AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Monday, August 13, 2012

From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon-The Struggle For A Revolutionary Workers Party In 1940

Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives.

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Markin comment on James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party from the American Left History blog:

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.

At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American Socialist Revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.

For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the 1930’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles here this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.

As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism (click see all my reviews for reviews of all of these books). I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.
**********
The Struggle For A Revolutionary Workers Party In 1940

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to imperialist war this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the late 1970’s shortly after his death in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series on this important American Communist.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation after a long journeymanship working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- just before American entry into World War II- started with his leadership of the fight against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. Cannon won his spurs in that fight and in his struggle to orient the party toward World War II. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so.

As I write this review we are in the midst of commemorating the 3rd anniversary of the start of the American invasion of Iraq. As I have argued elsewhere in this space militants must support the call for immediate United States and Allied forces withdrawal from that war-torn country. Over the long haul more drastic action is needed, much more, including a change in government but that demand is the minimum basis for action today. The proper response to the American invasion by leftists today has been the subject of much discussion (and precious little action). This dilemma is due in part to the lost of continuity with earlier leftist traditions of struggle in this country. Let us learn from them.

I note here that even among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of that day, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support in the impeding world-wide war to come. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to World War II than is evident in today’s leftist responses to Iraq Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book where Cannon offers a cogent polemic against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution against an impeding imperialist onslaught. Perhaps as important is Cannon’s leadership of the organizational struggle against that tendency just prior to American entry into World War II.

For most of the period before World War II, and indeed for most of the 20th century, the so-called Russian Question was a central, if not the central question that divided the international labor movement. Where organizations and individuals stood on defense of the gains of the Russian Revolution because or despite the victorious Stalinist leadership shaped all other policies. As orthodox Trotskyists the Socialist Workers Party was committed to defend the Russian Revolution and hence the Soviet Union in case of war with any of the imperialist powers. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, when it appeared that this question was going to go from an abstract slogan to reality in 1939-40 parts of that party rebelled. That rebellion was ignited under various theoretical justifications- in any case- it resulted from the pressure of middle class public opinion against the Soviet Union on the organization after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. The good old days of the Popular Front when all were good fellows and true rapidly receded into the background. This question moreover split the central leadership of the party which had worked together through thick and thin for more than a decade. For more insights by Cannon this section bears a careful reading especially on the decisive importance of party program in orienting the membership through the rough spots.

As an aside, although the Russian question was the central political question dividing the party as it faced World War II a disproportionate amount of Cannon’s ink was spilled on the organization question. That is, in polemicizing against those elements in the leadership and their hangers-on who were unhappy with their positions or who were nursing slights by the Cannon ‘regime’. Trotsky faced some of the same accusations then and earlier during his leadership of various parts of the Soviet state. It is apparent that some of the oppositionists of the leadership were using the political situation to abandon the party altogether. Those elements (mainly around Shachtman and Abern) thought they could build a mass party on the cheap. After the split they lost no time setting up a new party which was supposed to be faster and speedier than the old party. That party’s (The Workers Party) later evolution to mainstream State Department social democracy and political disintegration should give one pause. Although the Russian question, with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991-92, is no longer a day to day burning issue for the international labor movement a serious attitude toward program and politics is still warranted. Cannon’s work here shows how that should look.

From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon-The American Socialist Workers Party In World War II

Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives.

*************
Markin comment on James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party from the American Left History blog:

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.

At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American Socialist Revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.

For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the 1930’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles here this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.

As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism (click see all my reviews for reviews of all of these books). I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.
**********
The American Socialist Workers Party In World War II

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to imperialist war this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of the writings of James P. Cannon that was published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the late 1970’s shortly after his death in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series on this important American Communist.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation after a long journeymanship working with Trotsky. The period under discussion started with his leadership of the fight against those who no longer wanted to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution despite the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution. He won his spurs in that fight and in his struggle to orient the party toward World War II. One thing is sure- in his prime which includes this period Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so.

As I write this review we are in the midst of commemerrating the 3rd Anniversary of the start of the American invasion of Iraq. As I have argued elsewhere in this space militants must support the call for immediate United States and Allied forces withdrawal from that war-torn country. More drastic action is needed, much more, over the long haul including a change in government but that demand is the minimum basis for action today. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to World War II the Cannon’s writing here will assist you. I draw your attention to three aspects of policy which highlight this book; the historic socialist anti-war policy; the ambiguous Proletarian Military Policy of the Socialist Workers Party; and, revolutionary socialist defense policy against governmental persecution and suppression.

Historically, at least in peace time, most socialist tendencies before World War I had a formal policy against the war policies and military buildup. At the start of World War I most European socialist parties capitulated to their respective imperialist state’s war aims that are rightly understood as a betrayal of that policy. The Russian Bolshevik Party led by Lenin and preciously few other European parties and individuals upheld the Marxist policy against war and militarism. Moreover, one of the most enduring lessons of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that the only way to successfully fight against imperialist war aims and stop war is to overthrow the capitalist system of your own country. As developed during World War I that understanding of socialist policy had two prongs. First, socialists must not vote for or otherwise support the war aims of their own imperialist state. Second, in order to end war and bring in the prospect of a socialist organization of society dedicated to ending war one must actively seek to turn the imperialist war into a civil war. This is the perspective the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, led by James P. Cannon, operated from prior to and during World War II. Thus, they operated within an orthodox Leninist revolutionary perspective. They did this forthrightly and paid the price for it with the imprisonment of its leaders, including Cannon, and virtual suppression of its newspaper. These were severe blows to that small party.

Although the Socialist Workers Party honorably upheld the revolutionary socialist position on imperialist war during this period that party pursued what can only be considered an ambiguous policy that has come down in history as the Proletarian Military Policy. In this perspective the organization was influenced by Trotsky’s theses on permanent war and total militarism. That policy had two parts when it was elaborated just prior to American participation in World War II. One was trade union control of worker military training in case of conscription and the other was control of worker-officer training. The fundamental flaw in this policy is that it contradicts the Marxist understanding of the state which is that in the final analysis the state is an armed body of men (women) in the service of the ruling class. To call for such controls is either utopian or opportunism and blunted the other orthodox actions that proved the worth of the party. Yes, oppose conscription. Yes, oppose the war budget. Yes, sent your youthful cadre into the army when drafted to influence working class and minority youth. No, to this scheme.

As a result of their open and defiant opposition to Roosevelt’s war aims the leadership of the Socialist Workers was indicted before the opening of United States involvement in World War II. Ultimately most of those indicted were convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. This is the price revolutionary must know in their bones they will have to pay for such fundamental opposition. All honor to those courageous individuals. The Socialist Workers Party in response to this governmental persecution created a broad based defense organization to both raise funds and call attention to the plight of their comrades. This was both appropriate and useful. Moreover, the organization properly used the trial as a forum on socialism. This is also a proper response to such persecutions by the government. Cannon has some interesting things his experiences in the legal vs. illegal party debate and the proper tone to take during wartime to protect your legal status when you oppose the government. If you oppose the United States occupation in Iraq read this book. Before we are done you and I may need to use some of the lessons drawn from this source.

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future- Radical Activist Carlos Montes Saddled with Probation

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-

Markin comment on this series:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my early 1960s youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.

As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
********
Workers Vanguard No. 1006
3 August 2012

Carlos Montes Saddled with Probation

The court case against Chicano activist Carlos Montes ended on June 5 in Los Angeles when Montes pleaded “no contest” to one count of perjury in exchange for the local district attorney dropping the three remaining felonies against him. Although Montes will receive no prison time, he now must serve three years of formal probation, which will keep him under the thumb of the capitalist state, and 180 hours of community service. He also is prohibited from possessing any weapons. Montes was originally charged with six felonies, two of which were dropped on March 27, and faced up to 18 years in jail.

A leftist political activist for 40-plus years, Montes is a supporter of the reformist Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and writes for its newspaper, Fight Back! He was one of the victims in an FBI frame-up of 24 leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists. Beginning in September 2010, the FBI raided homes and offices, mainly in the Midwest, as part of an “anti-terror” witchhunt (see “Protest FBI Raids on Leftists, Union Activists!” WV No. 966, 8 October 2010). Early on 17 May 2011, the FBI and an L.A. Sheriff’s SWAT team broke down Montes’ door and, with automatic assault rifles leveled, ransacked his home, seizing his notes and papers.

The agents arrested Montes under reactionary gun control laws, claiming that he had violated a firearms code because he supposedly had a felony on his record and therefore was prohibited from owning a gun. However, as the Committee to Stop FBI Repression pointed out, “according to a recent court document, this charge was sentenced as a misdemeanor. The prosecution is basing its case on this 42-year-old misdemeanor, disguising it as a bogus felony” (fightbacknews.org, 25 March). That misdemeanor stems from a 1969 student strike for black, Chicano and women’s studies at East L.A. College during which police beat and arrested protesters. On his way home, Montes was arrested and accused of assaulting a sheriff’s deputy—with an empty soda can!

While we certainly welcome the fact that Montes will not be imprisoned, the onerous penalties that he has been saddled with are not a “victory against repression” as the FRSO’s Web site trumpeted. In fact, what transpired is the normal workings of the American “injustice” system—bogus felony charges threatening decades in prison are routinely leveled in order to coerce plea agreements to lesser charges. In the same posting, the FRSO touted its petition campaign calling on Barack Obama, Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, and his top cop Attorney General Eric Holder to “Stop the FBI campaign of repression against Chicano, immigrant rights, anti-war and international solidarity activists now!” But the very business of the FBI is repression, and it is Obama and Holder who—in upholding the interests of the racist capitalist ruling class—unleash such agents of state terror against workers and the oppressed.

During the 2008 elections, the FRSO pushed the dangerous myth that the election of Obama would reverse the worst policies of George W. Bush. But Obama’s intent always was to wage a more effective “war on terror,” and he has since implemented repressive measures that go well beyond what Bush accomplished. So-called socialists who seek to pressure the capitalist Democratic Party to “do right” are an obstacle to mobilizing the working class and the oppressed in defense of their own interests.

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future- Lenin On "Lockouts and the Class Struggle"

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-

Markin comment on this series:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my early 1960s youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.

As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
**********
Workers Vanguard No. 1006
3 August 2012

Lockouts and the Class Struggle

(Quote of the Week)

With the U.S. economy continuing to falter and the labor movement in an extended retreat, lockouts have increasingly been used by the capitalists in their drive to wrest ever-greater concessions from the unions, or destroy them altogether. V. I. Lenin, writing in a period of intense strikes in Russia on the eve of World War I, discussed workers’ resistance to lockouts. Despite the different contexts, the role of Marxists in advancing the class consciousness of the proletariat remains unchanged.

Lockouts, i.e., the mass discharge of workers by common agreement among employers, is as necessary and inevitable a phenomenon in capitalist society as strikes are. Capital, which throws the whole of its crushing weight upon the ruined small producers and the proletariat, constantly threatens to force the conditions of the workers down to starvation level and condemn them to death from starvation. And in all countries there have been cases, even whole periods in the life of nations, when the failure of the workers to fight back has led to their being reduced to incredible poverty and all the horrors of starvation.

The workers’ resistance springs from their very conditions of life—the sale of labour-power. Only as a result of this resistance, despite the tremendous sacrifices the workers have to make in the struggle, are they able to maintain anything like a tolerable standard of living. But capital is becoming more and more concentrated, manufacturers’ associations are growing, the number of destitute and unemployed people is increasing, and so also is want among the proletariat; consequently, it is becoming harder than ever to fight for a decent standard of living. The cost of living, which has been rising rapidly in recent years, often nullifies all the workers’ efforts.

By drawing larger and larger masses of the proletariat into the organised struggle, the workers’ organisations, and first and foremost the trade unions, make the workers’ resistance more planned and systematic. With the existence of mass trade unions of different types, strikes become more stubborn: they occur less often, but each conflict is of bigger dimensions.

Lockouts are caused by a sharpening of the struggle, and in their turn, sharpen that struggle. Rallying in the struggle and developing its class-consciousness, its organisation and experience in that struggle, the proletariat becomes more and more firmly convinced that the complete economic reconstruction of capitalist society is essential.

Marxist tactics consist in combining the different forms of struggle, in the skilful transition from one form to another, in steadily enhancing the consciousness of the masses and extending the area of their collective actions, each of which, taken separately, may be aggressive or defensive, and all of which, taken together, lead to a more intense and decisive conflict.

—V. I. Lenin, “Forms of the Working-Class Movement (The Lockout and Marxist Tactics)” (April 1914)

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future- Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Markin comment on this series:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my early 1960s youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.

As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*******

Workers Vanguard No. 1006
3 August 2012

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

July 2 marked 30 years since a nearly all-white jury declared class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal guilty in the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner on 9 December 1981. One day later, on the eve of the 4th of July, the jurors sentenced Mumia to death, based explicitly on his political views and activities as a champion of black freedom and an eloquent voice for the oppressed. Beginning in the late 1960s, Mumia was targeted by the police as a Black Panther leader and later as a MOVE supporter and journalist renowned for his searing exposés of cop brutality and racist oppression.

For three decades, police, prosecutors and government officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties screamed for the head of this innocent man. That effort finally ran aground on 7 December 2011 when Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams announced that he would not pursue the death sentence for Mumia. This announcement came in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last October rejecting the D.A.’s petition to reinstate the death sentence, which was overturned in 2001 (see “Drive to Execute Mumia Halted,” WV No. 993, 6 January). Mumia is now left to languish in prison without possibility of parole. Finally removed from death row, Mumia was transferred to Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he was vindictively thrown into solitary for seven weeks before finally being released into the general prison population at the end of January.

Mumia’s conviction and death sentence were the result of a political and racist frame-up. Cops, prosecutors and “hanging judge” Albert Sabo ripped to shreds every single one of Mumia’s trial rights—from the right to an attorney of his choice to the right to even be present in the courtroom where his life and freedom hung in the balance. Black people were summarily excluded from the jury. Witnesses were terrorized by the cops. Exculpatory evidence was concealed from the defense. Court after court refused to even consider the mountains of evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the confession of the actual killer. In this, the courts are joined not only by the right-wing tabloids but also by anti-death penalty liberals like those at the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer who are hopeful that Mumia will now be a forgotten man left to rot in prison for the rest of his life.

During the decades of his unjust imprisonment, Mumia has remained unbowed, speaking out for the oppressed and the impoverished through his death row commentaries (which can be heard on prisonradio.org). Mumia has published a number of books, including collections of his commentaries and essays in Live From Death Row, Death Blossoms and All Things Censored, the autobiographical We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party and Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. the U.S.A.

On July 9, PDC representatives visited Mumia. Dating back to 1987, our comrades have visited him on many occasions, first at Huntingdon prison and later at SCI Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. In those previous visits, Mumia was separated by a thick wall of Plexiglas, and until a couple of years ago his hands were manacled. Mumia’s life on death row also meant that he was confined in an eight-by-twelve-foot cell almost 24 hours a day, with severe restrictions, including on phone calls.

With the restraints of death row finally lifted, Mumia is allowed six hours a day outdoors and is getting all the exercise and soaking up all the sun that he can. Mumia told how a number of fellow inmates had read his books and expressed their solidarity. He has been able to reacquaint himself with MOVE comrade Eddie Africa, also imprisoned at Mahanoy. For the first time, Mumia and our comrades could embrace, sit side by side and even break bread together (or at least the stale fare from the overpriced vending machines). At one point, a woman visiting another inmate came over to hug Mumia and tell how she has followed his case for 30 years. Noticing one particularly playful little girl, Mumia—who for decades could not touch his wife or bounce his children or grandchildren on his knee—expressed how much he appreciated being able to actually see children.

Compared to the death row conditions under which Mumia lived for 30 years, the more ordinary hell of America’s prisons is an improvement. But it is a crime that this innocent man has spent even a day behind bars. We remain dedicated to searing the cause of Mumia’s fight for freedom into the consciousness of the working class, radical youth and opponents of black oppression. Free Mumia now!

From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 90th Anniversary Of The Fourth Congress (1922)-The Black Freedom Struggle and the Comintern (1922)-Presentation at Toronto Conference

From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 90th Anniversary Of The Fourth Congress (1922)- Toronto Historical Materialism Conference-Revisionists Still Trying to Bury Leninism

Click on the headline to link to the Communist International Internet Archives.

Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.
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Workers Vanguard No. 1006
3 August 2012

Toronto Historical Materialism Conference-Revisionists Still Trying to Bury Leninism

In May, comrades from the Canadian and U.S. sections of the International Communist League intervened in a Historical Materialism (HM) conference held in Toronto, where some 400 people attended dozens of sessions over three days. One theme of debate was the 1922 Fourth Congress of the Communist International (CI), following the release by the Historical Materialism Book Series of a useful new English-language volume of the Congress proceedings, edited by leftist historian John Riddell. The Historical Materialism Book Series describes itself as a “publishing initiative of the radical left” and is influenced by the Cliffite Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain among others. Haymarket Books, associated with the American International Socialist Organization (ISO), is publishing paperback editions of the HM series.

HM and Haymarket render a useful service in publishing English-language works of interest to the workers movement. However, HM conferences are driven by the stock-in-trade reformist politics of the SWP and the ISO as well as the SWP-affiliated Canadian International Socialists, whose historic leaders—Paul Kellogg and Abigail Bakan—had a high profile at the Toronto event. These groups from their origins sided with their respective bloody “democratic” imperialist ruling classes against the Soviet degenerated workers state (see “The Bankruptcy of ‘New Class’ Theories,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 55, Autumn 1999). Since the fall of the USSR, they echo the bourgeoisie’s “death of communism” triumphalism and continue to bury the lessons of the Russian Revolution. Illustrating this were comments at one session by Bakan, who assisted Riddell with the Fourth Congress volume and yet asserted that the CI Congresses are not a textbook for leftists today.

On the contrary! The early Communist International provides a vital guide. Although we cast a critical eye on the Fourth Congress in particular, the ICL stands programmatically on the first four CI Congresses (i.e., those that occurred prior to the 1923-24 Stalinist political counterrevolution that resulted in the degeneration of the Soviet workers state). Emerging out of the Russian workers revolution of October 1917, these Congresses represent the highest theoretical and programmatic generalization of revolutionary lessons that the proletariat has ever achieved. The Russian Revolution, carried out under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, was a shaping event of the 20th century: capitalism was swept away and in its place a workers state based on workers and peasants councils (soviets) was established. It was viewed by Lenin and Trotsky as the opening shot in a revolution that could only be completed on the world stage.

The CI’s 1919 founding manifesto stated that as “representatives of the revolutionary proletariat of the different countries of Europe, America, and Asia,” its members were the heirs and executors of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. It proclaimed that its task was “to generalize the revolutionary experience of the working class, to cleanse the movement of the corroding influence of opportunism and social patriotism, and rally the forces of all truly revolutionary parties of the world proletariat.”

Communist parties were only beginning to form in 1919. Advanced workers in most countries were still organized under the banner of the social-democratic Second International, whose leaders helped bring workers to the slaughter of World War I by peddling poisonous nationalism and embracing the war aims and colonial ambitions of their “own” imperialist rulers. The Bolshevik Party under Lenin had by 1912 achieved a thorough political and organizational split from the opportunists in Russia, the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks also had acquired an unequaled wealth of practical experience under a rapid and varied succession of conditions and methods of struggle.

The Bolsheviks politically defeated the pro-capitalist opportunists in leading the Russian proletariat to power. Revolutionary workers uprisings that broke out in Central Europe right after WWI were smashed in large part due to the immaturity of the new Communist parties leading them. The CI sought to accomplish a final split of young Communist parties from the Social Democracy and to forge a more politically homogeneous international.

The Fourth Congress and the “Workers Government”

The ICL has a critical appraisal of the Fourth Congress’s treatment of the call for a “workers government.” We agree with Trotsky who in the 1938 Transitional Program made clear that the call for a workers government “represented nothing more than the popular designation for the already established dictatorship of the proletariat,” which also accords with Lenin’s views. Prior to the October Revolution, Lenin wrote The State and Revolution to prepare the working class for the seizure of power. In it, he described how a state—that is, the whole repressive apparatus of the ruling class, centrally the army, police and courts—emerges out of the “irreconcilability of class antagonisms.” Citing the conclusion drawn by Marx and Engels after the Paris Commune of 1871, Lenin emphasized that workers can’t simply “lay hold of the ready-made state machinery” but must crush it and replace it with a workers state.

But various reformist leftists take weak or ambiguous aspects of the decisions at the Fourth Congress to justify their own opportunist and class-collaborationist practices today. A case in point is the confused CI resolution that endorsed multiple interpretations of what constitutes a “workers government.” It detailed how this slogan could mean the dictatorship of the proletariat on the model of the October Revolution but also argued that “not every workers’ government is truly proletarian, that is, a revolutionary instrument of proletarian power.” The resolution allowed that the “workers government” designation could apply to Communists participating in a capitalist government run by Social Democrats, i.e., a bourgeois government dressed up in workers clothing. This latter interpretation was defended at the Historical Materialism conference.

For revolutionaries, it is an absolute betrayal of the working class to politically support or participate in a bourgeois government or to hold an executive post at the national, state or local level. However, this view—the illusory and ultimately deadly idea that workers parties could run a bourgeois state in workers’ interests—had been championed by an increasingly dominant section of the Second International. In the early years of the CI, the young Communist parties struggled to fully break with this reformist programmatic heritage. “Ultraleft” currents wrongly rejected parliamentary tactics altogether, while right-wing currents continued to cling to illusions in bourgeois parliamentarism, not assimilating the lessons imparted by Marx and Lenin on the state. The “workers government” debate at the Fourth Congress reflected these different political tendencies.

As an ICL comrade remarked at the Toronto conference:

“The proceedings of the Fourth Congress, usefully put together in John Riddell’s book, show that the debate on the ‘workers government’ slogan was extremely ill-prepared and extremely confused. Many delegates, not just ultralefts who opposed the united front on principle, spoke against the idea of coalition governments with social democrats and against the idea of so-called ‘workers governments’ based on parliamentary forms.”

He continued, “In contrast, the German leadership, the KPD, who were the central pushers of the final version of the ‘workers government’ resolution as adopted, were trying to do something on the ground in Germany—which was to form coalition governments with Social Democrats in various German regional states. At different points, that was opposed and pushed back by elements in the CI leadership, but in the end it went through.”

The consequences were enormous. In 1923, the German workers—plagued by hunger and massive inflation—were in a state of revolutionary turmoil. Unrest was fueled by the French occupation of the heavily industrial western part of Germany, a result of reparations that had been imposed on Germany after its defeat in WWI. In October, the German Communist Party (KPD) entered Social Democratic governments in the states of Saxony and Thuringia. Ignominiously, an insurrection was called off and a golden opportunity for revolution was lost, undermined by elements in the KPD and in the Soviet leadership (as Lenin was on his deathbed). As our comrade noted, looking for a halfway house between bourgeois and proletarian power “only leads to disaster.” (For more on the “workers government” slogan, see “A Trotskyist Critique of Germany 1923 and the Comintern,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 56, Spring 2001.)

In the main presentation on the “workers government” in Toronto, John Riddell accurately captured the Fourth Congress debate, noting that the CI resolution left room for a “workers government” to take office “while the capitalist state, or most of it, was still around,” a position that he embraced. Riddell began by addressing Greece today, where an economic crisis fueled by the austerity diktats of the German-dominated European Union (EU) has engulfed the country. Riddell was critical that the leftist Antarsya and Syriza coalitions had not joined forces, arguing that “if united, the left-wing, anti-austerity parties in Greece could have won the election.” Defending the idea that working-class organizations should consider managing the bourgeois state, he said: “The value of the workers government position rather lies in alerting us to a possibility and expanding our framework of thought and imagination,” adding that “even before the onset of workers revolution, workers can find a way to pose the issue of governmental power and to struggle for it.”

This perspective is precisely that of the Greek Internationalist Workers Left (DEA), a cofounder of Syriza that is associated with the American ISO. In a May 23 interview on the ISO’s Web site, a DEA leader explained: “We have declared before the people that the only government we will take part in or form is a government of the left, a government that will change the Memorandum [EU austerity terms] and all the laws that [sic] of the last three years, during the period of the crisis.” But such a “government of the left” would simply run the bourgeois state to help save the Greek and European capitalists. Syriza gives a “left” cover to the continued brutal exploitation of the Greek working class, while seeking to tinker with the EU-imposed terms of surrender.

As for Antarsya, which includes the Greek Socialist Workers Party (affiliated with the British SWP), it ran candidates in the June 17 election in its own name. However, Antarsya’s purpose was simply to pressure Syriza to the left from the outside, as was made clear in numerous declarations. Following the elections, its efforts have focused on building a pressure group around the Syriza opposition in parliament.

The ICL’s Greek section gave critical support to the Stalinist Greek Communist Party (KKE) in these elections. Despite its reformism and nationalism, the KKE campaigned in opposition to the EU and NATO and refused to participate in any class-collaborationist coalition with bourgeois parties (see “Vote KKE! No Vote to Syriza!” WV No. 1005, 6 July).

The “Anti-Imperialist United Front”

Another HM conference session further addressed the Fourth Congress, concentrating on questions of “Race, Gender, Nation and Class.” An associate of the Prometheus Research Library, our working Marxist archive, spoke on the crucial intervention of the Communist International in driving home the centrality of the fight for black freedom to proletarian revolution in the U.S. (see page 9). Among the other presentations in that session was one on women in the pre-1947 Indian Communist Party and another on “Islamism and Marxism.” The latter painted Islam and Marxism as complementary and compatible, drawing on weaknesses of the Fourth Congress in doing so. In fact, the ICL is also critical of the treatment by the Fourth Congress of the “anti-imperialist united front” as well as of pan-Islamism.

The Fourth Congress passed a resolution endorsing the “anti-imperialist united front,” tacitly posing an ongoing political bloc with bourgeois nationalism. Such a perspective could only tie the colonial workers and peasants to their own venal exploiters, who in turn are tied to the imperialists by a thousand threads. The ICL’s Declaration of Principles notes: “The ‘anti-imperialist united front’ is the particular form that class collaboration most often assumes in the colonial and ex-colonial countries, from the liquidation of the Chinese Communist Party into Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang in the 1920s to decades of prostration of the South African ‘left’ before the African National Congress (ANC).”

Similarly, the Fourth Congress opened the door to support of pan-Islamism, which had a hearing among workers in Muslim countries, such as Indonesia, by endowing Islamic political currents with “anti-imperialist” credentials. The Congress declared that “to the degree that the national-liberation movements extend in scope, the religious-political slogans of pan-Islamism will be more and more replaced by specific political demands.” That resolution stands in sharp contrast to one from the Second CI Congress in 1920 that took a hard position against pan-Islamism. The Second Congress’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” drafted by Lenin, argued that the CI “must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in colonial and backward countries” but insisted that it should “under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement.”

The disruptions in the imperialist centers brought on by WWI had by 1920 spurred the development of industry in the colonial world and correspondingly the emergence of a small but concentrated proletariat. The Second Congress was breaking new terrain in addressing the emergence of Communism in the colonies, where even bourgeois-nationalist movements were relatively new, reflecting the weak and late development of a native capitalist class. This situation together with the extremely limited implantation of Marxist ideas in these countries had the Second Congress looking primarily toward Western Europe, where revolutions appeared imminent. The sweeping away of capitalist property forms by a workers revolution in an imperialist center would immediately impact its colonies by ending imperialist subjugation. The CI fought to put the struggle against colonial and national oppression front and center as against the pro-imperialist politics of the Social Democracy.

At the conference session on “Race, Gender, Nation and Class,” an ICL comrade noted that “the Comintern leadership had to fight against indifference to the fight against colonial oppression, that’s a given.” But he added, “I want to speak to the other side, which is the strategy within the colonies, and I want to defend the Second Congress against the Fourth,” observing that “Lenin at the Second Congress put forward the idea of unconditional independence of the proletarian movement against all forms of bourgeois nationalism, in which he explicitly included pan-Islamism, however embryonic.” Our comrade also noted that Lenin stressed the importance of fighting against illusions in bourgeois nationalism, even as the Communists defended national liberation movements against colonialism.

The Fourth Congress discussion on proletarian independence in the colonies occurred immediately after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had been instructed by the CI to enter the bourgeois-nationalist Guomindang (GMD). This ultimately led to catastrophe for the young CCP. In May 1925, a Chinese workers revolution was sparked by a general strike in Shanghai that quickly spread throughout the country. The growing strike movement eventually pitted workers against the GMD. Even with the nationalists taking the lead in suppressing the uprising in 1926, the CCP remained inside the GMD. By this time, Stalin and his then-ally Nikolai Bukharin called the shots in the CI, which opposed requests from the CCP leadership to leave the GMD, even though the GMD had insisted that the CCP hand over a list of its members working within the GMD. The decisive crushing of the Chinese Revolution occurred in Shanghai in April 1927 when GMD leader Chiang Kai-shek carried out a coup, slaughtering tens of thousands of Communists and trade unionists (see “The Origins of Chinese Trotskyism,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 53, Summer 1997).

The bloody defeat of the Chinese Revolution shows where the “anti-imperialist united front” leads: not to “national liberation” from the imperialist yoke but rather to the subordination of the neocolonial masses to their own tinpot rulers and ultimately to bloody defeat. It was in the aftermath of the defeat of the Chinese Revolution that Trotsky generalized his theory of permanent revolution, which deepened and transcended the earlier debates in the CI, as pointed out by one of our comrades at the HM conference. Trotsky extended the model of the Russian Revolution, wherein the Bolsheviks stood in complete independence from, and fought against, the bourgeois liberals and vied for (and won) the allegiance of the poorest peasants and the oppressed peoples by championing their interests in the course of fighting for socialist revolution.

The crass pandering by the reformists before all manner of nationalist movements and even religious reaction was on display at the HM session on Egypt, where the ISO’s Ahmed Shawki was one of the speakers. A sharp debate took place between the ICL and the ISO over the pandering to the Muslim Brotherhood by the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists, which has ties to both the ISO and the SWP. Some attendees sympathized with the ISO/SWP view, arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood was the only organization “big enough and tough enough” to challenge the Mubarak dictatorship and that it had contradictions that leftists could exploit. Shawki demagogically railed against us for holding up Trotsky and Lenin to “lecture” people and hailed the youth of the Muslim Brotherhood who “physically put themselves out there” defending Tahrir Square and “made the revolution.”

But there was no social revolution in Egypt, nor was there any independent political expression of the working class as against the military, religious reactionaries and bourgeoisie. In opposition to the ISO, an ICL spokesman defended permanent revolution and argued that the “fundamentalists are precisely those forces that represent and are ideologically linked to the ruling class in every way, but also they are the mortal enemies of the Copts, of women, of peasants and of the organized working class itself.” She continued: “The clearest example of that is Iran in 1979, where all the [leftist] supporters of Khomeini ended up killed by Khomeini.” The ISO’s program is merely a recipe to keep workers and the oppressed under the neocolonial yoke.

As the philosopher George Santayana put it, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Socialist revolution remains the only fundamental solution to the ills of our time. This is still the epoch of imperialism—where finance capital holds sway and a handful of the most powerful capitalist countries dominate the globe—the same epoch that gave rise to WWI and the Russian Revolution. The inability of capitalism to fulfill even the minimal needs of the masses can be seen in the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, in the ravages of the recession on workers and the downtrodden, from the U.S. to Greece and beyond. The struggle between anti-Communist revisionism and revolutionary Marxism is the difference between disappearing the lessons of the past in order to repeat the same betrayals and studying the past to point the road to a victorious outcome.

It Ain’t About The Pool, Fast Eddie- Paul Newman’s “The Hustler”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Paul Newman’s The Hustler.

DVD Review

The Hustler, starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961

Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it. Fast Eddie coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post- World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek with everything you owned in the Great Depression or not having gotten your fill of blood, action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away.

But like the headline says it ain’t about the pool as this 1961 Paul Newman (as Fast Eddie) film under review, The Hustler, makes very clear. For Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Hanging out in white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide bucket belt, whipsaw ready, holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety store , some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.

But hunger, gnawed hunger, festering hunger is a tyrant, a hard and cruel tyrant, when you have Fast Eddie appetites. Yes, Fast Eddie, just join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade. Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it.

To watch Fast Eddie shoot pool when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, a wayward shoulder here or there, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot like he and the balls were one, and maybe they were, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then go on those runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to hanging off that wall at the mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh. He wanted the king hell king, Minnesota Fats (played by Jackie Gleason with serious style).

And he got Fats, got Fats in spades. Got more of Fats that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Got Fats with his blood up, with his king hell king no prisoners blood up. Jesus Fast Eddie looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful.

Fats about that time, about round ten, took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Fast Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.

But that guy, that no quote nine to five guy, had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he had never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world, to carry. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.

And then she, Sarah (played by Piper Laurie), showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie too much hunger pieces. To curb his hunger a little, maybe, and also to disturb his sleep. Some called her a tramp, an easy lay, a place to hang your hat while you were nursing your fresh wounds but Fast Eddie never, even from minute one, at the bus station diner saw her that way. And even wild corner boy sullen guys like Eddie who couldn’t say the right words knew she was no whore, no dish rag to dirty and move on.

Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to her bed. Polite society had called her a tramp, hanging on to a succession of beat down corner boys for dear life, maybe for her life. What could they know about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, he knew it, she knew it, and that thought got her through some stuff.

Sarah, Fast Eddie’s lifeline Sarah out of some biblical prophecy, out of those million books read, out of her own dark street past, knew the ten percent men, men like gambler Bert (played by George C. Scott), knew their clawing and scratching away at a man’s soul, at a woman’s soul too when they got their blood up. She knew, back streets knowledge knew at a heavy price, and a couple of off-hand bought drinks, that their price was too much to pay for fifteen minute fame dreams. Knew from her own much abused bed they had no pure Fast Eddie dreams, no Fast Eddie soul, just clawing away at more than their ten-percent cut. But would Fast Eddie listen, hell, not our boy, and so the dice were cast.

But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, forget some formless woman, let’s call her Sarah Packard, can’t live in the real world. Can’t live in the world of dirt and dust, and blood and still take breathe. So Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hungers. Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to nevertheless even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the Fat Man or die.

As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when he first worked his magic against some scrub surfer guy down in some southern California pool hall way out of his element in the 1950s be-bop night. The pockets were like manholes that night and everyone thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired Fats. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory,” that Sarah Packard –paid for victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool like your life depended on it.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -When Miss Cora Swayed

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1946 film adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.

This is the way Peter Paul Markin told me the story one night many years ago when we were, well, let's leave it at feeling no pain. Who he first heard it from I don't remember but here it is as best as I could take it down in my notebook at the time:

Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie a guy up so bad he will go to the chair without a murmur, the electric chair for those not in the know or those not wound up in the love game with a big old knot very tightly squeezing him. That is he will not murmur if there is such a merciful chair in his locale, otherwise whatever way they cut the life out of a guy who has been so twisted up he couldn’t think straight enough to tie his own shoes, or hers.

Here’s the funny part and you know as well as I do that I do not mean funny, laughing funny, the guy will go to his great big reward smiling, okay half-smiling, just to have been around that frail, frill, twist. dame, oh hell, you know what I mean. Around her slightly shy, sly, come hither scents, around her, well, just around her. Or maybe just to be done with it, done with the speculation, the knots and all, six-two-and even he would go back for more, plenty more, and still have that smile, ah, half-smile as they lead him away. Yah, guys just like Frank.

Frank Jackman had it bad. [But you might as well fill in future signatures, the Peter Paul Markins, the Joshua Lawrence Breslins, and every corner boy who ever kicked his heels against some drugstore store front wall, name your name, just kids, mere boys, when they started getting twisted up in knots, girl knots, and a million, more or less, other guys too, just as easily as Frank, real easy]. Yah, Frank had it bad as a man could have from the minute Miss Cora walked through that café door from the back of the house, the door that separated the living quarters from the café, a cup of joe in her hand. Just an off-hand plain plank door, cheaply made and amateurishly hinged, that spoke of no returns.

She breezed, Frank thought later when he tried to explain it, explain everything that had happened and how to anyone who would listen, trade winds breezed in although this was the wrong coast for that, in her white summer frilly V-neck buttoned cotton blouse, white short shorts, tennis or beach ready, maybe just ready for whatever came along, with convenience pockets for a woman’s this-and-that, and showing plenty of well-turned, lightly-tanned bare leg, long legs at first glance, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white, the bandana that is. Yah, she came out of that crooked cheapjack door like some ill-favored Pacific wind now that he had the coast right, some Japan Current ready, ready for the next guy out. Jesus.

I might as well tell you, just like he told it to me, incessantly told it to me like I was some father-confessor, and maybe I was, before he moved on, it didn’t have to finish up like the way it did. Or start that way either, for that matter. The way it did play out. Not at all. No way. He could have just turned around anytime he said but I just took that as so much wind talking, or maybe some too late regret. Sure there are always choices, for some people. Unless you had some Catholic/Calvinist/Shiva whirl pre-destination Mandela wheel working your fates, working your fates into damn overdrive like our boy Frank.

Listen up a little and see if Frank was just blowing smoke, or something. He was just a half-hobo, maybe less, bumming around and stumbling up and down the West Coast, too itchy to settle down after four years of hard World War II Pacific battle fights on bloody atolls, on bloody coral reefs, and knee-deep bloody islands with names even he couldn’t remember, or want to remember after Cora came on the horizon. He was just stumbling, like he said, from one half-ass mechanic’s job (a skill he had picked in the Marines) in some flop garage here, another city day laborer’s job shoveling something there, and picking fruits, hot sun fruits, maybe vegetables depending on the crop rotation, like some bracero whenever things got really tough, or the hobo jungle welcome ran out, ran out with the running out of wines and stubbed cigarette butts. He mentioned something about freight yard tramp knives, and cuts and wounds. Tough, no holds barred stuff, once tramp, bum, hobo solidarities broke down, and that easy and often. Frank just kind of flashed that part of the story because he was in a hurry for me to get it straight about him and Cora and the hobo jungle stuff was just stuff, and so much train smoke and maybe a bad dream.

Hell, the way he was going, after some bracero fruit days with some bad hombre bosses standing over his sweat, the “skids” in Los Angeles, down by the tar pits and just off the old Southern Pacific line, were looking good, a good rest up. Real good after fourteen days running in some Imperial Valley fruit fields so he started heading south, south by the sea somewhere near Paseo Robles to catch some ocean sniff, and have himself washed clean by loud ocean sounds so he didn’t have to listen to the sounds coming from his head about getting off the road.

Here is where luck is kind of funny though, and maybe this is a place where it is laughing funny, because, for once, he had a few bucks, a few bracero fruit bucks, stuck in his socks. He was hungry, maybe not really food hungry, but that would do at the time for a reason, and once he hit the coast highway this Bayview Diner was staring him right in the face after the last truck ride had let him off a few hundred yards up the road. Some fugitive barbecued beef smell, or maybe strong onions getting a workout over some griddled stove top, reached him and turned him away from the gas station fill-up counter where he had planned, carefully planning to husband his dough to make the city of angels, to just fill up with a Coke and moon pie. But that smell got the better of him. So he walked into that Bayview Diner, walked in with his eyes wide open. And then she walked through the damn door.

She may have been just another blonde, a very blonde frail, just serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint as he found out later, but from second one when his eyes eyed her she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Frank femme fatale, fatal. Of course between eyeing, pillow-talk dreaming, and scheming up some “come on” line once she had her hooks into him, which was about thirty seconds after he laid eyes on her, he forgot, foolishly forgot, rule number one of the road, or even of being a man in go-go post-war America.

What he should have asked, and had in the past when he wasn’t this dame-addled, was a dish like this doing serving them off the arm in some rundown roadside café out in pacific coast Podunk when she could be sunning herself in some be-bop daddy paid-up hillside bungalow or scratching some other dame’s eyes out to get a plum role in a B Hollywood film courtesy of some lonely rich producer. Never for a minute, not even during those thirty seconds that he wasn’t hooked did he figure, like some cagey guy would figure, that she had a story hanging behind that bandana hair.

And she did. Story number one was the “serve them off the platter” hubby short-ordering behind the grill in that tramp cafe. The guy who, to save dough, bought some wood down at the lumber yard and put up that crooked door that she had come through on first sight and who spent half his waking hours trying to figure how to short-change somebody, including his Cora. Story number two, and go figure, said hubby didn’t care one way or the other about what she did, or didn’t do, as long as he had her around as a trophy to show the boys on card-playing in the back of the diner living rooms and Kiwanis drunk as a skunk nights. Story number three was that she had many round-heeled down-at- the-heels stories too long to tell Frank before hubby came along to pick her out of some Los Angles arroyo gutter. Story number four, the one that would in the end sent our boy Frankie smiling, sorry half-smiling, to his fate was she hated hubby, hell-broth murder hated her husband, and would be “grateful” in the right way to some guy who had the chutzpah to take her out of this misery. But those stories all came later, later when she didn’t need to use those hooks she had in him, didn’t need to use them at all.

Peter Paul Markin Interlude One: “I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled, yelled from some womblike place, at the screen once I saw her coming through that door for him, for Frank, to get the hell out of there at that moment. This dame was poison, no question. Frank stop looking at those long paid for legs and languid rented eyes for a minute and get the hell out of there to some safe hobo jungle. Hell, just walk out the diner, café or whatever it is door, run if you have too, get your hitchhike great blue-pink American West thumb out and head for it. There’s a hobo jungle just down the road near Santa Monica, get going, and tonight grab some stolid, fetid stews, and peace.”

But here is where fate works against some guys, hell, most guys. She turned around to do some dish rack thing or other with her lipstick-smeared coffee cup and then, slowly, turned back to look at Frank with those languid eyes, what color who knows, it was the look not the color that doomed Frank and asked in a soft, kittenish voice “Got a cigarette for a fresh out girl?” And wouldn’t you know, wouldn’t you just know, that Frank, “flush” with bracero dough had bought a fresh deck of Luckies at the cigarette machine out at that filling station just adjacent to the diner and they were sitting right in his left shirt pocket for the entire world to see. For her to see. And wouldn’t you know too that Frank could see plain as day, plain as a man could see if he wanted to see, that bulging out of one of the convenience pockets of those long-legged white short shorts was the sharply-etched outline of a package of cigarettes. Yah, still he plucked a cigarette into her waiting lips, kind of gently, gently for rough-edged Frank, lit her up, and dated her up with his eyes. Gone, long-gone daddy gone, except for dreams, and that final half-smile.

Peter Paul Markin Interlude Two: “I screamed again, some vapid man-child scream, some kicking at the womb thump too, but do you think Frank would listen, no not our boy. You don’t need to know all the details if you are over twenty-one, hell over twelve and can keep a secret. She used her sex every way she could, and a few ways that Frank, not unfamiliar with the world’s whorehouses in lonely ports-of-call, was kind of shocked at, but only shocked. He was hooked, hook, line and sinker. Frank knew, knew what she was, knew what she wanted, and knew what he wanted so there was no crying there.”

Here is what is strange, and while I am writing this even I think it is strange. She told Frank her whole life’s story, the too familiar father crawling up into her barely teenage bed, the run-aways, returns, girls’ JD homes, some more streets, a few whorehouse tricks, some street tricks, a little luck with a Hollywood producer until his wife, who controlled the dough, put a stop to it, some drugs, some L.A. gutters, and then a couple of years back some refuge from those mean streets via husband Manny’s Bayview Diner.

Even with all of that Frank still believed, believed somewhere from deep in his recessed mind, somewhere in his Oklahoma kid mud shack mind, that Cora was virginal. Some Madonna of the streets. Toward the end it was her scent, some slightly lilac scent, some lilac scent that combined with steamed vegetable sweat combined with sexual animal sweat combined with ancient Lydia MacAdams' bath soap fresh junior high school crush sweat drove him over the edge. Drove him to that smiling chair.

He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end. Christ, just like his whole young stupid gummed up life he had to play with fire. And from that minute, the lit cigarette minute, although really from the minute that Frank saw those long legs protruding from those white shorts Manny was done for.
And once Frank had sealed his fate (and hers too) on that midnight roaring rock sandy beach night when the ocean depths smashing against the shore drowned out the sound of their passion everybody from Monterrey to Santa Monica knew he was done for, or said they knew the score after the fact. Everybody who came within a mile of the Bayview Diner anyway. Everybody except Manny and maybe somewhere in his cheap jack little heart he too knew he was done for when Cora, in her own sensible Cora way, persuaded him that he needed an A-One grease monkey to run the filling station.

The way Frank told it even I knew, knew that everybody had to have figured things out. Any itinerant trucker who went out of his way to take the Coast highway with his goods on board in order to get a full glance at Cora and try his “line” on her (Manny encouraged it, he said it was good for business and harmless, and maybe it was with them) knew it. Knew it the minute he sat at his favorite corner stool and saw a monkey wrench-toting Frank come in for something and watch the Frank-Cora- and cigar-chomping Manny in his whites behind the grille dance play out. He kept his eyes and his line to himself on that run.

Damn, any dated –up teen-age joy-riding kids up from Malibu looking for the perfect wave at Roaring Rock (and maybe some midnight passion drowned out by the ocean roar too) knew the minute they came in and smelled that lilac something coming like something out of the eden garden from Cora. The girls knowing instinctively that Cora lilac scent was meant for more than some half-drunk old short order cook. One girl, with a friendly look Frank’s way, and maybe with her own Frank Roaring Rock thoughts, asked Cora, while ordering a Coke and hamburger, whether she was married to him. And her date, blushing, not for what his date had just said but because he, fully under the lilac scent karma, wished that he was alone just then so she could take a shot at Cora himself.

Hell even the California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop who cruised the coast near the diner (and had his own not so secret eyes and desires for Cora) knew once Frank was installed in one of the rooms over the garage that things didn’t add up, add up to Manny’s benefit. And, more importantly, that if anything happened, anything at all, anything requiring more than a Band-Aid, to one Manny DeVito for the next fifty years the cops knew the first door to knock at.

Look I am strictly a money guy, going after loot wherever I could and so I never got messed up with some screwy dame on a caper. That was later, spending time later. And maybe if I had gotten a whiff of that perfume things might have been different in my mind too but I told Frank right out why didn’t he and Cora take out a big old .44 in the middle of the diner and just shoot Manny straight out, and maybe while the cop was present too. Then he /they could have at least put up an insanity or crime of passion defense. Not our boy though, no he had to play the angles, play Cora’s evil game.

These two amateurs gummed up the job every which way, gummed it so that even a detective novel writer would turn blush red with shame. Murder is, from guys that I know who specialize in such things, make a business out of taking guys out for dough, an art form and nothing for amateurs to mess around with. They tried one thing, something with poison taken over a long time that couldn’t be traced but Manny was such a lush it didn’t take. Then they tried to get him drunk and drown him off of Roaring Rock but that night around two in the morning about sixty kids from down around Malibu decided to have a cook-out after their prom night. In the end they just did the old gag that the cops have been wish to since about 1906 and conked him, threw him in the car, drove to the Roaring Rock and pushed him and the car over the cliff. Jesus, double jesus.

Peter Paul Interlude Three: “Frank, one last time, get out, get on the road, this ain’t gonna work. That poison thing was crazy. That drunk at the ocean thing was worst. The cops wouldn’t even have had to bother to knock at your door. Frank on this latest caper she’s setting you up. Who drove the car, who got the whiskey, who knew how to trip the brake lines, and who was big enough to carry Manny? Why don’t you just paint a big target on your chest and be done with it. She just wants the diner for her own small dreams. You don’t count. Hell, I ain’t no squealer but she is probably talking to that skirt –crazy (her skirt) cop right now. Get out I say, get out.”

If you want the details, want to see how she framed him but good and walked away with half the California legal system holding the door open for her, just look them up in the 1946 fall editions of the Los Angeles Gazette. They covered the story big time, and the trial too. That’s just the details though. I can give you the finish now and save your eyes, maybe. Frank, yah, Frank was just kind of smiling that smile, what did I call it, half-smile, all the way to the end. Do you need to know more?