one point from the 1848 Communist Manifesto that they considered “out-of-date.” Based on the experience of the Commune, Marx wrote in The Civil War in France (1871) that it had become clear that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” Lenin underlined in The State and Revolution, “The working class must break up, smash the ‘ready-made state machinery,’ and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.” The capitalist state must be smashed through a socialist revolution that erects in its place a workers state—i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on democratically-elected workers councils (soviets). It will take the victory of proletarian revolution on an international scale to lay the basis for the creation of a classless communist society and the withering away of the state.
To bolster its argument, the above letter states that “Marx and Engels believed that at least in the case of the United States and England, because of their long democratic traditions, Socialism could be achieved electorally and peacefully.” In fact, in those instances where Marx asserted that in the U.S. and England “workers may achieve their aims by peaceful means” (“On the Hague Congress,” 8 September 1872), he did not base himself on these countries’ “long democratic traditions” but rather on his belief that these countries lacked militarist cliques or significant bureaucratic apparatuses.
However, Marx’s speculation was in error. Britain had a vast colonial empire requiring large bureaucracies and military forces. In the U.S., the post-Civil War period produced an enormous boost to Northern capital, so that by the time of the Ulysses S. Grant administration all the pieces were in place for the development of full-blown U.S. imperialism in the coming decades (see “The Grant Administration (1869-1877) and the Rise of U.S. Imperialism,” WV Nos. 938 and 939, 5 June and 3 July). At any rate, whatever Marx may have speculated, we are now in the imperialist epoch. Today, the idea of a peaceful, parliamentary transition to socialism is worse than a pipe dream; it is a noose placed on the proletariat by the reformists and other enemies of workers revolution.
Writing in 1899, after French Socialist Alexandre Millerand took a ministerial post in the government, revolutionary Marxist Rosa Luxemburg underscored: “The government of the modern state is essentially an organization of class domination, the regular functioning of which is one of the conditions of existence of the class state. With the entry of a socialist into the government, and class domination continuing to exist, the bourgeois government doesn’t transform itself into a socialist government, but a socialist transforms himself into a bourgeois minister.”
This point has been repeatedly confirmed, with tragic results for workers and the oppressed. In 1970 in Chile, the Socialist Party’s Salvador Allende and his Unidad Popular—a coalition government that subordinated the workers to their deadly class enemies through a bloc of workers parties with a mythical “progressive” section of the bourgeoisie and the “democratic” officer corps—won a major electoral victory. When Allende became president, reformists across the globe hailed this as a great victory in the advance to socialism. But as we warned in “The Chilean Popular Front” (Spartacist No. 19, November-December 1970): “It is the most elementary duty for revolutionary Marxists to irreconcilably oppose the Popular Front in the election and to place absolutely no confidence in it in power. Any ‘critical support’ to the Allende coalition is class treason, paving the way for a bloody defeat for the Chilean working people when domestic reaction, abetted by international imperialism, is ready.”
It was the Chilean masses that paid for the reformists’ betrayals. Backed by the U.S., General Augusto Pinochet, whom Allende had appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, led a military coup on 11 September 1973 that overthrew the government, assassinated Allende and slaughtered tens of thousands of workers and other militants. Allende was not simply a martyred victim of the CIA and Chilean generals; he and his reformist supporters, with their promotion of a “peaceful” (i.e., parliamentary) road to socialism, led the Chilean working masses directly into this defeat.
Our position is that communist deputies can, as oppositionists, serve in bourgeois legislative bodies as tribunes of the proletariat. But assuming executive office means taking responsibility for the administration of the machinery of the capitalist state. And to stand for executive office carries the implication that one is ready to accept such responsibility (no matter what disclaimer one makes in advance). This can only lend legitimacy to prevailing and reformist conceptions of the state.
The 1917 Russian Revolution led by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky proved the validity of the Marxist theory on the state and made it a reality. In reaching our position on not running for executive offices, we are fulfilling and extending the work of the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky’s time. As Lenin put it in The State and Revolution, “A Marxist is solely someone who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Markin comment:
As detailed in that entry I, for a very long time, had held to the classic communist view (including previously to their new turn, the International Communist League) that there was some propaganda value in running for such offices under the assumption that, of course, if victorious the office would be rejected. Even saying that last sentence now, in my post-conversion period, makes me realize just how absurd the old position honorably held or not, really was given our relationship to the capitalist state. The exchange below from the pages of “Workers Vanguard” and a reader only emphasize that problem. Like many a late “convert” I am now ‘more Catholic than the Pope’, as the old expression used to be put in my grandparents’ house. The reader’s argument is so, well lets’ say it straight, naïve (at best) that it is hard to believe that there would be any opposition to this particular line change among revolutionaries. Let’s just put it this way-”Down With The Executive Offices of the Capitalist State!”. Needless to say, down with the capitalist state as well.
Workers Vanguard No. 940
31 July 2009
On Executive Offices and the Capitalist State: An Exchange
(Letter)
To the editor:
You take the position in Workers Vanguard (No. 918 [1 August 2008]) that Socialists should not run for executive office. You argue “To run for executive office means to aspire to be the next Commander-in-Chief who decides who gets tortured, who gets bombed, who gets invaded.”
On the contrary, a Socialist President would have the torturers arrested and prosecuted, starting with those who authorized the torture, to wit, Bush and Cheney et al.
He would immediately end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring all the troops home. And he would do everything in his power to advance the struggle for Socialism and oppose Capitalism and U.S. Imperialism.
U.S. military bases around the world would be shut down and all U.S. forces returned home and demobilized. Guantánamo would be returned to Cuba and the embargo ended. U.S. support for right wing regimes and Israel would end. The Pentagon and CIA budgets would be reduced to close to zero and the money saved would be used to better the lives of the American people.
All Federal political prisoners would be pardoned and so called “enemy combatants” would be freed or tried in Federal courts. Military commissions would be abolished. Spying on Americans would be immediately stopped. The crimes and lies of the Bush administration and its predecessors would be brought to the attention of the public. The practice of rendition would be ended. Left wing attorneys would be nominated to the Federal Judiciary.
Obviously if a Socialist were elected to the Presidency it would mean a tremendous leftward shift in U.S. politics, brought on no doubt by an economic crisis of severe proportions. The workers would be looking to Socialism as the answer to their problems.
A Socialist President by himself could not bring about Socialism, but he would explain what Socialism is and what would be needed to bring it about.
He would propose nationalizing the key industries, services and banks and operating them under workers control. If these proposals were blocked by Congress, the executive powers of Eminent Domain could be used to take over key industries etc. without Congressional approval.
He would fight for and mobilize the workers to achieve: Single Payer National Health insurance, a 30 hour week at 40 hour pay, repeal of all anti-labor laws, an indefinite moratorium on home mortgage foreclosures, a ban on companies relocating outside the country, shifting the tax burden off the workers onto the wealthy and the corporations, free college education, a guaranteed job for all, etc.
Incidentally, you might recall that both Marx and Engels believed that at least in the case of the United States and England, because of their long democratic traditions, Socialism could be achieved electorally and peacefully.
However, should a workers revolution develop in the United States, wouldn’t its chances of success be far greater if the President, who is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, were a Socialist? Think about this.
Running for the Presidency gives Socialists a wonderful opportunity to educate the American people about Socialism.
And if a Socialist were elected President it would represent a giant step toward a Socialist America.
Yours truly,
Concerned Reader
WV Replies:
The starting point of the above letter, using the example of the American imperial presidency, is that the working class can utilize the existing state apparatus to implement beneficial policies and gain political supremacy. In fact, the tasks that the author proposes for a “socialist” president are hardly revolutionary. Such proposals on torture, spying, the economy and health care read like a liberal or social-democratic wish list, while the call for a ban on companies relocating abroad echoes the “Buy American” chauvinism of the Democrats and the trade-union bureaucracy. More fundamentally, the differences we have with the letter are not only over the question of running for executive offices but the very basis of our opposition to running for such offices: the nature of the capitalist state. As we wrote in our extensive article (to which we refer readers), “Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 61, Spring 2009):
“Behind the question of running for executive office stands the fundamental counterposition between reformism and Marxism: Can the proletariat use bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois state to achieve a peaceful transition to socialism? Or, rather, must the proletariat smash the old state machinery, and in its place create a new state to impose its own class rule—the dictatorship of the proletariat—to suppress and expropriate the capitalist exploiters?”
Bourgeois politicians, sociologists and academics have utterly distorted what the state is, presenting it as a body that stands above society with the purpose of organizing it and arbitrating its class antagonisms. In reality, as Marxist leader V.I. Lenin outlined in his 1917 work, The State and Revolution, “the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of ‘order,’ which legalises and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between the classes.” In modern capitalist society, the state exists to defend the rule and profits of the bourgeoisie against the working class and oppressed. At its core, the state is made up of armed bodies of men and their adjuncts dedicated to that task: the cops, the military, the prisons, the courts.
The letter writer betrays huge illusions in bourgeois democracy. Such democracy is, in fact, for the bourgeoisie against the proletariat and oppressed. Lenin observed, “A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell…it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”
History has repeatedly demonstrated that the bourgeois state cannot be made to serve the interests of the proletariat and the oppressed. This was shown by the 1871 Paris Commune—when the Parisian proletariat held power for nearly three months before being crushed at a cost of over 20,000 lives. Lenin pointed out that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels found only one point from the 1848 Communist Manifesto that they considered “out-of-date.” Based on the experience of the Commune, Marx wrote in The Civil War in France (1871) that it had become clear that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” Lenin underlined in The State and Revolution, “The working class must break up, smash the ‘ready-made state machinery,’ and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.” The capitalist state must be smashed through a socialist revolution that erects in its place a workers state—i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on democratically-elected workers councils (soviets). It will take the victory of proletarian revolution on an international scale to lay the basis for the creation of a classless communist society and the withering away of the state.
To bolster its argument, the above letter states that “Marx and Engels believed that at least in the case of the United States and England, because of their long democratic traditions, Socialism could be achieved electorally and peacefully.” In fact, in those instances where Marx asserted that in the U.S. and England “workers may achieve their aims by peaceful means” (“On the Hague Congress,” 8 September 1872), he did not base himself on these countries’ “long democratic traditions” but rather on his belief that these countries lacked militarist cliques or significant bureaucratic apparatuses.
However, Marx’s speculation was in error. Britain had a vast colonial empire requiring large bureaucracies and military forces. In the U.S., the post-Civil War period produced an enormous boost to Northern capital, so that by the time of the Ulysses S. Grant administration all the pieces were in place for the development of full-blown U.S. imperialism in the coming decades (see “The Grant Administration (1869-1877) and the Rise of U.S. Imperialism,” WV Nos. 938 and 939, 5 June and 3 July). At any rate, whatever Marx may have speculated, we are now in the imperialist epoch. Today, the idea of a peaceful, parliamentary transition to socialism is worse than a pipe dream; it is a noose placed on the proletariat by the reformists and other enemies of workers revolution.
Writing in 1899, after French Socialist Alexandre Millerand took a ministerial post in the government, revolutionary Marxist Rosa Luxemburg underscored: “The government of the modern state is essentially an organization of class domination, the regular functioning of which is one of the conditions of existence of the class state. With the entry of a socialist into the government, and class domination continuing to exist, the bourgeois government doesn’t transform itself into a socialist government, but a socialist transforms himself into a bourgeois minister.”
This point has been repeatedly confirmed, with tragic results for workers and the oppressed. In 1970 in Chile, the Socialist Party’s Salvador Allende and his Unidad Popular—a coalition government that subordinated the workers to their deadly class enemies through a bloc of workers parties with a mythical “progressive” section of the bourgeoisie and the “democratic” officer corps—won a major electoral victory. When Allende became president, reformists across the globe hailed this as a great victory in the advance to socialism. But as we warned in “The Chilean Popular Front” (Spartacist No. 19, November-December 1970): “It is the most elementary duty for revolutionary Marxists to irreconcilably oppose the Popular Front in the election and to place absolutely no confidence in it in power. Any ‘critical support’ to the Allende coalition is class treason, paving the way for a bloody defeat for the Chilean working people when domestic reaction, abetted by international imperialism, is ready.”
It was the Chilean masses that paid for the reformists’ betrayals. Backed by the U.S., General Augusto Pinochet, whom Allende had appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, led a military coup on 11 September 1973 that overthrew the government, assassinated Allende and slaughtered tens of thousands of workers and other militants. Allende was not simply a martyred victim of the CIA and Chilean generals; he and his reformist supporters, with their promotion of a “peaceful” (i.e., parliamentary) road to socialism, led the Chilean working masses directly into this defeat.
Our position is that communist deputies can, as oppositionists, serve in bourgeois legislative bodies as tribunes of the proletariat. But assuming executive office means taking responsibility for the administration of the machinery of the capitalist state. And to stand for executive office carries the implication that one is ready to accept such responsibility (no matter what disclaimer one makes in advance). This can only lend legitimacy to prevailing and reformist conceptions of the state.
The 1917 Russian Revolution led by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky proved the validity of the Marxist theory on the state and made it a reality. In reaching our position on not running for executive offices, we are fulfilling and extending the work of the Communist International of Lenin and Trotsky’s time. As Lenin put it in The State and Revolution, “A Marxist is solely someone who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
As The Kennedy Legacy In American Politics Passes- Reflections Of An Old Leftist On Bobby Kennedy
Click on title to link to the Public Broadcasting System's "American Experience" episode on Robert Kennedy.
Markin Commentary-August 28, 2009
With the passing of Massachusetts United Senator Edward Kennedy on August 26, 2009 there is a palpable sense that a political era has passed in American bourgeois politics. That may be. There will be plenty of time to analyze that, for those so inclined, later. For now though this reviewer, as one who was born in Massachusetts and has been face to face with the Kennedy aura since early childhood, has a few comments to make, not on Ted Kennedy, but on the political hero of my youth his older brother, Robert. I am reposting two entries, “The Real Robert Kennedy” and “On Bobby Kennedy”, from last year, the 40th anniversary of Bobby’s assassination during his run for the 1968 democratic presidential nomination.
As for the late Ted Kennedy he probably went as far it is possible to do in professing the liberal capitalist credo inherited from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal”. Admittedly, since the halcyon “Camelot” days of the early 1960s that has been a bar that has been progressively lowered. Nevertheless, on specific issues, we leftists could unite (and did), with the appropriate freedom of criticism that we needed to insist on as a condition for joint action, with Ted Kennedy. That, my friends, who may not understand is under the old principle of uniting with “the devil and his grandmother” for the good of our cause.
But here is the real “skinny” on Ted Kennedy from our prospective. When, and if, the deal went down and the existence of the capitalist system was on the line old Teddy would have been the last “liberal” defender on the last barricade of that system. And why not? It was his system. Somewhere to Kennedy’s left there was a great divide that he could not pass and where we would, of necessity, have had to part company on those barricades just mentioned. Enough said on Ted though today I really want to go back to my young and reminisce about Bobby. Again.
Posted on “American Left History”-July 17, 2008
*The Real Robert Kennedy- A Sober Liberal View From PBS's American Experience Series
DVD REVIEW
Robert Kennedy, American Experience, PBS, 2004
It is somewhat ironic that at just the time that when presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a recent addition to the Democratic Party pantheon of heroes and heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy, is claiming the nomination of the party that the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1968 is being remembered in some quarters. That event holds much meaning in the political evolution of this writer. The Robert Kennedy campaign of 1968 was the last time that this writer had a serious desire to fight solely on the parliamentary road for progressive political change. So today he too has some remembrances, as well. This documentary from the Public Broadcasting System’s "American Experience" series only adds some visual flashes to those remembrances.
In a commentary in another space I have mentioned that through the tumultuous period leading to the early spring of 1968 that I had done some political somersaults as a result of Bobby Kennedy’s early refusal to take on a sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Moreover, I committed myself early (sometime in late 1967) to the reelection of Lyndon Johnson, as much as I hated his Vietnam War policy. Why? One Richard M. Nixon. I did not give Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent campaign even a sniff, although I agreed with his anti-war stance. Why? He could not beat one Richard M. Nixon. When Bobby Kennedy jumped in and Johnson announced that he was not going to run again and I was there the next day. I was a senior in college at the time but I believe I spent hundreds of hours that spring working the campaign either out of Boston, Washington, D.C. or elsewhere. Why? Well, you can guess the obvious by now. He COULD beat one Richard M. Nixon.
It was more than that though, and I will discuss that in the next paragraph. I took, as many did, Bobby's murder hard. It would be rather facile now to say that something of my youth, and that of others who I have talked to recently about this event, got left behind with his murder but there you have it. However, to show you the kind of political year that it was for me about a week after his death I was in the Hubert Humphrey campaign office in Boston. Why? You know why by now. And for those who don’t it had one name- Richard M. Nixon.
But let us get back to that other, more virtuous, political motive for supporting Bobby Kennedy. It was always, in those days, complicated coming from Massachusetts to separate out the whirlwind effect that the Kennedy family had on us, especially on ‘shanty’ Irish families. On the one hand we wished one of our own well, especially against the WASPs, on the other there was always that innate bitterness (jealousy, if you will) that it was not we who were the ones that were getting ahead. If there is any Irish in your family you know what I am talking about.
To be sure, as a fourteen year old I walked the neighborhood for John Kennedy in 1960 but as I have mentioned elsewhere that was a pro forma thing. Part of the ritual of entry into presidential politics. The Bobby thing was from the heart. Why? It is hard to explain but there was something about the deeply felt sense of Irish fatalism that he projected, especially after the death of his brother, that attracted me to him. But also the ruthless side where he was willing to cut Mayor Daly and every politician like him down or pat them on the back and more, if necessary, to get a little rough justice in the world. In those days I held those qualities, especially in tandem, in high esteem. Hell, I still do, if on a narrower basis.
Okay, that is enough for a trip down memory lane back to the old politically naïve days, or rather opportunistic days. Without detailing the events here the end of 1968 was also a watershed year for changing my belief that an individual candidate rather than ideas and political program were decisive for political organizing. That understanding, furthermore, changed my political appreciation for Bobby Kennedy (and the vices and virtues of the Democratic Party). That is the import of this well-produced (as always) portrayal of the short life and career of Robert Kennedy. If in 1968, with my 1968 political understandings, I stood shoulder to shoulder with Robert Kennedy my political evolution and his political past, as detailed here, have changed my perceptions dramatically.
This documentary highlights the close relationship between Robert and his older brother John starting with the Massachusetts United Senate campaign in 1952 (and that would continue in the 1960 campaign and during John Kennedy’s administration right up to the assassination). We are presented here, however, with the ‘bad’ Bobby who was more than willing to join Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “red scare” anti-communist campaign and the anti-labor McClellan Committee campaigns against Jimmy Hoffa in particular. There is no love lost between this writer and labor bureaucrats like Hoffa (or his son) but a bedrock position then and today is the need for labor to clean its own house. What purpose does government intervention into the labor movement do except to weaken it? Bobby was on the other side on this one, as well.
Under the John Kennedy Administration Robert, moreover, played a key role in putting a damper on the early civil rights movement in the South (as well as putting a 'tap' on Martin Luther King at the behest of one J. Edgar Hoover), the Bay of Pigs decision and aftermath , the Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation with the Soviet Union and the early escalation, under the rubric of counter-insurgency, in Vietnam. As readily observable, where I had previously downplayed my opposition to some of Bobby's positions I now put a minus next to them. That is politics.
Finally though, I will frankly admit a lingering ‘softness’ for Bobby. Why? The late political journalist Jack Newfield one of the inevitable 'talking heads' that people PBS productions, a biographer of Robert Kennedy I believe but in any case a close companion in the mid-1960’s and a prior resident of the Bedford-Stuveysant ghetto of New York City, made this comment about a Robert Kennedy response to his question during a tour of that area. Newfield asked Kennedy what he would have become if he had grown up in Bedford-Stuveysant. Bobby responded quickly- I would either be a juvenile delinquent or a revolutionary. I would like to think that he meant those alternatives seriously. Enough said.
Markin Commentary-August 28, 2009
With the passing of Massachusetts United Senator Edward Kennedy on August 26, 2009 there is a palpable sense that a political era has passed in American bourgeois politics. That may be. There will be plenty of time to analyze that, for those so inclined, later. For now though this reviewer, as one who was born in Massachusetts and has been face to face with the Kennedy aura since early childhood, has a few comments to make, not on Ted Kennedy, but on the political hero of my youth his older brother, Robert. I am reposting two entries, “The Real Robert Kennedy” and “On Bobby Kennedy”, from last year, the 40th anniversary of Bobby’s assassination during his run for the 1968 democratic presidential nomination.
As for the late Ted Kennedy he probably went as far it is possible to do in professing the liberal capitalist credo inherited from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal”. Admittedly, since the halcyon “Camelot” days of the early 1960s that has been a bar that has been progressively lowered. Nevertheless, on specific issues, we leftists could unite (and did), with the appropriate freedom of criticism that we needed to insist on as a condition for joint action, with Ted Kennedy. That, my friends, who may not understand is under the old principle of uniting with “the devil and his grandmother” for the good of our cause.
But here is the real “skinny” on Ted Kennedy from our prospective. When, and if, the deal went down and the existence of the capitalist system was on the line old Teddy would have been the last “liberal” defender on the last barricade of that system. And why not? It was his system. Somewhere to Kennedy’s left there was a great divide that he could not pass and where we would, of necessity, have had to part company on those barricades just mentioned. Enough said on Ted though today I really want to go back to my young and reminisce about Bobby. Again.
Posted on “American Left History”-July 17, 2008
*The Real Robert Kennedy- A Sober Liberal View From PBS's American Experience Series
DVD REVIEW
Robert Kennedy, American Experience, PBS, 2004
It is somewhat ironic that at just the time that when presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a recent addition to the Democratic Party pantheon of heroes and heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy, is claiming the nomination of the party that the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1968 is being remembered in some quarters. That event holds much meaning in the political evolution of this writer. The Robert Kennedy campaign of 1968 was the last time that this writer had a serious desire to fight solely on the parliamentary road for progressive political change. So today he too has some remembrances, as well. This documentary from the Public Broadcasting System’s "American Experience" series only adds some visual flashes to those remembrances.
In a commentary in another space I have mentioned that through the tumultuous period leading to the early spring of 1968 that I had done some political somersaults as a result of Bobby Kennedy’s early refusal to take on a sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Moreover, I committed myself early (sometime in late 1967) to the reelection of Lyndon Johnson, as much as I hated his Vietnam War policy. Why? One Richard M. Nixon. I did not give Eugene McCarthy’s insurgent campaign even a sniff, although I agreed with his anti-war stance. Why? He could not beat one Richard M. Nixon. When Bobby Kennedy jumped in and Johnson announced that he was not going to run again and I was there the next day. I was a senior in college at the time but I believe I spent hundreds of hours that spring working the campaign either out of Boston, Washington, D.C. or elsewhere. Why? Well, you can guess the obvious by now. He COULD beat one Richard M. Nixon.
It was more than that though, and I will discuss that in the next paragraph. I took, as many did, Bobby's murder hard. It would be rather facile now to say that something of my youth, and that of others who I have talked to recently about this event, got left behind with his murder but there you have it. However, to show you the kind of political year that it was for me about a week after his death I was in the Hubert Humphrey campaign office in Boston. Why? You know why by now. And for those who don’t it had one name- Richard M. Nixon.
But let us get back to that other, more virtuous, political motive for supporting Bobby Kennedy. It was always, in those days, complicated coming from Massachusetts to separate out the whirlwind effect that the Kennedy family had on us, especially on ‘shanty’ Irish families. On the one hand we wished one of our own well, especially against the WASPs, on the other there was always that innate bitterness (jealousy, if you will) that it was not we who were the ones that were getting ahead. If there is any Irish in your family you know what I am talking about.
To be sure, as a fourteen year old I walked the neighborhood for John Kennedy in 1960 but as I have mentioned elsewhere that was a pro forma thing. Part of the ritual of entry into presidential politics. The Bobby thing was from the heart. Why? It is hard to explain but there was something about the deeply felt sense of Irish fatalism that he projected, especially after the death of his brother, that attracted me to him. But also the ruthless side where he was willing to cut Mayor Daly and every politician like him down or pat them on the back and more, if necessary, to get a little rough justice in the world. In those days I held those qualities, especially in tandem, in high esteem. Hell, I still do, if on a narrower basis.
Okay, that is enough for a trip down memory lane back to the old politically naïve days, or rather opportunistic days. Without detailing the events here the end of 1968 was also a watershed year for changing my belief that an individual candidate rather than ideas and political program were decisive for political organizing. That understanding, furthermore, changed my political appreciation for Bobby Kennedy (and the vices and virtues of the Democratic Party). That is the import of this well-produced (as always) portrayal of the short life and career of Robert Kennedy. If in 1968, with my 1968 political understandings, I stood shoulder to shoulder with Robert Kennedy my political evolution and his political past, as detailed here, have changed my perceptions dramatically.
This documentary highlights the close relationship between Robert and his older brother John starting with the Massachusetts United Senate campaign in 1952 (and that would continue in the 1960 campaign and during John Kennedy’s administration right up to the assassination). We are presented here, however, with the ‘bad’ Bobby who was more than willing to join Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “red scare” anti-communist campaign and the anti-labor McClellan Committee campaigns against Jimmy Hoffa in particular. There is no love lost between this writer and labor bureaucrats like Hoffa (or his son) but a bedrock position then and today is the need for labor to clean its own house. What purpose does government intervention into the labor movement do except to weaken it? Bobby was on the other side on this one, as well.
Under the John Kennedy Administration Robert, moreover, played a key role in putting a damper on the early civil rights movement in the South (as well as putting a 'tap' on Martin Luther King at the behest of one J. Edgar Hoover), the Bay of Pigs decision and aftermath , the Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation with the Soviet Union and the early escalation, under the rubric of counter-insurgency, in Vietnam. As readily observable, where I had previously downplayed my opposition to some of Bobby's positions I now put a minus next to them. That is politics.
Finally though, I will frankly admit a lingering ‘softness’ for Bobby. Why? The late political journalist Jack Newfield one of the inevitable 'talking heads' that people PBS productions, a biographer of Robert Kennedy I believe but in any case a close companion in the mid-1960’s and a prior resident of the Bedford-Stuveysant ghetto of New York City, made this comment about a Robert Kennedy response to his question during a tour of that area. Newfield asked Kennedy what he would have become if he had grown up in Bedford-Stuveysant. Bobby responded quickly- I would either be a juvenile delinquent or a revolutionary. I would like to think that he meant those alternatives seriously. Enough said.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
*Singing The Blues For His Lord- The Reverend Gary Davis Is On Stage
Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Reverend Gary Davis Performing On Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest".
CD Review
Twelve Gates To The City: Reverend Gary Davis: In Concert 1962-1966, Shanachie Records, 2000
I have mentioned many of the old time black male country blues singers in this space, for example, Son House, Bukka White and Skip James. I have also mentioned the close connection between this rural music, the routine of life on the farm (mainly the Mississippi Delta plantations or sharecropping) and simple religious expression in their works. The blues singer under review meets all of those criteria and more. The Reverend Gary Davis, although not as well known in the country blues pantheon, has had many of his songs covered by the denizens of the folk revival of the 1960's and some rock groups, like The Grateful Dead, looking for a connection with their roots. Thus, by one of the ironies of fate his tradition lives on in popular music. I would also mention here that his work was prominently displayed in one of the Masters Of The Blues documentaries that I have reviewed in this space. That placement is insurance that that the Reverend's musical virtuosity is of the highest order. As an instrumentalist he steals the show in that film. Enough said.
Stick out songs here are the much-covered "Samson and Delilah", "Cocaine Blues" (from when it was legal, of course), "Twelve Keys To The City" and the gospelly "Blow Gabriel" and “Who Shall Deliver Poor Me”
Some Biographical Information From the Back Cover
Durham, North Carolina in the 1930's was a moderate sized town whose economy was driven by tobacco farming. The tobacco crop acted somewhat as a buffer against the worst ravages of the Depression. During the fall harvest, with its attendant tobacco auctions, there was a bit more money around, and that, naturally, attracted musicians. Performers would drift in from the countryside and frequently took up residence and stayed on. Two master musicians who made Durham their home, whose careers extended decades until they become literally world famous, were Reverend Gary Davis and Sonny Terry.
REV. GARY DAVIS
Reverend Gary Davis was one of the greatest traditional guitarists of the century. He could play fluently in all major keys and improvise continually without repetition. His finger picking style was remarkably free, executing a rapid treble run with his thumb as easily as with his index finger and he had great command of many different styles, representing most aspects of black music he heard as a young man at he beginning of the century. Beyond his blues-gospel guitar, Davis was equally adept at ragtime, marches, breakdowns, vaudeville songs, and much more. Born in Lawrence County, South Carolina in 1895, Davis was raised by his grandmother, who made his first guitar for him. Learning from relatives and itinerant musicians, he also took up banjo and harmonica. His blindness was probably due to a congenital condition. By the time he was a young man he was considered among the elite musicians in his area of South Carolina where, as in most Southern coastal states, clean and fancy finger picking with emphasis on the melody was the favored style. Sometime in the early 1950's, Davis started a ministry and repudiated blues. In 1935, he recorded twelve gospel songs that rank among the masterpieces of the genre. In 1944, he moved to New York where he continued his church work, and sometimes did some street singing in Harlem. By the early 1960's, with the re-emergence of interest in traditional black music, Davis finally received the recognition and prominences he so richly deserved.
*******
- Blow, Gabriel, Blow Lyrics
[RENO]
Brothers and sisters, we are here tonight to fight the devil...
Do you hear that playin'?
[COMPANY]
Yes, we hear that playin'!
[RENO]
Do you know who's playin'?
[COMPANY]
No, who is that playin'?
[RENO]
Well, it's Gabriel, Gabriel playin'!
Gabriel, Gabriel sayin'
"Will you be ready to go
When I blow my horn?"
Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow,
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Oh, I was low, Gabriel, low,
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since I have seen the light,
I'm good by day and I'm good by night,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Come on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Come on you scamps, get up you sinners!
You're all too full of expensive dinners.
Stand up on your lazy feet and sing!
[ALL]
Blow, Gabriel, blow, (Blow, Gabriel!)
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow. (Blow, Gabriel!)
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
I was low, Gabriel, low, (Low, Gabriel!)
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since that I have seen the light
I'm good by day and I'm good by night
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
[RENO]
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel!
[ALL]
Go on and...
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
I wanna join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land,
So blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow!
CD Review
Twelve Gates To The City: Reverend Gary Davis: In Concert 1962-1966, Shanachie Records, 2000
I have mentioned many of the old time black male country blues singers in this space, for example, Son House, Bukka White and Skip James. I have also mentioned the close connection between this rural music, the routine of life on the farm (mainly the Mississippi Delta plantations or sharecropping) and simple religious expression in their works. The blues singer under review meets all of those criteria and more. The Reverend Gary Davis, although not as well known in the country blues pantheon, has had many of his songs covered by the denizens of the folk revival of the 1960's and some rock groups, like The Grateful Dead, looking for a connection with their roots. Thus, by one of the ironies of fate his tradition lives on in popular music. I would also mention here that his work was prominently displayed in one of the Masters Of The Blues documentaries that I have reviewed in this space. That placement is insurance that that the Reverend's musical virtuosity is of the highest order. As an instrumentalist he steals the show in that film. Enough said.
Stick out songs here are the much-covered "Samson and Delilah", "Cocaine Blues" (from when it was legal, of course), "Twelve Keys To The City" and the gospelly "Blow Gabriel" and “Who Shall Deliver Poor Me”
Some Biographical Information From the Back Cover
Durham, North Carolina in the 1930's was a moderate sized town whose economy was driven by tobacco farming. The tobacco crop acted somewhat as a buffer against the worst ravages of the Depression. During the fall harvest, with its attendant tobacco auctions, there was a bit more money around, and that, naturally, attracted musicians. Performers would drift in from the countryside and frequently took up residence and stayed on. Two master musicians who made Durham their home, whose careers extended decades until they become literally world famous, were Reverend Gary Davis and Sonny Terry.
REV. GARY DAVIS
Reverend Gary Davis was one of the greatest traditional guitarists of the century. He could play fluently in all major keys and improvise continually without repetition. His finger picking style was remarkably free, executing a rapid treble run with his thumb as easily as with his index finger and he had great command of many different styles, representing most aspects of black music he heard as a young man at he beginning of the century. Beyond his blues-gospel guitar, Davis was equally adept at ragtime, marches, breakdowns, vaudeville songs, and much more. Born in Lawrence County, South Carolina in 1895, Davis was raised by his grandmother, who made his first guitar for him. Learning from relatives and itinerant musicians, he also took up banjo and harmonica. His blindness was probably due to a congenital condition. By the time he was a young man he was considered among the elite musicians in his area of South Carolina where, as in most Southern coastal states, clean and fancy finger picking with emphasis on the melody was the favored style. Sometime in the early 1950's, Davis started a ministry and repudiated blues. In 1935, he recorded twelve gospel songs that rank among the masterpieces of the genre. In 1944, he moved to New York where he continued his church work, and sometimes did some street singing in Harlem. By the early 1960's, with the re-emergence of interest in traditional black music, Davis finally received the recognition and prominences he so richly deserved.
*******
- Blow, Gabriel, Blow Lyrics
[RENO]
Brothers and sisters, we are here tonight to fight the devil...
Do you hear that playin'?
[COMPANY]
Yes, we hear that playin'!
[RENO]
Do you know who's playin'?
[COMPANY]
No, who is that playin'?
[RENO]
Well, it's Gabriel, Gabriel playin'!
Gabriel, Gabriel sayin'
"Will you be ready to go
When I blow my horn?"
Oh, blow, Gabriel, blow,
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Oh, I was low, Gabriel, low,
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since I have seen the light,
I'm good by day and I'm good by night,
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Come on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel, blow!
Come on you scamps, get up you sinners!
You're all too full of expensive dinners.
Stand up on your lazy feet and sing!
[ALL]
Blow, Gabriel, blow, (Blow, Gabriel!)
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow. (Blow, Gabriel!)
I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp,
But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp,
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
I was low, Gabriel, low, (Low, Gabriel!)
Mighty low, Gabriel, low.
But now since that I have seen the light
I'm good by day and I'm good by night
So blow, Gabriel, blow.
[RENO]
Once I was headed for hell,
Once I was headed for hell;
But when I got to Satan's door
I heard you blowin' on your horn once more,
So I said, "Satan, farewell!"
And now I'm all ready to fly,
Yes, to fly higher and higher!
'Cause I've gone through brimstone
And I've been through the fire,
And I purged my soul
And my heart too,
So climb up the mountaintop
And start to blow, Gabriel, blow
[ALL]
Go on and blow, Gabriel, blow!
[RENO]
I want to join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land.
So blow, Gabriel!
[ALL]
Go on and...
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
Blow, Gabriel, blow
I wanna join your happy band
And play all day in the Promised Land,
So blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow, Gabriel, blow!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
***Preserving The Roots Anyway We Can- The Last Of The Mississippi “Jukes”-But Also, Once Again-"Mississippi Goddam"
Click on title to link to "Last Of The Mississippi Jukes Director's Notes" (Robert Mugge).
DVD Review
Last Of The Mississippi Jukes, Morgan Freeman and various artists, a documentary by Robert Mugge, 2003
Apparently, from the subject matter of the reviews that I have penned lately I have fallen into something of a roots music preservationist kick. Recent reviews have included a saga about the trials and tribulations of Austin, Texas blues club owner, the late Clifford Antone of “Antone’s” fame, in his attempt to save and expand the rich blues tradition that area of the country. I have also highlighted the attempts of Joe Bussard down in Maryland in his seemingly eternal quest to find every relevant old roots 78 rpm record ever produced. In the current review we are faced with the attempts, apparently unsuccessful, to save from the wrecker’s ball an old Jackson, Mississippi "juke joint”, the Subway Lounge (and attached separately historically important hotel, Summers Hotel) a location that is significant for the blues and for the civil rights struggle in the 1960s, as well.
I had initially intended to review this DVD mainly on the basic of the roots aspect of the documentary. Something along the lines, as I have done in the past, of paying tribute to those like Bobby Rush and King Edwards who continue the roots traditions down at the base without much hope of great recognition or riches. However, after viewing the footage of the up close and very personal indignities suffered by the older performing artists here back in Jim Crow days, day after day, as they were trying to keep the blues alive as an expression of the black cultural gradient that forms the American experience I feel more strongly the need to put on my political hat on this one.
Although there are plenty of references to blues, old and new and several performance from the new crop of blues devotees I was struck, and powerfully so, about the insights that this documentary put forth about the nature of Jim Crow society that existed in the not distant past down in Mississippi (and not just Mississippi and not just in the deeply segregated South). This policy struck the famous and those not so famous among the black population, homegrown or tourist. There are many anecdotal stories here about a number of events that revolved around the hotel, the “juke joint”, and just the every day of black experience and what Jim Crow was down at the base for black people. Yes, get this one for its slice of black history. But also get it to remember as I have said it before but Nina Simone’s old lyrics brings out so strongly. Once again, "Mississippi god dam".
Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we
Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
That's it for now! see ya' later
DVD Review
Last Of The Mississippi Jukes, Morgan Freeman and various artists, a documentary by Robert Mugge, 2003
Apparently, from the subject matter of the reviews that I have penned lately I have fallen into something of a roots music preservationist kick. Recent reviews have included a saga about the trials and tribulations of Austin, Texas blues club owner, the late Clifford Antone of “Antone’s” fame, in his attempt to save and expand the rich blues tradition that area of the country. I have also highlighted the attempts of Joe Bussard down in Maryland in his seemingly eternal quest to find every relevant old roots 78 rpm record ever produced. In the current review we are faced with the attempts, apparently unsuccessful, to save from the wrecker’s ball an old Jackson, Mississippi "juke joint”, the Subway Lounge (and attached separately historically important hotel, Summers Hotel) a location that is significant for the blues and for the civil rights struggle in the 1960s, as well.
I had initially intended to review this DVD mainly on the basic of the roots aspect of the documentary. Something along the lines, as I have done in the past, of paying tribute to those like Bobby Rush and King Edwards who continue the roots traditions down at the base without much hope of great recognition or riches. However, after viewing the footage of the up close and very personal indignities suffered by the older performing artists here back in Jim Crow days, day after day, as they were trying to keep the blues alive as an expression of the black cultural gradient that forms the American experience I feel more strongly the need to put on my political hat on this one.
Although there are plenty of references to blues, old and new and several performance from the new crop of blues devotees I was struck, and powerfully so, about the insights that this documentary put forth about the nature of Jim Crow society that existed in the not distant past down in Mississippi (and not just Mississippi and not just in the deeply segregated South). This policy struck the famous and those not so famous among the black population, homegrown or tourist. There are many anecdotal stories here about a number of events that revolved around the hotel, the “juke joint”, and just the every day of black experience and what Jim Crow was down at the base for black people. Yes, get this one for its slice of black history. But also get it to remember as I have said it before but Nina Simone’s old lyrics brings out so strongly. Once again, "Mississippi god dam".
Mississippi Goddam Lyrics
(1963) Nina Simone
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer
Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet
Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer
Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know
Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we
Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me
Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"
But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know
You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam
That's it for now! see ya' later
Monday, August 24, 2009
*The Afghan Elections-"This Is What Democracy Looks Like"- A Report-Obama- Get The Troops Out Now!
Click on title to link to "New York Times" (via the "Boston Globe', August 23, 2009) ) article by Carlotta Gill entitled "Observers Say Afghan Elections Marred" (the use of that last word is kind, to say the least).
Markin comment:
Sometimes the bourgeois press, and especially a key mouthpiece like the "Times" stumbles on the truth of a situation without really meaning to. Without getting too deep into analogies the various points made in this article remind me quite a bit of the election fetish of the Diem (and later) regimes in Vietnam in the early 1960s in order to appease the democratic 'sensibilities' of the American paymasters without, in the least taking cognisance of the social and political realities on the ground.
This article, probably more than anything that I or any other socialist or anti-war propagandist could say, succinctly puts the question of 'democracy' in Afghanistan and the rationale for the American imperial presence there in true perspective. But, just in case, there is any doubt about what is necessary to do in Afghanistan let me run the slogan one more time. Obama- Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan. Now!
Markin comment:
Sometimes the bourgeois press, and especially a key mouthpiece like the "Times" stumbles on the truth of a situation without really meaning to. Without getting too deep into analogies the various points made in this article remind me quite a bit of the election fetish of the Diem (and later) regimes in Vietnam in the early 1960s in order to appease the democratic 'sensibilities' of the American paymasters without, in the least taking cognisance of the social and political realities on the ground.
This article, probably more than anything that I or any other socialist or anti-war propagandist could say, succinctly puts the question of 'democracy' in Afghanistan and the rationale for the American imperial presence there in true perspective. But, just in case, there is any doubt about what is necessary to do in Afghanistan let me run the slogan one more time. Obama- Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan. Now!
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