Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
ISR Issue 72, July–August 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economic crisis and class struggle
Are recessions better for the left or right, asks Phil Gasper?
The most fundamental argument in favor of socialism is that capitalism is an irrational system that over the long term cannot meet the basic needs of the majority of the population because of its tendency to go into economic crisis. But what if economic crisis leads not to the growth of the left but to the rise of the far right? This is the argument of the radical economist Doug Henwood in a short article published in May on the MRzine Web site.
Henwood begins by criticizing “radicals [who] have fantasized that a serious recession—or depression—would lead to mass radicalization,” and he goes on to argue that there is empirical support for the opposite view—that economic crisis actually benefits the far right not the radical left. The evidence he cites is recent research by the economists Markus Brükner and Hans Peter Grüner. Brükner and Grüner studied sixteen European countries and discovered that between 1970 and 2002, every 1 percent decline in economic growth in these countries was associated with an increase in the vote share of far right and nationalist parties of between 1 and 2 percent.
By contrast, Brükner and Grüner found no corresponding increase in electoral support for communist parties during the same periods of economic decline. Henwood concludes that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right,” and that Brükner and Grüner’s research “helps explain the rise of the Tea Partiers and other strange life forms on the right.”
The first thing to note is that this is an incredibly narrow study on which to base the sweeping conclusion that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right.” In fact Henwood himself immediately notes one “major exception,” namely the United States during the Great Depression, when economic crisis led to a series of mass strikes, the birth of industrial unions, and the growth of the Communist Party to about 80,000 members. However, he adds that this was only because the scale of the crisis was so severe, with unemployment rates reaching 25 percent and, additionally, the “Great Depression didn’t do much for the left in Europe.”
In fact that last claim is not accurate. While the far right obviously grew as a result of the Depression, eventually seizing power in Germany, Spain, and Austria, the left also grew in many European countries, and there was nothing inevitable about its ultimate defeat. In Germany, the Social Democratic and Communist Parties had millions of supporters, and in the election of November 1932, the last genuinely free vote before Hitler took power, their combined support was several percentage points ahead of the Nazis. The tragedy was that the two left-wing parties were fatally divided and unable to agree on a common strategy to defeat the far right in the streets as well as at the ballot box. Similarly in Spain the left grew significantly. It eventually lost the civil war as a result of major conflicts between the different left-wing parties and outside support for Franco’s fascists.
Second, economic crises are a fact of life under capitalism, and one of the main arguments in favor of a different kind of economic system. Henwood instructs the left to “stop hoping for the worst,” but our hopes either way are irrelevant to how the economy actually performs, and severe recessions will periodically take place no matter what we think about them. If it were true that in such circumstances the right will grow and the left will not, there would be grounds for thoroughgoing political pessimism. During periods of economic growth and stability, the radical transformation of society would seem unnecessary, while during periods of economic crisis it would be impossible.
Henwood is certainly right about one thing—there is no automatic relationship between economic crisis and “mass radicalization.” But it is equally wrong to think that there is an automatic connection between crisis and the growth of the right. Whether or not an economic slump results in an increase in class struggle and gains for the left depends on a whole set of complex factors, including the nature of the crisis and the constellation of political forces going into it.
Perhaps no one has written about the relationship between economic booms, slumps, and political consciousness with more insight than the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who addressed these issues several times in the 1920s and the 1930s. In a report he wrote for the Communist International in 1921, Trotsky noted that, “there is no automatic dependence of the proletarian revolutionary movement upon a crisis. There is only a dialectical interaction. It is essential to understand this.” The example that Trotksy used to illustrate this point is worth quoting at length:
Let us look at the relations in Russia. The 1905 revolution was defeated. The workers bore great sacrifices. In 1906 and 1907 the last revolutionary flare-ups occurred and by the autumn of 1907 a great world crisis broke out. The signal for it was given by Wall Street’s Black Friday. Throughout 1907 and 1908 and 1909 the most terrible crisis reigned in Russia too. It killed the movement completely, because the workers had suffered so greatly during the struggle that this depression could act only to dishearten them. There were many disputes among us over what would lead to the revolution: a crisis or a favorable conjuncture?
At that time many of us defended the viewpoint that the Russian revolutionary movement could be regenerated only by a favorable economic conjuncture. And that is what took place. In 1910, 1911 and 1912, there was an improvement in our economic situation and a favorable conjuncture which acted to reassemble the demoralized and devitalized workers who had lost their courage. They realized again how important they were in production; and they passed over to an offensive, first in the economic field and later in the political field as well. On the eve of the war [in 1914] the working class had become so consolidated, thanks to this period of prosperity, that it was able to pass to a direct assault.
This period of class militancy was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War, when a wave of patriotism swept over the country, engulfing all but the most class-conscious workers. But as the war dragged on and Russia suffered massive casualties, patriotism gave way to cynicism and then anger, which eventually culminated in the successful revolutions of 1917.
One conclusion that Trotsky drew from examples like these was that class struggle was not simply the result of economic slump or of economic boom, but was often the result of the rapid shift from slump to boom and back again. Slumps can show the necessity for change, but they can also weaken the power of the working class as some lose their jobs and others become desperate to hang on to theirs. A return to economic growth can give workers renewed confidence to make significant demands, but if the new expansion is long-lived, the possibility for radical change will be lost until a new crisis begins. Here is Trotsky again:
Many of you will recall that Marx and Engels wrote in 1851—when the boom was at its peak—that it was necessary at that time to recognize that the Revolution of 1848 had terminated, or, at any rate, had been interrupted until the next crisis. Engels wrote that while the crisis of 1847 was the mother of revolution, the boom of 1849–51 was the mother of triumphant counter-revolution. It would, however, be very one-sided and utterly false to interpret these judgments in the sense that a crisis invariably engenders revolutionary action while a boom, on the contrary, pacifies the working class…
The irresolute and half-way Revolution of 1848 did, however, sweep away the remnants of the regime of guilds and serfdom and thereby extended the framework of capitalist development. Under these conditions and these conditions alone, the boom of 1851 marked the beginning of an entire epoch of capitalist prosperity which lasted till 1873. In citing Engels it is very dangerous to overlook these basic facts…. At issue here is not whether an improvement in the conjuncture is possible, but whether the fluctuations of the conjuncture are proceeding along an ascending or descending curve. This is the most important aspect of the whole question.
So it was the long period of capitalist expansion in the 1850s and 1860s that stabilized the system and led to a relatively low level of class struggle. By contrast, the period after the First World War, according to Trotsky, was one of long-term instability and decline, during which “upswings can only be of a superficial…character, while crises become more and more prolonged and deeper going.”
The effect of booms and slumps will thus depend in part on the underlying state of the economy—whether it is in a period of sustained expansion in which recessions are relatively minor interruptions, or whether it is in a period of decline in which the booms are short-lived and sustained growth cannot be achieved.
Today we find ourselves in a period of long-term economic instability, in which a return to sustained growth seems unlikely any time in the near future. During the past decade the U.S. economy has experienced two recessions—the most recent, the worst since the Great Depression—and low growth. Even when the economy was growing in the middle of the decade real wages continued to decline. Now the economy is growing again, but unemployment remains high (the real figure is around 15 percent) and there is a strong chance that there will soon be another recession.
Will the current period prove more favorable to the left or to the right? Over the past eighteen months we have certainly seen the growth of the right, including vicious scapegoating of immigrants and the emergence of the Tea Party, with its attacks on “big government” and the supposed socialism of the Obama administration, and its strong undercurrent of racism. Some commentators, including Noam Chomsky, are convinced that there is a real threat of fascism, with parallels to the decline of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis.
There is certainly no reason to be complacent about these developments, but the comparison with Germany in the 1930s makes little sense. Far from being a mass movement, the journalists Anthony DiMaggio and Paul Street describe the Tea Party as “a top-down interest group led by national and local political officials and financed by corporate America” and “fundamentally dependent upon the Republican Party.”
While the Tea Party has been able to mobilize a few thousand people and demonstrations around the country, these have been dwarfed by recent progressive mobilizations, including hundreds of thousands demonstrating for LGBT and immigrant rights. But progressive demonstrations generally receive very little media attention, while the cable channels—particularly, of course, Fox News—have given Tea Party events a level of exposure totally disproportionate to the numbers involved.
DiMaggio and Street argue that, despite some impressive recent mobilizations, much of the left has been “significantly pacified and demobilized by Obama and the corporate Democrats, has surely failed to capitalize on the recent economic downturn, and has generally failed to establish a progressive movement in the short term.” But they also point out that “the Tea Party represents a concession from Republican Party elites that they (along with their Democratic counterparts) no longer enjoy much legitimacy among the American people. Their only way of appealing to voters is to appear as if they are not political leaders, but ‘average people’ taking part in a populist uprising against a corrupt political system.”
Opinion polls show that there has been a significant shift to the left in terms of political attitudes over the past few years. In May, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of people under the age of thirty in the United States view socialism favorably, exactly the same percentage as those with a favorable view of capitalism. That figure alone shows that there is a remarkable opportunity for the left to grow in the current period. We have to honestly acknowledge that organizations to the left of the Democratic Party are tiny and that the labor movement in this country is at a low ebb. But if we are serious about changing the world, now is the time to get involved and rebuild them. The left can grow in a period of economic crisis.
Phil Gasper is the editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Document (Haymarket Books, 2005) and a member of the ISR editorial board.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty" Website- Down With The Death Penalty Everywhere!
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Testimony of Justice Joseph Nadeau before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty:
On New Hampshire's death penalty
It has been my good fortune to serve as a judge in New Hampshire for 37 years. For 13 of those years I was presiding justice of the Durham District Court. I served as a justice of the Superior Court for 18 years, nine of which I spent as chief justice. And I sat on the Supreme Court for six years before retiring in December of 2005.
Last week, I appeared before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, not to talk about facts and statistics or trials and cases but to address the moral issue of death as punishment.
The way we have been dealing with the death penalty for years is to talk about enacting laws, adopting procedures, establishing practices and providing mechanisms, as if by creating an elaborate process we could somehow sanitize the death penalty and thereby ignore the moral issues that capital punishment presents. We cannot.
I appeared before the Commission to answer one straightforward but complex question: Do I believe the systematic killing of another human being by the state, in my name, is justified?
My answer to that question is, No.
Why do we continue to struggle with the acceptability of death as punishment? I believe one reason we engage in this process is that no matter what some people say publicly about capital punishment, deep inside many are not as certain as they proclaim.
I believe another reason is that our thinking evolves, as people, technology, and societies progress. And what is acceptable at one time in our history may become unwelcome at another. So we are encouraged to re-examine our core principles and to consider whether death continues to be an acceptable punishment in New Hampshire.
There is no question that people who commit murder must be punished and should be removed from society. Life in prison without parole does both. It is interesting to note that two states, New Hampshire, which has not employed the death penalty since before Pearl Harbor, and North Dakota which does not condone capital punishment, did not need death to achieve the lowest murder rates in the nation every year of this century.
No legal system is perfect. Human beings make mistakes. That is one reason we accept the notion that occasionally the guilty will go free and the innocent will be convicted. But I do not believe anyone accepts the notion that it is all right for a person to be wrongfully executed. So with the most respected judicial system in the world, how can we willingly embrace a sentence which cannot be reversed after it is imposed; and how can we continue to believe that it is morally acceptable for the state to take a human life?
My answer is, we cannot.
As most of us, I have never experienced the emotions felt by a murder victim's loved ones, and I may never know for sure that I could not be persuaded by the desire for personal revenge to seek the death penalty for a person I knew killed someone I love. But for me, neither of these deficiencies makes opposition to the death penalty any less compelling.
So after 37 years on the bench; after presiding over hundreds of jury trials; after sitting on numerous criminal cases; after listening to witnesses in scores of sentencing hearings; after considering information in thousands of probation reports; after imposing sentences upon countless convicted defendants; after entertaining the arguments of lawyers at every level of skill; after talking with a host of judges and corrections officials; and after continued personal reflection; this is what I believe about capital punishment:
The threat of its use is not a deterrent to the commission of a homicide, because those who kill do not consider the sentence before they act or do not expect to be caught, or both.
The threat of its use is not necessary to protect the people of New Hampshire for the same reason.
Its abolition does not dishonor those who serve in law enforcement because honor comes from personal pride and earned respect, not from the ability of the state to execute a human being.
Its abolition does not diminish the voice of murder victims because the right of all victims to be heard is intended to come at the time defendants are sentenced not at the time they are charged.
It provides no more justice than life in prison without parole because justice is not measured by the sentences we impose.
To seek and carry out the death penalty costs the state much more in time and taxes than to prosecute and confine a person to prison for life.
To seek and carry out the death penalty consumes inordinate resources of courts, prosecution, defense and law enforcement.
The decision whether to seek the death penalty is too easily swayed by public opinion, political pressure and media attention.
Its potential as a prosecutorial tool is outweighed by its capacity for misuse.
It is too easily subject to selective prosecution.
It is too likely to be imposed upon minorities and the poor.
It is too likely to depend upon the persuasiveness of lawyers.
Its imposition is too readily subject to the emotions of individual jurors.
Its imposition is too clearly dependent upon the composition of the particular jury empanelled for each case.
It inevitably leads to disparate sentences.
It creates the unacceptable risk that a person may be wrongfully executed.
It exalts rage over reason.
It diminishes our character as a people.
And in the end, I believe it serves just 1 purpose: vengeance.
It is for these reasons, and from a personal abhorrence of the premeditated execution of a human being by the state, that I appeared before the Commission to speak in favor of the abolition of the death penalty in New Hampshire.
(source: Joseph Nadeau, Foster's Daily Democrat)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Testimony of Justice Joseph Nadeau before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty:
On New Hampshire's death penalty
It has been my good fortune to serve as a judge in New Hampshire for 37 years. For 13 of those years I was presiding justice of the Durham District Court. I served as a justice of the Superior Court for 18 years, nine of which I spent as chief justice. And I sat on the Supreme Court for six years before retiring in December of 2005.
Last week, I appeared before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, not to talk about facts and statistics or trials and cases but to address the moral issue of death as punishment.
The way we have been dealing with the death penalty for years is to talk about enacting laws, adopting procedures, establishing practices and providing mechanisms, as if by creating an elaborate process we could somehow sanitize the death penalty and thereby ignore the moral issues that capital punishment presents. We cannot.
I appeared before the Commission to answer one straightforward but complex question: Do I believe the systematic killing of another human being by the state, in my name, is justified?
My answer to that question is, No.
Why do we continue to struggle with the acceptability of death as punishment? I believe one reason we engage in this process is that no matter what some people say publicly about capital punishment, deep inside many are not as certain as they proclaim.
I believe another reason is that our thinking evolves, as people, technology, and societies progress. And what is acceptable at one time in our history may become unwelcome at another. So we are encouraged to re-examine our core principles and to consider whether death continues to be an acceptable punishment in New Hampshire.
There is no question that people who commit murder must be punished and should be removed from society. Life in prison without parole does both. It is interesting to note that two states, New Hampshire, which has not employed the death penalty since before Pearl Harbor, and North Dakota which does not condone capital punishment, did not need death to achieve the lowest murder rates in the nation every year of this century.
No legal system is perfect. Human beings make mistakes. That is one reason we accept the notion that occasionally the guilty will go free and the innocent will be convicted. But I do not believe anyone accepts the notion that it is all right for a person to be wrongfully executed. So with the most respected judicial system in the world, how can we willingly embrace a sentence which cannot be reversed after it is imposed; and how can we continue to believe that it is morally acceptable for the state to take a human life?
My answer is, we cannot.
As most of us, I have never experienced the emotions felt by a murder victim's loved ones, and I may never know for sure that I could not be persuaded by the desire for personal revenge to seek the death penalty for a person I knew killed someone I love. But for me, neither of these deficiencies makes opposition to the death penalty any less compelling.
So after 37 years on the bench; after presiding over hundreds of jury trials; after sitting on numerous criminal cases; after listening to witnesses in scores of sentencing hearings; after considering information in thousands of probation reports; after imposing sentences upon countless convicted defendants; after entertaining the arguments of lawyers at every level of skill; after talking with a host of judges and corrections officials; and after continued personal reflection; this is what I believe about capital punishment:
The threat of its use is not a deterrent to the commission of a homicide, because those who kill do not consider the sentence before they act or do not expect to be caught, or both.
The threat of its use is not necessary to protect the people of New Hampshire for the same reason.
Its abolition does not dishonor those who serve in law enforcement because honor comes from personal pride and earned respect, not from the ability of the state to execute a human being.
Its abolition does not diminish the voice of murder victims because the right of all victims to be heard is intended to come at the time defendants are sentenced not at the time they are charged.
It provides no more justice than life in prison without parole because justice is not measured by the sentences we impose.
To seek and carry out the death penalty costs the state much more in time and taxes than to prosecute and confine a person to prison for life.
To seek and carry out the death penalty consumes inordinate resources of courts, prosecution, defense and law enforcement.
The decision whether to seek the death penalty is too easily swayed by public opinion, political pressure and media attention.
Its potential as a prosecutorial tool is outweighed by its capacity for misuse.
It is too easily subject to selective prosecution.
It is too likely to be imposed upon minorities and the poor.
It is too likely to depend upon the persuasiveness of lawyers.
Its imposition is too readily subject to the emotions of individual jurors.
Its imposition is too clearly dependent upon the composition of the particular jury empanelled for each case.
It inevitably leads to disparate sentences.
It creates the unacceptable risk that a person may be wrongfully executed.
It exalts rage over reason.
It diminishes our character as a people.
And in the end, I believe it serves just 1 purpose: vengeance.
It is for these reasons, and from a personal abhorrence of the premeditated execution of a human being by the state, that I appeared before the Commission to speak in favor of the abolition of the death penalty in New Hampshire.
(source: Joseph Nadeau, Foster's Daily Democrat)
*From The Blogosphere-The Latest From The "Left In East Dakota" Blog
Click on the title to link to the blog mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Nurses' Strike in Minnesota
Written by Graeme Anfinson (CWA 37002, personal capacity)
Friday, 25 June 2010
The rainy weather and mountain of security guards didn’t deter some 12,000 Minnesota nurses from going on a one-day strike at 14 different hospitals across the Twin Cities on Thursday, June 10th. The Minnesota Nurses Association, which is part of the newly formed National Nurses United, voted overwhelmingly for the strike, after hospital administrators refused to respond to even one of the contract negotiation proposals the nurses put forward. This was the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history. A solidarity strike by 13,000 California nurses was also planned, but was eventually blocked by a judge in San Francisco.
National Nurses United have made headlines and gained 155,000 members since forming just six months ago. They have done this by aggressively putting contentious issues like nurse-to-patient ratio and membership mobilizations at the forefront of their organizing agenda. This is in direct contrast to the American Nurses Association, as well as much of the rest of organized labor, who have struggled with organizing, while becoming ever more comfortable with the bosses. Unfortunately, many have not seemed to understand that there is a direct correlation between the two.
The main issues affecting Twin Cities’ nurses are staffing and pension cuts. As with all workers during this current crisis of capitalism, the bosses are trying to squeeze more productivity out of fewer people. As a result, this leaves hospitals understaffed, with fewer nurses dealing with more patients and more responsibilities, as technological complexity increases and more and more baby boomers enter the system. Despite what many of us were taught in Economics 101, in the real world, when productivity goes up, compensation tends to go down. Despite nurses’ pensions only making up a little over 1% of the hospitals’ yearly revenue, they are asking nurses to accept cuts to their pensions as well as receive little to no pay increase. All this while these hospitals raked in some $700 million in profits in 2009.
We were able to join the nurses on the picket line and express our solidarity as members of the Workers International League and as members of the Communication Workers of America- Newspaper Guild, Local 37002, the union Socialist Appeal is organized under. The mood among the picketers was buoyant and optimistic. Many talked about how they had never been very political before, or even very involved with their union, but this event had changed all that.
One nurse lamented the fact that the hospital administration was making it impossible for her to provide decent care to her patients, denounced the “hierarchy structure” of the hospital, and called it a “class system.” She went on to tell us that hospitals had become increasingly “corporatized,” and that “profits and health care don’t mix. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s like trying to wear pants as a shirt or a shirt as pants.”
She was by no means a “radical” socialist or even a union activist. These were the words of an ordinary working nurse, saddened that she and her co-workers were being reduced to mere cogs in a corporate profit-making machine. She explained that she didn’t even want to go on strike, that it was a difficult moral decision for her to leave the patients in the hands of a reduced staff of scabs, doctors and administrators, but that the stakes were too high for her and future generations of nurses not to take action.
Even with hospital officials offering thousands of dollars to people for one day’s work, they only were able to fill a fraction of the openings. Ironically, many doctors were forced to do more hands-on work with patients, which is something the nurses have been fighting for. The public was largely supportive, with many honking car horns and raised fists, and one pregnant woman even came outside to grab one of the picket signs and bring it into the hospital in solidarity.
Despite all this, however, hospital officials have shown no desire to negotiate. They locked many nurses out of work the next day and accused them of “abandoning their patients.” One union activist was even physically thrown out by security and ended up having to go to the hospital’s emergency room.
Management understands their interests and are united in trying to defeat the nurses. Organized Labor in the Twin Cities must do the same, and back the MNA in their fight against accepting any and all concessions. The unions should mobilize the public to bring pressure to bear on the hospitals’ board of directors.
The MNA has now voted 84% in favor of an open-ended strike, with negotiations to resume shortly. Nurse Ashley Christensen had this to say about the strike authorization: “The hospitals have put us in a corner. The response is fight or flight. We have to fight.”
Nonetheless, The pressure is on the MNA leadership to take the threat of an actual indefinite strike off the table until late July, and they have indicated they are open to negotiate on some of their demands. However, the militant mood and broad support for the nurses should embolden the union to resist any and all concessions and to fight for their just demands. A victory in Minnesota can begin to reverse the tide of defeats and concession contracts the labor movement has been hammered with for the past few years, and serve as an example to health care and other workers around the country.
The Workers International League fully support the nurses in their struggle and will continue to report on the situation. Stay tuned to socialistappeal.org for details and contact us if you would like to get involved.
Source: Socialist Appeal (USA)
Nurses' Strike in Minnesota
Written by Graeme Anfinson (CWA 37002, personal capacity)
Friday, 25 June 2010
The rainy weather and mountain of security guards didn’t deter some 12,000 Minnesota nurses from going on a one-day strike at 14 different hospitals across the Twin Cities on Thursday, June 10th. The Minnesota Nurses Association, which is part of the newly formed National Nurses United, voted overwhelmingly for the strike, after hospital administrators refused to respond to even one of the contract negotiation proposals the nurses put forward. This was the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history. A solidarity strike by 13,000 California nurses was also planned, but was eventually blocked by a judge in San Francisco.
National Nurses United have made headlines and gained 155,000 members since forming just six months ago. They have done this by aggressively putting contentious issues like nurse-to-patient ratio and membership mobilizations at the forefront of their organizing agenda. This is in direct contrast to the American Nurses Association, as well as much of the rest of organized labor, who have struggled with organizing, while becoming ever more comfortable with the bosses. Unfortunately, many have not seemed to understand that there is a direct correlation between the two.
The main issues affecting Twin Cities’ nurses are staffing and pension cuts. As with all workers during this current crisis of capitalism, the bosses are trying to squeeze more productivity out of fewer people. As a result, this leaves hospitals understaffed, with fewer nurses dealing with more patients and more responsibilities, as technological complexity increases and more and more baby boomers enter the system. Despite what many of us were taught in Economics 101, in the real world, when productivity goes up, compensation tends to go down. Despite nurses’ pensions only making up a little over 1% of the hospitals’ yearly revenue, they are asking nurses to accept cuts to their pensions as well as receive little to no pay increase. All this while these hospitals raked in some $700 million in profits in 2009.
We were able to join the nurses on the picket line and express our solidarity as members of the Workers International League and as members of the Communication Workers of America- Newspaper Guild, Local 37002, the union Socialist Appeal is organized under. The mood among the picketers was buoyant and optimistic. Many talked about how they had never been very political before, or even very involved with their union, but this event had changed all that.
One nurse lamented the fact that the hospital administration was making it impossible for her to provide decent care to her patients, denounced the “hierarchy structure” of the hospital, and called it a “class system.” She went on to tell us that hospitals had become increasingly “corporatized,” and that “profits and health care don’t mix. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s like trying to wear pants as a shirt or a shirt as pants.”
She was by no means a “radical” socialist or even a union activist. These were the words of an ordinary working nurse, saddened that she and her co-workers were being reduced to mere cogs in a corporate profit-making machine. She explained that she didn’t even want to go on strike, that it was a difficult moral decision for her to leave the patients in the hands of a reduced staff of scabs, doctors and administrators, but that the stakes were too high for her and future generations of nurses not to take action.
Even with hospital officials offering thousands of dollars to people for one day’s work, they only were able to fill a fraction of the openings. Ironically, many doctors were forced to do more hands-on work with patients, which is something the nurses have been fighting for. The public was largely supportive, with many honking car horns and raised fists, and one pregnant woman even came outside to grab one of the picket signs and bring it into the hospital in solidarity.
Despite all this, however, hospital officials have shown no desire to negotiate. They locked many nurses out of work the next day and accused them of “abandoning their patients.” One union activist was even physically thrown out by security and ended up having to go to the hospital’s emergency room.
Management understands their interests and are united in trying to defeat the nurses. Organized Labor in the Twin Cities must do the same, and back the MNA in their fight against accepting any and all concessions. The unions should mobilize the public to bring pressure to bear on the hospitals’ board of directors.
The MNA has now voted 84% in favor of an open-ended strike, with negotiations to resume shortly. Nurse Ashley Christensen had this to say about the strike authorization: “The hospitals have put us in a corner. The response is fight or flight. We have to fight.”
Nonetheless, The pressure is on the MNA leadership to take the threat of an actual indefinite strike off the table until late July, and they have indicated they are open to negotiate on some of their demands. However, the militant mood and broad support for the nurses should embolden the union to resist any and all concessions and to fight for their just demands. A victory in Minnesota can begin to reverse the tide of defeats and concession contracts the labor movement has been hammered with for the past few years, and serve as an example to health care and other workers around the country.
The Workers International League fully support the nurses in their struggle and will continue to report on the situation. Stay tuned to socialistappeal.org for details and contact us if you would like to get involved.
Source: Socialist Appeal (USA)
Monday, August 02, 2010
*From The Blogosphere-The Lastet From The "Minnesota Hands Off Honduras Coalition"
Click on the title to link to the blog mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "Leonard Peltier Defense Committee" Website- Free Leonard Now!
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
*****
IN THE SPIRIT OF LEONARD PELTIER VISIONS OF US PRISONER #89637-132
Date: Thursday January 31st, 7:00 pm
Location: El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe,
1615 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
phone: 505-992-0591
info@ElMuseoCultural.org
Directions and info for El Museo: http://elmuseocultural.org/
Date: Saturday February 2nd, 7:00 pm
Location:Railyard Performance Center
1611 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Phone: 505-982-8309
Author/Editor/Spoken-Word Performer Harvey Arden along with guest performers.
Mark Holtzman [ aka. Silent Bear ] will honor the gathering with his music on the Jan 31 venue only.
These and other dedicated and talented people will offer their personal thoughts of Leonard Peltier. Harvey Arden with the passion and spirit in the words of Leonard Peltier will make the event something not to be missed.
This passionate spoken word performance is based on the Leonard Peltier book-Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance.
Prison Writings was written in 1999 by the Native American political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, whose words were adapted into a powerful stage-play by his editor, Harvey Arden. Leonard's words are just as poignant today as when the book first appeared and deserves the attention of the entire nation.
Prison Writings is a collection of Peltier's essays and poems, reflecting his life and his work from within the prison walls. Defending his People and being Indian is his only crime. The cultural traditions of his people connect Leonard and each of us to the Great Mystery [ Wakan Tanka ]. This spirit connection and his personal sacrifice to the Creator keeps him strong and unbroken. His life is connected to each of us. Each day this innocent man suffers for his people; in fact ,now that you know his truth, he also suffers for you.
What will you do now?
During the horrific early 1970's Reign of Terror on the Lakota (Sioux)reservation at Pine Ridge South Dakota, an infamous time of violence and corruption existed. Complicit tribal officials hired local thugs known as ' GOONS --'Guardians of the Oglala Nation', who--with the blessing of the U.S. Government--carried out an unprovoked series of assaults on the traditional people on the Pine Ridge reservation. SD. Behind these attacks was Big Energy's desire for uranium under Sioux lands, then being secretly negotiated between the U.S. government and compliant Tribal officials.
Two FBI agents were killed on June 26, 1975 during a gun battle on The Jumping Bull Property. Leonard Peltier was falsely framed for the murder of the two FBI agents. The other defendants charged with the same crime had been acquitted by a jury. They were defending their people from an unprovoked attack. Self defense a basic right was denied Leonard Peltier and his legal team.
Following the discovery of new evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Mr. Peltier demanded a new trial. The Eighth Circuit court ruled, "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been made available to him." Yet, the court denied Mr.Peltier a new trial. The jury sentenced Mr. Peltier to two consecutive life terms.
Judge Heaney, who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced firm support for Mr. Peltier's release, stating that:
" The FBI used improper tactics to convict Mr. Peltier".
Judge Heaney also stated that:" The FBI was equally responsible for the shoot-out, and that Mr. Peltier's release would promote healing with Native Americans ".
So why is this story of Judicial Racism hidden from the public eye ?
The late Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International,International Indian Treaty Council, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, Mikhail Gorbachev, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, Robert Redford, the European Parliament, and a host of other notables all have worked, petitioned,and pleaded for his release.
For the American Indian Nations as well as the world at large, the continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier is Americas Judicial embarrassment.
The spirit of the Sun- dancer who is Leonard Peltier confronted with the treachery and ugliness of life has transcended and Has become the message, of hope, courage, and integrity for his People for his family and each of us.
Peltier has been behind prison bars for more than half of his life (he turned 63 this past September). He remains a model prisoner,establishing numerous humanitarian projects within the prison system as well as back on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Petitions will be available at both performances appealing for Leonard's release in his upcoming parole hearing. If Mr. Peltier is denied release at this hearing -he will not receive another
opportunity for freedom until the 2017 parole hearing. His official release date is 2041.
Leonards voice from inside the cage asks you,
" What will you do now ."
Be the change, question everything, its your duty as a citizen.
Be one voice if in your heart you can stand in support.
Join your voice with our's and together we can create change.
For further information or to become part of the healing....
Please contact:
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC)- http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
The Oglala Commemoration can be reached at http://www.oglalacommemoration.com/
holding events each June 26th and following Leonards requests to implement many projects on the Rez.
Information about Harvey Arden or to order his books-
http://www.haveyouthought.com/.
Locally, Prison Writings may be found at Hotel Santa Fe's Picuris Art Shop- 505-982-1200
(and will be available along with other titles by Mr. Arden at the above events).
http://www.mylifeismysundance.com/
to learn more about these and other upcoming Peltier events-including the screen play being produced in Santa Fe this Summer, " My Life is My Sun dance" or contact Keith Rabin at keith@mylifeismysundance.com
Respectfully,
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
Note:
Some excerpts were furnished by: Stephanie M. Schwartz (SilvrDrach@Gmail.com) from the article,"Transcendent Magic," March 2007 issue of Namaste Magazine. Please read the entire article compiled by Stephanie M Schwartz. See the hand outs at the event.
We thank her greatly.
In Peace
posted by Leonard @ 9:06 PM
*****
IN THE SPIRIT OF LEONARD PELTIER VISIONS OF US PRISONER #89637-132
Date: Thursday January 31st, 7:00 pm
Location: El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe,
1615 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
phone: 505-992-0591
info@ElMuseoCultural.org
Directions and info for El Museo: http://elmuseocultural.org/
Date: Saturday February 2nd, 7:00 pm
Location:Railyard Performance Center
1611 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Phone: 505-982-8309
Author/Editor/Spoken-Word Performer Harvey Arden along with guest performers.
Mark Holtzman [ aka. Silent Bear ] will honor the gathering with his music on the Jan 31 venue only.
These and other dedicated and talented people will offer their personal thoughts of Leonard Peltier. Harvey Arden with the passion and spirit in the words of Leonard Peltier will make the event something not to be missed.
This passionate spoken word performance is based on the Leonard Peltier book-Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance.
Prison Writings was written in 1999 by the Native American political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, whose words were adapted into a powerful stage-play by his editor, Harvey Arden. Leonard's words are just as poignant today as when the book first appeared and deserves the attention of the entire nation.
Prison Writings is a collection of Peltier's essays and poems, reflecting his life and his work from within the prison walls. Defending his People and being Indian is his only crime. The cultural traditions of his people connect Leonard and each of us to the Great Mystery [ Wakan Tanka ]. This spirit connection and his personal sacrifice to the Creator keeps him strong and unbroken. His life is connected to each of us. Each day this innocent man suffers for his people; in fact ,now that you know his truth, he also suffers for you.
What will you do now?
During the horrific early 1970's Reign of Terror on the Lakota (Sioux)reservation at Pine Ridge South Dakota, an infamous time of violence and corruption existed. Complicit tribal officials hired local thugs known as ' GOONS --'Guardians of the Oglala Nation', who--with the blessing of the U.S. Government--carried out an unprovoked series of assaults on the traditional people on the Pine Ridge reservation. SD. Behind these attacks was Big Energy's desire for uranium under Sioux lands, then being secretly negotiated between the U.S. government and compliant Tribal officials.
Two FBI agents were killed on June 26, 1975 during a gun battle on The Jumping Bull Property. Leonard Peltier was falsely framed for the murder of the two FBI agents. The other defendants charged with the same crime had been acquitted by a jury. They were defending their people from an unprovoked attack. Self defense a basic right was denied Leonard Peltier and his legal team.
Following the discovery of new evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Mr. Peltier demanded a new trial. The Eighth Circuit court ruled, "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been made available to him." Yet, the court denied Mr.Peltier a new trial. The jury sentenced Mr. Peltier to two consecutive life terms.
Judge Heaney, who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced firm support for Mr. Peltier's release, stating that:
" The FBI used improper tactics to convict Mr. Peltier".
Judge Heaney also stated that:" The FBI was equally responsible for the shoot-out, and that Mr. Peltier's release would promote healing with Native Americans ".
So why is this story of Judicial Racism hidden from the public eye ?
The late Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International,International Indian Treaty Council, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, Mikhail Gorbachev, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, Robert Redford, the European Parliament, and a host of other notables all have worked, petitioned,and pleaded for his release.
For the American Indian Nations as well as the world at large, the continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier is Americas Judicial embarrassment.
The spirit of the Sun- dancer who is Leonard Peltier confronted with the treachery and ugliness of life has transcended and Has become the message, of hope, courage, and integrity for his People for his family and each of us.
Peltier has been behind prison bars for more than half of his life (he turned 63 this past September). He remains a model prisoner,establishing numerous humanitarian projects within the prison system as well as back on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Petitions will be available at both performances appealing for Leonard's release in his upcoming parole hearing. If Mr. Peltier is denied release at this hearing -he will not receive another
opportunity for freedom until the 2017 parole hearing. His official release date is 2041.
Leonards voice from inside the cage asks you,
" What will you do now ."
Be the change, question everything, its your duty as a citizen.
Be one voice if in your heart you can stand in support.
Join your voice with our's and together we can create change.
For further information or to become part of the healing....
Please contact:
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC)- http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
The Oglala Commemoration can be reached at http://www.oglalacommemoration.com/
holding events each June 26th and following Leonards requests to implement many projects on the Rez.
Information about Harvey Arden or to order his books-
http://www.haveyouthought.com/.
Locally, Prison Writings may be found at Hotel Santa Fe's Picuris Art Shop- 505-982-1200
(and will be available along with other titles by Mr. Arden at the above events).
http://www.mylifeismysundance.com/
to learn more about these and other upcoming Peltier events-including the screen play being produced in Santa Fe this Summer, " My Life is My Sun dance" or contact Keith Rabin at keith@mylifeismysundance.com
Respectfully,
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
Note:
Some excerpts were furnished by: Stephanie M. Schwartz (SilvrDrach@Gmail.com) from the article,"Transcendent Magic," March 2007 issue of Namaste Magazine. Please read the entire article compiled by Stephanie M Schwartz. See the hand outs at the event.
We thank her greatly.
In Peace
posted by Leonard @ 9:06 PM
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "End Us War. Org." Website-Troops Out Of Iraq And Afghanistan Now!
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Markin comment:
I think that we need to "speak" a little more Bolshevik on this issue than what is offered here by this group but at this point in the anti-war struggle every point of opposition accrues to our benefit. Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal From Afghanistan and Iraq!
Friday, July 30, 2010
House approves $37 billion war-funding bill, 308-114.
War Is A Crime: SIGN THE END US WARS PLEDGE!
Please add your name and district by writing to sign [at] enduswars.org to be published on the Pledge page.
For All Voters:
I will actively oppose any candidate who has, during the current 111th Congress (2009-2011), voted for (or otherwise facilitated) appropriations to fund the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran. I will make every effort to identify, recruit, fund, publicize, and support anti-war candidates of any party whatsoever. To earn my support, these candidates must pledge in public and in writing that they will vote and speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for the policies and acts of aggression enumerated above.
For All Congressional Candidates:
I hereby pledge that if elected I will vote, speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for all policies and acts of aggression including the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran.
Markin comment:
I think that we need to "speak" a little more Bolshevik on this issue than what is offered here by this group but at this point in the anti-war struggle every point of opposition accrues to our benefit. Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal From Afghanistan and Iraq!
Friday, July 30, 2010
House approves $37 billion war-funding bill, 308-114.
War Is A Crime: SIGN THE END US WARS PLEDGE!
Please add your name and district by writing to sign [at] enduswars.org to be published on the Pledge page.
For All Voters:
I will actively oppose any candidate who has, during the current 111th Congress (2009-2011), voted for (or otherwise facilitated) appropriations to fund the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran. I will make every effort to identify, recruit, fund, publicize, and support anti-war candidates of any party whatsoever. To earn my support, these candidates must pledge in public and in writing that they will vote and speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for the policies and acts of aggression enumerated above.
For All Congressional Candidates:
I hereby pledge that if elected I will vote, speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for all policies and acts of aggression including the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
*From Cyberspace-"The Max Shachtman Internet Archives"-Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s "Problems of the Chinese Revolution"(1931)
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Markin comment:
The article below is prima facie evidence that when Max Shachtman was a revolutionary in his younger days he could "speak" Marxism with the best of them. Right, Leon Trotsky and Jim Cannon?
****************
Max Shachtman (1931)
Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
There is hardly an event of greater world historical significance since the proletarian revolution in Russia than the awakening of the cruelly exploited and oppressed Orient, which found its most dramatic and most tragic expression in the great Chinese revolutionary movement of 1925-1927. For the first time in history, the capitalist countries of Europe, long ago matured for the socialist overthrow, gave way in revolutionary precedence to an Eastern land which bid fair to condense the experiences of capitalist evolution, under the titanic blows of the social revolution, into a brief span of time and, unlike the Occidental countries, enter boldly upon the path of socialist development. A more audacious enterprise, history could not imagine. Even the Russian working class was compelled to pass through a long period of capitalist development before it was peremptorily confronted with the opportunity and the need of breaking down the last barrier to the emancipation and free development of humanity. The Chinese proletariat, reaching a virile manhood at the crossroads of a revolutionary epoch, armed also with the strength of uncounted millions of insurgent peasants, was given the rare opportunity to choose between capitalist enslavement under its “own” bourgeoisie or socialist growth in alliance with the Soviet Union and the revolutionary working class of the West.
There is no point here in arguing the academic question as to whether China has matured economically for the establishment or construction of a socialist society. It is not a question to be settled statistically or statically in China—any more than it could have been established for Russia in 1917. This problem is solved primarily on an international scale, in the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist sectors of world economy. What has, however, been demonstrated since the day of the successful counter-revolution in China, if theoretical consideration and forecast were still inadequate, was that the basic problems of China, its. democratic tasks of national unification and independence, self- determination for its various peoples, and the agrarian revolution included, could be solved in no other way than by the victory of the workers acting independently as a class. In other words, all the problems and antagonisms arising out of the struggle against imperialist subjection, against the remnants of feudal relationships, which could have been but were not solved by the revolution of 1925-1927 or by the regime which succeeded it, will find a solution only with the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. It is in the opportunity offered for the attainment of this goal that lies the great importance of the Chinese revolution of 1925-1927.
But it is precisely in examining this opportunity that we encounter a monstrous historical anomaly. The revolution ended not with a victory, but with a horribly sanguinary defeat for the proletariat and the peasantry. How was this possible? In the European bourgeois revolutions of 1848, the young proletariat and the peasantry were the fighting troops for the equally youthful bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie triumphed over feudalism, and also over the proletariat. The latter still lived in the period of the rise of capitalism; it had not yet learned how to act independently as a class; it did not have at its head a conscious revolutionary leadership. Even the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871 is not difficult to understand, nor could anybody have expected that this first faint dawn of the proletarian revolution could, under the circumstances of time and place, see the full daylight of life. One can even go farther ahead in history, to the very end of the world war. The German proletariat overthrew the kaiser in 1918, but it did not come to power because its social democratic leadership, corrupted by the bourgeoisie, ran to the head of the marching column of mutinous workers for the purpose of turning them off to the road of bourgeois democracy.
But in China we had a partly armed proletariat. Even the peasantry was armed to a certain extent. A Communist party was in the field and had every opportunity to develop. The prestige of the Soviet Union was incalculable—every Chinese worker knew that Bolshevism had rid Russia of the imperialists and of the bankers and exploiters, every Chinese peasant knew that the Soviets had given the Russian peasant the land. The official political counsellor to the nationalist government was the Russian Communist, Borodin, just as one of its principal military directors was the Russian Communist, Galen. On every occasion, the workers and the peasants showed their desire to emulate the Russians—the former by their struggles against their own bourgeoisie, the latter by their constant attempts to carry out the first real steps of the agrarian revolution. In the Communist party itself, there was a strong current that favored breaking away from the domination of the bourgeoisie and its Kuo Min Tang and taking the path of independent class action. Yet, with all these and other favorable conditions, the proletariat not only did not come within reach of taking power, but was made the last object crushed under the heel of the bourgeois counter-revolution which did take and hold the power.
Where does the most active cause for this truly monstrous catastrophe lie? It was not so much objective difficulties that stood in the way. It was not the classic interference of the socialist agents of capital in the labor movement. The Chinese proletariat was prohibited by the policies and instructions of the leadership of the Communist International, the organizing center of the world revolution, from fulfilling the role imposed upon it by history! There is the source that must be sought to explain the bitter tragedy of the Chinese revolution.
No greater indictment can be presented against the faction of Stalin and Bucharin than this: invested with all the formal authority of the Soviet Union, of the Communist International, holding to so great an extent the destiny of China—one might say, of the whole East—in their hands, entrusted with the awful responsibility of guiding an unprecedentedly huge revolutionary movement, all they did was to translate the theories and practises of Menshevism into the language of Chinese politics, palm them off as Bolshevism, and, in the name of Lenin, pursue a course against which Lenin had fought throughout his whole political life.
All through the revolutionary period, the official leadership of the Communist International staked its cards upon the national bourgeoisie instead of upon the worker and the peasant, upon Chiang Kai-Shek, and then upon Wang Chin Wei, but not upon the Shanghai proletarian. Worse yet, the latter was told in no uncertain terms that the national bourgeoisie was the leader of the revolution, figuring as the main partner in the ill-conceived “bloc of the four classes”. The Chinese Communist Party was driven into the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang with the Stalinist whip, and there it was compelled to swear allegiance to the petty bourgeois philosophy of Sun Yat Senism. The policy of class struggle was liquidated in the interests of the “united national front”. Strikes were prohibited or else settled by “arbitration commissions” in the best class collaborationist style, for how could the worker have a conflict of interests with the Chinese employer who was his leader in the “united national front” of the Kuo Min Tang? So as not to irritate the bourgeoisie, Stalin sent telegrams to the Chinese Communist Party, instructing it to restrain the peasants from taking the land. On pain of denunciation as “Trotskyists”, the equivalent among the Stalinist churchmen to excommunication, the Chinese Communists were prohibited from forming Soviets, first under the Chiang Kai-Shek regime and later under the Wuhan government because, you see, the latter was already the revolutionary center. Even though the caliber of the man was known—he had already attempted a reactionary coup d’État early in 1926—a veritable cult was built up for Chiang Kai-Shek by the international Communist press. What more striking condemnation of the official course is needed than the fact—characteristic of the whole policy—that on the eve of Chiang Kai-Shek’s march into Shanghai to establish the counter-revolutionary regime and to massacre the militant workers, the French Communist Party and its central organ L’HumanitÉ, sent him a solemn message of greetings, hailing the establishment of the Shanghai … Commune. Such “mistakes” are not accidental. They flowed from the whole past course. By the policy of Stalin and Bucharin, not only the Chinese Communists, but the international revolutionary movement was obliged to make the mistake of confusing a Gallifet with a Communard, the counter-revolution with the Commune.
For how many years, and how heavily has the Chinese proletarian and the Chinese peasant paid for this mistake in identity!
It would, however, be wrong to believe that this mistake was made by the whole Communist movement. No. The responsibility lies entirely upon the factions of Stalin and Bucharin, and lies doubly heavy because the Bolshevik wing of the party was wiser than they and did not trample upon the teachings of Marx and Lenin, or turn its back upon the revolutionary experiences and traditions of the past. It analyzed correctly that which was at the moment, it used Marxism not to spit at but as an instrument for probing into and preparing for the future, it warned against the consequences of the prevailing policy, and at every stage of the struggle it advanced the essentially correct course. In every important particular, it was as correct in its prospect as it has been justified a thousand times over in retrospect.
There is no possible justification, however, for the line of the officialdom. What the lessons of the past and the events of the moment might have failed to teach them, the Bolshevik-Leninists of Russia pointed out to them day in and day out. They were rewarded for this work by having abuse heaped upon them, by having their views deliberately distorted and misrepresented, by having their speeches hushed up and their writings suppressed, and, when the facts of life had accumulated into mountainous evidence of their correctness, they were finally expelled from the party, imprisoned, exiled or banished from the borders of the Soviet Union. The latter fate was reserved for the greatest living Bolshevik because he, more than anyone else, refused to regard the Gallifets of the Chinese revolution as its leaders, as its Communards.
But the bureaucratic, small-minded method of solving political and theoretical disputes solves nothing but a temporary consolidation of the power of the usurpers. Marx and his followers in the labor movement spent years, decades, in studying every phase of the ill-starred Paris Commune. In the discussion of the Commune and the defeated Russian revolution of 1905, Bolshevism became the dominant current in the movement and was finally able to lead the proletariat to power. In the same sense, it can be said today that without a thorough, all-sided study and assimilation of the lessons of the Chinese revolution, the Bolshevik regiments of tomorrow will not be assembled and trained to measure up to their tasks. For the lessons of the Chinese revolution have a living, timely application to the problems of the revolutionary movement in every country in the world. They relate to the fundamental principle questions of Marxism.
But such a study is today forbidden in the official Communist movement. This makes it all the more imperative that it be undertaken, for a real beginning has hardly been made. It is with this in mind that the following contributions by comrade Trotsky have been assembled and presented to American readers. With the exception of a few pages, none of them has even been published in the English language. As has unfortunately been the case with most of the serious Marxian writings of recent times, the works presented here have for the most part had to be sent out of the Soviet Union secretly. Their distribution has been made illegal by the Stalinist regime, and even when they were first presented to the Russian party and to the Communist International, those who listened to them or read them were confined to a select few hardened bureaucrats upon whom logic, arguments and facts made no impression. At the very height of the revolutionary events in China, the masses of the Communist workers were prevented from hearing the standpoint of the Left Opposition.
So overcome with the fear of the Apposition’s arguments were the bureaucrats, that they not only prevented the publication of the former’s documents, but even their own writings and speeches, which events proceeded so rapidly to deride, had to be kept concealed. Thus, Stalin’s speech in defense of Chiang Kai-Shek, made a few days before the coup d’État in Shanghai, has never been made public. The whole Eighth Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, at which the discussion of the Chinese question occupied the main point on the agenda, met under the conditions of a complete censorship. For the first time in the history of the Communist International, the proceedings of so signal a Plenum were not made public, in full or in part, in the party press of any country. The Communist world knew about its sessions only from the official resolution finally adopted and from a scant article in Pravda, reprinted in the International Press Correspondence. The censorship was not, it seems, completely air-tight. Some of the Opposition’s documents and a speech or two, made their way to Germany soon after the Plenum, and they were issued in pamphlet form, first by the German Left Oppositionists and later by the French. Only for the purpose of counteracting the effect of these documents did the official publishing house of the Comintern finally print, one year after the Plenum, a slim brochure containing the speeches delivered by Bucharin, Stalin, Manuilsky, Smeral, Pepper, Ferdi, Petrov, and a number of other apparatus men, plus one of Trotsky’s speeches and one of Vuyovitch’s. Aside from this, and an odd pamphlet here and there by Tang Ping Shan—the official spokesman for Stalin and Bucharin in China who later turned renegade from Communism—by Heller, and a few others, the literary contributions of the Communist International on the problems of the Chinese revolution, in modern non-Russian languages, are confined to journalistic dispatches from China which distinguished themselves in every case by the fact that a week later the events robbed them of any pretension to truth or analytical importance. In English, the official literature is more limited and more worthless: a pamphlet by Earl Browder, another by R. Doonping—kindness and mercy dictate that nothing more be said about them.
These facts, as well as the intrinsic value of the material presented in this book, make a study of it one of the main duties of the revolutionary worker today. That it deals so largely “with the past” does not rob it of one iota of its value. The present cannot be understood unless the past in which it is rooted is understood. The criminal opportunism of yesterday is being paid for by the light-hearted adventurism of the Comintern in China today. The idea of the Soviets as the instruments of the proletarian insurrection and later the dictatorship, is being abused by Stalinism today, in the period of counter-revolution, as it was in 1927, in the period of the revolutionary ascent. Yesterday, the bourgeois regime of Wuhan was passed off as a substitute for arming the workers and peasants independently and forming their Soviets. Today, the struggles of isolated, desperate peasant bands, aroused by the belated echo in the village of the revolutionary clashes of four years ago, and doomed to degeneration without the leadership of a strong, well-knit, thoroughly restored movement of proletarian revolutionists in the cities—are this time passed off by the Stalinists as the Soviet regime. And above all, the “super-historical” formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” continues to be set up against the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution so as to guarantee in advance that the coming Chinese revolution will be strangled just as fatally as the last one.
There remain three other points which require comment before these remarks are brought to an end.
Among the conceptions, or rather the misconceptions, concerning the standpoint of the Opposition in the Chinese question, as contrasted to that defended by the official spokesmen, is that the divergences were confined to an issue which is now “outlived”: the establishment of Soviets in the 1927 period. It would be more accurate to say that the differences of the kernel of the Opposition with the Stalinist standpoint were and remain concerned with all the fundamental principal questions of the Chinese revolution in all its phases and at every stage. Even in the ranks of the Opposition, particularly among the ultra-Leftists, the idea took shape that the Opposition’s struggle was confined to views which excluded any “democratic” development for China, or the imperative need for advancing in China the most resolute and extreme slogans of democracy. Especially at the present stage of the counter-revolution, the need for putting forward the slogans of democracy in China becomes unpostponable. The Communists will lead the masses of workers and peasants on to the socialist path by demonstrations in life that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve for the people all the democratic tasks which stand on the order of the day for China. In this respect, there is no conflict between the emphasis placed by the Opposition in 1925-1927 and the emphasis it places on the slogans necessary for today. The conflict really arises in the ranks of Stalinism which, while putting forward the perspective of the “democratic dictatorship”, categorically rejects the advancement of the most necessary democratic slogans!
Further, in connection with the question of the “democratic dictatorship”, an apparent conflict may be perceived in the documents which make up this book. In the later articles, comrade Trotsky counterposes the permanent revolution to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, whereas the early articles do not make such a contrast; indeed, the 1927 Platform of the Opposition speaks for the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. The conflict is more apparent than real and is derived from two sources. The first is that in the bloc established in 1926 between the “Trotsky” and the “Zinoviev” Oppositions (the Moscow Opposition of 1923 and the Leningrad Opposition of 1925), formal concessions of this kind were made by the former to the Left Centrists of Leningrad in the interests of maintaining the bloc against the Menshevik policy of Stalin and Bucharin. The second is that in 1925-1927, the slogan of the “democratic dictatorship”, borrowed literally and purely formally from Lenin’s pre-1917 writings, had not yet so clearly been filled with the reactionary content which the epigones poured into it. The Opposition, as proceeds plainly even from the early articles of comrade Trotsky, construed the slogan in the same sense that Lenin construed it in and after 1917, that is, that the “democratic dictatorship” was realized in the “democratic period” (the first six months) of the October revolution, but realized under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long before the revolution, Lenin had written that the slogan had a past and a future. For China, the epigones, looking backward only to the past—and even there with a distorted vision—filled the slogan with a reactionary content, which they still seek to apply not only to “backward China”, but to about four-fifths of the whole world … including modern Spain. One of the greatest contributions to the movement made by the Opposition, and in the first place, by comrade Trotsky, is the setting of the old Leninist slogan in its proper historical perspective, the frank—and not slavish—examination of the value of the slogan in the light of revolutionary experiences, and the restoration to its rightful place of the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution, expressed by Lenin for the East in particular, in those sections of the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International which speak of the non-capitalist path of development of the backward colonial and semi- colonial countries.
A third point which may interest readers, or arouse a certain amount of confusion, is another apparent contradiction in the standpoint of the Opposition. It is only in the later documents that comrade Trotsky speaks about the Opposition having stood against the integration of the proletarian party, the Communist Party of China, into the party of the bourgeoisie, the Kuo Min Tang. Any misunderstanding that may arise will be eliminated by reproducing part of a letter written by comrade Trotsky to the present writer on December 10, 1930, which I take the liberty of quoting.
”You are quite right when you point out that the Russian Opposition, as late as the first half of 1927, did not demand openly the withdrawal from the Kuo Min Tang. I believe, however, that I have already commented on this fact publicly somewhere. I personally was from the very beginning, that is, from 1923, resolutely opposed to the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang, as well as against the acceptance of the Kuo Min Tang into the `Kuomintern’. Radek was always with Zinoviev against me. The younger members of the Opposition of 1923 were with me almost to a man. Rakovsky was in Paris and not sufficiently informed. Up to 1926, I always voted independently in the Political Bureau on this question, against all the others. In 1925, simultaneously with the theses on the Eastern Chinese Railway which I have quoted in the Opposition press, I once more presented the formal proposal that the Communist party leave the Kuo Min Tang instantly. This was unanimously rejected and contributed a great deal to the baiting later on. In 1926 and 1927, I had uninterrupted conflicts with the Zinovievists on this question. Two or three times, the matter stood at the breaking point. Our center consisted of approximately equal numbers from both of the allied tendencies, for it was after all only a bloc. At the voting, the position of the 1923 Opposition was betrayed by Radek, out of principle, and by Piatakov, out of unprincipledness. Our faction (1923) was furious about it, demanded that Radek and Piatakov be recalled from the center. But since it was a question of splitting with the Zinovievists, it was the general decision that I must submit publicly in this question and acquaint the Opposition in writing with my standpoint. And that is how it happened that the demand was put up by us so late, in spite of the fact that the Political Bureau and the Plenum of the Central Committee always contrasted my view with the official view of the Opposition. Now I can say with certainty that I made a mistake by submitting formally in this question. In any case, this mistake became quite clear only by the further evolution of the Zinovievists. At that time, the split with them appeared to the overwhelming majority of our faction as absolutely fatal. Thus, the manifesto [of the International Left Opposition on the Chinese question, issued late in 1930] in no way contradicts the facts when it contends that the Russian Opposition, the real one, was against the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang. Out of the thousands of imprisoned, exiled, etc., hardly a single one was with Radek in this question. This fact too I have referred to in many letters, namely, that the great majority of the capitulators were not sure and firm in the Chinese and the Anglo-Russian question. That is very characteristic! …”
The documents which follow are arranged more or less in chronological order. As a whole, they present a fairly thorough picture of the course of the Chinese revolution and the struggle for Bolshevism which the Opposition carried on in all the periods of its development, up to the present day. How brilliantly they demonstrate the indispensability of Marxism— which serves the revolutionist to foresee the coming day and to prepare for it—can be left to the reader to judge. As appendices, we have included articles and speeches by other comrades. The suppressed theses of Zinoviev present invaluable facts and documents, even though they present the relations between the Communist party and the Kuo Min Tang in a confused manner. The Shanghai letter by three Russian comrades, all of them opponents of “Trotskyism”, shows that the leadership of the Comintern was well aware of the real state of affairs in China. The letter is presented here for the first time. It suffered the same fate of suppression as so much other important material. Indeed, one of its authors, the youth comrade Nassonov, together with the party comrade, Mandalyan, were recalled in disgrace from China by Stalin. As punishment, Nassonov was “exiled” to the United States as representative of the Young Communist International, and I still recall how he would tell me that in spite of everything, Stalin had been “compelled in the end to carry out” his viewpoint….
In conclusion, the writer wishes to express his gratitude, and the appreciation of the publishers, to his comrades, Sam Gordon and Morris Lewit, who gave such indispensable assistance in the final checking of the translations.
NEW YORK, August 7,
1931
Max Shachtman.
Markin comment:
The article below is prima facie evidence that when Max Shachtman was a revolutionary in his younger days he could "speak" Marxism with the best of them. Right, Leon Trotsky and Jim Cannon?
****************
Max Shachtman (1931)
Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
There is hardly an event of greater world historical significance since the proletarian revolution in Russia than the awakening of the cruelly exploited and oppressed Orient, which found its most dramatic and most tragic expression in the great Chinese revolutionary movement of 1925-1927. For the first time in history, the capitalist countries of Europe, long ago matured for the socialist overthrow, gave way in revolutionary precedence to an Eastern land which bid fair to condense the experiences of capitalist evolution, under the titanic blows of the social revolution, into a brief span of time and, unlike the Occidental countries, enter boldly upon the path of socialist development. A more audacious enterprise, history could not imagine. Even the Russian working class was compelled to pass through a long period of capitalist development before it was peremptorily confronted with the opportunity and the need of breaking down the last barrier to the emancipation and free development of humanity. The Chinese proletariat, reaching a virile manhood at the crossroads of a revolutionary epoch, armed also with the strength of uncounted millions of insurgent peasants, was given the rare opportunity to choose between capitalist enslavement under its “own” bourgeoisie or socialist growth in alliance with the Soviet Union and the revolutionary working class of the West.
There is no point here in arguing the academic question as to whether China has matured economically for the establishment or construction of a socialist society. It is not a question to be settled statistically or statically in China—any more than it could have been established for Russia in 1917. This problem is solved primarily on an international scale, in the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist sectors of world economy. What has, however, been demonstrated since the day of the successful counter-revolution in China, if theoretical consideration and forecast were still inadequate, was that the basic problems of China, its. democratic tasks of national unification and independence, self- determination for its various peoples, and the agrarian revolution included, could be solved in no other way than by the victory of the workers acting independently as a class. In other words, all the problems and antagonisms arising out of the struggle against imperialist subjection, against the remnants of feudal relationships, which could have been but were not solved by the revolution of 1925-1927 or by the regime which succeeded it, will find a solution only with the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. It is in the opportunity offered for the attainment of this goal that lies the great importance of the Chinese revolution of 1925-1927.
But it is precisely in examining this opportunity that we encounter a monstrous historical anomaly. The revolution ended not with a victory, but with a horribly sanguinary defeat for the proletariat and the peasantry. How was this possible? In the European bourgeois revolutions of 1848, the young proletariat and the peasantry were the fighting troops for the equally youthful bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie triumphed over feudalism, and also over the proletariat. The latter still lived in the period of the rise of capitalism; it had not yet learned how to act independently as a class; it did not have at its head a conscious revolutionary leadership. Even the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871 is not difficult to understand, nor could anybody have expected that this first faint dawn of the proletarian revolution could, under the circumstances of time and place, see the full daylight of life. One can even go farther ahead in history, to the very end of the world war. The German proletariat overthrew the kaiser in 1918, but it did not come to power because its social democratic leadership, corrupted by the bourgeoisie, ran to the head of the marching column of mutinous workers for the purpose of turning them off to the road of bourgeois democracy.
But in China we had a partly armed proletariat. Even the peasantry was armed to a certain extent. A Communist party was in the field and had every opportunity to develop. The prestige of the Soviet Union was incalculable—every Chinese worker knew that Bolshevism had rid Russia of the imperialists and of the bankers and exploiters, every Chinese peasant knew that the Soviets had given the Russian peasant the land. The official political counsellor to the nationalist government was the Russian Communist, Borodin, just as one of its principal military directors was the Russian Communist, Galen. On every occasion, the workers and the peasants showed their desire to emulate the Russians—the former by their struggles against their own bourgeoisie, the latter by their constant attempts to carry out the first real steps of the agrarian revolution. In the Communist party itself, there was a strong current that favored breaking away from the domination of the bourgeoisie and its Kuo Min Tang and taking the path of independent class action. Yet, with all these and other favorable conditions, the proletariat not only did not come within reach of taking power, but was made the last object crushed under the heel of the bourgeois counter-revolution which did take and hold the power.
Where does the most active cause for this truly monstrous catastrophe lie? It was not so much objective difficulties that stood in the way. It was not the classic interference of the socialist agents of capital in the labor movement. The Chinese proletariat was prohibited by the policies and instructions of the leadership of the Communist International, the organizing center of the world revolution, from fulfilling the role imposed upon it by history! There is the source that must be sought to explain the bitter tragedy of the Chinese revolution.
No greater indictment can be presented against the faction of Stalin and Bucharin than this: invested with all the formal authority of the Soviet Union, of the Communist International, holding to so great an extent the destiny of China—one might say, of the whole East—in their hands, entrusted with the awful responsibility of guiding an unprecedentedly huge revolutionary movement, all they did was to translate the theories and practises of Menshevism into the language of Chinese politics, palm them off as Bolshevism, and, in the name of Lenin, pursue a course against which Lenin had fought throughout his whole political life.
All through the revolutionary period, the official leadership of the Communist International staked its cards upon the national bourgeoisie instead of upon the worker and the peasant, upon Chiang Kai-Shek, and then upon Wang Chin Wei, but not upon the Shanghai proletarian. Worse yet, the latter was told in no uncertain terms that the national bourgeoisie was the leader of the revolution, figuring as the main partner in the ill-conceived “bloc of the four classes”. The Chinese Communist Party was driven into the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang with the Stalinist whip, and there it was compelled to swear allegiance to the petty bourgeois philosophy of Sun Yat Senism. The policy of class struggle was liquidated in the interests of the “united national front”. Strikes were prohibited or else settled by “arbitration commissions” in the best class collaborationist style, for how could the worker have a conflict of interests with the Chinese employer who was his leader in the “united national front” of the Kuo Min Tang? So as not to irritate the bourgeoisie, Stalin sent telegrams to the Chinese Communist Party, instructing it to restrain the peasants from taking the land. On pain of denunciation as “Trotskyists”, the equivalent among the Stalinist churchmen to excommunication, the Chinese Communists were prohibited from forming Soviets, first under the Chiang Kai-Shek regime and later under the Wuhan government because, you see, the latter was already the revolutionary center. Even though the caliber of the man was known—he had already attempted a reactionary coup d’État early in 1926—a veritable cult was built up for Chiang Kai-Shek by the international Communist press. What more striking condemnation of the official course is needed than the fact—characteristic of the whole policy—that on the eve of Chiang Kai-Shek’s march into Shanghai to establish the counter-revolutionary regime and to massacre the militant workers, the French Communist Party and its central organ L’HumanitÉ, sent him a solemn message of greetings, hailing the establishment of the Shanghai … Commune. Such “mistakes” are not accidental. They flowed from the whole past course. By the policy of Stalin and Bucharin, not only the Chinese Communists, but the international revolutionary movement was obliged to make the mistake of confusing a Gallifet with a Communard, the counter-revolution with the Commune.
For how many years, and how heavily has the Chinese proletarian and the Chinese peasant paid for this mistake in identity!
It would, however, be wrong to believe that this mistake was made by the whole Communist movement. No. The responsibility lies entirely upon the factions of Stalin and Bucharin, and lies doubly heavy because the Bolshevik wing of the party was wiser than they and did not trample upon the teachings of Marx and Lenin, or turn its back upon the revolutionary experiences and traditions of the past. It analyzed correctly that which was at the moment, it used Marxism not to spit at but as an instrument for probing into and preparing for the future, it warned against the consequences of the prevailing policy, and at every stage of the struggle it advanced the essentially correct course. In every important particular, it was as correct in its prospect as it has been justified a thousand times over in retrospect.
There is no possible justification, however, for the line of the officialdom. What the lessons of the past and the events of the moment might have failed to teach them, the Bolshevik-Leninists of Russia pointed out to them day in and day out. They were rewarded for this work by having abuse heaped upon them, by having their views deliberately distorted and misrepresented, by having their speeches hushed up and their writings suppressed, and, when the facts of life had accumulated into mountainous evidence of their correctness, they were finally expelled from the party, imprisoned, exiled or banished from the borders of the Soviet Union. The latter fate was reserved for the greatest living Bolshevik because he, more than anyone else, refused to regard the Gallifets of the Chinese revolution as its leaders, as its Communards.
But the bureaucratic, small-minded method of solving political and theoretical disputes solves nothing but a temporary consolidation of the power of the usurpers. Marx and his followers in the labor movement spent years, decades, in studying every phase of the ill-starred Paris Commune. In the discussion of the Commune and the defeated Russian revolution of 1905, Bolshevism became the dominant current in the movement and was finally able to lead the proletariat to power. In the same sense, it can be said today that without a thorough, all-sided study and assimilation of the lessons of the Chinese revolution, the Bolshevik regiments of tomorrow will not be assembled and trained to measure up to their tasks. For the lessons of the Chinese revolution have a living, timely application to the problems of the revolutionary movement in every country in the world. They relate to the fundamental principle questions of Marxism.
But such a study is today forbidden in the official Communist movement. This makes it all the more imperative that it be undertaken, for a real beginning has hardly been made. It is with this in mind that the following contributions by comrade Trotsky have been assembled and presented to American readers. With the exception of a few pages, none of them has even been published in the English language. As has unfortunately been the case with most of the serious Marxian writings of recent times, the works presented here have for the most part had to be sent out of the Soviet Union secretly. Their distribution has been made illegal by the Stalinist regime, and even when they were first presented to the Russian party and to the Communist International, those who listened to them or read them were confined to a select few hardened bureaucrats upon whom logic, arguments and facts made no impression. At the very height of the revolutionary events in China, the masses of the Communist workers were prevented from hearing the standpoint of the Left Opposition.
So overcome with the fear of the Apposition’s arguments were the bureaucrats, that they not only prevented the publication of the former’s documents, but even their own writings and speeches, which events proceeded so rapidly to deride, had to be kept concealed. Thus, Stalin’s speech in defense of Chiang Kai-Shek, made a few days before the coup d’État in Shanghai, has never been made public. The whole Eighth Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, at which the discussion of the Chinese question occupied the main point on the agenda, met under the conditions of a complete censorship. For the first time in the history of the Communist International, the proceedings of so signal a Plenum were not made public, in full or in part, in the party press of any country. The Communist world knew about its sessions only from the official resolution finally adopted and from a scant article in Pravda, reprinted in the International Press Correspondence. The censorship was not, it seems, completely air-tight. Some of the Opposition’s documents and a speech or two, made their way to Germany soon after the Plenum, and they were issued in pamphlet form, first by the German Left Oppositionists and later by the French. Only for the purpose of counteracting the effect of these documents did the official publishing house of the Comintern finally print, one year after the Plenum, a slim brochure containing the speeches delivered by Bucharin, Stalin, Manuilsky, Smeral, Pepper, Ferdi, Petrov, and a number of other apparatus men, plus one of Trotsky’s speeches and one of Vuyovitch’s. Aside from this, and an odd pamphlet here and there by Tang Ping Shan—the official spokesman for Stalin and Bucharin in China who later turned renegade from Communism—by Heller, and a few others, the literary contributions of the Communist International on the problems of the Chinese revolution, in modern non-Russian languages, are confined to journalistic dispatches from China which distinguished themselves in every case by the fact that a week later the events robbed them of any pretension to truth or analytical importance. In English, the official literature is more limited and more worthless: a pamphlet by Earl Browder, another by R. Doonping—kindness and mercy dictate that nothing more be said about them.
These facts, as well as the intrinsic value of the material presented in this book, make a study of it one of the main duties of the revolutionary worker today. That it deals so largely “with the past” does not rob it of one iota of its value. The present cannot be understood unless the past in which it is rooted is understood. The criminal opportunism of yesterday is being paid for by the light-hearted adventurism of the Comintern in China today. The idea of the Soviets as the instruments of the proletarian insurrection and later the dictatorship, is being abused by Stalinism today, in the period of counter-revolution, as it was in 1927, in the period of the revolutionary ascent. Yesterday, the bourgeois regime of Wuhan was passed off as a substitute for arming the workers and peasants independently and forming their Soviets. Today, the struggles of isolated, desperate peasant bands, aroused by the belated echo in the village of the revolutionary clashes of four years ago, and doomed to degeneration without the leadership of a strong, well-knit, thoroughly restored movement of proletarian revolutionists in the cities—are this time passed off by the Stalinists as the Soviet regime. And above all, the “super-historical” formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” continues to be set up against the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution so as to guarantee in advance that the coming Chinese revolution will be strangled just as fatally as the last one.
There remain three other points which require comment before these remarks are brought to an end.
Among the conceptions, or rather the misconceptions, concerning the standpoint of the Opposition in the Chinese question, as contrasted to that defended by the official spokesmen, is that the divergences were confined to an issue which is now “outlived”: the establishment of Soviets in the 1927 period. It would be more accurate to say that the differences of the kernel of the Opposition with the Stalinist standpoint were and remain concerned with all the fundamental principal questions of the Chinese revolution in all its phases and at every stage. Even in the ranks of the Opposition, particularly among the ultra-Leftists, the idea took shape that the Opposition’s struggle was confined to views which excluded any “democratic” development for China, or the imperative need for advancing in China the most resolute and extreme slogans of democracy. Especially at the present stage of the counter-revolution, the need for putting forward the slogans of democracy in China becomes unpostponable. The Communists will lead the masses of workers and peasants on to the socialist path by demonstrations in life that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve for the people all the democratic tasks which stand on the order of the day for China. In this respect, there is no conflict between the emphasis placed by the Opposition in 1925-1927 and the emphasis it places on the slogans necessary for today. The conflict really arises in the ranks of Stalinism which, while putting forward the perspective of the “democratic dictatorship”, categorically rejects the advancement of the most necessary democratic slogans!
Further, in connection with the question of the “democratic dictatorship”, an apparent conflict may be perceived in the documents which make up this book. In the later articles, comrade Trotsky counterposes the permanent revolution to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, whereas the early articles do not make such a contrast; indeed, the 1927 Platform of the Opposition speaks for the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. The conflict is more apparent than real and is derived from two sources. The first is that in the bloc established in 1926 between the “Trotsky” and the “Zinoviev” Oppositions (the Moscow Opposition of 1923 and the Leningrad Opposition of 1925), formal concessions of this kind were made by the former to the Left Centrists of Leningrad in the interests of maintaining the bloc against the Menshevik policy of Stalin and Bucharin. The second is that in 1925-1927, the slogan of the “democratic dictatorship”, borrowed literally and purely formally from Lenin’s pre-1917 writings, had not yet so clearly been filled with the reactionary content which the epigones poured into it. The Opposition, as proceeds plainly even from the early articles of comrade Trotsky, construed the slogan in the same sense that Lenin construed it in and after 1917, that is, that the “democratic dictatorship” was realized in the “democratic period” (the first six months) of the October revolution, but realized under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long before the revolution, Lenin had written that the slogan had a past and a future. For China, the epigones, looking backward only to the past—and even there with a distorted vision—filled the slogan with a reactionary content, which they still seek to apply not only to “backward China”, but to about four-fifths of the whole world … including modern Spain. One of the greatest contributions to the movement made by the Opposition, and in the first place, by comrade Trotsky, is the setting of the old Leninist slogan in its proper historical perspective, the frank—and not slavish—examination of the value of the slogan in the light of revolutionary experiences, and the restoration to its rightful place of the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution, expressed by Lenin for the East in particular, in those sections of the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International which speak of the non-capitalist path of development of the backward colonial and semi- colonial countries.
A third point which may interest readers, or arouse a certain amount of confusion, is another apparent contradiction in the standpoint of the Opposition. It is only in the later documents that comrade Trotsky speaks about the Opposition having stood against the integration of the proletarian party, the Communist Party of China, into the party of the bourgeoisie, the Kuo Min Tang. Any misunderstanding that may arise will be eliminated by reproducing part of a letter written by comrade Trotsky to the present writer on December 10, 1930, which I take the liberty of quoting.
”You are quite right when you point out that the Russian Opposition, as late as the first half of 1927, did not demand openly the withdrawal from the Kuo Min Tang. I believe, however, that I have already commented on this fact publicly somewhere. I personally was from the very beginning, that is, from 1923, resolutely opposed to the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang, as well as against the acceptance of the Kuo Min Tang into the `Kuomintern’. Radek was always with Zinoviev against me. The younger members of the Opposition of 1923 were with me almost to a man. Rakovsky was in Paris and not sufficiently informed. Up to 1926, I always voted independently in the Political Bureau on this question, against all the others. In 1925, simultaneously with the theses on the Eastern Chinese Railway which I have quoted in the Opposition press, I once more presented the formal proposal that the Communist party leave the Kuo Min Tang instantly. This was unanimously rejected and contributed a great deal to the baiting later on. In 1926 and 1927, I had uninterrupted conflicts with the Zinovievists on this question. Two or three times, the matter stood at the breaking point. Our center consisted of approximately equal numbers from both of the allied tendencies, for it was after all only a bloc. At the voting, the position of the 1923 Opposition was betrayed by Radek, out of principle, and by Piatakov, out of unprincipledness. Our faction (1923) was furious about it, demanded that Radek and Piatakov be recalled from the center. But since it was a question of splitting with the Zinovievists, it was the general decision that I must submit publicly in this question and acquaint the Opposition in writing with my standpoint. And that is how it happened that the demand was put up by us so late, in spite of the fact that the Political Bureau and the Plenum of the Central Committee always contrasted my view with the official view of the Opposition. Now I can say with certainty that I made a mistake by submitting formally in this question. In any case, this mistake became quite clear only by the further evolution of the Zinovievists. At that time, the split with them appeared to the overwhelming majority of our faction as absolutely fatal. Thus, the manifesto [of the International Left Opposition on the Chinese question, issued late in 1930] in no way contradicts the facts when it contends that the Russian Opposition, the real one, was against the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang. Out of the thousands of imprisoned, exiled, etc., hardly a single one was with Radek in this question. This fact too I have referred to in many letters, namely, that the great majority of the capitulators were not sure and firm in the Chinese and the Anglo-Russian question. That is very characteristic! …”
The documents which follow are arranged more or less in chronological order. As a whole, they present a fairly thorough picture of the course of the Chinese revolution and the struggle for Bolshevism which the Opposition carried on in all the periods of its development, up to the present day. How brilliantly they demonstrate the indispensability of Marxism— which serves the revolutionist to foresee the coming day and to prepare for it—can be left to the reader to judge. As appendices, we have included articles and speeches by other comrades. The suppressed theses of Zinoviev present invaluable facts and documents, even though they present the relations between the Communist party and the Kuo Min Tang in a confused manner. The Shanghai letter by three Russian comrades, all of them opponents of “Trotskyism”, shows that the leadership of the Comintern was well aware of the real state of affairs in China. The letter is presented here for the first time. It suffered the same fate of suppression as so much other important material. Indeed, one of its authors, the youth comrade Nassonov, together with the party comrade, Mandalyan, were recalled in disgrace from China by Stalin. As punishment, Nassonov was “exiled” to the United States as representative of the Young Communist International, and I still recall how he would tell me that in spite of everything, Stalin had been “compelled in the end to carry out” his viewpoint….
In conclusion, the writer wishes to express his gratitude, and the appreciation of the publishers, to his comrades, Sam Gordon and Morris Lewit, who gave such indispensable assistance in the final checking of the translations.
NEW YORK, August 7,
1931
Max Shachtman.
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "Free The San Francisco Eight Committee" Website
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Markin comment:
As I have written before- Enough Is Enough- Drop The Charges Against Francisco Torres
**********
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Waiting for more discovery in last SF8 case
Numerous supporters of the San Francisco 8 came to the San Francisco courthouse at the beginning of the month (July 1) even though the only issue to be decided was the scheduling of future court dates. This was an important show of support for Francisco Torres, the last of the SF 8 still facing charges, since the prosecution may have hoped that the summer doldrums and long gaps between court appearances would erode solidarity.
The judge set September 17 for the next status appearance and for establishing the briefing schedule for the motion to dismiss the remaining charges.
Defense attorney Chuck Bourdon explained that the FBI has still not provided all the evidence in the discovery process, claiming that they are still looking for it. In the meantime it only becomes more apparent that the long delays in the thirty-nine-year old case are prejudicial to the cause of justice.
So mark your calendars: September 17 at 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco.
Markin comment:
As I have written before- Enough Is Enough- Drop The Charges Against Francisco Torres
**********
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Waiting for more discovery in last SF8 case
Numerous supporters of the San Francisco 8 came to the San Francisco courthouse at the beginning of the month (July 1) even though the only issue to be decided was the scheduling of future court dates. This was an important show of support for Francisco Torres, the last of the SF 8 still facing charges, since the prosecution may have hoped that the summer doldrums and long gaps between court appearances would erode solidarity.
The judge set September 17 for the next status appearance and for establishing the briefing schedule for the motion to dismiss the remaining charges.
Defense attorney Chuck Bourdon explained that the FBI has still not provided all the evidence in the discovery process, claiming that they are still looking for it. In the meantime it only becomes more apparent that the long delays in the thirty-nine-year old case are prejudicial to the cause of justice.
So mark your calendars: September 17 at 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
*Free The Black Panthers Omaha Two- Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter - Free All Class-War Prisoners! -An Online Article
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indy Media post on the class-war prisoners, Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter , the Omaha Two Black liberation fighters.
Markin comment:
This comment is easy- Free Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter- The Omaha Two!- Free All Class-War Prisoners!
Markin comment:
This comment is easy- Free Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter- The Omaha Two!- Free All Class-War Prisoners!
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "G.I. Voice (Fort Lewis)" Website
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Soldier who refused Afghan tour released
Submitted by mgibbs on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 9:03pm. Scott Fontaine;
Tacoma News-Tribune
April 2, 2010
Pvt. Travis Bishop left his jail cell at Joint Base Lewis-McChord last week with no job, a criminal conviction and just one regret.
“I wish I had known about applying for a conscientious objector status a lot sooner,” said Bishop, a 26-year-old Louisville, Ky., native.
The former sergeant made headlines when he went absent without leave and refused to deploy to Afghanistan with his Fort Hood unit last year. Bishop cited his Christian beliefs in making the decision – a move that ultimately cost him 71/2 months of freedom and led international human-rights group Amnesty International to label him a prisoner of conscience.
He also became a rallying point for the local peace movement, with calls for his release increasing after Fort Lewis Lt. Ehren Watada – who refused to deploy to Iraq – was discharged last fall. Bishop spoke to supporters last weekend at Coffee Strong, a Lakewood resource center for war resisters and disaffected soldiers.
Bishop was released three months early after Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the top commander at Fort Hood, granted Bishop’s request for clemency in February. Bishop is now effectively out of the Army. He retains the rank of private while an appeal to overturn his conviction and reverse the military’s plan for a bad-conduct discharge works its way through the military judicial system.
He now finds himself in the same place as countless others who left the military under less controversial circumstances: looking for a job, planning to enroll in college and adjusting to life without morning formations and buzz-cut requirements.
“I’m just trying to feel normal again,” Bishop said Tuesday in an interview with The News Tribune.
Bishop didn’t hold the same reservations about war when he enlisted in April 2004 or when he deployed to Iraq in 2006-07.
But as his unit prepared for an Afghanistan deployment early last year, he began asking himself tough questions.
“I had to get right with God in case I died or in case I had to kill someone,” he said.
He found answers in the Bible. Bishop, who was raised Baptist and considers himself a nondenominational Christian, came to believe Jesus preached a strict pacifist philosophy.
He felt trapped between his belief in the immorality of war and the duty to his friends to deploy with them. Some peace activists in Texas told him he could apply for conscientious-objector status. It was the first he’d heard of it outside the context of the Vietnam War, he said.
Bishop eventually made contact with James Branum, an Oklahoma-based lawyer, a day before the soldier was scheduled to fly to Afghanistan. Branum couldn’t advise him whether to go AWOL but did tell him the potential consequences, including jail time.
A sleepless night followed, and Bishop still struggled with the decision the morning before he was scheduled to leave.
“It’s easy to say, ‘I’m not going,’” he said. “But really, it’s hard – my best friend was going to go in my stead if I left.”
Bishop went AWOL hours before his flight left. He stayed with a friend while he filled out the conscientious-objector application. He turned himself into his company building a week later.
He was assigned a job with the company rear detachment. Almost everyone in his unit treated him professionally, he said, though small talk stopped with some people he once considered friends.
Authorities at Fort Hood turned down his request. He appealed to the Pentagon and was denied on that level as well.
Bishop blamed the timing of it, objecting as his unit prepared to go to war.
“I understand it hurt the validity of my claim,” he said. “I get that. But I didn’t know about CO status before then, and most of the military doesn’t know.”
His court-martial began in August, and he was found guilty and sentenced to a year in detention after a two-day trial. He arrived at the Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility in September.
He was held at Lewis-McChord’s 190-bed, medium-security facility because Fort Hood doesn’t have a detention center. Where a prisoner serves his sentence is based on the length of the sentence and the space available at various military lockups.
Branum alleged mistreatment of Bishop and other detainees at the facility during an October news conference – charges Lewis-McChord public affairs officials have denied.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/04/02/1132402/soldier-who-refused-afghan-tour.html|
Soldier who refused Afghan tour released
Submitted by mgibbs on Sat, 04/03/2010 - 9:03pm. Scott Fontaine;
Tacoma News-Tribune
April 2, 2010
Pvt. Travis Bishop left his jail cell at Joint Base Lewis-McChord last week with no job, a criminal conviction and just one regret.
“I wish I had known about applying for a conscientious objector status a lot sooner,” said Bishop, a 26-year-old Louisville, Ky., native.
The former sergeant made headlines when he went absent without leave and refused to deploy to Afghanistan with his Fort Hood unit last year. Bishop cited his Christian beliefs in making the decision – a move that ultimately cost him 71/2 months of freedom and led international human-rights group Amnesty International to label him a prisoner of conscience.
He also became a rallying point for the local peace movement, with calls for his release increasing after Fort Lewis Lt. Ehren Watada – who refused to deploy to Iraq – was discharged last fall. Bishop spoke to supporters last weekend at Coffee Strong, a Lakewood resource center for war resisters and disaffected soldiers.
Bishop was released three months early after Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the top commander at Fort Hood, granted Bishop’s request for clemency in February. Bishop is now effectively out of the Army. He retains the rank of private while an appeal to overturn his conviction and reverse the military’s plan for a bad-conduct discharge works its way through the military judicial system.
He now finds himself in the same place as countless others who left the military under less controversial circumstances: looking for a job, planning to enroll in college and adjusting to life without morning formations and buzz-cut requirements.
“I’m just trying to feel normal again,” Bishop said Tuesday in an interview with The News Tribune.
Bishop didn’t hold the same reservations about war when he enlisted in April 2004 or when he deployed to Iraq in 2006-07.
But as his unit prepared for an Afghanistan deployment early last year, he began asking himself tough questions.
“I had to get right with God in case I died or in case I had to kill someone,” he said.
He found answers in the Bible. Bishop, who was raised Baptist and considers himself a nondenominational Christian, came to believe Jesus preached a strict pacifist philosophy.
He felt trapped between his belief in the immorality of war and the duty to his friends to deploy with them. Some peace activists in Texas told him he could apply for conscientious-objector status. It was the first he’d heard of it outside the context of the Vietnam War, he said.
Bishop eventually made contact with James Branum, an Oklahoma-based lawyer, a day before the soldier was scheduled to fly to Afghanistan. Branum couldn’t advise him whether to go AWOL but did tell him the potential consequences, including jail time.
A sleepless night followed, and Bishop still struggled with the decision the morning before he was scheduled to leave.
“It’s easy to say, ‘I’m not going,’” he said. “But really, it’s hard – my best friend was going to go in my stead if I left.”
Bishop went AWOL hours before his flight left. He stayed with a friend while he filled out the conscientious-objector application. He turned himself into his company building a week later.
He was assigned a job with the company rear detachment. Almost everyone in his unit treated him professionally, he said, though small talk stopped with some people he once considered friends.
Authorities at Fort Hood turned down his request. He appealed to the Pentagon and was denied on that level as well.
Bishop blamed the timing of it, objecting as his unit prepared to go to war.
“I understand it hurt the validity of my claim,” he said. “I get that. But I didn’t know about CO status before then, and most of the military doesn’t know.”
His court-martial began in August, and he was found guilty and sentenced to a year in detention after a two-day trial. He arrived at the Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility in September.
He was held at Lewis-McChord’s 190-bed, medium-security facility because Fort Hood doesn’t have a detention center. Where a prisoner serves his sentence is based on the length of the sentence and the space available at various military lockups.
Branum alleged mistreatment of Bishop and other detainees at the facility during an October news conference – charges Lewis-McChord public affairs officials have denied.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/04/02/1132402/soldier-who-refused-afghan-tour.html|
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "Under The Hood G.I. Support" Website
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
*********
Injured Hearts, Injured Minds
by Forrest Wilder Font Size decrease font size increase font size Print Facebook Twitter Share Published on: Monday, August 03, 2009
In March, Army Spc. Michael Kern, 22, returned to Fort Hood after a year and a day in Iraq.
Shaken by his experience and disgusted with the war, Kern, a native of Riverside, Calif., tried to readjust by getting as hammered as possible. "Put it this way: For the first month, I was drunk at work, I was drunk 24/7."
In Iraq the violence had been fast and furious. "We were going through all sorts of bad shit: mortars, IEDs, indirect fire. Anything you can think of we experienced the first day."
On his second mission, Kern drew the short straw to drive the lead vehicle—a "mine resistant ambush protected" vehicle—in a convoy looking for a weapons cache near Baghdad. An IED exploded next to his vehicle, damaging his door. The platoon pulled back to base. The next day, April 7, on an identical mission, insurgents came after his unit with AK-47s, machine guns and IEDs. During the nine-hour firefight, a sniper killed Kern's buddy, Sgt. Richard A. Vaughn. Two others, including Kern's lieutenant, were seriously injured.
Kern tells me his story over two days in July at Under the Hood Café, a new GI coffeehouse and soldier-outreach center that opened in February. Since mid-May, when a drunken Kern first dropped in, Under the Hood has become his second home. While awaiting a medical discharge for PTSD and traumatic brain injury, he's here almost every day, working out what happened to him in Iraq, planning anti-war events and helping other soldiers come to terms with their combat experiences. The coffeehouse provides a support network, friends who've helped him quit drinking, people he can call on day or night, and provides what Kern appreciated most about the military: a sense of camaraderie.
"If it wasn't for this place, it's sad to say, I feel like I would be dead. I feel like I would have killed myself," Kern says.
Under the Hood is a rifle shot from the east gates of Fort Hood in a grim commercial zone of tattoo parlors, pawnshops, car lots, payday lenders, bars, strip clubs, and a place advertising "gold grillz" for teeth—establishments eager to drain young soldiers of their earnings. In this garrison town, the café has become a gathering place for dissident GIs, peace activists, veterans and active-duty soldiers who need help.
Inside, the walls are decorated with peace propaganda, including a map of the world pinpointing U.S. military interventions and a poster that reads, "You Can't Be All that You Can Be if You're Dead." A bookcase is stocked with anti-war literature. For entertainment, there's a dartboard, a foosball table and a big-screen TV with PlayStation. No alcohol is allowed, but there's no shortage of cigarette smoke.
Under the Hood is a gathering place for Ft. Hood soldiers, veterans and military spouses who are against the war or in need of help. Meet some of the patrons and organizers in this short documentary film by Matthew Gossage.
I came here to suss out efforts to build an anti-war movement within the Army. Fort Hood, the largest military installation in the country, has produced a smattering of war resisters in recent years. I met some of them at the coffeehouse, including Victor Agosto, an Iraq War veteran who refuses to deploy to Afghanistan, and Casey Porter, a mechanic who did two tours in Iraq. Porter, preparing to attend film school in Florida, recorded local life in Iraq, posting interviews with military personnel, battle footage and unvarnished street scenes.
Over the past four years, I've come into contact with scores of military personnel through my involvement with the Austin GI Rights Hotline, a group of volunteers trained to counsel service members about their rights.
Once a week, I sit on my couch and talk on the phone to soldiers, Marines and airmen who call with a dizzying array of issues, from the mundane to the impossibly complex. Many are stationed at Fort Hood. We get AWOL cases, people with untreated PTSD, 18-year-old enlistees who've found out their recruiter lied to them, middle-aged soldiers who've been stop-lossed, moms and dads calling on behalf of their kids, gay officers who've been outed—you name it. Some have made poor decisions; others are victims of a sometimes capricious, even cruel military system.
I got into it through my girlfriend. Katherine was in the news some years ago for being the first female conscientious objector to emerge from the war in Afghanistan. The military refused to recognize her as a conscientious objector, and after a long and painful process she was court-martialed and sentenced to 120 days in the brig. She ate lunch every day with Lynndie England, the young West Virginia woman best known for holding the leash in the infamous Abu Ghraib photos.
Joeie Michaels, Michael Kern's roommate and an Under the Hood regular, used to dance at Babes, a Killeen strip club popular with GIs. Performing there, she made sure the troops left with a flier for the coffeehouse.
Under the Hood's signal event was a Memorial Day peace march in the streets of Killeen, the city's first since Vietnam. The Killeen newspaper reported about 70 participants. Cindy Thomas, the military spouse who manages the coffeehouse and plays den mother to the young, often-raucous soldiers, estimates about 10 to 15 were locals, including veterans and active-duty soldiers.
"It's like a mother with a child," Thomas says. "It's unconditional love, and we help them any way we can."
The building housing Under the Hood's local antecedent, the Killeen coffeehouse Oleo Strut, is a few blocks away; it now houses an office complex. The Oleo Strut had a four-year run from 1968 to 1972, according to a history on Under the Hood's Web site. Run by civilians and veterans, the Oleo Strut plugged Fort Hood soldiers into the Vietnam anti-war movement and spread their ideas in the barracks. An underground newspaper circulated from the coffeehouse, and the crowd there organized demonstrations and teach-ins. Musicians passed through, purportedly including a young Stevie Ray Vaughan.
"The tinder was very dry," says Tom Cleaver, an Oleo Strut alum, Vietnam veteran and Hollywood screenwriter who helped raise money to start Under the Hood. "They ended up in '69 and '70 having big demonstrations there, a thousand guys marching in Killeen against the war."
Fort Hood at that time was a holding station for soldiers returning from Vietnam with less than six months left on their enlistments. Before being discharged, many were deployed to suppress domestic riots and protests, including those at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
"Here they come back to America, and what does the Army want them to do?" Cleaver asks. "Fight a war in America. That radicalized a lot of guys. They came back with bad feelings about the war, and now they were supposed to go defend the war."
There's no draft now, nor is there a broader social counterculture, to tap into. Given that, Thomas says, one of Under the Hood's primary functions is giving soldiers a place to speak openly.
"The military, they don't want you to think for yourself," Thomas says. "They don't want you to be informed; they don't want you to know that you have support because they function by fear and intimidation over these soldiers. So when you have a space where you can talk freely and find out what your rights are, you have that support, you have that kindness. It is a threat to them."
One coffeehouse regular, Spc. Ben Fugate, told me that after his commander spotted his name in a Killeen Daily Herald article about the Memorial Day peace march, his unit was lectured for two hours on the dangers of protesting.
Fugate, who describes himself as "very conservative," had been quoted in the paper saying, "I lost three buddies in my platoon in Iraq, and for what? Why lose more when we don't have to?"
Kern, seated on a couch in a cozy back room at Under the Hood, explains how he became a coffeehouse fixture. It's a Thursday in July, and he's wearing a T-shirt that asks, "Got Rights?" He's pale and swallowing tranquilizers to suppress panic attacks.
"I'm fucked up," he says. "I know it." Later, he says, "You know how they say a teenage boy thinks about sex every eight seconds. Every eight seconds I think about Iraq."
Kern, a tanker, says his unit averaged about two and a half missions per day.
At first, Kern says, he was gung ho: "I was an excellent soldier. I took joy out of killing people in Iraq. It was such an adrenaline rush. I craved it."
Over time, bravado faded into depression, guilt and a strong feeling that the war was wrong. When Kern deployed to Iraq he took a small handheld digital video camera and a laptop with editing software. He fixed the camera to his vehicle's turret and captured hours of patrol footage.
Some of that raw video has been distilled to a 10-minute film called Fire Mission that's available online.
In the film's last minutes, Spc. Steven Pesicka, a soldier in Kern's unit, narrates what he calls a "mortar mission for shock and awe" near an Iraqi village. The first mortar lands near a house, and the forward observer calls for the next one to be targeted 200 meters farther from the village. The mortar team thought that was too far away, Pesicka says. The film shows the second mortar hitting the town. "Oh fuck," the forward observer is heard to say. "They did not drop 200 [meters], over. They hit the town."
Minutes after the explosion, the soldier describes dead bodies being loaded into the back of trucks.
Such experiences led Kern to a radical form of empathy.
"If you just take a step back and you think, I mean, I'd be doing the same thing if Iraqis were in the United States," Kern, dressed in battle fatigues, says in Fire Mission. "I'd be the dude trying to plant a bomb under the road. I'd be trying to kill them. Oh, hell yeah, get the fuck out of my country."
Beginning in May or June, Kern started having nightmares, sometimes while he was awake. On several occasions he hallucinated an Iraqi child with half his skull missing, as real to him as the desert heat. His psychiatrist says the child might represent guilt, but all Kern knows is that it scared the shit out of him. In January, on his birthday, while his unit was on patrol, he told a commander—in confidence—that he was going to see a mental health specialist. The doctor prescribed Zoloft and sent him on his way. Back with his platoon, Kern discovered that the commander had ratted him out to his platoon sergeant.
"I was called out in front of the entire platoon, was made an example of, saying why are you going to mental health. This isn't a war. This isn't bad." The next day, on a mission, Kern talked openly of suicide. "Still to this day, my buddy doesn't know he talked me down, but I really wanted to kill myself on that mission. I had three loaded weapons sitting right next to me. I could have done it real easy."
Back home, Kern avoided his demons, drowning them in drink. Thomas and Michaels encouraged Kern to open up.
"They'd be like, 'How was Iraq?' I'd say 'Oh, it was just Iraq.' I kept brushing it aside and stuff. They kept telling me, 'You're gonna break, you're gonna break. You need to get help.' " Kern relented.
Michaels found a psychiatrist in Austin whom Kern has been seeing twice a week for free. In May he visited Fort Hood's mental health services office, but was told he'd have to wait six weeks to see a doctor.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi child had followed Kern back to Texas. On the first of June, Kern was in the bathroom at Under the Hood when the child made an appearance. Afterward, Thomas and Michaels found Kern sitting outside under a tree. "The look on his face was just empty. His eyes were hollow," Thomas says. Kern entered the 12-bed psychiatric ward at Fort Hood's military hospital. He spent the next week there, emerging with a diagnosis of PTSD and traumatic brain injury. Doctors put him on five medications, including tranquilizers, antidepressants and antipsychotics, which he carries in a small orange pillbox.
A week after being released, Kern started a blog, "Expendable Soldier." In his first post he wrote, "I still hate myself and everything I do. No matter what I am doing any day of the week I some how am still reminded of the things I did while I was in Iraq, and sometimes it gets so bad that I believe I am still in Iraq. ... Sometimes I wish I never came back."
Still, Kern reports for duty at the coffeehouse every day. He's working on restarting an Iraq Veterans Against the War chapter in Killeen and talking to other soldiers about the coffeehouse. Does he feel like he's become part of an anti-war movement? "I am part of an anti-war movement," he says. "There's no 'feeling' about it."
*********
Injured Hearts, Injured Minds
by Forrest Wilder Font Size decrease font size increase font size Print Facebook Twitter Share Published on: Monday, August 03, 2009
In March, Army Spc. Michael Kern, 22, returned to Fort Hood after a year and a day in Iraq.
Shaken by his experience and disgusted with the war, Kern, a native of Riverside, Calif., tried to readjust by getting as hammered as possible. "Put it this way: For the first month, I was drunk at work, I was drunk 24/7."
In Iraq the violence had been fast and furious. "We were going through all sorts of bad shit: mortars, IEDs, indirect fire. Anything you can think of we experienced the first day."
On his second mission, Kern drew the short straw to drive the lead vehicle—a "mine resistant ambush protected" vehicle—in a convoy looking for a weapons cache near Baghdad. An IED exploded next to his vehicle, damaging his door. The platoon pulled back to base. The next day, April 7, on an identical mission, insurgents came after his unit with AK-47s, machine guns and IEDs. During the nine-hour firefight, a sniper killed Kern's buddy, Sgt. Richard A. Vaughn. Two others, including Kern's lieutenant, were seriously injured.
Kern tells me his story over two days in July at Under the Hood Café, a new GI coffeehouse and soldier-outreach center that opened in February. Since mid-May, when a drunken Kern first dropped in, Under the Hood has become his second home. While awaiting a medical discharge for PTSD and traumatic brain injury, he's here almost every day, working out what happened to him in Iraq, planning anti-war events and helping other soldiers come to terms with their combat experiences. The coffeehouse provides a support network, friends who've helped him quit drinking, people he can call on day or night, and provides what Kern appreciated most about the military: a sense of camaraderie.
"If it wasn't for this place, it's sad to say, I feel like I would be dead. I feel like I would have killed myself," Kern says.
Under the Hood is a rifle shot from the east gates of Fort Hood in a grim commercial zone of tattoo parlors, pawnshops, car lots, payday lenders, bars, strip clubs, and a place advertising "gold grillz" for teeth—establishments eager to drain young soldiers of their earnings. In this garrison town, the café has become a gathering place for dissident GIs, peace activists, veterans and active-duty soldiers who need help.
Inside, the walls are decorated with peace propaganda, including a map of the world pinpointing U.S. military interventions and a poster that reads, "You Can't Be All that You Can Be if You're Dead." A bookcase is stocked with anti-war literature. For entertainment, there's a dartboard, a foosball table and a big-screen TV with PlayStation. No alcohol is allowed, but there's no shortage of cigarette smoke.
Under the Hood is a gathering place for Ft. Hood soldiers, veterans and military spouses who are against the war or in need of help. Meet some of the patrons and organizers in this short documentary film by Matthew Gossage.
I came here to suss out efforts to build an anti-war movement within the Army. Fort Hood, the largest military installation in the country, has produced a smattering of war resisters in recent years. I met some of them at the coffeehouse, including Victor Agosto, an Iraq War veteran who refuses to deploy to Afghanistan, and Casey Porter, a mechanic who did two tours in Iraq. Porter, preparing to attend film school in Florida, recorded local life in Iraq, posting interviews with military personnel, battle footage and unvarnished street scenes.
Over the past four years, I've come into contact with scores of military personnel through my involvement with the Austin GI Rights Hotline, a group of volunteers trained to counsel service members about their rights.
Once a week, I sit on my couch and talk on the phone to soldiers, Marines and airmen who call with a dizzying array of issues, from the mundane to the impossibly complex. Many are stationed at Fort Hood. We get AWOL cases, people with untreated PTSD, 18-year-old enlistees who've found out their recruiter lied to them, middle-aged soldiers who've been stop-lossed, moms and dads calling on behalf of their kids, gay officers who've been outed—you name it. Some have made poor decisions; others are victims of a sometimes capricious, even cruel military system.
I got into it through my girlfriend. Katherine was in the news some years ago for being the first female conscientious objector to emerge from the war in Afghanistan. The military refused to recognize her as a conscientious objector, and after a long and painful process she was court-martialed and sentenced to 120 days in the brig. She ate lunch every day with Lynndie England, the young West Virginia woman best known for holding the leash in the infamous Abu Ghraib photos.
Joeie Michaels, Michael Kern's roommate and an Under the Hood regular, used to dance at Babes, a Killeen strip club popular with GIs. Performing there, she made sure the troops left with a flier for the coffeehouse.
Under the Hood's signal event was a Memorial Day peace march in the streets of Killeen, the city's first since Vietnam. The Killeen newspaper reported about 70 participants. Cindy Thomas, the military spouse who manages the coffeehouse and plays den mother to the young, often-raucous soldiers, estimates about 10 to 15 were locals, including veterans and active-duty soldiers.
"It's like a mother with a child," Thomas says. "It's unconditional love, and we help them any way we can."
The building housing Under the Hood's local antecedent, the Killeen coffeehouse Oleo Strut, is a few blocks away; it now houses an office complex. The Oleo Strut had a four-year run from 1968 to 1972, according to a history on Under the Hood's Web site. Run by civilians and veterans, the Oleo Strut plugged Fort Hood soldiers into the Vietnam anti-war movement and spread their ideas in the barracks. An underground newspaper circulated from the coffeehouse, and the crowd there organized demonstrations and teach-ins. Musicians passed through, purportedly including a young Stevie Ray Vaughan.
"The tinder was very dry," says Tom Cleaver, an Oleo Strut alum, Vietnam veteran and Hollywood screenwriter who helped raise money to start Under the Hood. "They ended up in '69 and '70 having big demonstrations there, a thousand guys marching in Killeen against the war."
Fort Hood at that time was a holding station for soldiers returning from Vietnam with less than six months left on their enlistments. Before being discharged, many were deployed to suppress domestic riots and protests, including those at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
"Here they come back to America, and what does the Army want them to do?" Cleaver asks. "Fight a war in America. That radicalized a lot of guys. They came back with bad feelings about the war, and now they were supposed to go defend the war."
There's no draft now, nor is there a broader social counterculture, to tap into. Given that, Thomas says, one of Under the Hood's primary functions is giving soldiers a place to speak openly.
"The military, they don't want you to think for yourself," Thomas says. "They don't want you to be informed; they don't want you to know that you have support because they function by fear and intimidation over these soldiers. So when you have a space where you can talk freely and find out what your rights are, you have that support, you have that kindness. It is a threat to them."
One coffeehouse regular, Spc. Ben Fugate, told me that after his commander spotted his name in a Killeen Daily Herald article about the Memorial Day peace march, his unit was lectured for two hours on the dangers of protesting.
Fugate, who describes himself as "very conservative," had been quoted in the paper saying, "I lost three buddies in my platoon in Iraq, and for what? Why lose more when we don't have to?"
Kern, seated on a couch in a cozy back room at Under the Hood, explains how he became a coffeehouse fixture. It's a Thursday in July, and he's wearing a T-shirt that asks, "Got Rights?" He's pale and swallowing tranquilizers to suppress panic attacks.
"I'm fucked up," he says. "I know it." Later, he says, "You know how they say a teenage boy thinks about sex every eight seconds. Every eight seconds I think about Iraq."
Kern, a tanker, says his unit averaged about two and a half missions per day.
At first, Kern says, he was gung ho: "I was an excellent soldier. I took joy out of killing people in Iraq. It was such an adrenaline rush. I craved it."
Over time, bravado faded into depression, guilt and a strong feeling that the war was wrong. When Kern deployed to Iraq he took a small handheld digital video camera and a laptop with editing software. He fixed the camera to his vehicle's turret and captured hours of patrol footage.
Some of that raw video has been distilled to a 10-minute film called Fire Mission that's available online.
In the film's last minutes, Spc. Steven Pesicka, a soldier in Kern's unit, narrates what he calls a "mortar mission for shock and awe" near an Iraqi village. The first mortar lands near a house, and the forward observer calls for the next one to be targeted 200 meters farther from the village. The mortar team thought that was too far away, Pesicka says. The film shows the second mortar hitting the town. "Oh fuck," the forward observer is heard to say. "They did not drop 200 [meters], over. They hit the town."
Minutes after the explosion, the soldier describes dead bodies being loaded into the back of trucks.
Such experiences led Kern to a radical form of empathy.
"If you just take a step back and you think, I mean, I'd be doing the same thing if Iraqis were in the United States," Kern, dressed in battle fatigues, says in Fire Mission. "I'd be the dude trying to plant a bomb under the road. I'd be trying to kill them. Oh, hell yeah, get the fuck out of my country."
Beginning in May or June, Kern started having nightmares, sometimes while he was awake. On several occasions he hallucinated an Iraqi child with half his skull missing, as real to him as the desert heat. His psychiatrist says the child might represent guilt, but all Kern knows is that it scared the shit out of him. In January, on his birthday, while his unit was on patrol, he told a commander—in confidence—that he was going to see a mental health specialist. The doctor prescribed Zoloft and sent him on his way. Back with his platoon, Kern discovered that the commander had ratted him out to his platoon sergeant.
"I was called out in front of the entire platoon, was made an example of, saying why are you going to mental health. This isn't a war. This isn't bad." The next day, on a mission, Kern talked openly of suicide. "Still to this day, my buddy doesn't know he talked me down, but I really wanted to kill myself on that mission. I had three loaded weapons sitting right next to me. I could have done it real easy."
Back home, Kern avoided his demons, drowning them in drink. Thomas and Michaels encouraged Kern to open up.
"They'd be like, 'How was Iraq?' I'd say 'Oh, it was just Iraq.' I kept brushing it aside and stuff. They kept telling me, 'You're gonna break, you're gonna break. You need to get help.' " Kern relented.
Michaels found a psychiatrist in Austin whom Kern has been seeing twice a week for free. In May he visited Fort Hood's mental health services office, but was told he'd have to wait six weeks to see a doctor.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi child had followed Kern back to Texas. On the first of June, Kern was in the bathroom at Under the Hood when the child made an appearance. Afterward, Thomas and Michaels found Kern sitting outside under a tree. "The look on his face was just empty. His eyes were hollow," Thomas says. Kern entered the 12-bed psychiatric ward at Fort Hood's military hospital. He spent the next week there, emerging with a diagnosis of PTSD and traumatic brain injury. Doctors put him on five medications, including tranquilizers, antidepressants and antipsychotics, which he carries in a small orange pillbox.
A week after being released, Kern started a blog, "Expendable Soldier." In his first post he wrote, "I still hate myself and everything I do. No matter what I am doing any day of the week I some how am still reminded of the things I did while I was in Iraq, and sometimes it gets so bad that I believe I am still in Iraq. ... Sometimes I wish I never came back."
Still, Kern reports for duty at the coffeehouse every day. He's working on restarting an Iraq Veterans Against the War chapter in Killeen and talking to other soldiers about the coffeehouse. Does he feel like he's become part of an anti-war movement? "I am part of an anti-war movement," he says. "There's no 'feeling' about it."
Friday, July 30, 2010
*The Last Waltz- The Never-Ending Review Tour-Coming Of Age, Period- Oldies But Goodies-And Good Night All
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Shangri-las performing The Leader Of The Pack. Wow!
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Fifteen, Original Sound Record Co., 1990
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the soulful, snappy timing and voice intonation. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
****************
Leader Of The Pack Lyrics
[Spoken:]
Is she really going out with him?
Well, there she is. Let's ask her.
Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing?
Mm-hmm
Gee, it must be great riding with him
Is he picking you up after school today?
Uh-uh
By the way, where'd you meet him?
I met him at the candy store
He turned around and smiled at me
You get the picture? (yes, we see)
That's when I fell for (the leader of the pack)
My folks were always putting him down (down, down)
They said he came from the wrong side of town
(whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town?)
They told me he was bad
But I knew he was sad
That's why I fell for (the leader of the pack)
One day my dad said, "Find someone new"
I had to tell my Jimmy we're through
(whatcha mean when ya say that ya better go find somebody new?)
He stood there and asked me why
But all I could do was cry
I'm sorry I hurt you (the leader of the pack)
[Spoken:]
He sort of smiled and kissed me goodbye
The tears were beginning to show
As he drove away on that rainy night
I begged him to go slow
But whether he heard, I'll never know
Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out!
I felt so helpless, what could I do?
Remembering all the things we'd been through
In school they all stop and stare
I can't hide the tears, but I don't care
I'll never forget him (the leader of the pack)
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
[Fade]
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Fifteen, Original Sound Record Co., 1990
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the soulful, snappy timing and voice intonation. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
****************
Leader Of The Pack Lyrics
[Spoken:]
Is she really going out with him?
Well, there she is. Let's ask her.
Betty, is that Jimmy's ring you're wearing?
Mm-hmm
Gee, it must be great riding with him
Is he picking you up after school today?
Uh-uh
By the way, where'd you meet him?
I met him at the candy store
He turned around and smiled at me
You get the picture? (yes, we see)
That's when I fell for (the leader of the pack)
My folks were always putting him down (down, down)
They said he came from the wrong side of town
(whatcha mean when ya say that he came from the wrong side of town?)
They told me he was bad
But I knew he was sad
That's why I fell for (the leader of the pack)
One day my dad said, "Find someone new"
I had to tell my Jimmy we're through
(whatcha mean when ya say that ya better go find somebody new?)
He stood there and asked me why
But all I could do was cry
I'm sorry I hurt you (the leader of the pack)
[Spoken:]
He sort of smiled and kissed me goodbye
The tears were beginning to show
As he drove away on that rainy night
I begged him to go slow
But whether he heard, I'll never know
Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out!
I felt so helpless, what could I do?
Remembering all the things we'd been through
In school they all stop and stare
I can't hide the tears, but I don't care
I'll never forget him (the leader of the pack)
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
The leader of the pack - now he's gone
[Fade]
*The Last Waltz- The Never-Ending Review Tour-Coming Of Age, Period- Oldies But Goodies-Yet Again
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and the Comets performing their classic Rock Around The Clock.
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Fourteen, Original Sound Record Co., 1990
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic Brenda Lee weepy tune I’m Sorry fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the soulful timing. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
*******
Rock Around The Clock-Song Lyrics from Bill Haley
One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock,
Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, rock,
Nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, rock,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight.
Put your glad rags on and join me, hon,
We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When the clock strikes two, three and four,
If the band slows down we'll yell for more,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When the chimes ring five, six and seven,
We'll be right in seventh heaven.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When it's eight, nine, ten, eleven too,
I'll be goin' strong and so will you.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When the clock strikes twelve, we'll cool off then,
Start a rockin' round the clock again.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Fourteen, Original Sound Record Co., 1990
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic Brenda Lee weepy tune I’m Sorry fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the soulful timing. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
*******
Rock Around The Clock-Song Lyrics from Bill Haley
One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock,
Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, rock,
Nine, ten, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, rock,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight.
Put your glad rags on and join me, hon,
We'll have some fun when the clock strikes one,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When the clock strikes two, three and four,
If the band slows down we'll yell for more,
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When the chimes ring five, six and seven,
We'll be right in seventh heaven.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When it's eight, nine, ten, eleven too,
I'll be goin' strong and so will you.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
When the clock strikes twelve, we'll cool off then,
Start a rockin' round the clock again.
We're gonna rock around the clock tonight,
We're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'til broad daylight.
We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight.
*The Last Waltz- The Never-Ending Review Tour-Coming Of Age, Period- Oldies But Goodies- An Encore
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Aretha Franklin performing her classic Chain Of Fools.
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Thirteen, Original Sound Record Co., 1993
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic There Goes My Baby fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the soulful timing. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
**********
Aretha Franklin - Chain Of Fools lyrics
Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
Five long years I thought you were my man
But I found out I'm just a link in your chain
You got me where you want me
I ain't nothing but your fool
You treated me mean oh you treated me cruel
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
Every chain has got a weak link
I might be weak child, but I'll give you strength
You told me to leave you alone
My father said come on home
My doctor said take it easy
Whole bunch of lovin is much too strong
I'm added to your chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain,
Chain, chain of fools
One of these mornings the chain is gonna break
But up until then, yeah, I'm gonna take all I can take
Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Thirteen, Original Sound Record Co., 1993
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic There Goes My Baby fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the soulful timing. And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
**********
Aretha Franklin - Chain Of Fools lyrics
Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
Five long years I thought you were my man
But I found out I'm just a link in your chain
You got me where you want me
I ain't nothing but your fool
You treated me mean oh you treated me cruel
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
Every chain has got a weak link
I might be weak child, but I'll give you strength
You told me to leave you alone
My father said come on home
My doctor said take it easy
Whole bunch of lovin is much too strong
I'm added to your chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain,
Chain, chain of fools
One of these mornings the chain is gonna break
But up until then, yeah, I'm gonna take all I can take
Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
*The Last Waltz- The Never-Ending Review Tour-Coming Of Age, Period- Oldies But Goodies
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Dixie Cups performing the classic Chapel Of Love.
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Eleven, Original Sound Record Co., 1986
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
So what still sounds good on this CD compilation to a current AARPer, and perhaps to some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such a 1950s-oriented compilation “speaks” to. Of course, the Maurice Evans click-clack Little Darlin’. The Kingmen’s early rock anthem Louie, Louie. The knife-twisty My Boyfriend’s Back. Naturally, in a period of classic rock numbers, The Everly Brothers When Will I Be Loved? (and about half a dozen of their songs).
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic Dixie Cups tune, Chapel Of Love, fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the harmonies (by the way they stopped the show at the Newport Folk Festival about 15 years with that beauty). And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
**********
Chapel Of Love Lyrics
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Gee, I really love you
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel of love
Spring is here, th-e-e sky is blue, whoa-oh-oh
Birds all sing as if they knew
Today's the day we'll say "I do"
And we'll never be lonely anymore because we're
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Gee, I really love you
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel of love
Bells will ring, the-e-e sun will shine, whoa-oh-oh
I'll be his and he'll be mine
We'll love until the end of time
And we'll never be lonely anymore because we're
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Gee, I really love you
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel of love
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Goin' to the chapel of love
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
FADE
Goin' to
CD Review
Oldies But Goodies, Volume Eleven, Original Sound Record Co., 1986
Note: The term “last waltz” used in the headline is used here as a simple expression of the truth. Just when I thought I had completed this “Oldies But Goodies” series at Volume Ten I now find that this is a fifteen, fifteen count ‘em, volume series. Therefore I am whipping off these last five in one day and be done with it. After all how much can we rekindle, endlessly rekindle, memories from a relatively short, if important, part of our lives, even for those who lived and died by the songs (or some of the songs) in these compilations. How many times can one read about wallflowers, sighs, certain shes (or hes), the moonlight of high school dances (if there was any) and hanging around to the bitter end for that last dance of the night to prove... what. Bastante! Enough!
******
I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but here when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question that those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, musical moves away from ballady Broadway show tunes and rhymey Tin Pan Alley pieces hit the radio airwaves. (If you do not know what a radio is then ask your parents or, ouch, grandparents, please.) And, most importantly, we were there when the music moved away from any and all music that your parents might have approved of, or maybe, even liked, or, hopefully, at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room when rock and roll hit post- World War II America teenagers like, well, like an atomic bomb.
Not all of the material put forth was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of songs had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who, like me as well, had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe, close to close, with that certain she (or he for shes). Just be alive…uh, hip to the music. Otherwise you might become the dreaded wallflower. But that fear, the fear of fears that haunted many a teenage dream then, is a story for another day. Let’s just leave it at this for now. Ah, to be very, very young then was very heaven.
So what still sounds good on this CD compilation to a current AARPer, and perhaps to some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such a 1950s-oriented compilation “speaks” to. Of course, the Maurice Evans click-clack Little Darlin’. The Kingmen’s early rock anthem Louie, Louie. The knife-twisty My Boyfriend’s Back. Naturally, in a period of classic rock numbers, The Everly Brothers When Will I Be Loved? (and about half a dozen of their songs).
But what about the now, seeming mandatory to ask, inevitable end of the night high school dance (or maybe even middle school) song that seems to be included in each CD compilation? The song that you, maybe, waited around all night for just to prove that you were not a wallflower, and more importantly, had the moxie to, mumbly-voiced, parched-throated, sweaty-handed, asked a girl to dance (women can relate their own experiences, probably similar). Here the classic Dixie Cups tune, Chapel Of Love, fills the bill. Hey, I did like this one, especially the harmonies (by the way they stopped the show at the Newport Folk Festival about 15 years with that beauty). And, yes, I know, this is one of the slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven, that you didn’t destroy your partner’s shoes and feet. Well, one learns a few social skills in this world if for no other reason that to “impress” that certain she (or he for shes, or nowadays, just mix and match your preferences) mentioned above. I did, didn’t you?
**********
Chapel Of Love Lyrics
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Gee, I really love you
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel of love
Spring is here, th-e-e sky is blue, whoa-oh-oh
Birds all sing as if they knew
Today's the day we'll say "I do"
And we'll never be lonely anymore because we're
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Gee, I really love you
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel of love
Bells will ring, the-e-e sun will shine, whoa-oh-oh
I'll be his and he'll be mine
We'll love until the end of time
And we'll never be lonely anymore because we're
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Gee, I really love you
And we're gonna get ma-a-arried
Goin' to the chapel of love
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Goin' to the chapel of love
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
FADE
Goin' to
Thursday, July 29, 2010
*The Latest From The "Lynne Stewart Defense Committee" Website- Free Lynne Stewart Now!
Click on the headline to link to the latest from the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee Website.
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart Now!- She Must Not Die In Prison!
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart Now!- She Must Not Die In Prison!
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