Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League website.
Workers Vanguard No. 1004
8 June 2012
Quebec: Mass Defiance of Anti-Protest Law
Broad Support for Student Strike
JUNE 4—The nearly four-month student strike in Quebec, which was sparked by proposed massive tuition hikes, has now escalated into a major social crisis. Fueling protest is the repressive Law 78—popularly known as the “loi des matraques” (law of the nightsticks). This measure was enacted on May 18 by the widely despised provincial Liberal government after up to 200,000 students throughout Quebec had boycotted classes and shut down the campuses with mass pickets, often in defiance of court injunctions. Students have faced brutal, near daily assaults by the police. The emergency law bans any protests in or outside the schools, severely restricts all other protests and threatens fines of up to $125,000 for groups who defy these edicts. Even advertising such protests is now illegal, as is supporting any kind of strike at a university or college.
The evening that Law 78 was enacted, at least 10,000 students and their supporters took to the streets of Montreal. Protests continued over the following nights and the police declared them illegal, moving in with tear gas, sound cannons and pepper spray and staging mass roundups. Altogether, more than 2,500 people have now been arrested during the student strike (see “Defend Quebec Students!” above). This total far exceeds the arrests even under the War Measures Act in October 1970, when the federal government in Ottawa suspended civil liberties and imprisoned hundreds of leftists, nationalists and union leaders in a move to suppress widespread social struggle over national rights for the French-speaking Québécois.
The Quebec government clearly hoped that the threat of stepped-up repression and huge fines would quell the student protests and smash the strike. But the opposite happened. Four days later on May 22, thousands of trade unionists marching behind union banners as well as large numbers of teachers, parents and high school students joined a 300,000-strong demonstration in Montreal. CLASSE, the more left-wing, anarchist-influenced student union representing the majority of strikers, refused to announce the route of the march and thus effectively dared the government to ban the “illegal” protest and arrest its leaders. The immense size of the protest and substantial union presence stayed the hand of the police.
CLASSE had called on other organizations opposed to the emergency law to join it in active defiance. The union bureaucracy, other striking student groups and leaders of the petty-bourgeois nationalist Québec Solidaire responded by saying that they could support only “peaceful and legal” protests. Nonetheless, a significant majority of protesters went with CLASSE when the demonstration split about ten minutes into the march.
Despite a daily media barrage demonizing “violent” students, polls show that a majority of the francophone Québécois oppose the emergency law. Many are wearing red squares, the symbol of support to the students and opposition to the crippling student debt (i.e., “being in the red”). As the May 22 demo passed a major downtown hospital, elderly wheelchair-bound patients hooked up to IVs sat on the sidewalk with red squares pinned to their hospital gowns, applauding and raising their fists. The protesters responded with massive cheers. Nightly “pots and pans” marches against Law 78 have broken out in Montreal and other cities, emulating protests during the recent student strikes in Chile.
Having earlier, and repeatedly, vowed that there was nothing to negotiate, the Quebec government did an about-face and resumed talks with the student federations. But the negotiations collapsed on May 31 after the students rejected a gratuitously insulting “offer” to cut one dollar off the planned 75 percent tuition hike. Liberal premier Jean Charest soon after raised the prospect of further repression, slandering CLASSE as “people who are threatening the Québécois” (La Presse, 1 June).
Our comrades intervening in the demonstrations reported that many students put forward the notion that better “democracy” is the answer to government repression. In fact, “democracy” does not exist in a vacuum but rather its content is determined by the class that rules society. Under capitalism, democracy is a thin veil to hide the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is enforced by its state machinery of violence, namely the cops, courts and prisons—the very forces that are beating and jailing strikers.
While campus activists clearly welcome support from the unions, there is little sense of the unique social power of the working class. Students do not have any direct relationship to the means of production and lack the social power to beat back the capitalist onslaught. This power resides with the working class, which can withhold its labor and bring the capitalist system to a grinding halt. In the French-language supplement that our comrades distributed at the May 22 mass protest, which appeared in English translation as “Student Strike Shakes Quebec” in WV No. 1003 (25 May), we noted: “Student struggle can certainly spark broader social battles, as the current strike shows. But ultimately the only way forward is to ally with the working class.”
It also is in the interest of workers to champion the struggle for free, quality education for all, with a state-paid living stipend and free childcare for students. In the face of mounting debt servitude to the banks, there should be a fight to abolish the student debt. Since all reforms wrested from the bourgeoisie are temporary and reversible under capitalism, such struggles on behalf of students, workers and the oppressed must be linked to the necessary task of overthrowing this system through socialist revolution.
CLASSE has called for workers to strike in solidarity with the students. But in no way is it advancing a perspective of working-class struggle against the very capitalist system that deprives youth and working people of their basic needs. Like the other two student federations leading the strike, CLASSE seeks to refurbish the education system within the framework of capitalism. A short-lived May 5 deal that the CLASSE leaders endorsed—which was later widely rejected by students—simply tinkered with the terms of austerity and could easily have spelled wage cuts and layoffs for university and college employees.
The abortive deal was brokered in part by the union bureaucracy, which has done its part to attempt to restore “social peace.” Despite the broad anger among working people against the Liberal government, the potentially powerful trade unions of Quebec have not been mobilized for strike action or anything more than an occasional contingent at a demonstration. The union misleaders are firmly wedded to a class-collaborationist outlook, as expressed by their support to one or another bourgeois nationalist party.
The French-speaking Québécois have long been forcibly retained in a “united” Canada. We call for independence for Quebec as a means to combat Anglo chauvinism and address the national antagonisms that divide the workers of both nations. The mutually reinforcing nationalisms of the Maple Leaf and fleur de lys serve to tie workers to their own exploiters, poisoning prospects for united class struggle.
When in the provincial government in the 1990s, the bourgeois-nationalist Parti Québécois (PQ) carried out sweeping attacks on the working class and social programs in the interests of the francophone bourgeoisie. A darling of the reformist left, Québec Solidaire employs populist rhetoric to attract those dissatisfied with the PQ, keeping them firmly in the grip of bourgeois nationalism. Its founding “principles and orientation” foster terrible illusions in a “reformed” bourgeois rule, upholding “democracy,” pacifism and environmentalism while eschewing socialism or class struggle.
Struggle against the all-sided attacks of the capitalist rulers must proceed from an understanding that the interests of the workers and their exploiters are irreconcilable. Only after the working class, standing at the head of all the oppressed, sweeps away the capitalist state and expropriates the bourgeoisie will the right of all to free, quality education, much less jobs, housing and health care, be secured. We are dedicated to winning advanced workers and radical youth to the struggle to forge a revolutionary workers party, one that can unite capitalism’s many victims behind the social power of the proletariat in the fight for a socialist egalitarian society.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Trotskyist Group of Greece Says:Vote KKE! No Vote to Syriza!
5 June 2012
Trotskyist Group of Greece Says:Vote KKE! No Vote to Syriza!
The following is a translation of a leaflet being distributed by our comrades in Greece.
The Greek section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) calls on workers, minorities and all opponents of capitalist austerity to vote for the candidates of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) on June 17. The central issue for the working class in Greece today is rejection of the devastating attacks dictated by the troika [the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund] and imposed by the Greek bourgeoisie. A massive vote to the KKE—which opposes the EU—would deliver a slap in the face to the imperialists and their Greek lackeys and could give a boost to the defensive battles of workers across Europe.
The KKE rightly stands against Syriza’s perspective of keeping “Greece in the EU and NATO and the capitalist relations of production untouched” (KKE Web site, “Between Two Tough Battles,” 23 May). Despite intense pressure for unity, the KKE has rejected Syriza’s appeal to form a “left” (bourgeois) government. Syriza stands in favor of the imperialist EU and the euro, while claiming it can “renegotiate” the austerity package. As proletarian internationalists, we oppose the imperialist EU on principle (as well as the single currency) as part of our perspective for the Socialist United States of Europe. A socialist society cannot be achieved within the borders of Greece alone.
The KKE correctly notes that the central force within Syriza, the “Coalition of the Left” (SYN), voted for the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, is a supporter of the EU and “joined the anti-communist campaign against the USSR” (“Between Two Tough Battles,” 23 May). Today, the pseudo-Trotskyist groups who also hailed counterrevolution in the Soviet Union—including the Socialist Workers Party (SEK) and Xekinima—place themselves to the right of the KKE, whom they denounce for rejecting Syriza’s call to join them in government. We say: Down with the EU! No vote to Syriza!
Our call for a vote to the KKE in this election is an application of the tactic of critical support outlined by Lenin in “Left-Wing” Communism—An Infantile Disorder in 1920. While supporting KKE candidates, we have fundamental differences of program. Our program is proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist. In contrast, the KKE panders to Greek nationalism, the chief obstacle to building a revolutionary party in Greece. Their perspective of “people power” liquidates the proletariat—the only class with the power to overthrow capitalism—into “the people” and obscures the class line, the central division in capitalist society. The KKE’s populism—expressed as “the people” against “the monopolies”—is counterposed to the class independence of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie.
The violent racist attacks on immigrants by rampaging mobs of Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) fascists pose the urgent need to mobilize contingents of workers to defend immigrants and to sweep the fascist vermin off the streets. The KKE has the social weight in the trade unions to do this, but its nationalist populism is a barrier to it. Rather than mobilizing workers and immigrants against Golden Dawn, which represents a threat to the whole of the organized working class, the KKE appeals for votes from among the same backward layers of the population who voted for the fascist scum, demanding: “The working people who voted for Golden Dawn must correct their vote” (KKE Press Office statement, 2 June).
The KKE admits that: “During the 1950’s and 1980’s, the KKE formed ‘left’ alliances” and claims that it “has drawn valuable conclusions from its experience regarding the policy of alliances and it does not intend to repeat similar mistakes” (“Between Two Tough Battles,” 23 May). These were not mistakes but betrayals that flow from their Stalinist program. Despite the KKE’s refusal to participate in a coalition government at the present time, they have not broken politically with the program that led them to join bourgeois governments in the past.
Our international tendency actively fought, to the limit of our resources, for defense of the Soviet Union against counterrevolution. We also stood for a proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy, whose politics of “socialism in one country” and of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism undermined the defense of the USSR and ultimately led to the triumph of counterrevolution in 1991-92, a defeat for the world’s working masses.
With this call to vote for the KKE we are mass-distributing the article, “Banks Starve Greek Working People” [Workers Vanguard No. 1002, 11 May], to introduce to a wider audience our broader political views. We seek to coalesce into a political formation those forces who agree with the politics expressed there.
—5 June 2012
Trotskyist Group of Greece Says:Vote KKE! No Vote to Syriza!
The following is a translation of a leaflet being distributed by our comrades in Greece.
The Greek section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) calls on workers, minorities and all opponents of capitalist austerity to vote for the candidates of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) on June 17. The central issue for the working class in Greece today is rejection of the devastating attacks dictated by the troika [the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund] and imposed by the Greek bourgeoisie. A massive vote to the KKE—which opposes the EU—would deliver a slap in the face to the imperialists and their Greek lackeys and could give a boost to the defensive battles of workers across Europe.
The KKE rightly stands against Syriza’s perspective of keeping “Greece in the EU and NATO and the capitalist relations of production untouched” (KKE Web site, “Between Two Tough Battles,” 23 May). Despite intense pressure for unity, the KKE has rejected Syriza’s appeal to form a “left” (bourgeois) government. Syriza stands in favor of the imperialist EU and the euro, while claiming it can “renegotiate” the austerity package. As proletarian internationalists, we oppose the imperialist EU on principle (as well as the single currency) as part of our perspective for the Socialist United States of Europe. A socialist society cannot be achieved within the borders of Greece alone.
The KKE correctly notes that the central force within Syriza, the “Coalition of the Left” (SYN), voted for the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, is a supporter of the EU and “joined the anti-communist campaign against the USSR” (“Between Two Tough Battles,” 23 May). Today, the pseudo-Trotskyist groups who also hailed counterrevolution in the Soviet Union—including the Socialist Workers Party (SEK) and Xekinima—place themselves to the right of the KKE, whom they denounce for rejecting Syriza’s call to join them in government. We say: Down with the EU! No vote to Syriza!
Our call for a vote to the KKE in this election is an application of the tactic of critical support outlined by Lenin in “Left-Wing” Communism—An Infantile Disorder in 1920. While supporting KKE candidates, we have fundamental differences of program. Our program is proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist. In contrast, the KKE panders to Greek nationalism, the chief obstacle to building a revolutionary party in Greece. Their perspective of “people power” liquidates the proletariat—the only class with the power to overthrow capitalism—into “the people” and obscures the class line, the central division in capitalist society. The KKE’s populism—expressed as “the people” against “the monopolies”—is counterposed to the class independence of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie.
The violent racist attacks on immigrants by rampaging mobs of Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) fascists pose the urgent need to mobilize contingents of workers to defend immigrants and to sweep the fascist vermin off the streets. The KKE has the social weight in the trade unions to do this, but its nationalist populism is a barrier to it. Rather than mobilizing workers and immigrants against Golden Dawn, which represents a threat to the whole of the organized working class, the KKE appeals for votes from among the same backward layers of the population who voted for the fascist scum, demanding: “The working people who voted for Golden Dawn must correct their vote” (KKE Press Office statement, 2 June).
The KKE admits that: “During the 1950’s and 1980’s, the KKE formed ‘left’ alliances” and claims that it “has drawn valuable conclusions from its experience regarding the policy of alliances and it does not intend to repeat similar mistakes” (“Between Two Tough Battles,” 23 May). These were not mistakes but betrayals that flow from their Stalinist program. Despite the KKE’s refusal to participate in a coalition government at the present time, they have not broken politically with the program that led them to join bourgeois governments in the past.
Our international tendency actively fought, to the limit of our resources, for defense of the Soviet Union against counterrevolution. We also stood for a proletarian political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy, whose politics of “socialism in one country” and of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism undermined the defense of the USSR and ultimately led to the triumph of counterrevolution in 1991-92, a defeat for the world’s working masses.
With this call to vote for the KKE we are mass-distributing the article, “Banks Starve Greek Working People” [Workers Vanguard No. 1002, 11 May], to introduce to a wider audience our broader political views. We seek to coalesce into a political formation those forces who agree with the politics expressed there.
—5 June 2012
Η Τροτσκιστική Ομάδα Ελλάδας δηλώνει:Η Τροτσκιστική Ομάδα Ελλάδας δηλώνει:ΨΗΦΟ ΣΤΟ ΚΚΕ!ΚΑΜΙΑ ΨΗΦΟ ΣΤΟ ΣΥΡΙΖΑ!
Η Τροτσκιστική Ομάδα Ελλάδας δηλώνει:ΨΗΦΟ ΣΤΟ ΚΚΕ!ΚΑΜΙΑ ΨΗΦΟ ΣΤΟ ΣΥΡΙΖΑ!
5 Ιουνίου - Το ελληνικό τμήμα της Διεθνούς Κομμουνιστικής Ένωσης (4ο διεθνιστικής) καλεί τους
εργάτες, τις μειονότητες και όλους τους αντιπάλους της καπιταλιστικής λιτότητας να ψηφίσουν τους
υποψήφιους του ΚΚΕ στις 17 Ιουνίου. Το κύριο θέμα για την εργατική τάξη στην Ελλάδα σήμερα
είναι η απόρριψη των καταστροφικών επιθέσεων που προστάζει η τρόικα και επιβάλλονται από την
ελληνική αστική τάξη. Μία μαζική ψήφος στο ΚΚΕ – το οποίο εναντιώνεται στην ΕΕ – θα έδινε μια
γροθιά στο πρόσωπο των ιμπεριαλιστών και των Ελλήνων λακέδων τους και θα μπορούσε να δώσει
ώθηση στους αμυντικούς αγώνες των εργατών σε όλη την Ευρώπη.
Το ΚΚΕ ορθά στέκεται ενάντια στην προοπτική του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ να κρατήσει την «Ελλάδα στην
ΕΕ και στο ΝΑΤΟ και τις καπιταλιστικές σχέσεις παραγωγής άθικτες» (στην αγγλική διαδυκτιακή
σελίδα του ΚΚΕ, “Between two tough battles”, 23 Μαΐου). Παρά τις έντονες πιέσεις για ενότητα, το
ΚΚΕ έχει απορρίψει την έκκληση του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ για σχηματισμό μιας «αριστερής» (αστικής)
κυβέρνησης. Ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ στέκεται υπέρ της ιμπεριαλιστικής ΕΕ και του ευρώ ενώ υποστηρίζει ότι
μπορεί να «επαναδιαπραγματευτεί» το πακέτο λιτότητας. Ως προλεταριακοί διεθνιστές,
εναντιωνόμαστε στην ιμπεριαλιστική ΕΕ από θέση αρχής (καθώς και στο κοινό νόμισμα) ως μέρος
της προοπτικής μας για τις Σοσιαλιστικές Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Ευρώπης. Μια σοσιαλιστική
κοινωνία δεν μπορεί να επιτευχθεί μόνο μέσα στα σύνορα της Ελλάδας.
Το ΚΚΕ σωστά τονίζει ότι η κεντρική δύναμη μέσα στον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, ο «Συνασπισμός της
Αριστεράς» (ΣΥΝ), ψήφισε την συνθήκη του Μάαστριχτ το 1992, είναι υποστηριχτής της ΕΕ και
«συμμετείχε στην αντικομμουνιστική καμπάνια ενάντια στην ΕΣΣΔ» (“Between two tough battles”,
23 Μαΐου). Σήμερα, οι ψευδοτροτσκιστικές ομάδες οι οποίες επίσης χαιρέτησαν την αντεπανάσταση
στην Σοβιετική Ένωση – συμπεριλαμβανομένου του Σοσιαλιστικού Εργατικού Κόμματος (ΣΕΚ) και
του ΞΕΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΟΣ – τοποθετούν τον εαυτό τους στα δεξιά του ΚΚΕ, το οποίο καταγγέλουν για
την απόρριψη προς το κάλεσμα του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ να σχηματίσουν μαζί κυβέρνηση. Λέμε: Κάτω η ΕΕ! Όχι
ψήφο στο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ!
Το κάλεσμά μας για ψήφο στο ΚΚΕ σε αυτές τις εκλογές είναι μία εφαρμογή της τακτικής της
κριτικής υποστήριξης που περιέγραψε ο Λένιν στο Ο “Αριστερισμός”, Παιδική Αρρώστια του
Κομμουνισμού το 1920. Ενώ υποστηρίζουμε τους υποψήφιους του ΚΚΕ έχουμε θεμελιακές
προγραμματικές διαφορές. Το πρόγραμμά μας είναι προλεταριακό, επαναστατικό και διεθνιστικό. Σε
αντίθεση, το ΚΚΕ συνθηκολογεί με τον ελληνικό εθνικισμό, που είναι το κύριο εμπόδιο για το
χτίσιμο ενός επαναστατικού κόμματος στην Ελλάδα. Η προοπτική της «λαϊκής εξουσίας» διαλύει το
προλεταριάτο – την μόνη τάξη με τη δύναμη να ανατρέψει τον καπιταλισμό – σε «λαό» και θολώνει
την ταξική γραμμή, τη βασική διαίρεση στην καπιταλιστική κοινωνία. Ο λαϊκισμός του ΚΚΕ – που
εκφράζεται ως «ο λαός» ενάντια «στα μονοπώλια» - αντιτίθεται στην ταξική ανεξαρτησία του
προλεταριάτου από την αστική τάξη.
Οι βίαιες ρατσιστικές επιθέσεις σε μετανάστες από τις αφηνιασμένες φασιστικές συμμορίες της Χρυσής Αυγής θέτουν την άμεση ανάγκη για την κινητοποίηση εργατικών τμημάτων για να υπερασπιστούν τους μετανάστες και για να καθαρίσουν το φασιστικό δηλητήριο από τους δρόμους. Το ΚΚΕ έχει το κοινωνικό βάρος στα εργατικά σωματεία για να το κάνει, αλλά ο εθνικιστικός λαϊκισμός αποτελεί εμπόδιο σε αυτό. Αντί να κινητοποιήσει τους εργάτες και τους μετανάστες εναντίον της Χρυσής Αυγής, η οποία αντιπροσωπεύει μία απειλή σε ολόκληρη την οργανωμένη εργατική τάξη, το ΚΚΕ κάνει έκκληση για ψήφο στα ίδια καθυστερημένα στρώματα του πληθυσμού που ψήφισαν τα φασιστικά αποβράσματα, απαιτώντας: «Οι εργαζόμενοι που ψήφισαν την Χρυσή Αυγή πρέπει να διορθώσουν την ψήφο τους» (Σχόλιο του Γραφείου Τύπου για την επίθεση μελών της Χρυσής Αυγής εναντίον μεταναστών, 2 Ιουνίου).
Το ΚΚΕ παραδέχεται ότι: «Κατά την διάρκεια της δεκαετίας του 1950 και του 1980, το ΚΚΕ σχημάτισε “αριστερές συμμαχίες”» και υποστηρίζει ότι «έχει αντλήσει πολύτιμα συμπεράσματα από τις εμπειρίες του αναφορικά με την πολιτική των συμμαχιών και δεν προτίθεται να επαναλάβει παρόμοια λάθη» (“Between two tough battles”, 23 Μαΐου). Αυτά δεν ήταν λάθη αλλά προδοσίες που προέρχονται από το Σταλινικό τους πρόγραμμα. Παρά την άρνηση του ΚΚΕ να συμμετέχει σε μία κυβέρνηση συνασπισμού τώρα, δεν έχει σπάσει πολιτικά με το πρόγραμμα που το οδήγησε να συμμετέχει σε αστικές κυβερνήσεις στο παρελθόν.
Η διεθνής μας τάση πάλεψε ενεργά, στο όριο των δυνάμεών μας, για την υπεράσπιση της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης ενάντια στην αντεπανάσταση. Επίσης σταθήκαμε για μία προλεταριακή πολιτική επανάσταση ενάντια στην Σταλινική γραφειοκρατία, της οποίας οι πολιτικές του «σοσιαλισμού σε μία μόνη χώρα» και της «ειρηνικής συνύπαρξης» με τον ιμπεριαλισμό υπονόμευσαν την υπεράσπιση της ΕΣΣΔ και τελικά οδήγησαν στον θρίαμβο της αντεπανάστασης το 1991-92, μία ήττα για τις παγκόσμιες εργατικές μάζες.
Μαζί με αυτό το κάλεσμα για ψήφο στο ΚΚΕ διανέμουμε μαζικά το άρθρο «Οι Τράπεζες Ματώνουν τους Έλληνες Εργαζόμενους» για να εισάγουμε σε ένα μεγαλύτερο ακροατήριο τις ευρύτερες πολιτικές μας απόψεις. Αναζητούμε να ενώσουμε σε ένα πολιτικό σχηματισμό αυτές τις δυνάμεις που συμφωνούν με τις πολιτικές που εκφράζονται σε αυτό το άρθρο.
ΤΟΕ
5 Ιουνίου - Το ελληνικό τμήμα της Διεθνούς Κομμουνιστικής Ένωσης (4ο διεθνιστικής) καλεί τους
εργάτες, τις μειονότητες και όλους τους αντιπάλους της καπιταλιστικής λιτότητας να ψηφίσουν τους
υποψήφιους του ΚΚΕ στις 17 Ιουνίου. Το κύριο θέμα για την εργατική τάξη στην Ελλάδα σήμερα
είναι η απόρριψη των καταστροφικών επιθέσεων που προστάζει η τρόικα και επιβάλλονται από την
ελληνική αστική τάξη. Μία μαζική ψήφος στο ΚΚΕ – το οποίο εναντιώνεται στην ΕΕ – θα έδινε μια
γροθιά στο πρόσωπο των ιμπεριαλιστών και των Ελλήνων λακέδων τους και θα μπορούσε να δώσει
ώθηση στους αμυντικούς αγώνες των εργατών σε όλη την Ευρώπη.
Το ΚΚΕ ορθά στέκεται ενάντια στην προοπτική του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ να κρατήσει την «Ελλάδα στην
ΕΕ και στο ΝΑΤΟ και τις καπιταλιστικές σχέσεις παραγωγής άθικτες» (στην αγγλική διαδυκτιακή
σελίδα του ΚΚΕ, “Between two tough battles”, 23 Μαΐου). Παρά τις έντονες πιέσεις για ενότητα, το
ΚΚΕ έχει απορρίψει την έκκληση του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ για σχηματισμό μιας «αριστερής» (αστικής)
κυβέρνησης. Ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ στέκεται υπέρ της ιμπεριαλιστικής ΕΕ και του ευρώ ενώ υποστηρίζει ότι
μπορεί να «επαναδιαπραγματευτεί» το πακέτο λιτότητας. Ως προλεταριακοί διεθνιστές,
εναντιωνόμαστε στην ιμπεριαλιστική ΕΕ από θέση αρχής (καθώς και στο κοινό νόμισμα) ως μέρος
της προοπτικής μας για τις Σοσιαλιστικές Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Ευρώπης. Μια σοσιαλιστική
κοινωνία δεν μπορεί να επιτευχθεί μόνο μέσα στα σύνορα της Ελλάδας.
Το ΚΚΕ σωστά τονίζει ότι η κεντρική δύναμη μέσα στον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, ο «Συνασπισμός της
Αριστεράς» (ΣΥΝ), ψήφισε την συνθήκη του Μάαστριχτ το 1992, είναι υποστηριχτής της ΕΕ και
«συμμετείχε στην αντικομμουνιστική καμπάνια ενάντια στην ΕΣΣΔ» (“Between two tough battles”,
23 Μαΐου). Σήμερα, οι ψευδοτροτσκιστικές ομάδες οι οποίες επίσης χαιρέτησαν την αντεπανάσταση
στην Σοβιετική Ένωση – συμπεριλαμβανομένου του Σοσιαλιστικού Εργατικού Κόμματος (ΣΕΚ) και
του ΞΕΚΙΝΗΜΑΤΟΣ – τοποθετούν τον εαυτό τους στα δεξιά του ΚΚΕ, το οποίο καταγγέλουν για
την απόρριψη προς το κάλεσμα του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ να σχηματίσουν μαζί κυβέρνηση. Λέμε: Κάτω η ΕΕ! Όχι
ψήφο στο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ!
Το κάλεσμά μας για ψήφο στο ΚΚΕ σε αυτές τις εκλογές είναι μία εφαρμογή της τακτικής της
κριτικής υποστήριξης που περιέγραψε ο Λένιν στο Ο “Αριστερισμός”, Παιδική Αρρώστια του
Κομμουνισμού το 1920. Ενώ υποστηρίζουμε τους υποψήφιους του ΚΚΕ έχουμε θεμελιακές
προγραμματικές διαφορές. Το πρόγραμμά μας είναι προλεταριακό, επαναστατικό και διεθνιστικό. Σε
αντίθεση, το ΚΚΕ συνθηκολογεί με τον ελληνικό εθνικισμό, που είναι το κύριο εμπόδιο για το
χτίσιμο ενός επαναστατικού κόμματος στην Ελλάδα. Η προοπτική της «λαϊκής εξουσίας» διαλύει το
προλεταριάτο – την μόνη τάξη με τη δύναμη να ανατρέψει τον καπιταλισμό – σε «λαό» και θολώνει
την ταξική γραμμή, τη βασική διαίρεση στην καπιταλιστική κοινωνία. Ο λαϊκισμός του ΚΚΕ – που
εκφράζεται ως «ο λαός» ενάντια «στα μονοπώλια» - αντιτίθεται στην ταξική ανεξαρτησία του
προλεταριάτου από την αστική τάξη.
Οι βίαιες ρατσιστικές επιθέσεις σε μετανάστες από τις αφηνιασμένες φασιστικές συμμορίες της Χρυσής Αυγής θέτουν την άμεση ανάγκη για την κινητοποίηση εργατικών τμημάτων για να υπερασπιστούν τους μετανάστες και για να καθαρίσουν το φασιστικό δηλητήριο από τους δρόμους. Το ΚΚΕ έχει το κοινωνικό βάρος στα εργατικά σωματεία για να το κάνει, αλλά ο εθνικιστικός λαϊκισμός αποτελεί εμπόδιο σε αυτό. Αντί να κινητοποιήσει τους εργάτες και τους μετανάστες εναντίον της Χρυσής Αυγής, η οποία αντιπροσωπεύει μία απειλή σε ολόκληρη την οργανωμένη εργατική τάξη, το ΚΚΕ κάνει έκκληση για ψήφο στα ίδια καθυστερημένα στρώματα του πληθυσμού που ψήφισαν τα φασιστικά αποβράσματα, απαιτώντας: «Οι εργαζόμενοι που ψήφισαν την Χρυσή Αυγή πρέπει να διορθώσουν την ψήφο τους» (Σχόλιο του Γραφείου Τύπου για την επίθεση μελών της Χρυσής Αυγής εναντίον μεταναστών, 2 Ιουνίου).
Το ΚΚΕ παραδέχεται ότι: «Κατά την διάρκεια της δεκαετίας του 1950 και του 1980, το ΚΚΕ σχημάτισε “αριστερές συμμαχίες”» και υποστηρίζει ότι «έχει αντλήσει πολύτιμα συμπεράσματα από τις εμπειρίες του αναφορικά με την πολιτική των συμμαχιών και δεν προτίθεται να επαναλάβει παρόμοια λάθη» (“Between two tough battles”, 23 Μαΐου). Αυτά δεν ήταν λάθη αλλά προδοσίες που προέρχονται από το Σταλινικό τους πρόγραμμα. Παρά την άρνηση του ΚΚΕ να συμμετέχει σε μία κυβέρνηση συνασπισμού τώρα, δεν έχει σπάσει πολιτικά με το πρόγραμμα που το οδήγησε να συμμετέχει σε αστικές κυβερνήσεις στο παρελθόν.
Η διεθνής μας τάση πάλεψε ενεργά, στο όριο των δυνάμεών μας, για την υπεράσπιση της Σοβιετικής Ένωσης ενάντια στην αντεπανάσταση. Επίσης σταθήκαμε για μία προλεταριακή πολιτική επανάσταση ενάντια στην Σταλινική γραφειοκρατία, της οποίας οι πολιτικές του «σοσιαλισμού σε μία μόνη χώρα» και της «ειρηνικής συνύπαρξης» με τον ιμπεριαλισμό υπονόμευσαν την υπεράσπιση της ΕΣΣΔ και τελικά οδήγησαν στον θρίαμβο της αντεπανάστασης το 1991-92, μία ήττα για τις παγκόσμιες εργατικές μάζες.
Μαζί με αυτό το κάλεσμα για ψήφο στο ΚΚΕ διανέμουμε μαζικά το άρθρο «Οι Τράπεζες Ματώνουν τους Έλληνες Εργαζόμενους» για να εισάγουμε σε ένα μεγαλύτερο ακροατήριο τις ευρύτερες πολιτικές μας απόψεις. Αναζητούμε να ενώσουμε σε ένα πολιτικό σχηματισμό αυτές τις δυνάμεις που συμφωνούν με τις πολιτικές που εκφράζονται σε αυτό το άρθρο.
ΤΟΕ
From The Pen Of American Trotskysist Founding Leader James P. Cannon-On Anarchsim- A Letter
James P. Cannon On Anarchism
The following letter to Myra Tanner Weiss from James P.
Cannon has never been previously published.
Los Angeles, Calif.
July 29, 1955
Dear Myra:
I received your letter of June 9. Sending you my IWW
pamphlet was really a bit of sly calculation on my part. I
knew my IWW pamphlet would stir up the old Wobbly
in you.
Murry may be partly right in interpreting my sending
the pamphlet to you as a recognition that you are an
“anarchist.” But he is dead wrong to deprecate the term
as such. Anarchism is all right when it is under the control
of organization. This may seem a contradiction in terms,
but if it were not for the anarchism in us as individuals
we wouldn’t need the discipline of organization. The
revolutionary party represents a dialectical unity of opposites.
In one sense it is, in effect, the fusion of the rebel
instincts of individuals with the intellectual recognition
that their rebellion can be effective only when they are
combined and united into a single striking force which
only a disciplined organization can supply.
In my young days I was very friendly to the anarchists,
and was an anarchist myself by nature. I dearly loved that
word “freedom,” which was the biggest word in the
anarchist vocabulary. But my impulse to go all the way
with them was blocked by recognition that the re-organization
of society, which alone can make real freedom
possible, cannot be achieved without organization, and
that organization signifies discipline and the subordination
of the individual to the majority. I wanted to have
my cake and eat it too—in fact, I still have the same
idea—but I have never yet been able to figure out exactly
how it could be done.
People who have grown up since the Russian Revolution
and the First World War don’t know and can’t have
a real feel of what the anarchist movement was before that
time, before its theoretical assumptions had been put to
the decisive test. Anarchism was then regarded as the
most extreme form of radicalism. The anarchists had
some wonderful people; they claimed the heritage of the
Haymarket martyrs, and they were greatly respected in
all radical circles. When Emma Goldman and Alexander
Berkman came to Kansas City on lecture tours, we Wobblies
used to pitch in and promote their meetings as a
matter of course.
Goldman was a great orator, one of the best I every
heard, and Berkman was a heroic figure of pure nobility.
It was he who organized the first defense committee and
movement for the defense of Tom Mooney, after he had
been convicted and was on the way to the gallows, when
everybody else was cowed and afraid to raise a voice. I
remember his coming to Kansas City on a nation-wide
tour to arrange the first net-work of Mooney Defense
Committees, and I recall fondly and proudly the fact that
I was an active member of this first committee organized
by Berkman. (Me and Browder!)
The impulses of the original anarchists were wonderful,
but their theory was faulty, and it could not survive
the test of war and revolution. It is shameful to recall that
the Spanish anarchists became ministers in a bourgeois
cabinet in the time of the Spanish Revolution; and that
old-time American anarchists in New York, or rather
what was left of them, became social patriots in the
Second World War. Nothing is so fatal as a false theory.
If I get wound up some day I will write something
about the anarchist movement in America, as it was in the
days before the First World W a r.
So you’re really living it up these days as a full-time
party functionary and housewife. You had better not let
Murry read my chapter in “America’s Road to Socialism”
about the coming jail-break of the housewives from their
kitchens. He might get so scared at the prospect as to turn
against socialism, and we don’t want to risk that.
The weather’s cool and crisp here today, as usual in
this time of the year. How are things on the weather front
in New York? The L.A. papers have been printing a lot of
scare stories about the devastating heat in all parts of the
country outside California. What’s bad weather really
like? I can’t remember.
Fraternally,
J.P. Cannon
The following letter to Myra Tanner Weiss from James P.
Cannon has never been previously published.
Los Angeles, Calif.
July 29, 1955
Dear Myra:
I received your letter of June 9. Sending you my IWW
pamphlet was really a bit of sly calculation on my part. I
knew my IWW pamphlet would stir up the old Wobbly
in you.
Murry may be partly right in interpreting my sending
the pamphlet to you as a recognition that you are an
“anarchist.” But he is dead wrong to deprecate the term
as such. Anarchism is all right when it is under the control
of organization. This may seem a contradiction in terms,
but if it were not for the anarchism in us as individuals
we wouldn’t need the discipline of organization. The
revolutionary party represents a dialectical unity of opposites.
In one sense it is, in effect, the fusion of the rebel
instincts of individuals with the intellectual recognition
that their rebellion can be effective only when they are
combined and united into a single striking force which
only a disciplined organization can supply.
In my young days I was very friendly to the anarchists,
and was an anarchist myself by nature. I dearly loved that
word “freedom,” which was the biggest word in the
anarchist vocabulary. But my impulse to go all the way
with them was blocked by recognition that the re-organization
of society, which alone can make real freedom
possible, cannot be achieved without organization, and
that organization signifies discipline and the subordination
of the individual to the majority. I wanted to have
my cake and eat it too—in fact, I still have the same
idea—but I have never yet been able to figure out exactly
how it could be done.
People who have grown up since the Russian Revolution
and the First World War don’t know and can’t have
a real feel of what the anarchist movement was before that
time, before its theoretical assumptions had been put to
the decisive test. Anarchism was then regarded as the
most extreme form of radicalism. The anarchists had
some wonderful people; they claimed the heritage of the
Haymarket martyrs, and they were greatly respected in
all radical circles. When Emma Goldman and Alexander
Berkman came to Kansas City on lecture tours, we Wobblies
used to pitch in and promote their meetings as a
matter of course.
Goldman was a great orator, one of the best I every
heard, and Berkman was a heroic figure of pure nobility.
It was he who organized the first defense committee and
movement for the defense of Tom Mooney, after he had
been convicted and was on the way to the gallows, when
everybody else was cowed and afraid to raise a voice. I
remember his coming to Kansas City on a nation-wide
tour to arrange the first net-work of Mooney Defense
Committees, and I recall fondly and proudly the fact that
I was an active member of this first committee organized
by Berkman. (Me and Browder!)
The impulses of the original anarchists were wonderful,
but their theory was faulty, and it could not survive
the test of war and revolution. It is shameful to recall that
the Spanish anarchists became ministers in a bourgeois
cabinet in the time of the Spanish Revolution; and that
old-time American anarchists in New York, or rather
what was left of them, became social patriots in the
Second World War. Nothing is so fatal as a false theory.
If I get wound up some day I will write something
about the anarchist movement in America, as it was in the
days before the First World W a r.
So you’re really living it up these days as a full-time
party functionary and housewife. You had better not let
Murry read my chapter in “America’s Road to Socialism”
about the coming jail-break of the housewives from their
kitchens. He might get so scared at the prospect as to turn
against socialism, and we don’t want to risk that.
The weather’s cool and crisp here today, as usual in
this time of the year. How are things on the weather front
in New York? The L.A. papers have been printing a lot of
scare stories about the devastating heat in all parts of the
country outside California. What’s bad weather really
like? I can’t remember.
Fraternally,
J.P. Cannon
Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Time Of Laura’s Time- Magical Realism 101
Scene: A smoky sunless nameless, or rather legion, bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home down in sad sack Kentucky long gone daddy left years before and gladly times. Order another deadened drink, high- end beer these days, gone are rotgut whiskey (or high blend when in the chips) accompanied by that self-same beer, slightly benny-addled. Then, like some misbegotten scene out of Rick’s Café, in walks a vision. A million times in walks a vision, in a million walk in bars, some frail, naturally, but in white linen this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches searching for meaningful shells, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Yes, that seems about right, right against the inflation -beggared times right, and mean street break-down right. And then this tale:
Walking down the narrow stairs leading to the admission window booth at Johnny Fleet’s in good old Harvard Square on this cold Columbus Day 1978 night, jesus 1978 is almost gone already, I was suddenly depressed by this thought-how many times lately had I walked down these very stairs looking, looking for what, looking, as Tom Waits says in his song, for the heart of Saturday night, looking recently every night from Monday to Sunday and not just Saturday. Looking, not hard looking, not right now hard looking anyway after my last nitwit affair, but looking for a man who at least has a job, doesn’t have another girlfriend or ten, and who wants to settle down a little, settle down with me a little. Yes, if you really need to know, want to know, I’ve got those late twenties getting just a touch worried old maid blues.
My parents, my straight-arrow, god-fearing, Methodist god-fearing and that is a fierce fearing, hard-working, lost in some 1950s dreamland parents, my mother really, my father just keeps his own counsel between shots of whiskey and trying to read the latest seed catalogues that keep him and his business alive through the haze, keeps badgering me about finding a nice young man. Yes, easy for you to say you don’t know the nitwits who are out there and they ain’t Rickey Nelson dream jukebox guys, Mother. And then she starts on the coming home, coming home to cranky Mechanicsville (that’s in upstate New York, near Albany, if you don’t believe me) and finding some farmer-grown boy from high school and X, Y, and Z, farmer boys all, still asks about me. No thanks, jesus, that is why I fled to Boston right after college in 1972 (and fled to a far-away, and a no living at home college too but don’t tell her that) and not just because I wanted to get my social worker master’s degree like I told them. And so here I am, a few years later, walking down these skinny stairs again, sigh, yet again.
Johnny’s (nobody calls it Johnny Fleet’s except for one-time people or tourists) isn’t a bad place to hang your hat, as my father always likes to say, when he finds that one or two places in the universe outside of the farm where he feels comfortable enough to stay more than ten minutes before getting the “I’ve got to go water the greenhouse plants” or something itch (read: drink itch). Not a bad place for a woman, a twenty–eight year old woman with college degrees and some aims in life beyond some one-night stand every now and again. Or not a bad place for a pair of women, if my friend and roommate, Priscilla, decides she is man-hungry enough to make the trip to Harvard Square from the wilds of Watertown, and can stand the heavy smoke, mainly cigarette smoke as far as I know, but after a few drinks who knows, that fills the air before the night is half over.
Tonight Priscilla is with me because she has a “crush” on Albie St John, the lead singer for the featured local rock group, The Haystraws. And the last time she was here he was giving her that look like he was game for something although he is known around the Square as strictly a “for fun” guy. And that is okay with Priscilla because she has some guy back home some guy from upstate New York where she is from near Utica, some fresh from the farm guy who she has known since about third grade, who will marry her if and when she says the word.
Here is the funny thing though alone, or like tonight with Priscilla, this funky old bar is the only place around where a woman can find a guy who is the least bit presentable to the folks back home, wherever back home is. I’ve met a couple of decent guys in here, although like I said before, things didn’t work out for some reason because they were one-night stand guys or already loaded down with girlfriends and I am in no mood to take a ticket, stuff like that. So you can see what desperate straits I am in still trying to meet that right guy, or something close, without a lot of overhead. My standards may be a little high for the times but I’m chipping away at them by the day.
Moreover, this place, this Johnny’s is the only place around that has the kind of music I like, a little country although not Grand Ole Opry country stuff like my parents go for, you know George Jones or Aunt Bee, or someone. And is a little bit folkie, kind of left-handed folkie, more like local favorite Eric Andersen folk rock, and a little old time let it rip 1950s rock and roll, like The Haystraws cover. You know, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, those guys, that I never knew anything about when I was a kid since I never got past Rickey Nelson and Bobby Darin, darn him, out in the farm field sticks. Upstate New York, like I said, not far out of Albany but it might as well have been a million miles away with me picking my sting beans, tomatoes, and whatever else pa grew to keep us from hunger’s door.
Not for me this trendy disco stuff, not my style at all, no way, although I love to dance and even took belly dancing lessons although I am not voluptuous, more just left of skinny if I say it but really voluptuous Priscilla calls me just skinny. Also my kind of guy would never, never wear an open shirt and some chainy medallion around his neck. Jesus, no way. Plus, a big plus, Johnny’s has a jukebox for intermissions filled with all kinds of odd-ball songs, real country, stuff, late 1950s rock and roll (the Rickey Nelson/Bobby Vee/Bobby Darin stuff) that nobody but me probably ever heard of unless, of course, you were from Mechanicsville, or a place like that.
After going through mandatory license check and admission fee stuff, saying “hi” to the waitresses that I know now by name, and Priscilla does too, and the regular bartenders as we pass by we find our seats, kind of “reserved” seats for us where we can sit and not be hassled by guys, or be hassled if something interesting comes along. I have been in kind of a dry spell, outside the occasional minute affair if one could really call some of the “affairs” even that, for about six months now. Ever since I started to work, work doing social work, my profession, if you need to know. That’s what I am trained to do anyway although when I first came to town a few years ago I was, as one beau back then said, “serving them off the arm” in a spaghetti joint over the other side of Cambridge. Strictly a family fare menu and plenty of college guys including a few who I wound up dating, low on funds doing the cheap Saturday night date circuit. All in all a “no tips” situation anyway you cut it, although plenty of guff, a lot of come-ons, and extra helpings of “get me this and get me that.”
Before that, out in Rochester in college, and later after a short stop at hometown Mechanicsville it was nothing but wanna-be cowboy losers, an occasional low-rent dope dealer, some wanna-be musicians, farmer brown farmers, and married guys looking for a little something on a cold night. Ya, I know, I asked for it but a girl gets cold and lonely too. Not just guys, not these days anyway. But I am still pitching, although very low-key. That is my public style (some say, say right to my face, prim but that’s only to fend off the losers).
“Laura, what are you having, tonight honey?’ asked my “regular” waitress, Lannie, and then asked Priscilla the same. “Two Rusty Nails,” we replied. Tonight, from a quick glance around the room even though it is a Columbus Day holiday night, looks like it is going to be a hard-drinking night from the feel of it. That means on my budget and my capacity about three drinks, max. About the same for Priscilla unless she is real man-hungry. But that is just between us, okay. Lannie, as is her habit, knowing that we are good tippers (the bonds of waitress sisterhood as Priscilla has also “served them off the arm”) brought the drinks right away. And so we settled in get ready to listen to The Haystraws coming up in a while for their first set. Or rather I did the settling in. Priscilla was looking, looking hard at Albie, and he was looking right back. I guess I will be driving home alone tonight.
As I settled in I noticed that some guy was playing the jukebox like crazy. Like crazy for real. He kept playing about three old timey LaVern Baker songs, Jim Dandy of course, and See See Rider but also about six times in a row her Tomorrow Night. I was kind of glad when the band, like I said, these really good rockers, The Haystraws, began their first set. And so the evening was off, good, bad, or indifferent.
About half way through the set I noticed this jukebox guy kept kind of looking at me, kind of “checking” me out without being rude about it. You know those little half-looks and then look away kind of like kid hide-and-seek and back again. Now I have around long enough to know that I am not bad to look at even if I am a little skinny and I take time to get ready when I go out, especially lately, and although times have been tough lately I am easy to get to know but this guy kind of put me on my guard a little. He was about thirty, neatly bearded which I like and okay for looks, I have been with worst. But what I couldn’t figure out, and it bothered me a little even when I tried to avoid his peeks (as he “avoided” mine) is why he was in this place.
Johnny’s, despite its locale in the heart of Harvard Square, is kind of an oasis for country girls like me, or half-country girls like Priscilla (from upstate New York too, Utica, in case you forgot) and guys the same way although once in a while a Harvard guy from the sticks comes around (or a guy who says he goes to Harvard. I have met some who made the claim who I don’t think could spell the name of the college, I swear). This guy looked like Harvard Square was his home turf and if he found himself five feet from a well-lighted street, a library, or a bookstore he would freak out big time. He might have been an old folkie, maybe early Dylan or Dave Von Ronk that nasal hard to understand kind of stuff, he had that feel, or maybe a bluesy kind of guy, Muddy Waters maybe, but he was strictly a city boy and was just cruising this joint.
But here is where this jukebox joe story gets interesting. At intermission Priscilla had to run to the ladies’ room and on the way this guy, Allan Jackman, as I found out later when he introduced himself to me, stopped her and said that her brunette friend looked very nice in her white linen pants and blouse. He then said to her that he would like to meet me. Priscilla, a veteran of the Laura wars (and I of hers), had the snappy answer ready, “Go introduce yourself, yourself.” And he did start to come over but I kind of turned away to avoid him just in case he had escaped from somewhere (ya, like I said before my luck has been running a little rough lately so I am a little gun-shy). Still he worked his way over.
And this is the very first thing that Allan ever said to me. “I noticed that you kind of perked up when I played LaVern Baker’s Tomorrow Night. Have you been disappointed when things didn’t work out after that first night of promise too, like in the song?” Not an original line, but close. I answered almost automatically, “Yes.” Then he introduced himself and just kind of stood there not trying to sit down or anything like that waiting for me to make the next move. Then Priscilla came back and said she had run into Albie St. John and he wanted to “talk” to her before the band came back for a second set (she said with a certain twist like she was doing him this big favor and not like she was practically drooling at the idea. Like I said I am definitely driving home alone today.). She left and Allan was still standing there, a little ill at ease from his look. Befuddled by his soft non-threatening demeanor , and soft manners, I was not sure if I wanted him to sit down or not but then I said what the hell, he seems nice enough and at least he was not drunk.
So he sat down, and gently, actually very gently, shook my hand and said “thank you” for letting me let him sit at the table. In the flush of reaction to that gentle handshake, I swear no man had ever taken my hand in such a manly manner without guile or gimme something before, I relaxed a little and asked him, not an origin question but I was curious, what brought him to Johnny’s. He started to tell me about his country minute, about finding out about the wild boys of country music, about Hank Williams (I winched, that was my father’s music) about this guy Townes Van Zandt and so on.
And then he said he was looking for me. I winched again. Not another crazy. No, not me exactly, but me as a person who he sensed had been kind of beaten down in the love game lately like he had. He said he saw that look in my face, in my eyes, when he kind of half-checked me out at the jukebox. (I made him laugh when I said we were kid-hide-and-seeking earlier). I said I thought he had fully “checked me out” but he would only confess to the half. We both laughed at that one.
And after that opening, strange to say, because being a country girl, and being brought up in a Methodist-etched household to keep my thoughts to myself, or else, or else Dad would have a fit, I started to talk to him about my troubles lately. And he listened and kept asking more questions, not in-your- face questions, but questions like he was really interested in the answers and not as some fiendish experiment to take advantage of a simple girl. And then I asked him a few things and before we knew it the evening’s entertainment was over and Lannie kept telling us that we had to go. I still had some doubts about this guy, this city boy and his city ways, and his fierce piercing blue eyes that could be true or truly devilish.
As we got up to leave he asked, kind of sheepishly with a little stutter, asked, for my telephone number. No “my place or your place, honey,” or “let’s go down the Charles and have some fun,” or “I brought you six drinks (we had each bought our own) and so I expect something more” or any of that usual end of the night stuff that I have become somewhat inured to. He simply, softly, said he wanted it because he wanted to call me up tomorrow night. We kind of laughed at that seeing the way we met, before we met. I hesitated just a minute and he, sensing my dilemma, started to turn to leave. A guy who knows how to take no for an answer, or the possibility of no, without recrimination or fuss. Wait a minute, Laura. Before he took two steps I blurted out my number. And then put it on a cocktail napkin for him. As I passed the glass wet napkin to him he said he would call about seven if that was okay. I said yes. And then he shook my hand, shook it even more gently than when he introduced himself, if that was possible. I flushed again as he headed to the door. Something in that handshake said you had better not let this one get away. Something that said you had better be near the phone at 7:00 PM tomorrow night waiting for his call. And I will be.
Walking down the narrow stairs leading to the admission window booth at Johnny Fleet’s in good old Harvard Square on this cold Columbus Day 1978 night, jesus 1978 is almost gone already, I was suddenly depressed by this thought-how many times lately had I walked down these very stairs looking, looking for what, looking, as Tom Waits says in his song, for the heart of Saturday night, looking recently every night from Monday to Sunday and not just Saturday. Looking, not hard looking, not right now hard looking anyway after my last nitwit affair, but looking for a man who at least has a job, doesn’t have another girlfriend or ten, and who wants to settle down a little, settle down with me a little. Yes, if you really need to know, want to know, I’ve got those late twenties getting just a touch worried old maid blues.
My parents, my straight-arrow, god-fearing, Methodist god-fearing and that is a fierce fearing, hard-working, lost in some 1950s dreamland parents, my mother really, my father just keeps his own counsel between shots of whiskey and trying to read the latest seed catalogues that keep him and his business alive through the haze, keeps badgering me about finding a nice young man. Yes, easy for you to say you don’t know the nitwits who are out there and they ain’t Rickey Nelson dream jukebox guys, Mother. And then she starts on the coming home, coming home to cranky Mechanicsville (that’s in upstate New York, near Albany, if you don’t believe me) and finding some farmer-grown boy from high school and X, Y, and Z, farmer boys all, still asks about me. No thanks, jesus, that is why I fled to Boston right after college in 1972 (and fled to a far-away, and a no living at home college too but don’t tell her that) and not just because I wanted to get my social worker master’s degree like I told them. And so here I am, a few years later, walking down these skinny stairs again, sigh, yet again.
Johnny’s (nobody calls it Johnny Fleet’s except for one-time people or tourists) isn’t a bad place to hang your hat, as my father always likes to say, when he finds that one or two places in the universe outside of the farm where he feels comfortable enough to stay more than ten minutes before getting the “I’ve got to go water the greenhouse plants” or something itch (read: drink itch). Not a bad place for a woman, a twenty–eight year old woman with college degrees and some aims in life beyond some one-night stand every now and again. Or not a bad place for a pair of women, if my friend and roommate, Priscilla, decides she is man-hungry enough to make the trip to Harvard Square from the wilds of Watertown, and can stand the heavy smoke, mainly cigarette smoke as far as I know, but after a few drinks who knows, that fills the air before the night is half over.
Tonight Priscilla is with me because she has a “crush” on Albie St John, the lead singer for the featured local rock group, The Haystraws. And the last time she was here he was giving her that look like he was game for something although he is known around the Square as strictly a “for fun” guy. And that is okay with Priscilla because she has some guy back home some guy from upstate New York where she is from near Utica, some fresh from the farm guy who she has known since about third grade, who will marry her if and when she says the word.
Here is the funny thing though alone, or like tonight with Priscilla, this funky old bar is the only place around where a woman can find a guy who is the least bit presentable to the folks back home, wherever back home is. I’ve met a couple of decent guys in here, although like I said before, things didn’t work out for some reason because they were one-night stand guys or already loaded down with girlfriends and I am in no mood to take a ticket, stuff like that. So you can see what desperate straits I am in still trying to meet that right guy, or something close, without a lot of overhead. My standards may be a little high for the times but I’m chipping away at them by the day.
Moreover, this place, this Johnny’s is the only place around that has the kind of music I like, a little country although not Grand Ole Opry country stuff like my parents go for, you know George Jones or Aunt Bee, or someone. And is a little bit folkie, kind of left-handed folkie, more like local favorite Eric Andersen folk rock, and a little old time let it rip 1950s rock and roll, like The Haystraws cover. You know, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, those guys, that I never knew anything about when I was a kid since I never got past Rickey Nelson and Bobby Darin, darn him, out in the farm field sticks. Upstate New York, like I said, not far out of Albany but it might as well have been a million miles away with me picking my sting beans, tomatoes, and whatever else pa grew to keep us from hunger’s door.
Not for me this trendy disco stuff, not my style at all, no way, although I love to dance and even took belly dancing lessons although I am not voluptuous, more just left of skinny if I say it but really voluptuous Priscilla calls me just skinny. Also my kind of guy would never, never wear an open shirt and some chainy medallion around his neck. Jesus, no way. Plus, a big plus, Johnny’s has a jukebox for intermissions filled with all kinds of odd-ball songs, real country, stuff, late 1950s rock and roll (the Rickey Nelson/Bobby Vee/Bobby Darin stuff) that nobody but me probably ever heard of unless, of course, you were from Mechanicsville, or a place like that.
After going through mandatory license check and admission fee stuff, saying “hi” to the waitresses that I know now by name, and Priscilla does too, and the regular bartenders as we pass by we find our seats, kind of “reserved” seats for us where we can sit and not be hassled by guys, or be hassled if something interesting comes along. I have been in kind of a dry spell, outside the occasional minute affair if one could really call some of the “affairs” even that, for about six months now. Ever since I started to work, work doing social work, my profession, if you need to know. That’s what I am trained to do anyway although when I first came to town a few years ago I was, as one beau back then said, “serving them off the arm” in a spaghetti joint over the other side of Cambridge. Strictly a family fare menu and plenty of college guys including a few who I wound up dating, low on funds doing the cheap Saturday night date circuit. All in all a “no tips” situation anyway you cut it, although plenty of guff, a lot of come-ons, and extra helpings of “get me this and get me that.”
Before that, out in Rochester in college, and later after a short stop at hometown Mechanicsville it was nothing but wanna-be cowboy losers, an occasional low-rent dope dealer, some wanna-be musicians, farmer brown farmers, and married guys looking for a little something on a cold night. Ya, I know, I asked for it but a girl gets cold and lonely too. Not just guys, not these days anyway. But I am still pitching, although very low-key. That is my public style (some say, say right to my face, prim but that’s only to fend off the losers).
“Laura, what are you having, tonight honey?’ asked my “regular” waitress, Lannie, and then asked Priscilla the same. “Two Rusty Nails,” we replied. Tonight, from a quick glance around the room even though it is a Columbus Day holiday night, looks like it is going to be a hard-drinking night from the feel of it. That means on my budget and my capacity about three drinks, max. About the same for Priscilla unless she is real man-hungry. But that is just between us, okay. Lannie, as is her habit, knowing that we are good tippers (the bonds of waitress sisterhood as Priscilla has also “served them off the arm”) brought the drinks right away. And so we settled in get ready to listen to The Haystraws coming up in a while for their first set. Or rather I did the settling in. Priscilla was looking, looking hard at Albie, and he was looking right back. I guess I will be driving home alone tonight.
As I settled in I noticed that some guy was playing the jukebox like crazy. Like crazy for real. He kept playing about three old timey LaVern Baker songs, Jim Dandy of course, and See See Rider but also about six times in a row her Tomorrow Night. I was kind of glad when the band, like I said, these really good rockers, The Haystraws, began their first set. And so the evening was off, good, bad, or indifferent.
About half way through the set I noticed this jukebox guy kept kind of looking at me, kind of “checking” me out without being rude about it. You know those little half-looks and then look away kind of like kid hide-and-seek and back again. Now I have around long enough to know that I am not bad to look at even if I am a little skinny and I take time to get ready when I go out, especially lately, and although times have been tough lately I am easy to get to know but this guy kind of put me on my guard a little. He was about thirty, neatly bearded which I like and okay for looks, I have been with worst. But what I couldn’t figure out, and it bothered me a little even when I tried to avoid his peeks (as he “avoided” mine) is why he was in this place.
Johnny’s, despite its locale in the heart of Harvard Square, is kind of an oasis for country girls like me, or half-country girls like Priscilla (from upstate New York too, Utica, in case you forgot) and guys the same way although once in a while a Harvard guy from the sticks comes around (or a guy who says he goes to Harvard. I have met some who made the claim who I don’t think could spell the name of the college, I swear). This guy looked like Harvard Square was his home turf and if he found himself five feet from a well-lighted street, a library, or a bookstore he would freak out big time. He might have been an old folkie, maybe early Dylan or Dave Von Ronk that nasal hard to understand kind of stuff, he had that feel, or maybe a bluesy kind of guy, Muddy Waters maybe, but he was strictly a city boy and was just cruising this joint.
But here is where this jukebox joe story gets interesting. At intermission Priscilla had to run to the ladies’ room and on the way this guy, Allan Jackman, as I found out later when he introduced himself to me, stopped her and said that her brunette friend looked very nice in her white linen pants and blouse. He then said to her that he would like to meet me. Priscilla, a veteran of the Laura wars (and I of hers), had the snappy answer ready, “Go introduce yourself, yourself.” And he did start to come over but I kind of turned away to avoid him just in case he had escaped from somewhere (ya, like I said before my luck has been running a little rough lately so I am a little gun-shy). Still he worked his way over.
And this is the very first thing that Allan ever said to me. “I noticed that you kind of perked up when I played LaVern Baker’s Tomorrow Night. Have you been disappointed when things didn’t work out after that first night of promise too, like in the song?” Not an original line, but close. I answered almost automatically, “Yes.” Then he introduced himself and just kind of stood there not trying to sit down or anything like that waiting for me to make the next move. Then Priscilla came back and said she had run into Albie St. John and he wanted to “talk” to her before the band came back for a second set (she said with a certain twist like she was doing him this big favor and not like she was practically drooling at the idea. Like I said I am definitely driving home alone today.). She left and Allan was still standing there, a little ill at ease from his look. Befuddled by his soft non-threatening demeanor , and soft manners, I was not sure if I wanted him to sit down or not but then I said what the hell, he seems nice enough and at least he was not drunk.
So he sat down, and gently, actually very gently, shook my hand and said “thank you” for letting me let him sit at the table. In the flush of reaction to that gentle handshake, I swear no man had ever taken my hand in such a manly manner without guile or gimme something before, I relaxed a little and asked him, not an origin question but I was curious, what brought him to Johnny’s. He started to tell me about his country minute, about finding out about the wild boys of country music, about Hank Williams (I winched, that was my father’s music) about this guy Townes Van Zandt and so on.
And then he said he was looking for me. I winched again. Not another crazy. No, not me exactly, but me as a person who he sensed had been kind of beaten down in the love game lately like he had. He said he saw that look in my face, in my eyes, when he kind of half-checked me out at the jukebox. (I made him laugh when I said we were kid-hide-and-seeking earlier). I said I thought he had fully “checked me out” but he would only confess to the half. We both laughed at that one.
And after that opening, strange to say, because being a country girl, and being brought up in a Methodist-etched household to keep my thoughts to myself, or else, or else Dad would have a fit, I started to talk to him about my troubles lately. And he listened and kept asking more questions, not in-your- face questions, but questions like he was really interested in the answers and not as some fiendish experiment to take advantage of a simple girl. And then I asked him a few things and before we knew it the evening’s entertainment was over and Lannie kept telling us that we had to go. I still had some doubts about this guy, this city boy and his city ways, and his fierce piercing blue eyes that could be true or truly devilish.
As we got up to leave he asked, kind of sheepishly with a little stutter, asked, for my telephone number. No “my place or your place, honey,” or “let’s go down the Charles and have some fun,” or “I brought you six drinks (we had each bought our own) and so I expect something more” or any of that usual end of the night stuff that I have become somewhat inured to. He simply, softly, said he wanted it because he wanted to call me up tomorrow night. We kind of laughed at that seeing the way we met, before we met. I hesitated just a minute and he, sensing my dilemma, started to turn to leave. A guy who knows how to take no for an answer, or the possibility of no, without recrimination or fuss. Wait a minute, Laura. Before he took two steps I blurted out my number. And then put it on a cocktail napkin for him. As I passed the glass wet napkin to him he said he would call about seven if that was okay. I said yes. And then he shook my hand, shook it even more gently than when he introduced himself, if that was possible. I flushed again as he headed to the door. Something in that handshake said you had better not let this one get away. Something that said you had better be near the phone at 7:00 PM tomorrow night waiting for his call. And I will be.
From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-The Embryo Of An Alternate Government-Learn The Lessons Of History-Lessons From The Utopian Socialists- Charles Fourier and The Phalanx Movement-“Universal Harmony”
Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
*******
Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
**********
In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.
Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
*******
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Universal Harmony”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Année 1851.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The calculus of Harmony, for which Madame A. F. seeks publicity, is a discovery that the human race was far from expecting. It is a mathematical theory concerning the destinies of all the globes and their inhabitants, a theory of the sixteen social orders which can be established on the diverse globes throughout eternity.
Of the sixteen possible societies, only three are to be seen on our globe: Savagery, Barbarism and Civilisation. Soon they will come to an end, and all the nations of the earth will enter the fifteenth stage which is Simple Harmony.
Great men of all the centuries! Newton and Leibnitz, Voltaire and Rousseau, do you know in what you are great? In blindness. You will soon seem like no more than great madmen for having thought that civilisation was the social destiny of the human race. How could you have failed to understand that these three societies, the savage, the barbarian and the civilised, are but rungs to be climbed, that they are reason’s age of childhood and imbecility, and that God would be improvident if he had conceived of nothing better adapted to human happiness? These three societies are the most disastrous among the sixteen. Of the sixteen there are seven which will see the establishment of perpetual peace, universal unity, the liberty of women.
I owe this astonishing discovery to the analytic and synthetic calculus of passionate attraction which our savants have deemed unworthy of attention during their two thousand five hundred years of study. They have discovered the laws of material movement; that’s all very well, but it doesn’t get rid of poverty. It was necessary to discover the laws of social movement. Their invention is going to lead the human race to opulence, to sensual pleasures, to the unity of the globe. I repeat, this theory will be geometrical and applied to the physical sciences. It is not an arbitrary doctrine like the political and moral sciences, which are going to meet a sad fate. There is going to be a great disaster at the libraries.
If ever war was deplorable, it is at this moment. Soon the victors will be on the same level as the vanquished. What point is there in conquests when the entire globe will comprise but a single nation, will be run by a single administration? In spite of this unity, there will be no equality in harmony.
To the chief of France can be reserved the honour of extracting the human race from social chaos, of being the founder of Harmony and the liberator of the globe. The rewards which this honour entails will not be modest, and they will be transmitted in perpetuity to the descendants of the founder.
Some readers will cry out: “dream,” “visionary.” Patience! In a short time we will wake them from their own frightful dream, the dream of civilisation. Blind savants, just look at your cities paved with beggars, your citizens struggling against hunger, your battlefields and all your social infamies. Do you still believe that civilisation is the destiny of the human race? Or was J.-J. Rousseau right in saying of the civilised: “These are not men; there is a disorder in things, the cause of which we have not yet fathomed.”
*******
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Letter to the High Judge”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
Written: December 1803;
First Published: Lettre de Fourier au Grand Juge , Charles Pellarin (ed.), Paris, 1874 and as an appendix to J-J. Hemardinquer, “Notes critiques sur le jeune Fourier,” Le Mouvement social, No. 48 (July-September, 1964), pp. 50-69.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lyon, 4 Nivose, Year XI[1]
Citizen High Judge:
It is with respect to a trivial matter that I am going to bring you great news. Allow me half a page concerning this trifle which is the occasion for the revelation of universal harmony.
I have been informed that a few individuals have sent you their critical comments about my article on the “Triumvirate” of which I am enclosing a copy. It seems to me that the police commissioner handles the matter perfectly well. I have talked with him, and I will follow his instructions.
On a number of occasions I have sent political missives to the Directory or to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have always received complimentary letters in reply. I presume that the article on the “Triumvirate” will likewise be appreciated in its essence, even though it might be deficient in its style since it was written hastily. Although the ideas which it contains run counter to current policies, they are only all the more worthy of attention. The situation is menacing. Upon the outbreak of continental war, one of the two German empires will be divided up, and then the triumvirate will be a reality. From the outset it will actually be no more than a duumvirate; for Germany, unprotected and caught between the two rivals, will become a vassal of one or the other. But the duumvirate will still be only a trap for France; and when I warn my country that it is likely to be defeated in a subsequent conflict, that Russia will have the means to strike some decisive blows, and that France will have very few advantages in its favor, I am asserting nothing that I could not prove in the greatest detail. I dare to believe that this warning will win the approbation of the government rather than its disapproval, and that the printer who published it, out of confidence in me, will be given no trouble.[2]
But this is not the matter which I propose to discuss with you. These disputes of civilisation are no more than child’s play in the present circumstances. An event of much greater importance is brewing, and I wish to make it known to the government:
Universal Social Harmony and the Imminent Collapse of the Civilised, Barbarian and Savage Societies.
I am the inventor of the mathematical calculus of the destinies, a calculus which Newton had within his grasp without realising it. He determined the laws of material attraction, and I have discovered those of passionate attraction, a theory approached by no one before me.
Passionate attraction is the archetype according to which God has regulated all the modifications of matter, the order of universal movement and the social movement of the human inhabitants of all the worlds.
As long as a globe fails to calculate the laws of attraction by analysis and synthesis, its reason advances from shadow to shadow; it cannot acquire the slightest notion of the laws which govern the universe, of the social destinies, the goal of the passions, etc.
The theory of the destinies can be divided into three principal branches:
First. The theory of the creations, that is to say the determination of the plans adopted by God concerning the modifications of matter, including everything from the cosmogony of the universes and the invisible stars to the most minute alterations of matter in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The plans followed by God in the distribution of passions, properties, forms, colours, tastes, etc. to the diverse substances.
Second. The social movement, that is to say the future and past destinies of human societies on the diverse globes, their ordonnance, their revolutions, their characters, etc.
Third. Immortality or the future and past destiny of God and of souls in the diverse worlds which they have traversed and will traverse throughout eternity.
You see, Citizen Minister, that the complete elaboration of this prodigious theory would be much too difficult a task for one man or even for several. Thus I have devoted myself primarily to the most urgent calculation, that of the social movement and the societary destiny of the industrious nations. I have determined the whole mechanism of Harmony in its smallest details, from the methods of its central administration down to the most minute aspects of its domestic relations, which are diametrically opposed to our own.
As for calculations other than that of the social movement, I have limited myself to finding the key, to making trials in each of the fixed sciences[3] and even in the fixed arts like music. I will hand over that key to the savants; it will be a prize which will provide them with ample means of winning fame. I will keep for myself only the honour of having opened the way for them, but I will have all to myself the honour of the discovery of the laws of universal harmony
It is obvious that if this discovery could not satisfy the passions of great men and sovereigns, it would be useless and ridiculous to announce the imminence of Harmony; if it offered them no more than three times the advantages of their present situation, they would decide to remain in civilisation. This is something which I had to anticipate. But their pleasures in the new order will be so prodigious that they will become its most enthusiastic partisans, for their souls and senses are more practiced than those of the vulgar, more apt at appreciating and savouring states of happiness.
The laws of Harmony should have been discovered 2300 years ago; they have remained unknown due to the inadvertence and pride of the three metaphysical, moral and political sciences. These sciences have failed to determine the functions and duties of God. They should have recognised that God owes men a social code. To discover this code they should have opened an inquiry concerning the means of revelation employed by God to make his designs known to us. Attraction, which explains the designs of God with regard to the stars and the animals, is also the organ of God with regard to human beings. Its synthesis forms the code for the reign of social harmony which is going to last approximately sixty thousand years. After that, the cooling of the globe will bring a marked decline in luxury. With the final disappearance of luxury, which is the pivot. of Harmony, the human race will fall back into subversion. Mankind will complete its course as it began by traversing the civilised, barbarian and savage societies and others which belong to the subversive order.[4]
Since the announcement of this discovery will help bring about peace in the measure that it wins the confidence of the government, I ought, Citizen High Judge, to explain it to you in a detailed memorandum. But since my right hand is sprained and in bad condition for writing, I cannot devote myself now to the composition of a lengthy essay. The details of Harmony are so extraordinary that a superficial explanation would be quite inadequate. If you wish, I will go into a few details. but given the state of my sprained hand, I can scarcely promise more than two large sheets like this one.
Being the sole possessor of the theory of social movement, I shall not give it away to the public. Instead I shall make known only the superficial aspects of the calculus, taking precautions so that its essence and the solutions to the problems it raises may be safeguarded for the French government. Thus the First Consul cannot be beaten out by any other prince in the establishment of Harmony. He will be assured of no competition for the title of Primate or Emperor of the Globe, a title to be conferred by right upon the founder. There is no impertinence or charlatanism about this, for the calculus is correct, mathematical and invariable.
Do not suppose, Citizen High Judge, that this discovery could become a rallying point for fanatics and intriguers. On the contrary it offers a sure means of foiling the civil and political trouble makers of all countries. For the whole earth is going to enjoy a better lot. Poverty will be completely eliminated; and a graduated metamorphosis will turn the poor class into a middle class, will bring opulence to the bourgeois, splendour to the opulent, and so forth. This perspective, which is well substantiated and confirmed by all conceivable proofs, will wither the seeds of civil or political discord and calm the most turbulent individuals.
Permit me a few lines of argument. Poverty is the principal cause of social disorders. Inequality, so much maligned by the philosophers, is not displeasing to men. On the contrary, the bourgeois delights in hierarchy; he loves to see the bigwigs decked out and parading in their best finery. The poor man views them with the same enthusiasm. Only if he lacks what is necessary does he begin to detest his superiors and the customs of society. This is the origin of social disorders, crimes and of the gallows, that sad bastion of the civilised order. It is easy to prove that all social crimes committed out of ambition proceed from the poverty of the people, from their efforts to escape poverty, from the anxiety which is instilled in society by the presence of poverty, from the fear of falling into it, and from disgust for the odious habits which it encourages.
For social science there is thus only one problem to resolve, that of the graduated metamorphosis which I have mentioned. By this I mean the art of raising each of the classes of civilisation to the condition of the class above it. Then indigence and discomfort will be eliminated, since the lower class will have become the middle class and will enjoy an honest comfort like our petty bourgeois who are far removed indeed from a spirit of sedition.[5] When the people enjoy constant comfort and a decent minimum, all the sources of discord will be dried up or reduced to very little. Administration will become child’s play, and in Harmony the government of the whole planet will be much less complicated than that of a civilised empire.
To eliminate poverty it was necessary to conceive of an industrial system more productive than our own. Such will be universal harmony which will produce at least triple — yes, without exaggeration — at least triple the yield of the civilised system in a well-cultivated empire. Accordingly, while Harmony will greatly increase the wealth of the well-to-do, it will bring about an excessive increase in that of the people, to whom it will guarantee a salary or in old age a decent minimum below which they cannot fall. This beneficence will be all the more simple in that humanity will reproduce much less in Harmony than in civilisation.
This is far removed from the theories of the philosophers, some of whom, the Demagogues, seek to rob the rich to provide for the poor.[6] The others, who are called the Economists, do not have the welfare of the people in mind.[7] They think only of enriching empires without worrying themselves about the fate of the individual. Thus the theories of the Economists have greatly enriched England without enriching the English. According to the Tableau de Londres[8] you can find 115,000 paupers, prostitutes, thieves, beggars and unemployed in the city of London alone; the workers of Scotland live in a frightful state of misery. This is nonetheless the consequence of the modern systems which claim to alleviate the suffering of the people.
Furthermore, just as Steuart[9] prophesied, none of the philosophical theories has proved adequate to deal with the problem of excessive population. The civilised reproduce too much, produce too little, and waste vast quantities of food, labour, time, energy, etc. Count Rumford[10] and Cadet de Vaux[11] are the only writers I know who have understood the vice of civilised societies. These societies are going to reduce the common people to the most frightful poverty everywhere except in new areas like the United States where labour is lacking. The source of this widespread indigence is excessive procreation. Nevertheless humanity will be able to multiply for about eighty more years in order to bring the globe to its full size of three billion inhabitants. Once this number is reached, however, the population will remain fixed in Harmony. What would be the point of having swarms of excess population once wars are abolished? Excessive numbers of people will become so useless that France, for its part, will disgorge about five million of its inhabitants who will find homes in Spain, the Ukraine, etc.
Let us summarise the problem which I have just raised: it is to prove that three billion inhabitants in the order of Harmony will be just as productive as nine or ten billion in civilisation. Of course this prodigious increase in wealth would be illusory if Harmony failed to eliminate the seeds of human discord, such as war, which neutralise the efforts of men and absorb the fruits of their industry, no matter how great they may be.
Note well that this prospect of future happiness does not rest solely upon an enormous increase in wealth. For even a Lucullus would be most unhappy if his dominant passions were not satisfied. The opulence of Harmony will merely be an agent of happiness, merely a means for the development and gratification of a huge number of brilliant passions which are unknown in civilisation and will be revealed in Harmony. For what is it to be happy if not to feel and gratify an immense number of harmless passions? Such will be the lot of men when they are delivered from the civilised, barbarian and savage states. Their passions will be so numerous, so explosive and so varied that the rich man will spend his life in a sort of permanent frenzy and the twenty-four hours of his day will fly by like one.
You can tell from this sketch, Citizen High Judge, that the announcement of this discovery will be a source of concord, a balm poured on the wounds of the human race. The certainty of such a brilliant metamorphosis will paralyse the ambitious and throw trouble makers into a state of apathy; it will inspire a profound disdain for the tumult, the torment, the perfidies and the injustices of civilisation; the widespread feeling to which it will give rise will be that of Charity. Everyone will understand the necessity of working together to ease the lot of the poor until the establishment of Harmony will free them from want. This charitable impulse will be the more spontaneous in that when the Spherical Hierarchy is constituted, it will reimburse all the alms which have been provisionally voted.
It is necessary, Citizen High Judge, to advise you of a comic incident which will follow the revelation of the theory of social movement. It is going to deal a mortal blow to the political and moral philosophies and, in addition, an incurable wound to metaphysics. These three sciences have engendered and sustained poverty, perfidy and ignorance of the destinies. ... The disgrace of these three sciences will be a misfortune of very little importance. As soldiers say: “You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Thus, in the encounter of truth and sophistry, some sciences have got to crack. Humanity will lose a great many books, but it will win happiness, affluence and peace for sixty thousand years. That’s sufficient consolation! ...
You may be astonished that I have waited four years before publishing my discovery. Here is the explanation for this delay. At the time of the discovery, I was a merchant’s clerk at Marseille. I quit work to go to Paris to study the fixed sciences and apply them all to, the calculus of passionate attraction. I studied with ardour, and in three or four years I would have applied all the sciences. But after eight or nine months misfortunes befell me. I had to break off my studies and resume my work as a merchant’s clerk at Lyon where I found a job. Driven to despair by this bad turn of events, I wished to safeguard my discovery until I regained the wealth necessary to continue my studies. I was too proud to share the glory with the savants. But since then I have undergone so much disgrace and illness that I renounce my plans for study. I will no longer deprive the physicists and naturalists of the honour of embellishing the core of my theory with the demonstrative analogies which their sciences can provide once I give them the appropriate clues. As a result of this delay, the calculus will have undergone the trial advised by Horace: novum prematur in annum.[12] It was quite unnecessary, for passionate attraction is as invariable as physics. If there are seven colours in the spectrum, there are seven primitive passions in the soul. If there are four arcs in a conic section, there are four groups of passionate attraction, and their properties are just the same as those of conic sections. Nothing can vary in my theory.
In order that this invention may provide me with a refuge from the poverty which pursues me, I have decided to open a subscription. It will be a success if the government grants me just one favour: I simply need permission to publicise the invention in the Paris journals. ... Without your authorisation, Citizen High Judge, my subscription will fail, the journals will not want to concern themselves with this discovery. I dare hope for the protection of the government, since it can be certain that I will not divulge any solutions and that the curious would vainly split their heads trying to solve the problems which I will leave unanswered. If they don’t know the secret, their efforts will be in vain. In any case there are not two people on the globe who have a flair for the problems of passionate attraction; they are too overwhelming in their immensity and in their frightful simplicity.
In unveiling before you the prospect of the welfare of all humanity, perpetual peace, the imminent cessation of poverty and crime, and the elevation of the First Consul to a position of world supremacy, I am sure, Citizen High Judge, to provoke not your doubts but your hopes concerning the veracity of the calculus. If it had not been revealed earlier and if the First Consul were now acquainted with the laws of social movement, he would be able to fool England completely by signing a peace treaty based on the expectation of the coming revolution. This humiliation of a trouble-making cabinet would be a brilliant jest with which to bring an end to civilisation.
Among the social benefits which I have unveiled before you, I should not forget to announce that two years after the establishment of Harmony we will see the end of all accidental ills, venereal epidemics, smallpox, yellow fever, etc. As soon as the Spherical Hierarchy is constituted, it will impose a quarantine on syphilitic diseases. At the same time the Primate of the globe will recruit about twenty million pioneers to cleanse foul regions. Thus the extinction of accidental maladies will take place within two or three years.
Any brilliant discovery subjects its author to the attacks of the envious. If Columbus, Galileo and other great men could be excommunicated for being ahead of their time, people may also try to blacken my reputation. But we are no longer living in an age of superstition. The conqueror of destiny fears nothing under the reign of the conqueror of success.
I summarise, Citizen High Judge, the two requests which I have to make of you:
1st: the authorisation to have separate articles inserted in the Paris journals, leaving them the latitude to make all necessary corrections, according to the intentions of the censorship which I shall try to anticipate.
2nd: the communication of my letter or a copy to the First Consul. I do not know how to get it directly to him, and I am counting on your help in this matter. He cannot fail to be moved at the idea of rescuing the human race from social chaos, of banishing poverty and crime forever from the face of the earth, and of becoming the terrestrial arm of God, of directing mankind to its destiny. He will not mistrust the man who offers him such a future. Extremes touch; if I am unknown and destitute, I expect to inspire the confidence of the first of men by the very excess of my obscurity.
I have the honour to offer you my respectful salutations,
Fourrier
Chez Madame Guyonnet, marchande
rue Saint-Come, à Lyon
***********
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Indices and Methods which led to the Discovery”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: 1808 in Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées génerales;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was thinking of nothing less than of research concerning the Destinies; I shared the widespread view which considers them to be impenetrable and which relegates any calculation about the destinies to a place among the visions of the astrologers and the magicians. The studies which led me up to the discovery centred simply around the industrial and political problems that I am now going to discuss.
After the philosophers had demonstrated their incapacity in their experimental venture, in the French Revolution, everyone agreed in regarding their science as an aberration of the human mind; their floods of political and moral enlightenment seemed to be nothing more than floods of illusions. Well! what else can be found in the writings of these savants who, after having perfected their theories for twenty-five centuries, after having accumulated all the wisdom of the ancients and moderns, begin by engendering calamities as numerous as the benefits which they promised, and help push civilised society back toward the state of barbarism? Such was the consequence of the first five years during which the philosophical theories were inflicted on France.
After the catastrophe of 1793, illusions were dissipated, the political and moral sciences were irretrievably blighted and discredited. From that point on people should have understood that there was no happiness to be found in acquired learning, that social welfare had to be sought in some new science, and that new paths had to be opened to political genius. It was evident that neither the philosophers nor their rivals possessed a remedy for the social distresses, and that their dogmas only served to perpetuate the most disgraceful calamities, among others poverty.
Such was the first consideration which led me to suspect the existence of a still-unknown Social Science and which provoked me to try to discover it. Far from taking fright at my lack of knowledge, I thought only about the honour of laying hold of what the savants had been unable to discover for twenty-five centuries.
I was encouraged by numerous symptoms of the aberration of reason and particularly by the spectacle of the calamities afflicting social industry: poverty, unemployment, the success of rascality, acts of maritime piracy, commercial monopoly, the abduction of slaves, finally other misfortunes too numerous to mention and which give one cause to ask whether civilised industry is not a calamity invented by God in order to punish the human race.
All this led me to suppose that some reversal of the natural order had taken place within industry; that it was perhaps functioning in a manner contrary to the designs of God; that the tenacity of so many scourges could be attributed to the absence of some arrangement willed by God and unknown to our savants. Finally I thought that if the human societies are suffering, as Montesquieu put it, “from a lingering disease, an inner vice, a secret and hidden venom,” one might find the remedy by avoiding the paths followed for so many centuries and with such bad luck by our uncertain sciences.[13] Thus I adopted as my rules of research the principles of absolute doubt and absolute deviation. These two methods must be defined, since before me no one had ever made use of them.
1st. absolute doubt. Descartes had an inkling; but while praising and recommending doubt, he used it in a limited and inappropriate way. He raised ridiculous doubts; he doubted his own existence and spent more time distilling the sophisms of the ancients than looking for useful truths.
Descartes’ successors made even less use of doubt than he. They applied the method only to things which displeased them; for instance, they raised questions about the necessity of religions because they were the antagonists of the priests. But they were very careful not to raise questions about the necessity of the political and moral sciences which were their means of subsistence, and which are today recognised as very useless under strong governments and as very dangerous under weak governments.
Since I had no relations with any scientific party, I resolved to apply the method of doubt to the opinions of all the parties without prejudice, and to suspect even those dispositions which had won universal assent. Such is civilisation, which is the idol of all the philosophical parties and to which they attribute the ultimate of perfection. However, what is more imperfect than this civilisation which drags all calamities in its wake? What is more questionable than its necessity and its future permanence? Isn’t it probable that it is only a stage in the life of society? If it has been preceded by three other societies, Savagery, Patriarchate and Barbarism, does it follow that it will be the last because it is the fourth? Could not others still be born, and won’t we see a fifth, a sixth, a seventh social order which will perhaps be less disastrous than civilisation, and which have remained unknown because we have never attempted to discover them? Thus the method of Doubt must be applied to civilisation; we must doubt its necessity, its excellence and its permanence. These are problems which the philosophers don’t dare to face, because in suspecting civilisation, they would call attention to the nullity of their own theories, which are all linked to civilisation, and which will all collapse with it as soon as a better social order is found to replace it.
Thus the philosophers have limited themselves to a Partial Doubt because they have books and corporate prejudices to uphold; and fearing to compromise the books and the coterie, they have always equivocated on the important questions. But I who had no party to defend could adopt the method of Absolute Doubt and apply it first of all to civilisation and to its most deeply rooted prejudices.
2nd. absolute deviation. I had presumed that the surest means of making useful discoveries was to deviate in every way from the paths followed by the uncertain sciences, which had never made the slightest discovery useful to society, and which, in spite of the immense progress of industry, had not even succeeded in warding off poverty. Thus I made it my business to remain in constant opposition to these sciences. Taking into consideration the multitude of their writers, I presumed that any subject which they had treated ought to be completely exhausted, and I resolved to apply myself only to problems which none of them had treated.
Accordingly, I avoided any inquiry into matters concerning the interests of the throne and altar, about which the philosophers have busied themselves ceaselessly ever since the origin of their science. They have always sought social welfare in administrative or religious innovations. I applied myself, on the contrary, to seeking the good only in operations which would have nothing to do either with administration or with the priesthood, which would rely only on industrial or domestic measures, and which would be compatible with all governments without requiring their intervention.
In following these two guides, Absolute Doubt concerning all prejudices, and Absolute Deviation from all known theories, I was sure to discover some new field of speculation, if any remained; but I scarcely expected to grasp the calculus of the Destinies. Far from aiming so high, I devoted myself at first only to very ordinary problems such as Agricultural Association... . When I began to speculate on this matter, I would myself never have presumed that such a modest calculation could lead to the theory of the Destinies. But since it has become the key to the theory, it is indispensable for me to speak about it at some length. ...
More than once people have supposed that incalculable savings and ameliorations would result if one could bring together the inhabitants of a village in an industrial society, if one could associate two or three hundred families of unequal wealth according to their capital and their work. At first the idea seems completely impractical because of the obstacle that would be presented by the human passions. The obstacle seems particularly great because the passions cannot be overcome by gradual degrees. It is scarcely possible to create an agricultural association of twenty, thirty, forty or fifty individuals. But at least eight hundred are necessary to establish a natural or attractive association. I mean by these words a society whose members would be inspired to work by rivalry, self-esteem and other stimuli compatible with self-interest. In the order to which I refer we will become passionately enthusiastic about agricultural work which is so irksome today that we only do it out of necessity and the fear of dying of hunger.
I will not discuss the stages of my research concerning the problem of natural association. It is a system so foreign to our ways that I am in no hurry to describe it in detail. It would seem ridiculous if I did not first provide the reader with a glimpse of the immense advantages which it will yield.
An agricultural association of roughly a thousand people offers such immense advantages that it is difficult to explain the fact that our modern philosophers have shown no interest in the idea. There is a group of savants, the economists, who are supposed to be particularly interested in industrial ameliorations. Their failure to search for a method of association is all the more inconceivable in that they have themselves indicated several of the advantages which will result from association. For instance, they have recognised, as anyone else could have done, that three hundred families of associated villagers could have just a single well-kept granary instead of three hundred run-down granaries, a single wine-vat instead of three hundred poorly maintained vats. In many cases, and especially in summer, these villagers could have just three or four large ovens instead of three hundred. They could send a single dairymaid to town with a wagon bearing a cask of milk and thus save a hundred other dairymaids the time and trouble it takes to carry their pitchers into town. These are just a few of the savings that diverse observers have recognised; and yet they have not indicated one-twentieth of the advantages which will result from agricultural association... .
Disputatious people are sure to raise objections. “How can you form an association out of families when one may have 100,000 livres and another may be penniless? How can you reconcile so many conflicting interests and desires? How can you absorb all their jealousies in such a way as to serve everyone’s interest?” My reply to all this is: by the enticement of wealth and pleasure. The strongest passion of both peasants and city people is the love of profit. When they see that a societary community yields a profit three times that of a community of incoherent families and provides all its members with the most varied pleasures, they will forget all their rivalries and hasten to form an association. The system will be adopted everywhere without the application of any form of constraint, for people everywhere are passionately devoted to wealth and pleasure.
To summarise, this theory of agricultural association, which is going to change the condition of the human race, appeals to the passions which are common to all men; it seduces them with the enticements of profit and sensual pleasure. That is why it is sure to succeed among the savages and barbarians as well as the civilised, for the passions are the same everywhere.
There is no urgency about making known this new system to which I will give the name progressive series, or series of groups, passionate series.[14] By these words I mean to designate an assemblage of several associated groups whose members are devoted to different branches of a single industry or a single passion... . The theory of passionate series or progressive series has not been conceived arbitrarily like our social theories. The ordonnance of these series is entirely analogous to that of a geometrical series. Both have the same properties such as the balance of rivalry between the extreme groups and the intermediate groups of the series... .
People have regarded the passions as enemies of concord and have written thousands of volumes against them. These volumes are going to fall into nothingness. For the passions tend only to concord, to that social unity which we have thought was so alien to them. But the passions can only be harmonised if they are allowed to develop in an orderly fashion within the progressive series or series of groups. Outside of this mechanism the passions are only unchained tigers, incomprehensible enigmas. For this reason the philosophers have claimed that they must be repressed. Their opinion is doubly absurd since the passions cannot be repressed and since, if they could, civilisation would rapidly disappear and man would rapidly fall back into a nomadic state in which the passions would be even more harmful than they are now. I have no more faith in the virtues of the shepherds than in those of their apologists.
The societary order which is going to replace the incoherence of civilisation has no place for moderation or equality or any of the other philosophical notions. It requires ardent and refined passions. As soon as an association is formed, the passions will harmonise with greater ease if they are more intense and more numerous.
This is not to say that the new order will change the passions. Neither God nor man is capable of changing them; but it is possible to change their direction without changing their nature... . Thus if I maintain that in the societary order men will acquire tastes which are different from those which they have at present, that they will prefer to live in the country rather than the city, one should not believe that in acquiring new tastes they will acquire new passions. They will still be guided by the love of wealth and pleasure.
I insist on this point to meet an objection which has been raised by certain obtuse individuals. When they hear me talk about the new tastes and customs which will emerge in the societary order, they immediately exclaim: “So you want to change the passions!” Certainly not. But what I do want to do is to provide them with new means of expression, to assure them three or four times the development which they have in the incoherent order in which we live. This is why we will see civilised people acquire an aversion for habits which please them today, such as family life. In the family system children spend all their time crying, quarrelling, breaking things and refusing to work. But when these same children have joined the progressive series or series of groups, they will become industrious; they will try to emulate each other’s accomplishments without any outside encouragement; they will enthusiastically try to inform themselves about agriculture, manufacturing, science and art.’ they will perform useful tasks while they think they are amusing themselves. When fathers witness this new order o f things, they will find their children adorable in the series and detestable in the incoherent household. Then they will observe that in the residence of a phalanx (this is the name I give to the association which farms a rural area) people are served marvellous food... . Finally they will discover that in the activities and relations of the series there is never any cheating, and that people who are so dishonest and crude in civilisation will become paragons of honesty and refinement in the series. When they have seen all this they will acquire an aversion for the household, the cities and the civilisation of which they are now so fond. They will want to associate themselves in the series of a Phalanx and live in its edifice. Will they have changed their passions in becoming disdainful of the customs and tastes which please them today? No, their passions will have changed their means of expression without having changed their nature or their ultimate goal.
Thus one should beware of supposing that the system of the progressive series, which will be entirely different from that of civilisation, will bring about the slightest change in the passions. The passions have been and will remain immutable. They will produce conflict and poverty outside of the progressive series and harmony and opulence in the societary state which is our destiny. The establishment of the societary order in a single community will be spontaneously imitated everywhere thanks to the immense profits and innumerable pleasures which that order will assure to all individuals, however poor or wealthy they may be.
I shall turn now to the results of this discovery from a scientific standpoint... . As to the new sciences which it has revealed, I shall confine myself to indicating the two most important ones. Since these matters will not interest most of my readers, I shall try to be as brief as possible.
The first science which I discovered was the theory of passionate attraction. When I recognised that the progressive series assure full development to the passions of both men and women, of the young and the old, and of people in every social class, when I discovered that in this new order a great number of passions will be a guarantee of strength and wealth, I surmised that if God had given so much influence to passionate attraction and so little to its enemy, reason, His purpose was to guide us to the system of progressive series which is completely consistent with attraction. Then I supposed that attraction, which is so much maligned by the philosophers, must be the interpreter of the designs of God concerning the social order. By this means I arrived at the analytic and synthetic calculus of passionate attractions and repulsions. This calculus cannot fail to culminate in agricultural association. Thus if anyone had attempted to study attraction analytically and synthetically, he would have discovered the laws of association without seeking them. This is something that no one has ever dreamed of. Even in the eighteenth century, when analytical methods were so popular, no one ever tried to apply them to attraction.
The theory of passionate attractions and repulsions is an exact science and wholly applicable to geometrical theorems. It has great ramifications and can become the sustenance of the philosophers who are, I believe, very much in need of some luminous and useful problem on which to exercise their metaphysical talents.
I continue my discussion of the filiation of the new sciences. I soon recognised that the laws of passionate attraction were in complete accord with the laws of material attraction, as explained by Newton and Leibnitz, and that there was a unified system of movement governing the material world and the spiritual world.
I suspected that this analogy might apply to particular laws as well as to general ones, and that the attractions and properties of the animals, vegetables and minerals were perhaps coordinated with the same scheme as those of man and the stars. After making the necessary investigations, I became convinced of this. Thus a new exact science was discovered: the analogy of the material, organic, animal and social movements, or the analogy of the modifications of matter with the mathematical theory of the passions of man and the animals.[15]
The discovery of these two exact sciences revealed others to me. It would be useless to list them all here. But they include everything up to literature and the arts, and they will permit the establishment of exact methods in all’ the domains of human knowledge.
Once I had discovered the two theories of attraction and the unity of the four movements, I began to make sense of the book of nature. One by one, I found the answers to its mysteries. I had lifted the veil that was supposed to be impenetrable. I advanced into a new scientific world. It was thus that I arrived by gradual degrees at the calculus of the Universal Destinies, or the determination of the fundamental system governing all the laws of movement, present, past and future.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
*******
Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
**********
In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.
Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
*******
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Universal Harmony”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Année 1851.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The calculus of Harmony, for which Madame A. F. seeks publicity, is a discovery that the human race was far from expecting. It is a mathematical theory concerning the destinies of all the globes and their inhabitants, a theory of the sixteen social orders which can be established on the diverse globes throughout eternity.
Of the sixteen possible societies, only three are to be seen on our globe: Savagery, Barbarism and Civilisation. Soon they will come to an end, and all the nations of the earth will enter the fifteenth stage which is Simple Harmony.
Great men of all the centuries! Newton and Leibnitz, Voltaire and Rousseau, do you know in what you are great? In blindness. You will soon seem like no more than great madmen for having thought that civilisation was the social destiny of the human race. How could you have failed to understand that these three societies, the savage, the barbarian and the civilised, are but rungs to be climbed, that they are reason’s age of childhood and imbecility, and that God would be improvident if he had conceived of nothing better adapted to human happiness? These three societies are the most disastrous among the sixteen. Of the sixteen there are seven which will see the establishment of perpetual peace, universal unity, the liberty of women.
I owe this astonishing discovery to the analytic and synthetic calculus of passionate attraction which our savants have deemed unworthy of attention during their two thousand five hundred years of study. They have discovered the laws of material movement; that’s all very well, but it doesn’t get rid of poverty. It was necessary to discover the laws of social movement. Their invention is going to lead the human race to opulence, to sensual pleasures, to the unity of the globe. I repeat, this theory will be geometrical and applied to the physical sciences. It is not an arbitrary doctrine like the political and moral sciences, which are going to meet a sad fate. There is going to be a great disaster at the libraries.
If ever war was deplorable, it is at this moment. Soon the victors will be on the same level as the vanquished. What point is there in conquests when the entire globe will comprise but a single nation, will be run by a single administration? In spite of this unity, there will be no equality in harmony.
To the chief of France can be reserved the honour of extracting the human race from social chaos, of being the founder of Harmony and the liberator of the globe. The rewards which this honour entails will not be modest, and they will be transmitted in perpetuity to the descendants of the founder.
Some readers will cry out: “dream,” “visionary.” Patience! In a short time we will wake them from their own frightful dream, the dream of civilisation. Blind savants, just look at your cities paved with beggars, your citizens struggling against hunger, your battlefields and all your social infamies. Do you still believe that civilisation is the destiny of the human race? Or was J.-J. Rousseau right in saying of the civilised: “These are not men; there is a disorder in things, the cause of which we have not yet fathomed.”
*******
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Letter to the High Judge”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
Written: December 1803;
First Published: Lettre de Fourier au Grand Juge , Charles Pellarin (ed.), Paris, 1874 and as an appendix to J-J. Hemardinquer, “Notes critiques sur le jeune Fourier,” Le Mouvement social, No. 48 (July-September, 1964), pp. 50-69.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lyon, 4 Nivose, Year XI[1]
Citizen High Judge:
It is with respect to a trivial matter that I am going to bring you great news. Allow me half a page concerning this trifle which is the occasion for the revelation of universal harmony.
I have been informed that a few individuals have sent you their critical comments about my article on the “Triumvirate” of which I am enclosing a copy. It seems to me that the police commissioner handles the matter perfectly well. I have talked with him, and I will follow his instructions.
On a number of occasions I have sent political missives to the Directory or to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have always received complimentary letters in reply. I presume that the article on the “Triumvirate” will likewise be appreciated in its essence, even though it might be deficient in its style since it was written hastily. Although the ideas which it contains run counter to current policies, they are only all the more worthy of attention. The situation is menacing. Upon the outbreak of continental war, one of the two German empires will be divided up, and then the triumvirate will be a reality. From the outset it will actually be no more than a duumvirate; for Germany, unprotected and caught between the two rivals, will become a vassal of one or the other. But the duumvirate will still be only a trap for France; and when I warn my country that it is likely to be defeated in a subsequent conflict, that Russia will have the means to strike some decisive blows, and that France will have very few advantages in its favor, I am asserting nothing that I could not prove in the greatest detail. I dare to believe that this warning will win the approbation of the government rather than its disapproval, and that the printer who published it, out of confidence in me, will be given no trouble.[2]
But this is not the matter which I propose to discuss with you. These disputes of civilisation are no more than child’s play in the present circumstances. An event of much greater importance is brewing, and I wish to make it known to the government:
Universal Social Harmony and the Imminent Collapse of the Civilised, Barbarian and Savage Societies.
I am the inventor of the mathematical calculus of the destinies, a calculus which Newton had within his grasp without realising it. He determined the laws of material attraction, and I have discovered those of passionate attraction, a theory approached by no one before me.
Passionate attraction is the archetype according to which God has regulated all the modifications of matter, the order of universal movement and the social movement of the human inhabitants of all the worlds.
As long as a globe fails to calculate the laws of attraction by analysis and synthesis, its reason advances from shadow to shadow; it cannot acquire the slightest notion of the laws which govern the universe, of the social destinies, the goal of the passions, etc.
The theory of the destinies can be divided into three principal branches:
First. The theory of the creations, that is to say the determination of the plans adopted by God concerning the modifications of matter, including everything from the cosmogony of the universes and the invisible stars to the most minute alterations of matter in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. The plans followed by God in the distribution of passions, properties, forms, colours, tastes, etc. to the diverse substances.
Second. The social movement, that is to say the future and past destinies of human societies on the diverse globes, their ordonnance, their revolutions, their characters, etc.
Third. Immortality or the future and past destiny of God and of souls in the diverse worlds which they have traversed and will traverse throughout eternity.
You see, Citizen Minister, that the complete elaboration of this prodigious theory would be much too difficult a task for one man or even for several. Thus I have devoted myself primarily to the most urgent calculation, that of the social movement and the societary destiny of the industrious nations. I have determined the whole mechanism of Harmony in its smallest details, from the methods of its central administration down to the most minute aspects of its domestic relations, which are diametrically opposed to our own.
As for calculations other than that of the social movement, I have limited myself to finding the key, to making trials in each of the fixed sciences[3] and even in the fixed arts like music. I will hand over that key to the savants; it will be a prize which will provide them with ample means of winning fame. I will keep for myself only the honour of having opened the way for them, but I will have all to myself the honour of the discovery of the laws of universal harmony
It is obvious that if this discovery could not satisfy the passions of great men and sovereigns, it would be useless and ridiculous to announce the imminence of Harmony; if it offered them no more than three times the advantages of their present situation, they would decide to remain in civilisation. This is something which I had to anticipate. But their pleasures in the new order will be so prodigious that they will become its most enthusiastic partisans, for their souls and senses are more practiced than those of the vulgar, more apt at appreciating and savouring states of happiness.
The laws of Harmony should have been discovered 2300 years ago; they have remained unknown due to the inadvertence and pride of the three metaphysical, moral and political sciences. These sciences have failed to determine the functions and duties of God. They should have recognised that God owes men a social code. To discover this code they should have opened an inquiry concerning the means of revelation employed by God to make his designs known to us. Attraction, which explains the designs of God with regard to the stars and the animals, is also the organ of God with regard to human beings. Its synthesis forms the code for the reign of social harmony which is going to last approximately sixty thousand years. After that, the cooling of the globe will bring a marked decline in luxury. With the final disappearance of luxury, which is the pivot. of Harmony, the human race will fall back into subversion. Mankind will complete its course as it began by traversing the civilised, barbarian and savage societies and others which belong to the subversive order.[4]
Since the announcement of this discovery will help bring about peace in the measure that it wins the confidence of the government, I ought, Citizen High Judge, to explain it to you in a detailed memorandum. But since my right hand is sprained and in bad condition for writing, I cannot devote myself now to the composition of a lengthy essay. The details of Harmony are so extraordinary that a superficial explanation would be quite inadequate. If you wish, I will go into a few details. but given the state of my sprained hand, I can scarcely promise more than two large sheets like this one.
Being the sole possessor of the theory of social movement, I shall not give it away to the public. Instead I shall make known only the superficial aspects of the calculus, taking precautions so that its essence and the solutions to the problems it raises may be safeguarded for the French government. Thus the First Consul cannot be beaten out by any other prince in the establishment of Harmony. He will be assured of no competition for the title of Primate or Emperor of the Globe, a title to be conferred by right upon the founder. There is no impertinence or charlatanism about this, for the calculus is correct, mathematical and invariable.
Do not suppose, Citizen High Judge, that this discovery could become a rallying point for fanatics and intriguers. On the contrary it offers a sure means of foiling the civil and political trouble makers of all countries. For the whole earth is going to enjoy a better lot. Poverty will be completely eliminated; and a graduated metamorphosis will turn the poor class into a middle class, will bring opulence to the bourgeois, splendour to the opulent, and so forth. This perspective, which is well substantiated and confirmed by all conceivable proofs, will wither the seeds of civil or political discord and calm the most turbulent individuals.
Permit me a few lines of argument. Poverty is the principal cause of social disorders. Inequality, so much maligned by the philosophers, is not displeasing to men. On the contrary, the bourgeois delights in hierarchy; he loves to see the bigwigs decked out and parading in their best finery. The poor man views them with the same enthusiasm. Only if he lacks what is necessary does he begin to detest his superiors and the customs of society. This is the origin of social disorders, crimes and of the gallows, that sad bastion of the civilised order. It is easy to prove that all social crimes committed out of ambition proceed from the poverty of the people, from their efforts to escape poverty, from the anxiety which is instilled in society by the presence of poverty, from the fear of falling into it, and from disgust for the odious habits which it encourages.
For social science there is thus only one problem to resolve, that of the graduated metamorphosis which I have mentioned. By this I mean the art of raising each of the classes of civilisation to the condition of the class above it. Then indigence and discomfort will be eliminated, since the lower class will have become the middle class and will enjoy an honest comfort like our petty bourgeois who are far removed indeed from a spirit of sedition.[5] When the people enjoy constant comfort and a decent minimum, all the sources of discord will be dried up or reduced to very little. Administration will become child’s play, and in Harmony the government of the whole planet will be much less complicated than that of a civilised empire.
To eliminate poverty it was necessary to conceive of an industrial system more productive than our own. Such will be universal harmony which will produce at least triple — yes, without exaggeration — at least triple the yield of the civilised system in a well-cultivated empire. Accordingly, while Harmony will greatly increase the wealth of the well-to-do, it will bring about an excessive increase in that of the people, to whom it will guarantee a salary or in old age a decent minimum below which they cannot fall. This beneficence will be all the more simple in that humanity will reproduce much less in Harmony than in civilisation.
This is far removed from the theories of the philosophers, some of whom, the Demagogues, seek to rob the rich to provide for the poor.[6] The others, who are called the Economists, do not have the welfare of the people in mind.[7] They think only of enriching empires without worrying themselves about the fate of the individual. Thus the theories of the Economists have greatly enriched England without enriching the English. According to the Tableau de Londres[8] you can find 115,000 paupers, prostitutes, thieves, beggars and unemployed in the city of London alone; the workers of Scotland live in a frightful state of misery. This is nonetheless the consequence of the modern systems which claim to alleviate the suffering of the people.
Furthermore, just as Steuart[9] prophesied, none of the philosophical theories has proved adequate to deal with the problem of excessive population. The civilised reproduce too much, produce too little, and waste vast quantities of food, labour, time, energy, etc. Count Rumford[10] and Cadet de Vaux[11] are the only writers I know who have understood the vice of civilised societies. These societies are going to reduce the common people to the most frightful poverty everywhere except in new areas like the United States where labour is lacking. The source of this widespread indigence is excessive procreation. Nevertheless humanity will be able to multiply for about eighty more years in order to bring the globe to its full size of three billion inhabitants. Once this number is reached, however, the population will remain fixed in Harmony. What would be the point of having swarms of excess population once wars are abolished? Excessive numbers of people will become so useless that France, for its part, will disgorge about five million of its inhabitants who will find homes in Spain, the Ukraine, etc.
Let us summarise the problem which I have just raised: it is to prove that three billion inhabitants in the order of Harmony will be just as productive as nine or ten billion in civilisation. Of course this prodigious increase in wealth would be illusory if Harmony failed to eliminate the seeds of human discord, such as war, which neutralise the efforts of men and absorb the fruits of their industry, no matter how great they may be.
Note well that this prospect of future happiness does not rest solely upon an enormous increase in wealth. For even a Lucullus would be most unhappy if his dominant passions were not satisfied. The opulence of Harmony will merely be an agent of happiness, merely a means for the development and gratification of a huge number of brilliant passions which are unknown in civilisation and will be revealed in Harmony. For what is it to be happy if not to feel and gratify an immense number of harmless passions? Such will be the lot of men when they are delivered from the civilised, barbarian and savage states. Their passions will be so numerous, so explosive and so varied that the rich man will spend his life in a sort of permanent frenzy and the twenty-four hours of his day will fly by like one.
You can tell from this sketch, Citizen High Judge, that the announcement of this discovery will be a source of concord, a balm poured on the wounds of the human race. The certainty of such a brilliant metamorphosis will paralyse the ambitious and throw trouble makers into a state of apathy; it will inspire a profound disdain for the tumult, the torment, the perfidies and the injustices of civilisation; the widespread feeling to which it will give rise will be that of Charity. Everyone will understand the necessity of working together to ease the lot of the poor until the establishment of Harmony will free them from want. This charitable impulse will be the more spontaneous in that when the Spherical Hierarchy is constituted, it will reimburse all the alms which have been provisionally voted.
It is necessary, Citizen High Judge, to advise you of a comic incident which will follow the revelation of the theory of social movement. It is going to deal a mortal blow to the political and moral philosophies and, in addition, an incurable wound to metaphysics. These three sciences have engendered and sustained poverty, perfidy and ignorance of the destinies. ... The disgrace of these three sciences will be a misfortune of very little importance. As soldiers say: “You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Thus, in the encounter of truth and sophistry, some sciences have got to crack. Humanity will lose a great many books, but it will win happiness, affluence and peace for sixty thousand years. That’s sufficient consolation! ...
You may be astonished that I have waited four years before publishing my discovery. Here is the explanation for this delay. At the time of the discovery, I was a merchant’s clerk at Marseille. I quit work to go to Paris to study the fixed sciences and apply them all to, the calculus of passionate attraction. I studied with ardour, and in three or four years I would have applied all the sciences. But after eight or nine months misfortunes befell me. I had to break off my studies and resume my work as a merchant’s clerk at Lyon where I found a job. Driven to despair by this bad turn of events, I wished to safeguard my discovery until I regained the wealth necessary to continue my studies. I was too proud to share the glory with the savants. But since then I have undergone so much disgrace and illness that I renounce my plans for study. I will no longer deprive the physicists and naturalists of the honour of embellishing the core of my theory with the demonstrative analogies which their sciences can provide once I give them the appropriate clues. As a result of this delay, the calculus will have undergone the trial advised by Horace: novum prematur in annum.[12] It was quite unnecessary, for passionate attraction is as invariable as physics. If there are seven colours in the spectrum, there are seven primitive passions in the soul. If there are four arcs in a conic section, there are four groups of passionate attraction, and their properties are just the same as those of conic sections. Nothing can vary in my theory.
In order that this invention may provide me with a refuge from the poverty which pursues me, I have decided to open a subscription. It will be a success if the government grants me just one favour: I simply need permission to publicise the invention in the Paris journals. ... Without your authorisation, Citizen High Judge, my subscription will fail, the journals will not want to concern themselves with this discovery. I dare hope for the protection of the government, since it can be certain that I will not divulge any solutions and that the curious would vainly split their heads trying to solve the problems which I will leave unanswered. If they don’t know the secret, their efforts will be in vain. In any case there are not two people on the globe who have a flair for the problems of passionate attraction; they are too overwhelming in their immensity and in their frightful simplicity.
In unveiling before you the prospect of the welfare of all humanity, perpetual peace, the imminent cessation of poverty and crime, and the elevation of the First Consul to a position of world supremacy, I am sure, Citizen High Judge, to provoke not your doubts but your hopes concerning the veracity of the calculus. If it had not been revealed earlier and if the First Consul were now acquainted with the laws of social movement, he would be able to fool England completely by signing a peace treaty based on the expectation of the coming revolution. This humiliation of a trouble-making cabinet would be a brilliant jest with which to bring an end to civilisation.
Among the social benefits which I have unveiled before you, I should not forget to announce that two years after the establishment of Harmony we will see the end of all accidental ills, venereal epidemics, smallpox, yellow fever, etc. As soon as the Spherical Hierarchy is constituted, it will impose a quarantine on syphilitic diseases. At the same time the Primate of the globe will recruit about twenty million pioneers to cleanse foul regions. Thus the extinction of accidental maladies will take place within two or three years.
Any brilliant discovery subjects its author to the attacks of the envious. If Columbus, Galileo and other great men could be excommunicated for being ahead of their time, people may also try to blacken my reputation. But we are no longer living in an age of superstition. The conqueror of destiny fears nothing under the reign of the conqueror of success.
I summarise, Citizen High Judge, the two requests which I have to make of you:
1st: the authorisation to have separate articles inserted in the Paris journals, leaving them the latitude to make all necessary corrections, according to the intentions of the censorship which I shall try to anticipate.
2nd: the communication of my letter or a copy to the First Consul. I do not know how to get it directly to him, and I am counting on your help in this matter. He cannot fail to be moved at the idea of rescuing the human race from social chaos, of banishing poverty and crime forever from the face of the earth, and of becoming the terrestrial arm of God, of directing mankind to its destiny. He will not mistrust the man who offers him such a future. Extremes touch; if I am unknown and destitute, I expect to inspire the confidence of the first of men by the very excess of my obscurity.
I have the honour to offer you my respectful salutations,
Fourrier
Chez Madame Guyonnet, marchande
rue Saint-Come, à Lyon
***********
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Indices and Methods which led to the Discovery”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: 1808 in Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées génerales;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was thinking of nothing less than of research concerning the Destinies; I shared the widespread view which considers them to be impenetrable and which relegates any calculation about the destinies to a place among the visions of the astrologers and the magicians. The studies which led me up to the discovery centred simply around the industrial and political problems that I am now going to discuss.
After the philosophers had demonstrated their incapacity in their experimental venture, in the French Revolution, everyone agreed in regarding their science as an aberration of the human mind; their floods of political and moral enlightenment seemed to be nothing more than floods of illusions. Well! what else can be found in the writings of these savants who, after having perfected their theories for twenty-five centuries, after having accumulated all the wisdom of the ancients and moderns, begin by engendering calamities as numerous as the benefits which they promised, and help push civilised society back toward the state of barbarism? Such was the consequence of the first five years during which the philosophical theories were inflicted on France.
After the catastrophe of 1793, illusions were dissipated, the political and moral sciences were irretrievably blighted and discredited. From that point on people should have understood that there was no happiness to be found in acquired learning, that social welfare had to be sought in some new science, and that new paths had to be opened to political genius. It was evident that neither the philosophers nor their rivals possessed a remedy for the social distresses, and that their dogmas only served to perpetuate the most disgraceful calamities, among others poverty.
Such was the first consideration which led me to suspect the existence of a still-unknown Social Science and which provoked me to try to discover it. Far from taking fright at my lack of knowledge, I thought only about the honour of laying hold of what the savants had been unable to discover for twenty-five centuries.
I was encouraged by numerous symptoms of the aberration of reason and particularly by the spectacle of the calamities afflicting social industry: poverty, unemployment, the success of rascality, acts of maritime piracy, commercial monopoly, the abduction of slaves, finally other misfortunes too numerous to mention and which give one cause to ask whether civilised industry is not a calamity invented by God in order to punish the human race.
All this led me to suppose that some reversal of the natural order had taken place within industry; that it was perhaps functioning in a manner contrary to the designs of God; that the tenacity of so many scourges could be attributed to the absence of some arrangement willed by God and unknown to our savants. Finally I thought that if the human societies are suffering, as Montesquieu put it, “from a lingering disease, an inner vice, a secret and hidden venom,” one might find the remedy by avoiding the paths followed for so many centuries and with such bad luck by our uncertain sciences.[13] Thus I adopted as my rules of research the principles of absolute doubt and absolute deviation. These two methods must be defined, since before me no one had ever made use of them.
1st. absolute doubt. Descartes had an inkling; but while praising and recommending doubt, he used it in a limited and inappropriate way. He raised ridiculous doubts; he doubted his own existence and spent more time distilling the sophisms of the ancients than looking for useful truths.
Descartes’ successors made even less use of doubt than he. They applied the method only to things which displeased them; for instance, they raised questions about the necessity of religions because they were the antagonists of the priests. But they were very careful not to raise questions about the necessity of the political and moral sciences which were their means of subsistence, and which are today recognised as very useless under strong governments and as very dangerous under weak governments.
Since I had no relations with any scientific party, I resolved to apply the method of doubt to the opinions of all the parties without prejudice, and to suspect even those dispositions which had won universal assent. Such is civilisation, which is the idol of all the philosophical parties and to which they attribute the ultimate of perfection. However, what is more imperfect than this civilisation which drags all calamities in its wake? What is more questionable than its necessity and its future permanence? Isn’t it probable that it is only a stage in the life of society? If it has been preceded by three other societies, Savagery, Patriarchate and Barbarism, does it follow that it will be the last because it is the fourth? Could not others still be born, and won’t we see a fifth, a sixth, a seventh social order which will perhaps be less disastrous than civilisation, and which have remained unknown because we have never attempted to discover them? Thus the method of Doubt must be applied to civilisation; we must doubt its necessity, its excellence and its permanence. These are problems which the philosophers don’t dare to face, because in suspecting civilisation, they would call attention to the nullity of their own theories, which are all linked to civilisation, and which will all collapse with it as soon as a better social order is found to replace it.
Thus the philosophers have limited themselves to a Partial Doubt because they have books and corporate prejudices to uphold; and fearing to compromise the books and the coterie, they have always equivocated on the important questions. But I who had no party to defend could adopt the method of Absolute Doubt and apply it first of all to civilisation and to its most deeply rooted prejudices.
2nd. absolute deviation. I had presumed that the surest means of making useful discoveries was to deviate in every way from the paths followed by the uncertain sciences, which had never made the slightest discovery useful to society, and which, in spite of the immense progress of industry, had not even succeeded in warding off poverty. Thus I made it my business to remain in constant opposition to these sciences. Taking into consideration the multitude of their writers, I presumed that any subject which they had treated ought to be completely exhausted, and I resolved to apply myself only to problems which none of them had treated.
Accordingly, I avoided any inquiry into matters concerning the interests of the throne and altar, about which the philosophers have busied themselves ceaselessly ever since the origin of their science. They have always sought social welfare in administrative or religious innovations. I applied myself, on the contrary, to seeking the good only in operations which would have nothing to do either with administration or with the priesthood, which would rely only on industrial or domestic measures, and which would be compatible with all governments without requiring their intervention.
In following these two guides, Absolute Doubt concerning all prejudices, and Absolute Deviation from all known theories, I was sure to discover some new field of speculation, if any remained; but I scarcely expected to grasp the calculus of the Destinies. Far from aiming so high, I devoted myself at first only to very ordinary problems such as Agricultural Association... . When I began to speculate on this matter, I would myself never have presumed that such a modest calculation could lead to the theory of the Destinies. But since it has become the key to the theory, it is indispensable for me to speak about it at some length. ...
More than once people have supposed that incalculable savings and ameliorations would result if one could bring together the inhabitants of a village in an industrial society, if one could associate two or three hundred families of unequal wealth according to their capital and their work. At first the idea seems completely impractical because of the obstacle that would be presented by the human passions. The obstacle seems particularly great because the passions cannot be overcome by gradual degrees. It is scarcely possible to create an agricultural association of twenty, thirty, forty or fifty individuals. But at least eight hundred are necessary to establish a natural or attractive association. I mean by these words a society whose members would be inspired to work by rivalry, self-esteem and other stimuli compatible with self-interest. In the order to which I refer we will become passionately enthusiastic about agricultural work which is so irksome today that we only do it out of necessity and the fear of dying of hunger.
I will not discuss the stages of my research concerning the problem of natural association. It is a system so foreign to our ways that I am in no hurry to describe it in detail. It would seem ridiculous if I did not first provide the reader with a glimpse of the immense advantages which it will yield.
An agricultural association of roughly a thousand people offers such immense advantages that it is difficult to explain the fact that our modern philosophers have shown no interest in the idea. There is a group of savants, the economists, who are supposed to be particularly interested in industrial ameliorations. Their failure to search for a method of association is all the more inconceivable in that they have themselves indicated several of the advantages which will result from association. For instance, they have recognised, as anyone else could have done, that three hundred families of associated villagers could have just a single well-kept granary instead of three hundred run-down granaries, a single wine-vat instead of three hundred poorly maintained vats. In many cases, and especially in summer, these villagers could have just three or four large ovens instead of three hundred. They could send a single dairymaid to town with a wagon bearing a cask of milk and thus save a hundred other dairymaids the time and trouble it takes to carry their pitchers into town. These are just a few of the savings that diverse observers have recognised; and yet they have not indicated one-twentieth of the advantages which will result from agricultural association... .
Disputatious people are sure to raise objections. “How can you form an association out of families when one may have 100,000 livres and another may be penniless? How can you reconcile so many conflicting interests and desires? How can you absorb all their jealousies in such a way as to serve everyone’s interest?” My reply to all this is: by the enticement of wealth and pleasure. The strongest passion of both peasants and city people is the love of profit. When they see that a societary community yields a profit three times that of a community of incoherent families and provides all its members with the most varied pleasures, they will forget all their rivalries and hasten to form an association. The system will be adopted everywhere without the application of any form of constraint, for people everywhere are passionately devoted to wealth and pleasure.
To summarise, this theory of agricultural association, which is going to change the condition of the human race, appeals to the passions which are common to all men; it seduces them with the enticements of profit and sensual pleasure. That is why it is sure to succeed among the savages and barbarians as well as the civilised, for the passions are the same everywhere.
There is no urgency about making known this new system to which I will give the name progressive series, or series of groups, passionate series.[14] By these words I mean to designate an assemblage of several associated groups whose members are devoted to different branches of a single industry or a single passion... . The theory of passionate series or progressive series has not been conceived arbitrarily like our social theories. The ordonnance of these series is entirely analogous to that of a geometrical series. Both have the same properties such as the balance of rivalry between the extreme groups and the intermediate groups of the series... .
People have regarded the passions as enemies of concord and have written thousands of volumes against them. These volumes are going to fall into nothingness. For the passions tend only to concord, to that social unity which we have thought was so alien to them. But the passions can only be harmonised if they are allowed to develop in an orderly fashion within the progressive series or series of groups. Outside of this mechanism the passions are only unchained tigers, incomprehensible enigmas. For this reason the philosophers have claimed that they must be repressed. Their opinion is doubly absurd since the passions cannot be repressed and since, if they could, civilisation would rapidly disappear and man would rapidly fall back into a nomadic state in which the passions would be even more harmful than they are now. I have no more faith in the virtues of the shepherds than in those of their apologists.
The societary order which is going to replace the incoherence of civilisation has no place for moderation or equality or any of the other philosophical notions. It requires ardent and refined passions. As soon as an association is formed, the passions will harmonise with greater ease if they are more intense and more numerous.
This is not to say that the new order will change the passions. Neither God nor man is capable of changing them; but it is possible to change their direction without changing their nature... . Thus if I maintain that in the societary order men will acquire tastes which are different from those which they have at present, that they will prefer to live in the country rather than the city, one should not believe that in acquiring new tastes they will acquire new passions. They will still be guided by the love of wealth and pleasure.
I insist on this point to meet an objection which has been raised by certain obtuse individuals. When they hear me talk about the new tastes and customs which will emerge in the societary order, they immediately exclaim: “So you want to change the passions!” Certainly not. But what I do want to do is to provide them with new means of expression, to assure them three or four times the development which they have in the incoherent order in which we live. This is why we will see civilised people acquire an aversion for habits which please them today, such as family life. In the family system children spend all their time crying, quarrelling, breaking things and refusing to work. But when these same children have joined the progressive series or series of groups, they will become industrious; they will try to emulate each other’s accomplishments without any outside encouragement; they will enthusiastically try to inform themselves about agriculture, manufacturing, science and art.’ they will perform useful tasks while they think they are amusing themselves. When fathers witness this new order o f things, they will find their children adorable in the series and detestable in the incoherent household. Then they will observe that in the residence of a phalanx (this is the name I give to the association which farms a rural area) people are served marvellous food... . Finally they will discover that in the activities and relations of the series there is never any cheating, and that people who are so dishonest and crude in civilisation will become paragons of honesty and refinement in the series. When they have seen all this they will acquire an aversion for the household, the cities and the civilisation of which they are now so fond. They will want to associate themselves in the series of a Phalanx and live in its edifice. Will they have changed their passions in becoming disdainful of the customs and tastes which please them today? No, their passions will have changed their means of expression without having changed their nature or their ultimate goal.
Thus one should beware of supposing that the system of the progressive series, which will be entirely different from that of civilisation, will bring about the slightest change in the passions. The passions have been and will remain immutable. They will produce conflict and poverty outside of the progressive series and harmony and opulence in the societary state which is our destiny. The establishment of the societary order in a single community will be spontaneously imitated everywhere thanks to the immense profits and innumerable pleasures which that order will assure to all individuals, however poor or wealthy they may be.
I shall turn now to the results of this discovery from a scientific standpoint... . As to the new sciences which it has revealed, I shall confine myself to indicating the two most important ones. Since these matters will not interest most of my readers, I shall try to be as brief as possible.
The first science which I discovered was the theory of passionate attraction. When I recognised that the progressive series assure full development to the passions of both men and women, of the young and the old, and of people in every social class, when I discovered that in this new order a great number of passions will be a guarantee of strength and wealth, I surmised that if God had given so much influence to passionate attraction and so little to its enemy, reason, His purpose was to guide us to the system of progressive series which is completely consistent with attraction. Then I supposed that attraction, which is so much maligned by the philosophers, must be the interpreter of the designs of God concerning the social order. By this means I arrived at the analytic and synthetic calculus of passionate attractions and repulsions. This calculus cannot fail to culminate in agricultural association. Thus if anyone had attempted to study attraction analytically and synthetically, he would have discovered the laws of association without seeking them. This is something that no one has ever dreamed of. Even in the eighteenth century, when analytical methods were so popular, no one ever tried to apply them to attraction.
The theory of passionate attractions and repulsions is an exact science and wholly applicable to geometrical theorems. It has great ramifications and can become the sustenance of the philosophers who are, I believe, very much in need of some luminous and useful problem on which to exercise their metaphysical talents.
I continue my discussion of the filiation of the new sciences. I soon recognised that the laws of passionate attraction were in complete accord with the laws of material attraction, as explained by Newton and Leibnitz, and that there was a unified system of movement governing the material world and the spiritual world.
I suspected that this analogy might apply to particular laws as well as to general ones, and that the attractions and properties of the animals, vegetables and minerals were perhaps coordinated with the same scheme as those of man and the stars. After making the necessary investigations, I became convinced of this. Thus a new exact science was discovered: the analogy of the material, organic, animal and social movements, or the analogy of the modifications of matter with the mathematical theory of the passions of man and the animals.[15]
The discovery of these two exact sciences revealed others to me. It would be useless to list them all here. But they include everything up to literature and the arts, and they will permit the establishment of exact methods in all’ the domains of human knowledge.
Once I had discovered the two theories of attraction and the unity of the four movements, I began to make sense of the book of nature. One by one, I found the answers to its mysteries. I had lifted the veil that was supposed to be impenetrable. I advanced into a new scientific world. It was thus that I arrived by gradual degrees at the calculus of the Universal Destinies, or the determination of the fundamental system governing all the laws of movement, present, past and future.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
The Preacher Man Killeth- Robert Mitchum’s “The Night of The Hunter”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Robert Mitchum’s Night Of The Hunter.
DVD Review
Night Of The Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum, Lilian Gish, directed by Charles Laughton, United Artists, 1955
I admit, truth admit, that given a choice I much prefer Robert Mitchum as guy who is not afraid to take a bullet of two, and gladly, from some dishy femme fatale like Jane Greer after she has led him over the hoops for a while in a film like Out Of The Past. Or as tough guy detective Phillip Marlowe not a afraid to throw his weight around a little when the bad guys try to put the squeeze on some kindly old general in The Big Sleep (1980s version). What I can’t figure, but maybe it is just a matter of taste, is him as a mad man good book preacher, who just off-handedly kills a slew of women (mainly with dough) for “god.” But maybe too that is just because I get the slightest bit nervous around guys (gals too) who have a direct pipe line to “him.”
And that dilemma pretty much tells the tale, or really the half tale, of the film under review, The Night Of The Hunter. See Preacher Man Powell, despite his apparent “credentials” is a stone-cold crazy out of the great American backwoods (1930s style) when a man could kill a few, okay, okay twenty something, women and not have a coast to coast manhunt bothering him. But Preacher Man, like all stone-cold crazies, can’t leave well enough alone and so as he is fortuitously bunked up in prison with a guy who is facing the hangman for felony murder he finds out that the guy has the dough stashed somewhere back in the hills and hollows (yes, I know, hollas) of West Virginia.
Apparently they did not have a separate death row in those days because Brother Powell is in for some chicken charge and is released shortly after the execution. Released naturally to draw a beeline to Podunk . And there he courts the widow, faux coddles the kids, and then off-handedly cuts the widow’s throat and dumps her in some convenient river. And then to the kids. But justice, very rough justice, is done in the end. End of story and time number two hundred and forty-two in film noir where we find out that crime does into pay.
I mentioned above that this was the half-tale. The other half woven into the stone-killer story is one about redemption, kind of. See the kids, knowing they are doomed if they do or don’t tell Preacher Man where the dough is, head down river, and pronto. They wind up with Aunt Betty (okay, okay, Aunt Rachael), a women who takes in the strays of great depression 1930s). So as crazy and mad as Brother Powell is Sister Rachael is the opposite, including a having a ton of folk wisdom and country goodness. So you can see where an old tough guy crime noir aficionado would be longing to see Robert Mitchum show his stuff in a less stone-crazy manner. (Although maybe some dame, some unmentioned dame, put him over the edge back in the day. Then everything would be explainable.)
DVD Review
Night Of The Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum, Lilian Gish, directed by Charles Laughton, United Artists, 1955
I admit, truth admit, that given a choice I much prefer Robert Mitchum as guy who is not afraid to take a bullet of two, and gladly, from some dishy femme fatale like Jane Greer after she has led him over the hoops for a while in a film like Out Of The Past. Or as tough guy detective Phillip Marlowe not a afraid to throw his weight around a little when the bad guys try to put the squeeze on some kindly old general in The Big Sleep (1980s version). What I can’t figure, but maybe it is just a matter of taste, is him as a mad man good book preacher, who just off-handedly kills a slew of women (mainly with dough) for “god.” But maybe too that is just because I get the slightest bit nervous around guys (gals too) who have a direct pipe line to “him.”
And that dilemma pretty much tells the tale, or really the half tale, of the film under review, The Night Of The Hunter. See Preacher Man Powell, despite his apparent “credentials” is a stone-cold crazy out of the great American backwoods (1930s style) when a man could kill a few, okay, okay twenty something, women and not have a coast to coast manhunt bothering him. But Preacher Man, like all stone-cold crazies, can’t leave well enough alone and so as he is fortuitously bunked up in prison with a guy who is facing the hangman for felony murder he finds out that the guy has the dough stashed somewhere back in the hills and hollows (yes, I know, hollas) of West Virginia.
Apparently they did not have a separate death row in those days because Brother Powell is in for some chicken charge and is released shortly after the execution. Released naturally to draw a beeline to Podunk . And there he courts the widow, faux coddles the kids, and then off-handedly cuts the widow’s throat and dumps her in some convenient river. And then to the kids. But justice, very rough justice, is done in the end. End of story and time number two hundred and forty-two in film noir where we find out that crime does into pay.
I mentioned above that this was the half-tale. The other half woven into the stone-killer story is one about redemption, kind of. See the kids, knowing they are doomed if they do or don’t tell Preacher Man where the dough is, head down river, and pronto. They wind up with Aunt Betty (okay, okay, Aunt Rachael), a women who takes in the strays of great depression 1930s). So as crazy and mad as Brother Powell is Sister Rachael is the opposite, including a having a ton of folk wisdom and country goodness. So you can see where an old tough guy crime noir aficionado would be longing to see Robert Mitchum show his stuff in a less stone-crazy manner. (Although maybe some dame, some unmentioned dame, put him over the edge back in the day. Then everything would be explainable.)
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- What Brenda Lee Wanted - “I Want To Be Wanted”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Brenda Lee performing her classic heartache song, I Want To Be Wanted.
It’s hard to believe that fifty years later the tune to Brenda Lee’s 1960 classic tear-jerk song, I Want To Be Wanted, is running like some crazy escaped electrode through my head, incessantly through my head. The song’s premise is simple enough. A guy, if you can believe that a 1960s Mad Men in waiting guy could express such sentiments except through some woman fantasy of what a “sensitive” guy would feel when he is dumped (there is no other way to put in 1060. 1560, 2060, 2560), unceremoniously dumped by his sweetie (see I can be nice). So Brother Mopes is all bent out of shape and hardly knows that there is any real world outside his lost, and his pain. He has it so bad for this honey that he can’t even think about some future honey on the horizon taking that old sweetie’s place. Irreplaceable. So he will never be right again when some frail passes him by and gives her come hither smile. Poor guy.
Wait a minute not poor guy, no sap. And also the key to why I am still buzzing the tune through my head fifty years and five hundred come hither looks later (not all by shes, I did some of the come hithering, that is just the, appropriate, total combined). This was my story, hell, half the guys I knew had that same story (although the variety was in what would be missed, missed forever, and it was for the older guys a lot more than some errant kiss).
First to the sap part. There were a million chicks(excuse me, at the time we called dames, what we today with a lot more wisdom, respect and other evil eyes call women, chicks and they liked, some of them anyway, to be called that but that is for some social anthropologist to figure out) out there in the world. And there were at least a few of those millions that a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, hell, sixty year old boy could latch onto for company to keep away the cold after that theoretical “sweetie” showed him the door. Girls, women, who had many charms, good lips, and who could make my old heart pitter-patter just like the last chick, oops, girl. And unless some dangerous femme fatale, like Jane Greer in Out of The Past or Rita Hayworth in Gilda, has her claws into you bad , which excuses and explained every odd behavior on your part including that grin on your face when she cuts your heart open,
the world should be your oyster. So get over it.
Easy for me to say fifty years later and two years, maybe, smarter about women. But here is the “skinny.” I guess I really was that “sensitive” guy that old Brenda was describing because just about the time her song burst onto the scene, especially as a selection for the last dance of the school dance night I was in the throes of my first love affair (nice way to put it for a fourteen year old guy who wore black Chuck Taylor sneakers, flannel shirts, brown usually, black uncuffed chinos and sunglasses at midnight up in Podunk Maine (Olde Saco to be exact). Ya, heart- be-still as I say her name, Lucy D’Amboise, all of fourteen, had her non-femme fatale claws into me, into me bad after she showed me the door. And immediately took up with bad boy Jimmy LaCroix, Junior.
But time, a little, heals ten percent of all wounds, and so I got over sweet Lucy a while back. But here is the funny part although I found plenty of girl / woman companions that were better kissers, better “caressers,” less two-timing, and just as soft-voiced (although she had one of the softest, most demure voices around) they do not make me think back fifty years to some country torch song. I wonder what Lucy is doing this night.
It’s hard to believe that fifty years later the tune to Brenda Lee’s 1960 classic tear-jerk song, I Want To Be Wanted, is running like some crazy escaped electrode through my head, incessantly through my head. The song’s premise is simple enough. A guy, if you can believe that a 1960s Mad Men in waiting guy could express such sentiments except through some woman fantasy of what a “sensitive” guy would feel when he is dumped (there is no other way to put in 1060. 1560, 2060, 2560), unceremoniously dumped by his sweetie (see I can be nice). So Brother Mopes is all bent out of shape and hardly knows that there is any real world outside his lost, and his pain. He has it so bad for this honey that he can’t even think about some future honey on the horizon taking that old sweetie’s place. Irreplaceable. So he will never be right again when some frail passes him by and gives her come hither smile. Poor guy.
Wait a minute not poor guy, no sap. And also the key to why I am still buzzing the tune through my head fifty years and five hundred come hither looks later (not all by shes, I did some of the come hithering, that is just the, appropriate, total combined). This was my story, hell, half the guys I knew had that same story (although the variety was in what would be missed, missed forever, and it was for the older guys a lot more than some errant kiss).
First to the sap part. There were a million chicks(excuse me, at the time we called dames, what we today with a lot more wisdom, respect and other evil eyes call women, chicks and they liked, some of them anyway, to be called that but that is for some social anthropologist to figure out) out there in the world. And there were at least a few of those millions that a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, hell, sixty year old boy could latch onto for company to keep away the cold after that theoretical “sweetie” showed him the door. Girls, women, who had many charms, good lips, and who could make my old heart pitter-patter just like the last chick, oops, girl. And unless some dangerous femme fatale, like Jane Greer in Out of The Past or Rita Hayworth in Gilda, has her claws into you bad , which excuses and explained every odd behavior on your part including that grin on your face when she cuts your heart open,
the world should be your oyster. So get over it.
Easy for me to say fifty years later and two years, maybe, smarter about women. But here is the “skinny.” I guess I really was that “sensitive” guy that old Brenda was describing because just about the time her song burst onto the scene, especially as a selection for the last dance of the school dance night I was in the throes of my first love affair (nice way to put it for a fourteen year old guy who wore black Chuck Taylor sneakers, flannel shirts, brown usually, black uncuffed chinos and sunglasses at midnight up in Podunk Maine (Olde Saco to be exact). Ya, heart- be-still as I say her name, Lucy D’Amboise, all of fourteen, had her non-femme fatale claws into me, into me bad after she showed me the door. And immediately took up with bad boy Jimmy LaCroix, Junior.
But time, a little, heals ten percent of all wounds, and so I got over sweet Lucy a while back. But here is the funny part although I found plenty of girl / woman companions that were better kissers, better “caressers,” less two-timing, and just as soft-voiced (although she had one of the softest, most demure voices around) they do not make me think back fifty years to some country torch song. I wonder what Lucy is doing this night.
Ancient dreams, dreamed-Down On The Mean Streets Detour- Magical Realism 101
Endless tramp walked streets, waiting for the next fix. Waiting really for some god miracle, some murmured pray sacrilege and redemption seeking miracle. Waiting for all the accumulated messes of this world, this made world to seep into the gutter. Waiting for all past history, all past memoir better, all past sorrows, given and received, all pass two roads taken, wrong road chosen, all personal hurts, given and taken, all past vanities to break down in the means streets, and closure. No, not closure, relief. Waiting, ya, waiting but to no avail. And so all roads , chosen and unchosen closed, all forward turned back, all value devalued, all this ….
Five AM , dark turning to a shade lighter, after a hard ground under the Eliot Bridge bed night, cold October cold with all newspapers, Herald, Globe, upscale New York Times for a pillow used for ground cover yelling about some guy named Jimmy Carter and about how he is saved. Running for president too. The guy will need more saving that I need. Ironic though, just that minute when I need to be saved. Lord saved, mercy saved, some humble Joyell saved (although I did not know it, know it for a very long time, too long and too late).
Long walk along the Charles, supermarket double brown bag for all worldly possessions. A tee shirt, maybe two, underwear, socks, a half rank pair of pants (no childhood concern about cuffed or uncuffed now, or color even), another shirt to match the one I am wearing, a comb, and a bar of soap, Dial, and done. All worldly possessions reduced almost to grave size.
Long walk to safe downtown Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, and five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. My street bathroom, a splash (unlike those ocean wave splashes on ancient dream Pacific nights now faded) of water on the face, some precious soap, paper towel for a wash cloth, haphazard combing (hell, I ‘m not entering a beauty contest, jesus, no), some soap under the tee shirt for underarms and done. Worldly beauty done.
Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out under some other Eliot Street Bridge bungalow (switched nightly to avoid cop riffs and fellow tramp rips). Walk, stopping for an occasional library break , for a quick nod out, really, and quick read, not some political book though, these days, Genet, Celine, Burroughs, Kerouac (not On The Road magic but Big Sur traumas), and such self-help books. (Ironic.)
And minute plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Waiting for the next fix. Desolation row, no way home.
Five AM , dark turning to a shade lighter, after a hard ground under the Eliot Bridge bed night, cold October cold with all newspapers, Herald, Globe, upscale New York Times for a pillow used for ground cover yelling about some guy named Jimmy Carter and about how he is saved. Running for president too. The guy will need more saving that I need. Ironic though, just that minute when I need to be saved. Lord saved, mercy saved, some humble Joyell saved (although I did not know it, know it for a very long time, too long and too late).
Long walk along the Charles, supermarket double brown bag for all worldly possessions. A tee shirt, maybe two, underwear, socks, a half rank pair of pants (no childhood concern about cuffed or uncuffed now, or color even), another shirt to match the one I am wearing, a comb, and a bar of soap, Dial, and done. All worldly possessions reduced almost to grave size.
Long walk to safe downtown Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, and five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. My street bathroom, a splash (unlike those ocean wave splashes on ancient dream Pacific nights now faded) of water on the face, some precious soap, paper towel for a wash cloth, haphazard combing (hell, I ‘m not entering a beauty contest, jesus, no), some soap under the tee shirt for underarms and done. Worldly beauty done.
Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out under some other Eliot Street Bridge bungalow (switched nightly to avoid cop riffs and fellow tramp rips). Walk, stopping for an occasional library break , for a quick nod out, really, and quick read, not some political book though, these days, Genet, Celine, Burroughs, Kerouac (not On The Road magic but Big Sur traumas), and such self-help books. (Ironic.)
And minute plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Waiting for the next fix. Desolation row, no way home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)