***Remember "Studs" Terkel- Pro- Working Class Partisan Journalist

Click On Title To Link To Studs Terkel’s Web Page.

Commentary

Strangely, as I found out about the death of long time pro-working class journalist and general truth-teller "Studs" Terkel I was just beginning to read his "The Good War", about the lives and experiences of, mainly, ordinary people during World War II in Americaand elsewhere, for review in this space. A little comment is in order here for now. The obvious one is that many of the icons of my youth are now passing the scene. Saul Bellows, Arthur Miller, Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer, Utah Phillips to name a few. Terkel was certainly one of them not for his rather bland old New Deal political perspective, as much as a working class partisan as he might have been, but for his reportage about ordinary working people. These are our people. He heard the particular musical cadence of their lives and wrote with some verve on the subject. Here I post an obituary from The Boston Globe for November 1, 2008. I will have much more to say later when I review his books.

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Studs Terkel - the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian and radio host who heard America talking and presented an aural landscape of its democratic vistas as lively, expansive, and often as dark as Walt Whitman's - died in Chicago yesterday. He was 96.

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His son, Dan, issued a statement saying Mr. Terkel died at home, the Associated Press reported.

Mr. Terkel, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith once wrote, "is more than a writer; he is a national resource." The psychologist Robert Coles hailed him as "our leading student of American variousness as it gets embodied in human particularity."

Mr. Terkel's interviews with a wide range of Americans on such topics as the Great Depression ("Hard Times," 1970), jobs ("Working," 1974), and World War II ("The Good War," 1984, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction) helped establish oral history as a popular and enduring genre.

Yet the designation "oral historian" never sat well with Mr. Terkel. "It's too much kind of a grandiose term," he explained, "I'm uncomfortable wearing it. My books aren't histories; they're memory books."

Mr. Terkel preferred a more companionable title for himself: raconteur. A raconteur, he once said, "is a teller of stories for public entertainment. I like that; it's a good description of what I am, I guess."

Those stories were told on the air, as well as in print. For more than a half-century, Mr. Terkel was a fixture in Chicago broadcasting. His interview program - originally known as "Studs Terkel Almanac" and then "The Studs Terkel Show" - ran from 1952 to 1997.

When Mr. Terkel retired from broadcasting, he became distinguished scholar in residence at the Chicago Historical Society. The society is a repository for some 5,000 hours of tapes from Mr. Terkel's radio shows and another 2,000 hours of taped interviews done for his books. Several hundred hours are available at www.studsterkel.org.

Mr. Terkel liked to joke about how important the tape recorder had been to his career. "Do I become most alive and imaginative when I press down the ON lever of my mute companion? I have a theory. I am a neo-Cartesian: I tape; therefore I am."

Despite this identification with his tape recorder (or perhaps because of it), Mr. Terkel often referred to the device as "the goddamn thing." Such dismissiveness was understandable. Among the interview subjects Mr. Terkel inadvertently erased or failed to record were actor Michael Redgrave, theater director Peter Hall, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, and actor and comedian Jacques Tati.

"I don't know how a tape recorder works," Mr. Terkel once confessed.

Although audio technician never appeared on Mr. Terkel's resume, he did not lack for job titles. In addition to author and radio host, Mr. Terkel's jobs included actor, playwright, disc jockey, and journalist. The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, whose first performances for predominantly white audiences were arranged by Mr. Terkel, told him he should have been a preacher.

"The way I look at it," he said of his interviewing, "it's like being a gold prospector. You find this precious metal in people when you least expect it."

Mr. Terkel, whose first book was "Giants of Jazz" (1956), an introduction to the music for young readers, likened his interviewing to a jazz soloist's improvising: "There aren't any rules. You do it your own way. You experiment. You try this, you try that. . . . Stay loose, stay flexible."

Along with looseness and flexibility, Mr. Terkel had another piece of advice: "The first thing I'd say to any interviewer is . . . Listen. It's the second thing I say, too, and the third, and the fourth. Listen . . . listen . . . listen. And if you do, people will talk. They'll always talk."

Mr. Terkel was being somewhat disingenuous. Much of that willingness to talk was special to him. He was the least intimidating of interviewers, with a famously warm and empathetic manner. As Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko said, "I could never imagine someone replying 'no comment' to Studs."

Such friendliness toward his subjects led to the criticism most frequently leveled against Mr. Terkel's books, their tendency to sentimentalize people and simplify complex issues.

Admirers as well as critics saw in that tendency the influence of Mr. Terkel's politics, which were very much of the left. (Blacklisted during the 1950s, Mr. Terkel was proud of having a 503-page FBI file.) Certainly, his populist methodology reflected his radical egalitarianism. "My turf has been the arena of unofficial truth," he liked to say.

Mr. Terkel's books include the words of the unknown as well as famous, poor as well as rich, inarticulate as well as eloquent: a class-blind democracy of the tongue.

"I'm looking for the uniqueness in each person," he said. "What was it like to be a certain person then? What's it like to be a certain person now? That's what I'm trying to capture."

Mr. Terkel's own uniqueness was never in doubt. A friendly biographer once spoke of his "orotund personality."

He cut a colorful figure: garrulous, exuberant, a character every bit as distinctive as the honeyed gargle that was his voice. Working into his 90s, Mr. Terkel seemed inexhaustible and inexhaustibly interested.

"Curiosity never killed this cat - that's what I'd like as my epitaph," he once said. "It's what gave me life; the older I got the more curious I became."

Part of Mr. Terkel's legend grew from his association with Chicago. Equally uncomfortable with the elitist East and the laid-back West, he personified the open, muscular ethos of the urban heartland. Appropriately enough, his best friend was another quintessential Chicago writer, the novelist Nelson Algren. Indeed, Mr. Terkel was as much a part of Chicago as Wrigley Field or the Loop.

"In a city with a population of 3 million, Studs must know 2,999,999," the writer Calvin Trillin once observed, "and the only reason he doesn't know the other one is they never happened to ride the same bus together."

Even Mr. Terkel's nickname sprang from his hometown: So great was his identification with Studs Lonigan, the hero of James T. Farrell's 1930s trilogy, a classic of Chicago literature, friends took to calling him Studs. By the time he married Ida (Goldberg) Terkel, in 1939, only she was calling him by his given name, Louis, a habit she never abandoned during the six decades of their marriage. She died in 1999.

Louis Terkel was born in New York on May 16, 1912. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia: Samuel Terkel, a tailor, and Anna (Finkel) Terkel, a seamstress. In 1922, the family moved to Chicago and ran a boarding house. Mr. Terkel would often cite the experience of listening to the establishment's highly varied clientele as to how he came to have such an appreciation for others' talk.

After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1932, Mr. Terkel attended its law school. "I'd read about the great Clarence Darrow, the defender of the guilty and the oppressed," he said. "I saw myself as some kind of heroic figure like that."

He quickly learned the law had more to do with torts than crusades. Still, Mr. Terkel earned his degree; but after failing the bar exam he abandoned the profession. He applied to become a fingerprint classifier for the FBI, only to be rejected. Years later, he discovered that one of his professors had warned the bureau, "His appearance was somewhat sloppy, and I considered him to be not the best type of boy."

He went to work for the federal government doing statistical research in Omaha and then Washington, D.C. In Washington, he took up acting, something he continued when he returned to Chicago to join the Federal Writers Project.

Mr. Terkel flourished as an actor on radio, tending to get cast as a gangster, he explained, "because of the low, husky menacing sort of voice I had." During World War II, he briefly served in the Army Air Force.

Back in Chicago, Mr. Terkel became host of a music program called "The Wax Museum." Music was always a great love of Mr. Terkel's, and his tastes were eclectic. A given show might include recordings by Duke Ellington, Lotte Lehmann, Benny Goodman, Mahalia Jackson, and Enrico Caruso.

With the blacklist preventing him from acting, Mr. Terkel took up on-air interviewing. A publisher, Andre Schiffrin, noticed his talent for drawing people out and urged him to do a book.

The idea appealed to Mr. Terkel. "A radio interview, you do it and it's gone," he once put it. "The ephemeralness, that's part of the attraction. But a book is forever."

Mr. Terkel's other books include "Division Street: America" (1967), "Talking to Myself" (1977), "American Dreams: Lost and Found" (1980), "Chicago" (1986), "The Great Divide" (1988), "Race" (1992), "Coming of Age" (1995), "My American Century" (1997), "Spectator" (1999), "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" (2001), "Hope Dies Last" (2003), and "Touch and Go" (2007).

"P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening" is scheduled for release this month.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 8 IN CALIFORNIA- THE GAY MARRIGE BAN AMENDMENT

Click On Title To Link To July 2, 2009 "New York Review Of Books" Article Entitled "The Same-Sex Future" By David Cole That Gives An Update On This Struggle And A Capsule Of The Various Positions On The Issue.

Commentary

IN CALIFORNIA VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 8- THE GAY MARRIAGE BAN AMENDMENT-WITH BOTH HANDS!!!

Earlier this year the California Supreme Court held by a 4-3 vote that the prohibition against same sex marriage violated the California constitution. Needless to say, as has occurred in other locales like Massachusetts, the "social conservatives" there have attempted to overturn that decision by placing a proposition (Proposition 8) banning same sex marriages on the ballot for the November 4, 2008 elections.

Just as adamantly we oppose this measure. Vote NO with both hands on this one. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the politics of this space knows this is a "no-brainer" position that needs no further motivation as a simple measure in defense of democratic rights. Moreover, unless there is some supportable socialist candidate that I have not heard about on the California ballot (no, NOT Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party and certainly not the moribund Peace and Freedom Party) then this may be the only reason to go to the polls on that day. Do so.

In Massachusetts Vote NO on Question 1- No Repeal Of The State Income Tax

Commentary

In Massachusetts Vote NO on Question 1- Repealing of the State Income Tax

For President- Republican John McCain-No. Democrat Barack Obama- No. Green Party Cynthia McKinney-No. Independent-Ralph Nader-No. And so on down through the offices to the local county commissioners and such. Come Election Day in Massachusetts on November 4, 2008 it would seem that there is no reason to go to the polls. Right? Not true. As usually is the case here there are some interesting ballot questions to select from. None, from a socialist perspective (hell, from a democratic perspective even) as important as the No vote on Proposition 8 (the gay marriage amendment) in California but important smaller issues nevertheless.

Vote No on Question 1- This the perennial repeal the state income tax proposition that the “no tax”- types try to get passed every few years. Usually this is spear-headed by know-nothings and those who just do not want to pay taxes under any circumstances. Who does? Normally, this question of how the bourgeois state finances itself is of minor interest to socialists but there is another issue at stake. Until working people take state power in their own interests some form of taxation is going to be needed to provide basic services. Hell, in the beginning stages of socialist transformation there may be taxes, depending on the economic superstructure that we inherit from the capitalists.

The argument lurking underneath this one is that if there is no state income tax then the inevitable taxes that will replace that lost revenue will be based on local real property valuations. That means that public services like local education, public works and health care such as they are will be dependent on the wildly varying property tax bases of the various towns. In short, the poor and minorities will get even less public services that at present. And the richer towns? Well, you can already guess about their heartrending problems. We have a side on this one today. Vote it down with both hands!!!

Vote Yes on Question 2- This is a proposition that would decriminalize marijuana possession and use for the recreational smoker, in effect, by making a first offense a civil rather than a criminal one for certain non- drug pusher amounts. There is a system of fines, etc. in place of criminal penalties. Nevertheless the proposition is basically supportable. As socialists we are committed to the decriminalization of all drug use and this proposition is in line with that goal, a basic social right to be left alone to one’s own devises when there are victimless situations involved.

Vote Yes on Question 3- This is a proposition that would ban dog races (essentially greyhound racing) where wagering was involved (subject to state regulation, in other words). The writer of this blog has spend some time betting on various sporting propositions, lately, mainly on college football games (See My revolving weekly Now For The Real Question Of The Day- Who Will Win The National College Football Championship? for current selections.) so I am personally somewhat agnostic on this one, except my “significant other” is very strongly in favor of this one. I will defer to her on this. I would rather watch horses race any day. From my limited knowledge on this subject, the trainers do not do right by these beautiful animals either during their racing careers or seeing that they are provided for after that time.

The Hoodoo Lady- Memphis Minnie

CD REVIEW

Hoodoo Lady, Memphis Minnie, 1933-37, Sony, 1991

One of the interesting facts about the development of the blues is that in the early days the recorded music and the bulk of the live performances were done by women, at least they were the most popular exponents of the genre. That time, the early 1920's to the 1930's, was the classic age of women blues performers. Of course, when one thinks about that period the name that comes up is the legendary Bessie Smith. Beyond that, maybe some know Ethel Waters. And beyond that-a blank.

Yet the blues singer under review, Memphis Minnie, probably had as a productive career as either of the above-mentioned names. And here is the kicker. If you were to ask today's leading women blues singers like Bonnie Raitt, Rory Block, Tracey Nelson or Maria Muldaur about influences they will, naturally, give the obligatory Bessie response, but perhaps more surprisingly will also praise Ms. Minnie to the skies.

This compilation, while not technically the best, will explain the why of the above paragraph. Minnie worked with many back up players over the years, some good some bad, but her style and her energy carried most of the production. She was the mistress of the double entendre so popular in old time blues- you know phrases like `put a little sugar in my bowl'. The best of the bunch here are the title song Hoodoo Lady, Ice Man and Butcher Man but the real deal here is that this is an album you acquire a taste for-and then do not want to turn the damn thing off. That, for me, is high praise indeed.

*Saucy and Sexy- The Wicked Old World of James M. Cain- "The Institute"-Sex and Power in Washington

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American novelist James M. Cain

Sex and Power in Washington

The Institute, James M. Cain, Mason/Charter, New York, 1976

The last time I have had a chance to mention the work of James M. Cain, author of the classic noir works The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity a couple of novels that take place in the 1930-40’s in sunny California, was a later work Mignon set in the Louisiana of the American Civil War days. As usual when I get ‘high’ on an author I like to run through most of his or her work to see where he or she is going with it. Thus, this review of a lesser work, a much lesser work by Cain is something of an obligation. As is familiar to anyone who runs through an author’s lifetime of writing efforts not all such endeavors are equal. The Institute written late in Cain’s literary career shows a man who has run out of steam in his literary efforts.

Why is that so here? Well, the premise that Cain is working under is well-worn. Power, sex and philanthropy or some such combination in the corridors of Washington and its environs has been done to death both before and after this 1976 effort. In his earlier work, the classic stuff, Cain distinguished himself by writing novels that verged on being ‘potboilers’ but when the dust settled they were little gems of literary insight into how the human psyche operated when it got its ‘wanting habits on' as Bessie Smith once sang in an old blues tunes. Not so here as the plot is predictable concerning the powerful showing off their wealth by endowing an institute of learning and several off-hand rather surreal romances, the twists lead nowhere and in the end it turns into a sappy melodrama as all is forgiven and the main characters (who survive) the brainy Dr. Palmer and beautiful Mrs. Garrett, lovers and newly-hatched parents ride off into the sunset. Give me those chiselin’ dames and handy ne’er-do-well guys from the old days anytime. Sorry, James.

***From The Archives (2008)- Allan Greenspan Walks The Plank-Or Should

Allan Greenspan Walks The Plank- Or Should. Where Are Those Pirates of The Caribbean When You Need Them?

Commentary

One of the least edifying aspects of this international capitalist meltdown is the rush to point fingers at who is to blame. In America most conservative commentators have fixated on (surprise) the Democrats and their long ago legislation concerning Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac or the Community Redevelopment Act. These actions, rather than traditional Wall Street greed (make that super-greed) are seen as the culprits. The Democrats want to blame (surprise) Wall Street, “the bad capitalists”, for being unregulated. Here again, race and class raise their ugly little heads in the background. Behind all of this palaver are the “little guys and gals” , that is the poor working people of every race but mainly black and Hispanic, who just wanted to have their own homes-not an irrational dream in America whatever this writer’s personal take on the wisdom of such a choice might be. You see the poor are the fall guys and gals because they were in over their heads and should not have pursued that road. Well, we will let that one rest for now because we have bigger fish to fry today.

On October 23, 2008 former Federal Reserve Chairman Allan Greenspan appeared before a Congressional committee investigating the causes of the international financial meltdown. During the course of the interchange between Greenspan and members of the committee he owned up to the fact that, as long time overseer of the capitalist markets, he had miscalculated (“found a flaw” to use his expression) concerning the effects that self-interest should have played in the markets- the so-called “invisible hand” that watches out and safeguards against irrational behavior. Thanks for that insight, Allan. However there is more to it than that. Greenspan’s economic policies reflected his adherence to the ultra-capitalist notions of one of Russian Revolution refugee, Ayn Rand. A lynchpin in that thinking is the belief that markets should regulate themselves with little (really no) oversight from “big brother” government. Well, at least that was the widely accepted “wisdom” before some eight trillion dollars of “paper wealth” in the market proved to be essentially “funny money”.

None of the back and forth between the concepts of liberal “welfare state” capitalism and conservative “free market” capitalism reflected in this investigation is to the point. To paraphrase an old presidential campaign slogan- “It’s the system, stupid”. That is the elephant in the room studiously ignored by Republican and Democrat alike. Private ownership of the means of production and its adjunct credit markets and other financial devises as defined by the long history of capitalist rule has produced one constant- the continuous need for profits. No just any rate of profits but the highest possible, to put it in a word- greed. Until that glorious day when greed is not the central driving force behind economic life and is replaced by rational international socialist planning that will continue to be true. Revolutions have convulsed societies over policies that caused far less damage to the social fabric than have occurred in the present meltdown. But until that time a few heads should roll. As a contribution to that end can anyone disagree that old Allan Greenspan should walk the plank? I think not.

*From The Marxist Archives- The Irish Question-Our Day Will Come-A Socialist Day

Click on the title to link to "Wikipedia"'s entry for the Provisional IRA, provided here as background. As always with this source and its collective editorial policy, especially with controversial political issues like the Provisional IRA, be careful checking the accuracy of the information provided at any given time.


Commentary

From The Archives- The Irish Question

Spartacist Ireland Spring/Summer 2002

The protest action of 18 January 2002 by Catholic and Protestant workers in Northern Ireland against the murder of a Catholic postal worker by Loyalist paramilitaries was a rare and welcome display of united class action across the sectarian divide. However, the pro-capitalist trade union bureaucrats worked to divert the justified outrage of the workers into support for the imperialist “peace” fraud, which has in fact resulted in an escalation of anti-Catholic violence. It is precisely united working-class action which is needed to be mobilized against racist attacks and in defense of immigrants and Travellers, but the union bureaucracy here are wedded to pushing the lie of “national unity” and social “partnership”.

We of the Irish section of the ICL fight to break the workers from the reactionary “national unity” which has been the cornerstone of the “war on terrorism. In the U.S., for example, our comrades in the Labor Black League for Social Defense and the Partisan Defense Committee have raised the call on the powerful multiracial unions of the San Francisco Bay area to mobilize on February 9, 2002 against the U.S. government’s war on America’s integrated working class, on black people and on immigrants.

The struggle against racism must be linked to the fight against capitalist exploitation and for socialist revolution. It must be conducted not only against the clericalist state and groups like the xenophobic Immigration Control Platform, both of which incite murder by racist gangs, but also a political battle against the misleaders of the workers movement- the Labor Party and the trade union bureaucracy. The Irish Labor Party was in the previous government which seized on a wave or racist hysteria to enact the 1997 “Aliens Order” and slammed the door to immigrants. Their left tails, the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party absolve the trade union bureaucrats and the Labor Party, whom they supported in the previous elections.

NORTHERN IRELAND

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City was gift to British Prime Minister Tony Blair in several ways, not least that the IRA (Irish Republican Army-Provos) announce on October 23, 2002 that they had begun to decommission their weapons. The British government claims to be waging a “war against terrorism” in the interests of “democracy’ and the “civilized world” against religious fanatics. Terrorism anyone? How about the terrorism of the British state, such as the massive bombings of Afghanistan, and before this Serbia, in which this bloodthirsty Blair Labor government took center stage? What about British imperialism’s domination of Ireland, which lasted for centuries and created a militarized garrison state in the North where the façade of democracy was never much in evidence and where no-one has any reason to believe in such myths as “unarmed Bobbies”. As for religious zealots, there are very few Muslims in Northern Ireland but British rule there rests on collaboration with a gang of crazed fundamentalist Protestant bigots.

We said in 1993 that: “Any imperialist ‘deal’ will be bloody and brutal and will necessarily be at the expense of the oppressed Catholic minority. And it would not do any good for working-class Protestants either” (Workers Hammer no. 138, November/December 1993). This has been borne out: Loyalist attacks against Catholics have continued, firebombings and pipebombings are commonplace. There were 220 Loyalist attacks recorded in 213 days to August of 2001, including 75 bombings and 20 gun attacks (An Phoblacht, 9 August 2001). In the last week of October 2001 alone there were twelve bomb attacks against Catholics in North Belfast. There have, additionally, been a number of murders of Catholics including a Protestant killed by a Loyalist gunman who thought he was a Catholic.

The Catholics are an oppressed minority living under permanent siege. The plight of working- class Catholics hit international headlines in the summer of 2001 as schoolgirls in Ardoyne, North Belfast trying to walk to Holy Cross school with their parents wee shown daily on television confronting a Loyalist mob howling vile anti-Catholic and anti-woman slurs and throwing pipebombs and garbage. The British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary- now renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)- lined the streets and tried to look as if they wee making an honest effort to “keep the peace”. On the day of their name change, the PSNI escorted leaders of the Orange Order down the Catholic Garvaghy Road. Catholics know they have as much to fear from the police and the army as they do from the Loyalist death squads; indeed IRA decommissioning leaves sections of the Catholic population feeling defenseless against these forces.

Those scenes at Holy Cross school are a microcosm of Northern Ireland which show the bitter reality of British Labor’s imperialist “peace” deal. The fact that Catholic parents refused to meekly accept their status as second-class citizens brought out blatant anti-Irish prejudice from British journalists covering the story who would often report with amazement that the situation was reminiscent of the conditions of blacks in the American South in the 1950’s prior to the civil rights struggles there; nevertheless in the next breath they would ask Catholic parents why they did not use the back entrance to the school! The Irish bourgeois press, which has the same contempt for working class Catholics in the North as for those in the South, echoed Loyalist lies that the exercise was just a publicity stunt for Sinn Fein (SF). But, with or without decommissioning, Sinn Fein manifestly can offer no way forward to the beleaguered Catholics.

Sinn Fein has been organizing protests against particular military installations and complaining that the imperialists have not lived up to the ‘“program for demilitarization ‘ that was promised in the Good Friday Agreement “ (An Phoblacht, 1 November 2001). But while the British may agree to scale down the army presence to cut their costs, the Good Friday Agreement is premised on troops remaining in Northern Ireland.

We fight for the immediate unconditional withdrawal of British troops, not merely because no good can come of the British military presence there, but also because we agree with Karl Marx that the British working class cannot make a revolution against their “ own” capitalist rulers if they accept imperialist oppression in Ireland. It is in the direct interest of the working class to oppose repressive measures in Northern Ireland, which are often subsequently imposed on workers and minorities in Britain. After 9/11, Jack Straw pledged Britain would see “security of a kind people in Northern Ireland have had to live with for decades”. Sure enough, immigrants suspected of “terrorism” are being rounded up and interned without trial.
Withdrawal of the British Army does not in itself automatically ensure advance in a revolutionary direction, but it is the necessary starting point for a proletarian revolutionary perspective. We seek to break workers from illusions in Labor, which has loyally served racist, chauvinist British imperialism and the monarchy. The SL/B and Dublin Spartacist Group, sections of the ICL, fight to build revolutionary internationalist workers parties to put an end to capitalist rule and to establish a workers republic in Ireland as part of a federation of workers republics in the British Isles. Our framework is internationalist and is based on the necessity to link the struggles of the working class of Ireland, North and South, with those of workers in England, Scotland and Wales.

In Northern Ireland divisions between Catholics and Protestants have deepened, which means the prospect of united struggle by Protestant and Catholic workers for their common class interests appear remote. Although Protestant workers are only marginally better off than their Catholic counterparts, the view is pervasive that the improvements in the position of one community will necessarily be at the expense of the other. This indeed is true, unless such struggles challenge the framework of capitalist rule. A proletarian revolutionary perspective is the only way forward. There can be no just solution to the communal conflict in Northern Ireland short of proletarian rule in all of Ireland and Britain.

LABORITE “SOCIALISTS” PUSH IMPERIALIST “PEACE”

The Labor-loyal fake left have shamelessly touted British imperialism, in the guise of Blair and the Labor government, as the agency to bring peace and equality to the North. In the last British elections (2001), the Socialist Alliance-which at the time consisted of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Socialist Party, Workers Power and others- supported the reelection of Labor and removed the call for troops out of Northern Ireland from their manifesto before launching it to the bourgeois press. We said “No vote to Labor, imperialists butchers” and “No vote to Socialist Alliance, lackeys of Labor.”

The SWP is silent about the British Army, but gushing about the “tremendous hopes for peace in Northern Ireland following the IRA’s announcement that it will destroy its weapons”. They cravenly claim Labor’s “peace” process provides “space” for united struggle of the working class. Socialist Worker (3 November 2001) says;
“That process is about reaching an accommodation between politicians representing Catholic and Protestant ‘communities”.

“It can reproduce the sectarian division that is built into the Northern Ireland state. But it does provide a space for working class people, Catholic and Protestant, to fight for their interests against sectarianism.”

This is almost exactly what the SWP said when they supported British troops being sent to Northern Ireland in 1969 (by a Labor government, of course), which they claimed would provide a “breathing space” for the Catholics. They wrote:
“The breathing space provided by the presence of British troops is short but vital. Those who call for the immediate withdrawal of the troops before the men behind the barricades can defend themselves are inviting a pogrom which will hit first and hardest at socialists.”

-Socialist Worker, 11 September 1969

Less than three years later “their” British Army shot down 14 defenseless Catholics in cold blood in Derry on Bloody Sunday.

The sectarian Orange statelet was created by British imperialism’s partition of Ireland as a police state based on subjugation of the Catholic minority. Its backbone has been the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and, since 1969, the army; both work in tandem with the Loyalist paramilitary killers. Recent history is littered with scandals about collusion between Loyalist murderers and the RUC/PSNI and British Army, and there is “no breathing space” for anyone who tries to expose this to the outside world. Thus on September 28, 2001, Martin O’ Hagan, a journalist with the Dublin-based Sunday World, who researched the collusion between the British Army, the RUC, leading Unionist politicians and Loyalist death squads, was murdered by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). Rosemary Nelson, a prominent Catholic lawyer who reported to the UN that she received death threats from the RUC was also murdered in 1999; ten years earlier Pat Finucane, another well-known Catholic lawyer was also murdered by the Loyalist in collusion with the state. The current Labor government (2001) is withholding documents on the 1974 bombings in Dublin and Monaghan which killed 33 people and British state involvement is widely suspected.
The Laborite left even advocate “peace” with Loyalist thugs such as Billy Hutchinson. Irish secretary of the transport union ATGWU, Mick O’Reilly, recruited the Ulster Volunteer Force’s Hutchinson and David Ervine into the ATGWU. The wretched Socialist Party has sponsored Hutchinson in public meetings and the SWP jumped on the bandwagon by taking part in a 1999 “debate” with him organized by the Scottish Socialist Party.

NOT ORANGE AGAINST GREEN, BUT CLASS AGAINST CLASS!

Following capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union in 1991-92, petty-bourgeois nationalist movements like Sinn Fein and the PLO have had much less room to maneuver and have increasingly sought to make deals with imperialism. Sinn Fein played up illusions that by involving U.S. imperialism and the Dublin government they would secure a better deal from British imperialism for the Catholics. This overlooks the fact that U.S. imperialism is the most powerful enemy of the workers and oppressed of the world as can been seen in the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or the dirty colonial wars against Korea and Vietnam; the bedrock of the system of exploitation of American workers rests on racist oppression of black people. The imperialist “peace” deal was brokered under Democratic President Clinton, who preferred to pass off imperialist marauding as “human right” imperialism, something Bush and Company do not bother with. British imperialism is the junior partner of U.S. imperialism- the City of London has close ties with Wall Street and British imperialism is also the foremost military ally of U.S. imperialism in Europe. The Irish capitalist government is certainly no better. It supported the U.S. and Britain’s military adventures, including offering facilities for NATO warplanes at Shannon airport, and is viciously repressive of workers, women, Travellers and Republicans at home.

Petty-bourgeois nationalism is a political dead-end which cannot further the interests of the Catholic minority. It is premised on the world being divided into good and bad peoples. Whether through armed struggle (“the Armalite”) or the parliamentary road (“the ballot box”) the perspective of the Irish nationalists is to pressure imperialism.

Actions such as the Omagh bombing by the “Real IRA”. Which killed and maimed both Protestant and Catholic civilians in a shopping area, was a hideous crime from the standpoint of the working class and in no way a blow against imperialism. Marxists oppose the tactic of individual terror because it is antithetical to the necessary task of mobilizing the working class against imperialist and capitalist oppressors. Rather it expresses the aims of its practitioners to be the leaders of “their” people. When Irish nationalist groups strike a blow against the forces of British imperialism, the RUC/PSNI or Loyalist fascistic killers, we defend the perpetrators of such acts against state retribution. But we have a fundamentally different attitude to indiscriminate terror directed against civilians. From a proletarian standpoint, bombings such as Omagh or the bombing of British shopping centers and pubs, are criminal acts which only serve to deepen hatred between Protestant and Catholic, English and Irish workers.

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, an atrocity designed to kill as many civilians as possible, has served to weld American workers to the ruling class just as Irish nationalist atrocities against Protestants push Protestant workers toward Loyalist reactionaries. Viewed from the interests of the working class, nationalist terror ranges from criminal-such as Omagh- to merely stupid. Even when the IRA hits a military target these acts are carried out as part of a program, which writes off the Protestant-and Catholic- working class and also the British proletariat, which has an important Irish component.

In 1993, on the eve of the “peace” negotiations, the mainly Protestant workforce at Short Brothers in Belfast walked off the job in protest against the murder of a Catholic co-worker by Loyalist paramilitaries; very shortly afterwards the IRA placed a bomb in Belfast’s Shankill Road, which killed nine working-class Protestant shoppers. This led to anti-Catholic demonstrations by Protestant workers in Belfast.
A revolutionary party would struggle for an integrated, programmatically based workers militia to defend both Catholics and Protestants against sectarian attacks. As we said in our Theses on Ireland this must be based on the demand for the immediate withdrawal of the British Army and our Marxist analysis of terrorism:
“Such militias will need a broad and strong programmatic basis if they are not to be derailed or coopted. They cannot develop just out of trade unionism but fundamentally require the existence of a strong and authoritative revolutionary cadre. Each militia unit would need at least one member of each community and the presence and strong influence of trained revolutionary cadre. Consequently, the demand for an anti-sectarian workers militia is closely linked to the growth of a Leninist party based on a developed revolutionary program.”

Spartacist no. 24, Autumn 1977

We also explained there that:

“Leninism and nationalism are fundamentally counterposed political viewpoints. Thus, while revolutionists struggle against all forms of national oppression, they are also opposed to all forms of nationalist ideology. It is a revision of Leninism to claim that the ‘nationalism of the oppressed” is progressive and can be supported by communist internationalists. In one of his major works on the national question Lenin stressed: ‘Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the “most just”, “purest” most refined and civilized brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism…’ “Critical Remarks on the National Question,’ Collected Works, Vol. 20

WORKERS REVOLUTION BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER AND BOTH SIDES OF THE IRISH SEA!

Loyalist bigot Ian Paisley howls that the Good Friday Agreement is the slippery slope to being ruled by Dublin. Partition meant that Catholics in the North constituted an oppressed minority (although they are now over 40 per cent of the population) but an overwhelming majority in the South, In the North, we oppose all discrimination against the Catholic minority. We also recognize that the Protestants are a distinct community, largely defined in opposition to the Irish Catholic nation. As Leninist we uphold the right of self-determination of all nations, which means the right to set up an independent state, but where peoples are geographically interpenetrated “self-determination” for one can only be achieved by denying it to the other. Under capitalism this leads to intercommunal slaughter. We oppose the perspective of a capitalist “united Ireland” proffered by Sinn Fein nationalists, a prospect which is used to heighten genuine fears among Protestants of a reversal of the terms of oppression. Fear of being incorporated into the clericalist state serves to compact Protestants behind the Loyalist bigots. Precluding a polarization along class lines and instead laying the basis for communal blood-bath and forced population transfers.

The fact that the bourgeois state in the South is a Catholic Clericalist state is grist to the mill of the Loyalist bigots. The struggle for separation of church and state and for free abortion on demand is key not only for social progress in the South but as a way to under mine communalism in the North. Sinn Fein shares the clerical-nationalist outlook f Fianna Fail. Sinn Fein no longer flatly opposed abortion rights, but only concedes that it should be legally available in extreme circumstances, specifically: “where a woman’s mental and physical well-being or life is at risk or in grave danger” (Irish Times on the Web, 6 December 2001). The struggle for abortion rights strikes at backward Protestant fundamentalists as well. Significantly, although Sinn Fein’s Bairbre de Brun is health minister in the Stormont Assembly (2001), Sinn Fein was conspicuously absent from a crucial debate on legalizing abortion in Northern Ireland which was opposed by Ian Paisley’s DUP, David Trimble’s UUP, the Alliance Party and the SDLP.

The DSG has actively intervened in support of struggles of the combative Irish working class, fighting for abortion rights and counterposing our program to that of the Laborite bureaucrats. We said in a leaflet for the 1999 Irish nurse’s strike:
“It is this anti-woman Church which runs the hospitals. We call for: complete separation of church and state! We need free, quality healthcare for all. For free abortion and free contraception on demand! For free 24-hour childcare! To achieve these basic needs of women and the working class requires a revolutionary struggle against the entire capitalist system- and its labor lieutenants within the working class.”

-reprinted in Workers Hammer no. 171, Winter 1999/2000

After the recent elections (Spring 2002) in the South, Sinn Fein is poised to gain support at the expense of Fianna Fail and also trying to re-brand itself as the “left” alternative to Labor. Labor is rightly hated by workers for having dished out capitalist attacks as partners in coalition governments, most notoriously in 1994 by refusing to support striking TEAM Aer Lingus workers at Dublin airport. The Irish Labor Party, like its British namesake, is a bourgeois workers party- having a working-class base but a bourgeois program. They are loyal servants of the Irish capitalist class.

Sinn Fein can be scathing in their press about Labor’s rotten record. One of their articles on Labor concludes: “Sinn Fein is well on its way to overtaking the Labor Party, to cementing its position as the voice of the Irish Left, but in doing so the party must be careful that it does not lose sight of one of Connolly’s most fundamental truths. ‘The cause of labor is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of Labor” (An Phoblacht, 30 August 2001). But the idea that Sinn Fein could become the “voice of the Irish left” is absurd- they are a petty bourgeois capitalist party.

It is disingenuous in the extreme for Sinn Fein to claim the tradition of James Connolly. Connolly initiated and led the 1916 Easter Uprising in Dublin, hoping it would ignite workers struggles against capitalist rule in Europe amid the carnage of World War I. This did come about, with the Russian October Revolution of 1917, but by that time Connolly had been executed. Nonetheless the Rising was the catalyst for the end of British colonial rule in Ireland. Connolly was a revolutionary socialist and an internationalist who, together with Jim Larkin, led significant class battles of the Irish working class in Dublin, and in Belfast they made huge strides to unite Catholic and Protestant workers. Connolly’s success in overcoming sectarian bigotry was achieved because as a socialist he fought against the state, the Orange Order and, to the best of his ability, against Catholic nationalism. Like most socialists of his time outside Russia, he was not acquainted with Leninism, which alone hammered out a Marxist perspective on the national question. Connolly fought trenchantly against the Laborite trade union bureaucracy in Britain and in Ireland; as a true labor lieutenant of British imperialism Labor’s Arthur Henderson led the applause in the House of Commons when the announcement was made that Connolly had been executed by a British firing squad.

The kind of consciousness Connolly had instilled among workers was once again in evidence among the Belfast workers in the 1919 engineering strike. The most significant class battle to take place during the independence struggle. Charles McKay, a socialist of Catholic background, led a strike of mainly Protestant workers that shut down all heavy industry and most of the city. It was part of a wave of tumultuous strikes in engineering centers, including Glasgow. The army was deployed in Belfast (and later in Glasgow) but the strike lost because it was betrayed by the Labor bureaucrats in Britain and Ireland. The defeat of the Belfast strike led to massive purges of Catholics and trade union militants from the shipyards (including Protestant shop stewards), which paved the way for partition. Lord French, the British overlord in Ireland, released Sinn Fein leaders such as Arthur Griffith from prison in Dublin in recognition of Sinn Fein opposition to working-class struggle.

He told the Cabinet:

“I did not however, consider that the time was ripe for an actual move in the direction of an immediate release of prisoners until the strikes in the North occurred and a very dangerous crisis was at hand which might plunge the whole country in disaster.’

-quoted in Revolution in Ireland, C. Kostick (1996)

Today with the growing economic recession throughout Britain and Ireland (2002)
The capitalists will seek to increasingly pit one section of the working class against another. This could lead to increase communalism in Northern Ireland or, as happened during the struggles of unemployed workers in Belfast in the 1930’s, it could lead to united struggles of Protestant and Catholic workers. When instances of integrated working class struggle do arise, intervention by a communist vanguard will make a decisive difference to the outcome.

We seek to awaken the working class of England, Scotland and Wales to socialist consciousness and mobilize them around opposition to the monarch, House of Lords and other archaic institutions of British bourgeois rule including the “Mother of Parliaments”. We fight for an Irish workers republic, part of a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles. We also want to create ICL sections and reforge the FI

*Free Mumia Now!!!- From The Partisan Defense Committee

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.


Commentary

This information is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. Mumia is up against it now, we must redouble our efforts to win his freedom in any way we can.

******

Supreme Court Bars Evidence of Innocence

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Now!

There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!

On October 6, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal for a new trial based on evidence that critical witnesses lied under police coercion in his original frame-up trial. To the racists in black robes, a court of law is no place for evidence of the innocence of this fighter for the oppressed. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, MOVE supporter and eloquent journalist known as the “voice of the voiceless,” is an innocent man who has been on death row for 26 years, framed up for the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. This latest rejection comes after decades of Pennsylvania state and lower federal courts dismissing the mountains of evidence of his innocence and of his racist frame-up by the Philadelphia police and prosecution.

The appeal that was turned down was submitted on July 18 by Mumia’s attorney, Robert R. Bryan. That petition for a Writ of Certiorari on behalf of Mumia was a request for the Supreme Court to grant Mumia’s appeal of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision last February 19, which refused to let him present crucial evidence that key witnesses in his original frame-up trial had lied. The only witness claiming to have seen Mumia with a gun in hand was Cynthia White, a prostitute who was given favors and coerced by the cops to lie. Two months after Faulkner’s death, cops and prosecutors concocted a story that Mumia confessed to the killing as he bled nearly to death on the Jefferson Hospital Emergency Room floor after being shot and beaten by the cops.

The Partisan Defense Committee—a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League—issued a February 21 press release following the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision, emphasizing that the evidence barred by that court cuts to the heart of the prosecution frame-up. Such evidence included a 28 January 2002 declaration by Yvette Williams, who was in jail with Cynthia White in December 1981, stating that “Cynthia White told me the police were making her lie and say she saw Mr. Jamal shoot Officer Faulkner when she really did not see who did it.” Also barred was the declaration of Kenneth Pate, stepbrother of Priscilla Durham, a Jefferson Hospital security guard who testified at Mumia’s trial to hearing the bogus confession. In his 18 April 2003 declaration, Kenneth Pate recalled that Durham told him of pressure by the cops to say Mumia confessed; she confided to him, “All I heard him say was: ‘Get off me, get off me, they’re trying to kill me’.” (The declarations by Williams and Pate are available in full on the Partisan Defense Committee’s Web site (www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/yw.html and www.partisandefense.org/pubs/innocent/kp.html).

Mumia’s attorney Robert Bryan will be filing a second petition for review to the U.S. Supreme Court later this year. That petition will deal with the racist jury-rigging that marked Mumia’s 1982 trial. The prosecution used eleven of its 15 peremptory challenges to get rid of black jurors. In 2001, federal district court judge William Yohn overturned Mumia’s death sentence while upholding the frame-up conviction. Mumia’s attorney as well as the prosecution appealed—the former seeking to overturn the conviction and the latter seeking to reinstate the death penalty. On March 27, a three-judge panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Yohn’s ruling. In July, the Third Circuit Court also turned down an appeal for a full court hearing, letting stand its earlier decision. Mumia now faces the prospect of a new sentencing hearing, in which the only two choices are whether Mumia remains condemned to prison for the rest of his life or is again sentenced to death (see “Third Circuit Court Turns Down Appeal,” WV No. 918, 1 August).

The Supreme Court’s rejection of Mumia’s current petition is an outrage, but it comes as no surprise. The Supreme Court has denied previous petitions by Mumia’s attorneys in 1990, 1999 and 2004. The Supreme Court is the highest court of America’s racist capitalist rulers, the class enemy of workers, black people and all the oppressed. The courts, prisons and police exist to maintain, through organized violence and terror, the rule of the capitalists over working people. We have always advocated pursuing all possible legal proceedings. PDC attorneys Rachel Wolkenstein and Jonathan Piper served on Mumia’s legal team from 1995 to 1999, unearthing much evidence of Mumia’s innocence, including the confession of another man, Arnold Beverly, that he and not Mumia shot and killed Faulkner. But as the PDC has underlined, “We place all our faith in the power of the masses and no faith whatever in the ‘justice’ of the courts.”

The power that can make the courts yield is the power of the multiracial working class. It took a campaign of international mass protest, crucially including trade unionists, to help stay the executioner’s hand when Mumia was under a death warrant in 1995. We fight for a strategy of class-struggle defense, which must be based on the understanding that capitalist society is fundamentally divided between two hostile social classes—the capitalist exploiters and the working class—and that the capitalist state and its courts are organs of repression against working people and the oppressed. Our class-struggle strategy is counterposed to that of the liberals and reformists, who promote dangerous illusions that the courts can provide justice for Mumia, illusions codified in their longtime subordination of the demand for Mumia’s freedom to the call for a “new trial.” This reliance on the agencies of the class enemy, including pathetic appeals to capitalist politicians, has been promoted by groups including the Workers World Party, International Socialist Organization, the Revolutionary Communist Party’s Refuse & Resist, Socialist Action, the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal led by Pam Africa and the San Francisco Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal led by Socialist Action honcho Jeff Mackler.

In the weeks following the Third Circuit Court’s March decision, the PDC and its fraternal defense organizations internationally held emergency protests and united-front demonstrations. Though these protests brought out only hundreds, they point to what is necessary to win Mumia’s freedom: the mobilization of the working class independently of and in opposition to its capitalist class enemy, whether Democrat, Republican or Green. Over 500 organizations and individuals—including trade unionists, students, gay rights activists, leftists, black activists, death penalty abolitionists and others—endorsed these protests, called under the slogans: “Mumia Abu-Jamal Is Innocent! Free Mumia Now! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!”
Mumia’s conviction was a racist, political frame-up of an innocent man, a fighter against racial and class bias, a man who stands for social justice and against U.S. imperialism’s wars of depredation. Since his youth in the Black Panthers, Mumia has endured the hatred and concerted effort of the bourgeoisie to silence him because they see in him the spectre of black revolt. Mumia’s case throws a spotlight on the barbaric death penalty, which is institutionalized state terror directly descended from black chattel slavery and lynch mob terror.

Our fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal is rooted in the struggle to make the multiracial working class conscious of its class interests in the fight against the entire capitalist system, particularly the understanding that in America the fight for black freedom is central to the struggle for the emancipation of labor itself. The PDC’s Class-Struggle Contingents in protests for Mumia organized by other groups this spring expressed the necessity for independent working-class struggle on behalf of Mumia by demanding, in addition to the united-front calls to free Mumia and abolish the racist death penalty: “There Is No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! Mobilize Labor’s Power—For Mass Protest!”

The Birth of Rock and Roll- Big Joe Turner

CD REVIEW

Big Joe Turner’s Greatest Hits, Big Joe Turner, Atlantic Records, 1989

A few years ago there was a little controversy about whether songs like Joe Turner's Shake, Rattle and Roll or some early Elvis Presley tunes like Hound Dog or It's All Right, Mama represented the genesis of rock and roll. That might be an interesting discussion for musicologists with time on their hands but if you really want to know the answer listen here. If you do not find the base line here for all later classic rock then I am afraid it is lost in the mist of time. Musical trends draw from many influences but the rhythm and blues of the early 1950's seems to have been the real jump point for the turn to rock.

This compilation, that is moreover a technically competent one unlike others from this period, is a case study for the above stated propositions. It all comes together here on Shake, Rattle and Roll- the rest just complete the argument.


Jazz Legends: Rhythm and Blues At The Apollo Theater, Storyville Films AB, 1989

One of the questions that I have been posing to myself over the past several months as I trace the roots of rock ‘n’ rock, the music of my youth is to see what prior musical trend was most influential in its development. An argument can be made for old country black blues, for black city blues and for white rockabilly. However I am coming more and more to a view that rhythm and blues of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s was critical. Furthermore, one of the performers here, Big Joe Turner and his Shake, Rattle and Roll of 1954 was probably is the most influential in driving that form of music. Thus there is no accident that Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley, Elvis and many others covered the song.

So much for that. Here we have an all-star cast of jazz, rhythm and blues and just plain blues artists at New York City’s fame black musical Mecca- The Apollo Theater. We get full-bore performances from Big Joe, Dinah Washington and the legendary Ruth Brown, among others. A little old time humor is thrown in by the Emcee and some novelty songs as one would expect in a variety musical show. One interesting sidelight is that repeated scans of the audience show it is to an integrated but from the looks of it mainly white. This is one time that composition is good- that is the transmission belt to bringing that taste for black music to white audiences. If you need to see one aspect of the history of our common musical experiences look here. Rock on.

*Where Have All The Anti-War Protesters Gone?

Commentary

October 11, 2008 marked the sixth anniversary of the United States Senate’s signing off on authorization for President Bush’s war on Iraq. That date and March 20th (the date of the start of the actual invasion of Iraq in 2003) seem to be the focal points for the spring and fall “anti-war” campaign seasons each year. As such one would have expected a huge outpouring of anti-war sentiment on Saturday to “keep fire” under the feet of the various so-called ‘anti-war’ Democrats in the struggle to end the war. Or, at least, to end the funding of the war that so many of them had promised to stop in the Congressional campaign of 2006.

Not so, at least at the local gathering here at the Boston Common. At most a few hundred protesters showed up, mainly the tried and true veterans of the movement. I found myself talking mostly to old anti-warriors from past campaigns. The rather ‘shocking’ part of this sad spectacle was that in the very first lead up action in opposition to the war in the summer of 2002, when the Bush Administration started seriously beating the public tom-toms for war, there were actually more (and varied) people present at the first local demonstration. What has happened to that vaunted ‘street’ anti-war movement?

Well, the short answer, as always in a presidential election year, is that the focus shifts to parliamentary politics. Especially true this year, as year Barack Obama, the Democratic standard bearer, is “committed” to ending the war in Iraq (and shifting the forces and resources to Afghanistan, as the small print of his position reads. But who are we to quibble over such a detail). Moreover, the main anti-war coalitions like Troops Out Now and United For Peace and Justice (or is it justice and peace?) have purposefully, as they do in every presidential fall season, refrained from mass demonstrations in Washington and other major cities so as not to upset people (read, mainly Democrats) with such wild and outlandish slogans such as immediate withdrawal from Iraq AND Afghanistan.

That is the real nub of the matter. The vast majority of the “movement”, such as it is, really believes that one of the lessons that should have been learned from the vast Vietnam War-era protest was to keep off the streets and let the parliamentary road work its ‘magic’ as the way to end the Iraq war. We know now, painfully, the results of that strategy- almost six years of non-stop war. And if we are at all honest no end is in sight. Of course, to be fair there are other reasons for the dwindling number of protests and protesters but let’s address the one reason that we have control over. A new anti-war leadership has to be thrown up and a new strategy of serious opposition has to be embarked on (The odd thing is that even the vaunted current commitment to the parliamentary road has not been seriously organized). In any case- until that day- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops and Their Mercenaries from Iraq and Afghanistan is still the order of the day. Forward.

*That Other Musician From The Hills Of Oklahoma-The Music Of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys- “Western Swing's Greatest Hits"

Click on title to link to YouTube'sfil clip of Bob Wills And his Texas Playboys performing "Faded Love".

CD Review

The King Of Western Swing:Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Bob Wills and various artists who made up his Texas Playboys bands, ASV, 1998

Every once in a while I like a little change of pace from my main folk/rock/mountain music interest. Usually, that entails getting out the old jazz classics like Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman. However, every so often it also includes getting up a little dust with old Bob Wills. His countrified swing from the heyday of that genre is a pleasant surprise taken in small doses. Remember not everyone who needed to swing in order to drive away those Great Depression and World War II blues was in the city. Wills played around with and adapted the swing idea to that rural Saturday night barn dance milieu. From ballads like "Right or Wrong" to stompers like "Sugar Blues" to the haunting "Lone Star Rag" you get a good beginner mix with this album. That is as far as I am willing to take you. If you need more then you are on your own.

Faded Love

As I look at the letters that you wrote to me
It’s you that I’m thinking of
As I read the lines that to me were so sweet
I remember our Faded Love.
I miss you darling more and more every day
As heaven would miss the stars above.
With every heartbeat I still think of you
And remember our Faded Love.

As I think of the past and all the pleasures we had
As I watch the mating of the dove
It was in the springtime that you said goodbye
I remember our Faded Love
I miss you darling more and more everyday
As heaven would miss the stars above
With every heartbeat I still think of you
And remember our Faded Love


You're From Texas

Pardon me, stranger I hope there's no danger
You'll think I'm getting' off my range
But I calculate that you're from my state
And thought you may think it strange.

Chorus
I 'low as how you're from Texas
You talk a lingo I understand
I'll bet my kale that you hail from Texas
'Cause there's no mistakin' the brand
You've got a smile like an acre of sunflow'rs
And your eyes are a blue bonnet blue.
Shake hands, it's grand your from Texas
'Cause I'm from Texas too.

*That Other Musician From The Hills Of Oklahoma-The Music Of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys- “Fiddlin’ Man”

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys performing "Sitting On Top Of The World"

DVD Review

Fiddlin’ Man: The Life And Times OF Bob Wills, Bob Wills and various artists who played with him under the name Texas Playboys, VIEW Video, 1996

I have spent an inordinate amount of time in this space reviewing the work of that quintessential product of the hills of Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie. And that has been appropriate in my long time search for the roots of American music, if for no other reason than, his decisive influence on such later folk revivalists as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan (to speak nothing of son, Arlo Guthrie). But those Oklahoma hills (and Texas) also produced in an almost contemporary time frame a very different kind of roots music, western swing, that will always be associated with the name Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. I may, personally be more at home with the 1930s city-driven swing music of Mr. Benny Goodman but only a complete fool would deny Bob Wills his place as a seminal influence in American roots music. This hour long musical documentary gives a rough biographic sketch of that career, and along the way some toe-tapping footage of Bob Wills and his various Texas Playboy configurations doing their swing music.

To set the tone for the DVD I post a paragraph from an entry that reviewed one of Bob Wills CD compilations:

“Every once in a while I like a little change of pace from my main folk/rock/mountain music interest. Usually, that entails getting out the old jazz classics like Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman. However, every so often it also includes getting up a little dust with old Bob Wills. His countrified swing from the heyday of that genre is a pleasant surprise taken in small doses. Remember not everyone who needed to swing in order to drive away those Great Depression and World War II blues was in the city. Wills played around with and adapted the swing idea to that rural Saturday night barn dance milieu. From ballads like "Right or Wrong" to stompers like "Sugar Blues" to the haunting "Lone Star Rag" you get a good beginner mix with this album. That is as far as I am willing to take you. If you need more then you are on your own.”

Bob Wills was, like Woody, a product of the dirt poor Greta Depression-era who latched onto the idea of mixing up a whole bunch of genres of music including what today is called Tex-Mex (or Tejan) , a whole bunch of instruments, and an uncanny sense of which way the rhythm trends were heading. Some country, some jazz, some city swing, a little mountain and, as always in early American recorded music, some kind of blues those are the influences heard in this film from cowboys movie songs to square dance type tunes to love ballads. And all, as the interviewees here, including various ex-band members, make clear led by the charismatic and demanding Wills.


If you are not interested in the Wills story though you must watch this film for the vintage footage of Wills and the boys (women are, as far as I could tell, used only for backup singing) on locale in Hollywood as background to the ubiquitous cowboy movies that many of us older devotees cut our teeth on watching (or watching the television re-runs). As well, here you will see and hear the Western swing treatment of the classic “San Antone Rose”, “Sitting On Top Of The World” , “Milk Cow Blues”, and the signature “Take Me Back To Tulsa”. See, even I know it was not only about Woody back in the days.

Note: I would point out that while Bob Wills, over a long career spanning almost half a century, is truly identified as the originator of western swing he was not the only “hot” swing man of the period. An argument can be made and has, by folk singer Geoff Muldaur, that the work of Wills contemporary Milton Brown whose career was cut short by his death in an automobile accident, was perhaps better than Wills’ during that period. I have heard some of Brown’s work. I would say the jury is still out on this question.


Bob Wills, San Antonio Rose Tabs/Chords

F7 F+ Bb
A song of old San An - tone.
Bb7 Eb C7
Where in dreams I live with a memory,
F7 Bb
Beneath the stars all alone.
Bb7Eb C7
It was there I found beside the Alamo
F7 Bb
Enchantment strange as the blue up above.
Bb7 Eb C7
A moonlit pass only she would know,
F7 Bb
Still hears my broken song of love.
F Fdim C7 F C7 Abm C9
Moon in all your splendor, know only my heart
C Abm C9 F
Call back my Rose, Rose of San Antone.
Fdim F C7 F C C9
Lips so sweet and tender, like petals falling apart.
C Abm C9 F F7
Speak once a - gain of my love, my own.
Bb Bb7 Eb C7 F7 F+ Bb
Broken song, empty words I know still live in my heart all a - lone
Bb Bb7 Eb C7 F7 Bb
For that moonlit pass by the Alamo, and Rose, my Rose of San Antone.

*That Other Musician From The Hills Of Oklahoma-The Music Of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys-“Still Swingin’”

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys performing "Take Me Back To Tulsa".

DVD Review

Still Swingin’: 100th Anniversary Special Edition: Bob Wills, , hosted by Red Steagall with various artists, VCI, 1994

The first two paragraphs of this review have been used in reviews of other Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys material.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time in this space reviewing the work of that quintessential product of the hills of Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie. And that has been appropriate in my long time search for the roots of American music, if for no other reason than, his decisive influence on such later folk revivalists as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan (to speak nothing of son, Arlo Guthrie). But those Oklahoma hills (and Texas) also produced in an almost contemporary time frame a very different kind of roots music, western swing, that will always be associated with the name Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. I may, personally be more at home with the 1930s city-driven swing music of Mr. Benny Goodman but only a complete fool would deny Bob Wills his place as a seminal influence in American roots music. This hour long musical documentary gives a rough biographic sketch of that career, some toe-tapping footage of Bob Wills and his various Texas Playboy configurations doing their swing music, and unlike another Wills documentary, “Fiddlin’ Man”, that I have reviewed in this space spends some time on his influence on later artists and later covers by the likes of Tracy Bird and Asleep At The Wheel who carry on the tradition as best they can.

To set the tone for the DVD I post a paragraph from an entry that reviewed one of Bob Wills CD compilations:

“Every once in a while I like a little change of pace from my main folk/rock/mountain music interest. Usually, that entails getting out the old jazz classics like Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman. However, every so often it also includes getting up a little dust with old Bob Wills. His countrified swing from the heyday of that genre is a pleasant surprise taken in small doses. Remember not everyone who needed to swing in order to drive away those Great Depression and World War II blues was in the city. Wills played around with and adapted the swing idea to that rural Saturday night barn dance milieu. From ballads like "Right or Wrong" to stompers like "Sugar Blues" to the haunting "Lone Star Rag" you get a good beginner mix with this album. That is as far as I am willing to take you. If you need more then you are on your own.”


Bob Wills was, like Woody, a product of the dirt poor Great Depression-era who latched onto the idea of mixing up a whole bunch of genres of music including what today is called Tex-Mex (or Tejan) , a whole bunch of instruments, and an uncanny sense of which way the rhythm trends were heading. Some country, some jazz, some city swing, a little mountain and, as always in early American recorded music, some kind of blues those are the influences heard in this film from cowboys movie songs to square dance type tunes to love ballads. And all, as the interviewees here, including various ex-band members, make clear led by the charismatic and demanding Wills.

If you are not interested in the Wills story though you must watch this film for the vintage footage of Wills and the boys (women are, as far as I could tell, used only for backup singing) on locale in Hollywood as background to the ubiquitous cowboy movies that many of us older devotees cut our teeth on watching (or watching the television re-runs). As well, here you will see and hear the Western swing treatment of the classic “San Antonio Rose”, “Sitting On Top Of The World” , “Milk Cow Blues”, and the signature “Take Me Back To Tulsa”. See, even I know it was not only about Woody back in the days.

Note: I would point out that while Bob Wills, over a long career spanning almost half a century, is truly identified as the originator of western swing although he was not the only “hot” swing man of the period. An argument can be made and has, by folk singer Geoff Muldaur, that the work of Wills contemporary Milton Brown whose career was cut short by his death in an automobile accident, was perhaps better than Wills’ during that period. I have heard some of Brown’s work. I would say the jury is still out on this question.


Bob Wills, San Antonio Rose Tabs/Chords


F7 F+ Bb
A song of old San An - tone.
Bb7 Eb C7
Where in dreams I live with a memory,
F7 Bb
Beneath the stars all alone.
Bb7Eb C7
It was there I found beside the Alamo
F7 Bb
Enchantment strange as the blue up above.
Bb7 Eb C7
A moonlit pass only she would know,
F7 Bb
Still hears my broken song of love.
F Fdim C7 F C7 Abm C9
Moon in all your splendor, know only my heart
C Abm C9 F
Call back my Rose, Rose of San Antone.
Fdim F C7 F C C9
Lips so sweet and tender, like petals falling apart.
C Abm C9 F F7
Speak once a - gain of my love, my own.
Bb Bb7 Eb C7 F7 F+ Bb
Broken song, empty words I know still live in my heart all a - lone
Bb Bb7 Eb C7 F7 Bb
For that moonlit pass by the Alamo, and Rose, my Rose of San Antone.

Grifters, Drifters, Midnight Shifters- The Music of Tom Wait

CD REVIEWS

Mule Variations, Tom Waits


If, as I do, every once in a while from a distance you need to hear about boozers, losers, dopesters, hipsters, fallen sisters, grifters, drifters, the driftless, small-time grafters, hobos, bums, tramps, the fallen, those who want to fall, Spanish Johnnies, stale cigarette butts, whiskey-soaked barroom floors, loners, the lonely, sad sacks, the sad and others at the margins of society then this is your stop. Tom Waits gives voice in song to the characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). In short, these are the people who do not make revolutions, far from it, but they surely desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial voice and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who, with far more justification that ex-President Bill Clinton could possibly muster, “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. And that, my friends, is definitely a political statement.

*Another Small Victory For Same-Sex Marriage

Click On Title To Link To July 2, 2009 "New York Review Of Books" Article Entitled "The Same-Sex Future" By David Cole That Gives An Update On This Struggle And A Capsule Of The Various Positions On The Issue.

Commentary

With all the appalling economic news this week it is nice to have at least one small victory. That comes today with the Connecticut Supreme Court's decision declaring same-sex marriage constitutional in that state. This decision, while not as important as the first one in Massachusetts or as decisive as in California is still welcome. As always watch out for blow back on this issue.


Boston Globe news item- October 10, 2008


Connecticut became the third state to legalize same-sex marriage today in a 4-3 decision by the state Supreme Court.

In an 85-page decision issued at 11:30 a.m., the court struck down a law barring same-sex marriage, ruling that the state had "failed to establish adequate reason to justify the statutory ban."

The justices noted in the majority opinion that they recognized "as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health … that 'our decision marks a change in the history of our marriage law.' "

The case, Kerrigan v. the state Commissioner of Public Health, was brought by eight same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses by the Madison town clerk. They argued that the state's civil union law was discriminatory and unconstitutional because it established a separate and therefore inherently unequal institution for a minority group. Citing equal protection under the law, the state Supreme Court agreed.

The Lessons Of Vietnam- Vietnam: A Televison History

DVD REVIEW

Vietnam: A Television History, PBS, 1983

I have previously reviewed Stanley Karnow companion book, Vietnam-A History, that goes with this ten-part television series. I have reposted that review below for the convenience of the reader. Most of the political points that I have made there apply here as well. I would only add that visually some of the footage brought the message home more clearly that on the printed page and I would bring to the attention of the reader some of those highlights here.

This series spends much less time than Karsnow does on the long history of struggles against foreign invaders of Vietnam, particularly the Chinese. It really starts with the 19th century French occupation and more forcefully the take-over by the Japanese. When the dust of World War II settled there were massive forces in Vietnam who cried for independence but the vagaries of world politics and French imperialist designs to keep Indo-China as a colony frustrated that aim and led to the first of a series of post-war armed struggles for independence.

The Vietnamese fighting against the French occupation that culminated in their historic victory at Dien Bien Phu, the French withdrawal and the partition of Vietnam in 1954 is well-documented here, as is the then shadowy American presence. President John Kennedy’s early 1960's commitment to counter-insurgency as part of the global American-led fight against the expansion of the Soviet influence is explored. His initial escalation and the later increased escalation of President Lyndon Johnson are given full play here. Moreover, there are more than enough ‘talking head' high officials from various American administrations to give viewers a clue as to why, when the deal went down in Vietnam they were all, more or less, clueless- except the few, very few, who saw a quagmire in the making.

A subject that is done in great detail here is an examination of the morale of the American soldier as time when on and the reasons for continuing the war seemed hopelessly inadequate. Along those same lines, and for comparison's sake, is a rather nice introduction to what the ‘enemy’ thought about the whole thing, including interviews with General Giap, the military architect of the North Vietnamese strategies. Of course, no study of the course of the Vietnam War can be complete without an analysis of Tet 1968, both as a battlefield and in its relationship to a turn in American public opinion away from overt support for the war. Yes, for those who refuse to listen today in Iraq, Tet was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese. They admitted as much. However, in the modern world exclusively military objectives are not the only factors that will determine an outcome. Politically, the North by showing that this was indeed a strange adversary by American standards, moreover one committed to taking heavy casualties to achieve its goals, demonstrated that an American victory was no longer possible.

Or so one would have thought in 1968. Again American politics intervened with the election of one Richard Nixon. The war dragged on for five more years. As a result, as graphically documented here, the American army was almost broken in the process of the Vietnamization of the war. The part devoted to the collateral results in Laos and Cambodia in the early 1970's produced by American actions bears close watching as well as this has not received nearly enough detailed attention.

For those who want a case study in the limitations of a heavily armed army in modern warfare against a determined lightly armed but politically cohesive enemy this series is the place to look. If one solely wants a ten hour crash course into the Vietnam War era this is also your stop. This period of American history was part and parcel of my political coming of age and I found it informative and, as almost always with PBS productions, technically well done.

BOOK REVIEW

VIETNAM –A HISTORY, STANLEY KARNOW, PENQUIN BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1983

As the current Bush Administration-directed quagmire continues in Iraq it is rather timely to look at the previously bout of American imperialist madness in Vietnam if only in order to demonstrate the similar mindsets, then and now, of the American political establishment and their hangers-on. This book, unintentionally I am sure, is a prima facie argument, against those who see Iraq (or saw Vietnam) as merely an erroneous policy of the American government that can be ‘fixed’ by a change to a more rational imperialist policy guided by a different elite. Undeniably there are many differences between the current war and the struggle in Vietnam. Not the least of which is that in Vietnam there was a Communist-led insurgency that leftists throughout the world could identify with and were duty-bound to support. No such situation exists in Iraq today where, seemingly, from the little we know about the murky politics of the parties there militant leftists can support individual anti-imperialist actions as they occur but stand away, way away from the religious sectarian struggle for different versions of a fundamentalist Islamic state that the various parties are apparently fighting for.

Stanley Karnow’s well-informed study of the long history of struggle in Vietnam against outsiders, near and far, is a more than adequate primer about the history and the political issues, from the American side at least, as they came to a head in Vietnam in the early 1960’s. This work was produced in conjunction with a Public Broadcasting System documentary in 1983 so that if one wants to take the time to get a better grasp of the situation as it unfolded the combination of the literary and visual presentations will make one an ‘armchair expert’ on the subject. A glossary of by now unfamiliar names of secondary players and chronology of events is helpful as are some very good photographs that lead into each chapter

This book is the work of a long time journalist who covered Southeast Asia from the 1950’s until at least the early 1980’s when he went back after the war was over and interviewed various survivors from both sides as well as key political players. Although over twenty years has passed since the book’s publication it appears to me that he has covered all the essential elements of the dispute as well as the wrangling, again mainly on the American side , of policy makers big and small. While everyone should look at more recent material that material appears to me to be essentially more specialized analysis of the general themes presented in Karnow’s book. Or are the inevitably self-serving memoirs by those, like former Secretary of War Robert McNamara, looking to refurbish their images for the historical record. Karnow’s book has the added virtue of having been written just long enough after the end of the war that memories, faulty as they are in any case, were still fresh but with enough time in between for some introspection.

The first part of Karnow’s book deals with the long history of the Vietnamese as a people in their various provincial enclaves, or as a national entity, to be independent of the many other powers in the region, particularly China, who wanted to subjugate them. The book also pays detailed attention to the fight among the European colonial powers for dominance in the region culminating in the decisive victory for control by France in the 1800’s. That domination by a Western imperialist power, ultimately defeated by the same Communist and nationalist forces that were to defeat the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies, sets the stage for the huge role that the United States would come to play from the time of the French defeat in 1954 until their own defeat a couple of decades later. This section is important to read because the premises of the French about their adversary became, in almost cookie-cutter fashion, the same premises that drove American policy. And to similar ends.


The bulk of the book and the central story line, however, is a study of the hubris of American imperialist policy-makers in attempting to define their powers, prerogatives and interests in the post-World War II period. The sub-title of the book, which the current inhabitants of the Bush Administration obviously have not read and in any case would willfully misunderstand, is how not to subordinate primary interests to momentary secondary interests in the scramble to preserve the Empire.

Apparently, common sense and simple rationality are in short supply when one goes inside the Washington Beltway. Taking into account the differences in personality among the three main villains of the piece- Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon- the similarities of response and need to defend some sense of honor, American honor, are amazingly similar, individual rhetoric aside. There thus can be little wonder the North Vietnamese went about their business of revolution and independence pretty much according to their plans and with little regard to ‘subtleties’ in American diplomacy. But, read the book and judge for yourselves. Do not be surprised if something feels awfully, awfully familiar.

Sarah Palin- Hands Off Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn

October 7, 2008

Apparently, for the third time this presidential season I have to dust off this old review of the Weather Underground and the activities of leftist Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Why? Sarah Palin, self-proclaimed "hockey mom" Republican Vice-presidential candidate, has decided that the virtue of the American Republic requires a rehashing of that old chestnut concerning the supposed organic relationship between the "terrorist" professors and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. I am reposting previous comments here because, frankly, I have nothing to add to the previous comments. Except this, Professors Ayers and Dohrn can now serve as prima facie evidence that ostensible leftists should be very careful in the choice of bourgeois capitalist candidates they "hang around with". In short, stay very far away from those types.



August 26, 2008

Apparently, the Republican presidential campaign of Arizona Senator John McCain is trying to get mileage out of some tenuous connection between Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama and very, very ex-Weatherpeople Professors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. This same issue popped up in the spring of 2008. The introductory comment used there reposted directly below and a review of what The Weather Underground really meant politically still apply. I would only add that forty years of "cultural wars" by these reactionaries, led by Karl Rove and his ilk, is enough. I only hope that when our day comes we will relegate them to some nice island somewhere so they can "reflect" on their sins and leave the rest of us alone.

*******

May 2008

There is currently a tempest in a teapot swirling around Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama concerning his relationship with former Weatherpeople Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Here are a couple of reviews from last year on the historic significance of that movement. The real question to ask though is not why Obama was hanging around with Ayers and Dohrn but why they were hanging around with this garden-variety bourgeois candidate on the make. Enough said.

YOU DO NEED A WEATHERMAN (PERSON) TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS

DVD REVIEW

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND: REBELS WITH A CAUSE, 2003

In a time when I, among others, are questioning where the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War is going and why it has not made more of an impact on American society it was rather refreshing to view this documentary about the seemingly forgotten Weather Underground that as things got grimmer dramatically epitomized one aspect of opposition to the Vietnam War. If opposition to the Iraq war is the political fight of my old age Vietnam was the fight of my youth and in this film brought back very strong memories of why I fought tooth and nail against it. And the people portrayed in this film, the core of the Weather Underground, while not politically kindred spirits then or now, were certainly on the same page as I was- a no holds- barred fight against the American Empire. We lost that round, and there were reasons for that, but that kind of attitude is what it takes to bring down the monster. But a revolutionary strategy is needed. That is where we parted company.

One of the political highlights of the film is centered on the 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Convention that was a watershed in the student anti-war protest movement. That was the genesis of the Weathermen but it was also the genesis of the Progressive Labor Party-led faction that wanted to bring the anti-war message to the working class by linking up the student movement with the fight against capitalism. In short, to get to those who were, or were to be, the rank and file soldiers in Vietnam or who worked in the factories. In either case the point that was missed, as the Old Left had argued all along and which we had previously dismissed out of hand, was that it was the masses of working people who were central to ‘bringing the war home’ and the fight against capitalism. That task still confronts us today.

One of the paradoxical things about this film is that the Weather Underground survivors interviewed had only a vague notion about what went wrong. This was clearly detailed in the remarks of Mark Rudd, a central leader, when he stated that the Weathermen were trying to create a communist cadre. He also stated, however, that after going underground he realized that he was out of the loop as far as being politically effective. And that is the point. There is no virtue in underground activity if it is not necessary, romantic as that may be. To the extent that any of us read history in those days it was certainly not about the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 19th century. If we had we would have found that that movement also fought out the above-mentioned fight in 1969. Mass action vs. individual acts, heroic or otherwise, of terror. The Weather strategy of acting as the American component of the worldwide revolutionary movement in order to bring the Empire to its knees certainly had (and still does) had a very appealing quality. However, a moral gesture did not (and will not) bring this beast down. While the Weather Underground was made up a small group of very appealing subjective revolutionaries its political/moral strategy led to a dead end. The lesson to be learned; you most definitely do need weather people to know which way the winds blow. Start with Karl Marx.

On Workers Asset Liquidation Committees Today

COMMENTARY

On October 1, 2008 I commented in an entry entitled Fantastic Musings On The Financial Meltdown- Are We Prepared To Lead The Struggle For State Power that one of our demand today, a transitional demand if you will, should be to call for the establishment of workers committees to liquidate the assets of bankrupt companies and distribute them to the workers. I have taken a little heat from a couple of comrades over my formulation. I purposefully placed this demand in the context of the need for us to take a more aggressively agitational approach during this period, an exceptional time of capitalist economic chaos when we can get a hearing from working people looking for SOME way out of this nightmare.

The gist of the criticism of my position was that I was “defeatist” in that what is called for today is workers control of the companies. Under a workers government, which by the way is not going to spring forth today, that is the correct demand. Under capitalist conditions with no realistic prospect of a workers government on the horizon- and here I intend to be humorous- workers, take the money and run. Fast.

Look, our whole reason for existence as socialists is that we believe that this capitalist/imperialist system is fundamentally flawed and that it needs to be replaced by a more equitable society based, at the start, on socialist economic planning in the spirit of social solidarity rather than greed. No serious reader of this space should disagree with that general premise. The point is how to get that message out in a way that people can relate to. We, rightly, had (and have) not interest in bailouts, rescues or other remedies that would put a bandage on this broken down financial system. We call for a big NO vote on that issue. Again there should be no dispute on this. But hear me out.

Whether we socialists have developed a propaganda circle mentality or not, as I noted in the above-mentioned previous entry, we still need to deal with today’s social reality as we shift gears and become more agitational in our work as OUR political prospects brighten. The demand for workers committees to take control of liquidation of assets is directly counterposed to what is happening today as larger financial institutions are gobbling up smaller companies at fire sale prices. That is leaving untold workers without jobs, pensions, personal assets, etc. So companies fail- those things happen by hook or by crook under capitalism- we are in no position today to affect that. We ARE in a position to speak on behalf of those who suffer the consequences of this crisis in order to see that they get some minimal relief. Moreover this demand, and here is the real historic point, lets working people get to take things, even if in a negative way, into their own hands. That is worth raising the slogan for by itself.

Lastly, we have no interest in the imperialists’ capitalist nationalization schemes. This, essentially, is what the Freddie Mae and Fannie Mae deals were about. We socialists have all sorts of positions on nationalizations, when we support or call for them as well as, and under what conditions we defend them, depending of who is doing the nationalization and for what purposes. A quick review of recent history, as always, tells the tale. The Cuban Revolution’s nationalizations (and expropriations) of, mainly, American properties, we supported with both hands. Right? The same is true with any such efforts with the oil under Chavez in Venezuela. And we, moreover, defend those actions against attempts by the imperialists to take them back. No question. We neither supported nor called for the nationalizations of the (bankrupt) coal industrial under capitalist control state in Great Britain after World War II. We did, however, defend against Prime Minister Thatcher’s bloody attempts to de-nationalize these mines in the 1980’s. That will give a flavor of what a correct policy should be. Once again this position calls forth not the need for capitalist nationalizations but, in effect, the need to create workers committees to liquidate assets rather than to solidify the capitalists in their current strategies to save THEIR system.

The USA Trilogy- The Work Of John Dos Passos In His Prime

BOOK REVIEW

USA Trilogy: The 42nd Parallel; 1919; The Big Money, John Dos Passos, Library of America, 1997

I believe that the USA trilogy presented here (thankfully, under one roof- when I first read it in my youth I had to scrounge around for the third book) was the first time that I had read a novel than used the literary devices that the author John Dos Passos employed here. Vignettes, bits of poetry, snap biographies, headline banners all are employed here to great effect to both set up the drama of the narrative (such as it is) and the interplay between the various characters. Today we are all very familiar with the device; as the modern reader has E.L. Doctorow to rely on to continue this tradition as he has done in such works as Ragtime and The Book of Daniel. But back then this was rather an unusual format and one that today’s academic literary scholars have taken apart piece by piece in their efforts discount this work as a worthy insight into a slice of Americana in the first third of the 20th century. However, back in his day he was rated right up there with old Hemingway. That was rarefied air indeed.

The stories here cross between the exploits of the rich (and their wannabes) and the exploitation of poor (and their gonnabes). As is natural in a novel, modern or otherwise, we also have the search for love, the trauma of lost love, the inevitable longings and the occasional betrayals of that condition. We have hustlers (in high and low places), drifters, grifters and midnight shifters. In short, a regular cross-section of the white native and immigrant populations of that period. We see these characters in America and the other noted spots of the period, such as Mexico, Europe and Russia. We see them as political, anti-political, non-political and clueless, wise or broken. In some 1300 pages we get a companion as much as a novel. For those of certain generations, including this writer’s generation of '68, these characters- designers, high powered executives, labor organizers, scabs, revolutionaries were types we were at least familiar with from stories in childhood. Well, friends they are back here in this edition. So take your time and get re-introduced to a slice of America that is long gone and ain’t coming back.

A short comment on the author's politics- at this period in his life (the 1920’s) he was an ardent leftist of some persuasion. (I have asked around but nobody believes that he was actually in the American Communist Party (any help here?). In Spain in the 1936-37 period he was, according to my sources, close to some of the Americans in the International Brigade (Abraham Lincoln Battalion) and wrote some good articles on their exploits and their trials and tribulations. All this is by way of saying that I think that Dos Passos' youthful leftist political slant helped fuel the book and gave it a vitality lacking in some of his latter work when he got old, cranky and right-wing about politics.