From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Johnny Shea’s Femme Fatale Moment

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the classic femme fatale film Out Of The Past to set the scene below.

He, Johnny Shea from the old neighborhood, was on record, maybe not a swear on the bible take it to court under oath type record but on record, as being very much enthralled by the bad femme fatales of film noir (of course now from a safe cinematic distance ). He would go on and on about how Jane Greer in Out Of The Past off-handedly shot her kept man, Kirk Douglas (or did he keep her, a matter very much in dispute), then put a bullet or six in some snooping sleuth who crowded her just a little and for lunch, just for kicks, turned the tables on a guy, Robert Mitchum, just a stray off-hand guy built to handle rough stuff if necessary who thought maybe he could help her out of a jam after he got a look at her and a whiff of that gardenia perfume or whatever she was wearing that made him crazy. Yes, she was a stone-cold killer, blood simple they call it in some quarters, and Johnny couldn’t get enough of her.

On an off day, or when he got tired of telling, and we got tired of listening, about some newly discovered move Jane put on after watching that film for the fifteenth time, he would go on and on about glamorous, 1940s glamorous (although maybe eternal glamorous when you look at her pin-up pictures even today) Rita Hayworth as she framed, framed big time, one Orson Welles in The Lady From Shang-hai just because his was a little smitten with her after smelling that come hither fragrance. She wanted the dough, all of it, from a rich lawyer hubby and she wanted old Orson to work her magic for her. Yah, but see these guys had it coming because they went in with their eyes open, took their chances and took the fall, took the fall big time. And maybe in some deep recess of their minds, maybe like John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice, they smiled, and would have done it the same way if they that never to be had second chance to do it over.

Johnny, whatever femme film plot line he was thinking of, always came back to that question in the end, the question of questions, the part about a guy taking a beating, taking it hard, and then coming back for more when the femme purrs in his ear, or sways some flash dress into the room or he smells even a whiff, hell, a half whiff of that damn perfume which lets him know she is coming. That part, that doing it again part, always got to him. And this was no academic question, no noir theory, and no clever plotline about the vagaries of human experience, about how low you can go and still breathe. See Johnny had been there, had seen it all, and done it all and so he was haunted forever after about whether if she came in the door again he would also do it exactly like it was done before. Hell, enough of beating around the bush let him tell it and you decide.

“I not saying Rosa, Rosa Lebron, was as hot as Jane Or Rita, no way but she had her moments, her moments with me when she might as well have been one of those dames. I am not going to say exactly how we meet, or under what circumstances, but it all came together down in sunny Mexico, down Sonora way back in the late 1970s when I was doing a little of this and a little of that in the drug trade. This was before it got real crazy although it was always a tight thing when you dealt with the Mexicans, and when you dealt with dope. Period.

See Rosa ‘s older brother, hey, let’s call him Pedro alright just to be on the safe side and just because it doesn’t matter what his name was as long as you remember this is about Rosa and her ways, was a primo “distributor” down Sonora way, mainly marijuana (or herb, ice, ganga, rope, hemp, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood) but as time went on cocaine (ditto on what you call it in your town, snow, little sister, girl), but a guy on his way up in the cartel, no question. I met Pedro through mutual business contacts in New York City one night and that got us started on our business.

One time Rosa came up with him and at first I thought she was his girlfriend because they seemed very close. Now Pedro wasn’t a bad looking guy but I didn’t figure he could have such a fox for a girlfriend, you know all dark skin, nice shape, black as night hair, dancing black eyes AND some scent some mystic Aztec, mestizo, conquistador, ten thousand year sense that distracted me from the minute she clasped my hand. (I found out later from her that it was made from some Mexican cacti flowers, I forget the name but I will never forget that scent, that first time, never). And, so when he introduced me to Rosa as his sister I was relieved. Especially after she threw (there is no other word for it) those laughing Spanish eyes at me. She had me, had me bad from that moment.


I didn’t see her for a while, maybe a couple of months, although Pedro and I were doing a regular series of business transactions. Then, maybe it was late 1979 or so, I got a call from him to come down to Sonora for what he called a big deal. I showed up at the designated cantina, La Noche, on the main strip, a dusty old place then, maybe now to for all I know. And there was Rosa, all Rosa-like, dark, Spanish, those eyes, the fragrance, and dressed very elegantly in a very fashionable dress (so she told me later). She was the bait. And I bite.

Pedro never showed that night, and it didn’t matter as Rosa and I drank high- shelf tequila (my first time, and like scotch and other whiskies there are gradations of tequila too), danced (even with my two left feet it didn’t seem to matter), and wound up at her casa (room) for the night. The rest of the night you can figure out on your own. What matters is the next morning, early; after I took a shower and was lying on her bed she asked me if I couldn’t do Pedro a favor. The favor: go to Columbia and bring back a load (twenty kilos, forty pounds) of little sister. In those days Pedro’s cartel was testing the route and having a friendly Norte Americano do the run, which at the time would have been unusual and would have faked out the cops, was seen as the best way to iron out the wrinkles. And, well, Rosa would go along too. Sold.

The first trip, and several after, was actually uneventful. Back and forth, sometimes with Rosa sometimes with another female “mule.” After a few months, maybe six, Rosa came up to my hotel room in Sonora one night crying, crying like crazy. She told me that she was being harassed and beaten by Pedro because he had started to “use” some of the product and would get all crazy and lash out at whoever was around. She also said he wasn’t all that crazy now about have a goddam gringo around now that things were already set up and that maybe it was time to terminate my contract. The clincher though was when she said right then and there she said she had to get out, get out before she was maybe killed by Pedro, or one of his thugs on his orders.

Maybe it was the tears, maybe it was that scent that always threw me off or maybe now that I knew the score it was flat- out fear that I would be found face down in some Sonora back alley waiting for some consulate officer to ship my remains back home but I listened to what Rosa proposed.
The next shipment was our salvation; the forty of fifty pound of girl would get us a long way from Mexico and far enough away from Pedro that we could start our own lives. It sounded good, real good. The idea was to go to Columbia but instead of heading back to Mexico head to Panama, unload the dope in a new market, then catch a freighter to, to wherever, some island maybe. I was in, in all the way.

And it worked, worked beautifully. For Rosa. See here is how the deal really went down. We got the dope in Columbia okay, no problema as usual. And we did head to Panama and made the transaction there. Again no problema. Something like a half a million in cash in the proverbial suitcase. Easy street. We were to catch a freighter, some Liberian-registered tanker, headed for Africa the next morning. That night Rosa insisted that we celebrate our “liberation” with some high-shelf tequila in honor of our success and remembrance of our first night together. And that was the last I saw of Rosa Lebron.

The last of her but not quite of the story. After being drunk as a skunk and worn to a frazzle by our love-making (maybe drugged too, I don’t know) I was practically unconscious. The next morning when I awoke Rosa was gone. I frantically looked for her, checking every place including the tanker that we were supposed to take through the Canal. They had no reservations (under our aliases) for any gringo or senorita. No reservations for passengers at all. That’s when I started to panic (and to put two and two together). I couldn’t go back to (a) Columbia or (b) Mexico so I headed back to New York City on the sly. After a while I finally put the pieces together (or rather they got put together for me).

First Rosa was not Pedro’s sister but just part of his organization, his brother Pablo’s ex-girlfriend. It was Pedro who had put Rosa up to setting me up on that last transaction because he was feeling constrained by the cartel he was linked to and wanted to go out on his own. The half million (minus Rosa’s cut) would set him up just fine. The problem was that she ran out on Pedro too. It was Pedro (and you can read about it in the Mexican newspaper of the time when such incidents were fairly rare, unlike now) who wound up face down in that Sonora back alley for his lack of cartel spirit, twelve bullet holes in him. And Rosa? Nowhere to be found . Except here is the funny part, although I am not laughing, Pablo, Pedro’s brother and Rosa’s supposed ex-boyfriend was last seen in Sonora the day Rosa and I left for Columbia on that last easy street transaction. If you see her, her and her dancing eyes and that damn cactus flower fragrance tell her I said hello. ”

[Jesus, this is a no-brainer. Of course our boy Johnny would do it over again. Just like that. Take it easy on the tequila though that stuff will kill you Johnny . Christ I might take a run at Rosa and that fragrance myself and I only like to watch femmes from the comfort of my living room or local theater-JLB]

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International -Ted Grant-The Italian revolution and the tasks of British workers (1943)

Markin comment:

Below this general introduction is another addition to the work of creating a new international working class organization-a revolutionary one fit of the the slogan in the headline.

Markin comment (repost from September 2010):

Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**********
Ted Grant-The Italian revolution and the tasks of British workers (1943)


Originally published in Workers’ International News, Vol.5 No.12, August 1943

Reprinted in The bulletin of Marxist studies, spring 1986, pp. 13-16.

THE DISMISSAL of Mussolini marks a new epoch in the development of the revolution and the decay and disintegration of imperialism on the continent of Europe. In order to appreciate the trends of development in the Italian peninsula, it is necessary to understand the causes which led Italy to take the road of fascist barbarism first among all the countries in Europe, and is now the first country in the war to turn towards revolution.

Italy has always been one of the most backward of the great powers. The pesantry as in Russia has been burdened by the impositions of the great landowners; the impoverished proletariat, even before the last war, built up a powerful socialist movement as a means of conducting the struggle against the bourgeoisie. Italy's participation in the last war was essentially that of a second rate power, and though nominally on the side of the victors, Italy's gains in the last war were negligible. The weakened Italian bourgeoisie faced with the ruin of the Italian economy, attempted to load the burdens of "reconstruction" as they had those of the war, onto the shoulders of the Italian masses.

It was as a reply to this offensive of the bourgeoisie that the masses of Italian workers and peasants launched the counteroffensive with brilliant success. The years 1918-20 marked the period of "anarchy" for Italian capitalism. The working class, and following them, the peasantry, forced tremendous concessions from the ruling class. By September 1920, the workers had seized the factories and industries, and the peasants had occupied the land. The real power was no longer in the hands of the capitalists, who were paralysed with fear, but in the hands of the working class. What was necessary was a Bolshevik Party to draw the conclusions for the masses from this and guide the workers to the conquest of power.

The reformist leadership of the working class was incapable of drawing the lessons. Blind and impotent, they betrayed the movement and guided it back into the channels of "constitutionalism". Thus they prepared the way for the destruction of the working class movement.

Fascism in power loses social base

The bourgeoisie, which had been scared out of its wits by the movement of the workers, temporarily gave them some concessions. But the economic crisis continued. The Italian bourgeoisie, without reserves, without rich colonies and with a weak economic base, could not hope to compete with the more powerful bourgeoisie of the Entente on the world market. Consequently, they were compelled to intensify the exploitation of the Italian masses on pain of collapse and extinction.

The heroic attempts of the proletariat to find a way out on the path of the Socialist Revolution had been blocked by the sabotage of the reformist leadership. The bourgeoisie looked for a solution to the intolerable crisis in which "law and order" could be established. The economic crisis was further intensified in the post-war collapse. The middle class found itself completely ruined and rendered desperate. Large sections had followed the lead of the workers in supporting the Socialist Party in the post war revolutionary wave. The core of the petty-bourgeoisie could have been won with a bold policy on the part of the proletariat.

But in sheer despair, the petty bourgeoisie began to look for another solution. It was thus that the fascist movement arose as an expression of the desperation of the middle class. The big industrialists financed Mussolini liberally. Fascism began to organize its bands of crazed petty bourgeois and lumpen proletariat for the purpose of physically annihilating the leaders and the organizations of the proletariat. These bands of cutthroats roamed over Italy attacking workers' co-operatives, unions, Socialist municipalities etc, under the protection of the bourgeois police. In 1922 Mussolini was placed in power by the landowners, industrialists, Church and monarchy, as the sole means of preserving their interests.

The first few years of his rule saw him precariously attempting to establish his domination.

The murder of Matteotti (note 1) provoked a wave of indignation throughout Italy and the working class only needed a revolutionary lead to overthrow the Fascist regime. Still the Socialists clung to "legal" methods. Mussolini survived the crisis and proceeded systematically to destroy the organizations of the working class. The disillusionment and demoralization of the working class at the betrayal of their organizations led them to a position of prostration and apathy. Fascism firmly entrenched itself in power.

But once in power, Fascism begins to lose its middle class base. The impoverishment and ruin of the petty bourgeoisie is not halted, but on the contrary, receives a new impetus by the victory of Fascism. The counter-revolutionary delusions of the petty bourgeoisie are soon dispelled by the cold reality of the totalitarian state and the support for Fascism ebbs away. The Fascist regime loses its social basis completely and becomes an ordinary military-police bureaucratic dictatorship. That was the position of Mussolini's dictatorship. Yet it has endured for more than two decades!

The secret of the long period of Fascist rule lies not at all in the strength of the regime, but in world events on the one hand, and, the apathy and torpor of the Italian masses, who had lost all perspectives with the betrayal of their organizations. The victory of Hitler, the defeat of the French and Spanish workers, the further decay and collapse of the working class movement, the strengthening of reaction on a world scale, could not but further demoralize and plunge the Italian working class into gloomy indifference and lack of faith in the future.

But the crisis which overshadowed the regime, forced the Italian bourgeoisie, to attempt outward expansion to save themselves from being overthrown. The Abyssinian adventure (note 2) and the war which Mussolini waged against the Spanish workers, were symptoms of the desperation of Italian Fascism. Far from solving anything, they merely increased the misery of the workers and peasants, and increased the pressure on the regime. After the fall of France, the Italian capitalists eagerly seized the opportunity which they imagined had been presented, to secure a rich Empire on the cheap.

But the calculations of the bourgeoisie were completely falsified by events. Never in history had an army fought with less, morale and less belief in their cause than the army of Fascist Italy! The coarse witticisms of the British ruling class against "cowardly" Italians are completely beside the mark. The Italian army, like that of Czarist Russia, is composed mainly of peasants. Exploited and oppressed by the landlords, beaten and tyrannized by the Fascist thugs, their thoughts of the "enemy" were not against the armies opposing them, but of the landlords in the villages who lived well by battening on them, while their women and children hungered and even starved. They thought of the burdensome taxes to keep up a bloated ignorant fascist militia. They did not have the will to fight. Mussolini could not even defeat the Greeks! In Africa the Empire disappeared while the Italian soldiery surrendered by the tens of thousands with only the semblance of resistance. Twenty years of Fascism had rotted the regime from top to bottom. There was not a live element in the whole of its apparatus, either in the army or the means of suppression at home. Moreover, Italy as a backward and only semi-industrialized country did not possess the technique for modern wars as her twin Fascist Germany had the fortune of possessing in unrivalled technology' and first rate industrial equipment. All these factors combining, the defeat of Italy became inevitable.

Trotsky, with infallible foresight and a profound understanding of the masses and of the historical process, in analyzing the problems of the revolution in the fascist countries had shown that it would require some sharp shock to rouse the masses from their lethargy and stupor, to take the road of mass opposition and mass struggle against the totalitarian regimes; a shock which could be provided by military defeats or the victory of the revolution in one of the democracies.

The defeats of the regime were a final revelation of its bankruptcy; its corruption and decay provided the means for the re-awakening of the Italian proletariat. The molecular process of recovery and revival had been proceeding apace behind the outward facade of strength and stability of the regime. The relationship of forces began to change within the country. For the first time mass strikes had been taking place in the towns against the unbearable increase in the cost of living, the peasants had begun to move in a series of minor revolts against the„ landlords and the unbearable tax impositions of the Fascist officials, and mutinies in the army were an ominous indication of the spirits of the troops. As early as the war against Greece, there were reports of units taken prisoner, singing the "Bandiera Rossa" (The Red Flag).

Only the Trotskyists understood the processes

The bourgeoisie and the landowners could feel the ground trembling under their feet. As always in modern society, the approach of revolution was heralded by tension within all strata of society, within the ruling class as well as the workers, within the petty bourgeoisie as well as in the ranks of the fascist bureaucracy and the state apparatus. The pressure from below produces fissures and uncertainty, quarrels and differences within the erstwhile solid ranks of the ruling class. They begin to seek a way out of the impasse, a means of escaping the rising tide of revolt which threatens to engulf them. From regarding the "Leader" as their savior from the masses they begin to regard him as the author of their ills whose "mistakes" have landed them in an impossible situation. Abuse of the ruler and his immediate clique of collaborators are replaced by conspiracies and discussions of a coup d'etat, of a palace revolution, which by a timely movement from above will prevent and nip in the bud, a movement from below. The existing relations between the classes have become unbearable and the situation cannot last. The ruling class seeks for some means of saving themselves. They cannot reconcile themselves to the doom which they feel is impending and will overtake them unless they can forestall it by some means.

Thus it was in Czarist Russia before the February Revolution. Thus it was in Fascist Italy before the fall of Mussolini. Even a better analogy perhaps, was the removal of Primo de Rivera, the military dictator in Spain, by Alfonso in an effort to save the monarchy (note 3). Tomorrow we will observe the same process in Hitler's Germany. But all these moves in the ruling class, far from preventing the revolution, dialectically, are the means of precipitating it. The movement from above produces a mighty echo in the movement from below. Thus it was that Mussolini was flung aside by the ruling class in Italy in order to avert their overthrow. Thus as always in history; they have merely opened the first chapter in the Revolution.

Whatever the fate of the Italian revolution may be, in passing, it has dealt the death blow to the cowards and renegades from the labour movement, ex-"Marxists" such as James Burnham in the United States and CA Smith in Britain, and the whole tribe of petit bourgeois intellectuals and sceptics who have regarded the proletariat and the struggle for socialism with irony and scepticism. This short sighted professional rabble regarded the outward varnish of fascism as the development of a new form of society with a new ruling class, neither bourgeois nor proletarian! To them the inert attitude of the proletariat in Italy and Germany which bowed its head passively in face of the Fascist tyranny was proof of the incapacity of the proletariat and proof of a new society.

Incapable of understanding the dialectics of the development of society, they regard with irony, condescension and contempt, the strivings of the proletariat. As in the case of CA Smith this was merely a bridge to justify desertion to the camp of the bourgeoisie. But they were not alone. The traitors of Stalinism and the labour bureaucracy, attempted to justify their own treachery by unloading the blame for the passivity of the masses onto the "incapacity" of the proletariat and the lack of ripeness for the Socialist Revolution, which they have put decades hence. How pitiful is Stalinism, which dissolved the Comintern on the eve of the fall of Mussolini, how pitiful are the Vansittartistic labour bureaucracy and Stalinism which unload the blame for Hitler onto the shoulders of the German proletariat which "tolerates" Hitler. In reality it is the unending defeats of the past two decades, caused by the self-same "leaders" and their present policies, which has lain like a pall over the proletariat of the whole world and produced the mood of frustration and despair, of demoralization and disintegration, of lack of belief in itself and its own future. It is this indeed, which has led to the prolongation of the war and its continuance for four nightmare years before the first movement of the proletariat. All these forces and moods were merely the result of the reaction which they themselves had called forth.

Alone of all tendencies in the labour movement, the Trotskyists maintained faith in the working class and themselves.

Even at the darkest depth of reaction they maintained the banner of International Socialism, of the International Revolution and retained their faith and confidence in the proletariat. And this was not accidental either. They had analyzed and foreseen the reasons for the defeats and understood the basis of the turn towards reaction and naturally understanding the causes which did not lay in the proletariat but in the leadership of the proletariat, they could carry on with the sure confidence given by an understanding of Marxism. All other tendencies were blind.

They had caused the defeat and were incapable of understanding the way out of the impasse.

The crisis in Italy came to a head with the invasion of Sicily. The unprecedented lack of support of the regime, was revealed from the fact that even on their "own" soil the Italian soldiers demonstrated no great eagerness to fight. Their resistance was ho more energetic and hearty than that on the shores of Africa across the seas. Despite the exaggerations of Allied propaganda, it seems clear that the alien invaders were regarded with no great hostility in Palermo and other towns. Surely a rare occurrence in history! Anything, anything could not be worse than Mussolini, was the attitude of the inhabitants of this island. The regime was so rotten and so loathsome to the broad masses that they did not regard it as much better than that of a foreign conqueror. To this catastrophe had Mussolini's braggadocio and bombast reduced Italy! An emptiness and feeling of terror must have gathered round the hearts of the ruling class in Italy.

The denouement was not long in coming. In fear of the movement of the masses and realizing that for Italian Imperialism the war was irretrievably lost, the ruling class sought to save something from the wreckage. From Germany, already hard pressed and, facing the virtual certainty of defeat in the future, they could expect no more aid than would reduce Italy to the status of France or the satellite Balkan countries even in the event of problematic victory. And with the certainty that the "democratic" allies would extract ever greater penalties and tribute in that event. Mussolini was of no more use to them. They feared the invasion of the Allies. They feared their mightier "partner". In frantic panic, trapped in insuperable contradictions, the ignoble ruling classes of Italy contemptuously cast Mussolini onto the scrapheap of history.

But the bourgeoisie have lost all perspective for the morrow. The monarchy and the General Staff imagined that they could drop Mussolini and carry on as before, graciously offering Mussolini's hide to the masses as a scapegoat for their crimes. Surely Badoglio's proclamation of martial law will rank in history as the perfect example of the illusions of a regime which has been condemned by history to destruction. The dismissal of Mussolini was followed by a declaration of stringent martial law. But the decree merely remained on paper. Badoglio did not have the resources to carry it out despite the illusions of the General Staff.

The fall of Mussolini acted like an electric shock to the Italian workers. When the news came over the wireless, moved by a common impulse, hundreds of thousands rushed into the streets in the black-out to demonstrate their relief and their joy. The process that Trotsky had visualized would develop in Italy to mark the fall of fascism, had begun. (As the news trickled through, one could not but allow one's thoughts to dwell on the Old Man and to marvel at his unerring instinct and profound understanding which could develop in advance almost exactly the stages through which the revolution would pass.)

After 20 years of fascism the proletariat, now hardened by terror and persecution, has stepped on to the arena reinvigorated and fresh, like a giant awakening from a long sleep. Mass strikes in all the industrial cities, Milan, Turin, Genoa, etc, broke out in 24 hours. The railways in the whole of Northern Italy were paralyzed within a few days. The jails were stormed by the workers and the political prisoners were set free. The fascist headquarters in the large towns have been sacked and the fascist printing presses, seized by the workers in Milan and other areas. Anyone wearing the insignia of fascism in Italy on the day after Mussolini's disappearance stood in danger of being lynched. Fascism vanished overnight. The belated decree dissolving the fascist party merely took cognizance of a fact that had already been irrevocably established by the workers and the soldiers themselves. Symbolically in Milan, which once again has proudly taken the lead as "Red Milan", short shrift was given by the indignant workers to the murderer of Matteotti. In other areas too, the most hated of the fascist bosses have been dispatched by the workers. In Turin "two millionaire fascists" have been executed by the workers. Streets in Milan have been renamed in honour of Matteotti and other working class leaders murdered by the fascists. The attempt to use the soldiers against the demonstrating crowds in Milan has resulted in the soldiers going over to the side of the workers.

Reformists and Stalinists prepare betrayal

Overnight the working class has demonstrated its vitality and strength as though fascism had never existed. Workers committees have been set up in the factories in the industrial towns. Even the Stalinist Daily Worker, following on the news published in the bourgeoisie press, is compelled to report:

"The radio (Swiss) reported that a Citizens' Committee, consisting of representatives of industrial workers, soldiers and peasants has been created in Milan, centre of the industrial north ...

"A majority of the troops of the Milan garrison are reported to have sworn allegiance to the Committee. The banned Communist paper La Roscossa and the liberal paper La Mundo were republished on Saturday - produced in former fascist printing offices.

Similar moves were reported by the radio in Turin, Varese, Brescia and Vercelli.

In Brescia - according to the Swiss broadcast-workers have been armed from the army arsenal and have established a Workers' Militia, which took over the police authority-with little interference from the police."

What are these "Citizens Committees" if not Soviets, which the cowardly and treacherous Stalinists are afraid to avow at the present time? These are living proofs that the Italian Revolution has begun.

Whatever the vicissitudes of the Italian revolution in the next period the lie has been given to all the faint hearts and deserters, to all the cowards and sceptics. The wonderful resilience and buoyancy, the tremendous powers of recuperation and recovery of the working class, the only through and through progressive class in modern society, has been demonstrated. The victories of reaction are shown to be built on shifting sands. After every defeat, the proletariat recovers from its wounds and rises again with even greater force to vanquish the enemy.

All these events have been crowded into the short space of a single week! The first stage of the revolution has seen the whole of industrial Italy on the march. For the moment the peasants are quiet. It will take some time for the meaning of the events in the towns to penetrate into the villages. But once he begins to understand, the peasant will turn against his enemies. The fall of fascism will be interpreted by him, not only as the fall of the fascist official but as the beginning of the end for the landlord whom the officials represent. The peasants will begin, in isolated areas, sporadically to seize the land. Against the taxes and the landlord! These will be the rallying cries of the peasants.

All the factors that make for the Socialist Revolution in Italy are crystallizing out. The working class are forming their Soviets and Workers' Militias. The soldiers (mostly peasants in uniform) are moving over to the side of the workers. The peasants will move forward. The middle class in the towns are turning towards the workers for a lead. All the objective conditions for a socialist revolution are present. And the taking of power by the Italian workers would instantly provoke the overthrow of Hitler and inaugurate the Socialist Revolution throughout Europe. All the conditions? No. The subjective conditions for the revolution are not yet present. Instinctively and almost automatically the Italian working class has taken the correct steps on the road to workers' power. But the Socialists and Stalinists are already preparing to betray the movement by turning it into the channels of bourgeois "democracy".

Meanwhile, the "Allies" regard with not unmixed feelings the developments in Italy. Churchill's speech is a revelation of the fears and forebodings of the ruling class in the face of the revolution. His reference to, the difficulty of conquering a country mile by mile and the necessity to avoid rule through concentration camps and firing squads does not come from any tenderness towards the Italian workers but of fear of such measures. The old fox of the ruling class remembers with dread the fiasco of intervention against the Russian Revolution after the last war. He wishes if possible, to avoid the same experience again. The ruling class is preparing a deal with the monarchy and the possessing classes in Italy. They hope, by a military occupation to nip the revolution in the bud before it has time to develop.

Whatever the developments in the next period, even if the military events should move more swiftly than the political developments in the Italian peninsula, Europe and the world will never be the same again. The fall of Mussolini is merely the rehearsal for the fall of Hitler. The news reports from Switzerland state that Mussolini's fall was greeted by demonstrations of the Italian workers in Berlin who burned pictures of Mussolini and all the symbols of fascism on bonfires. And what is important was the reaction of the German workers. In the factories which employed the Italians, they solidarised with them and joined the demonstrations, adding to the bonfires, portraits of Hitler and the Nazi flag. The police took no active steps against them. This is just a symptom of the situation in Germany which must break out in revolution.

But it is not only a question of Germany. The whole of European society has developed explosive potentialities during the war. The contradictions which have been piling up for more than two decades have reached their extreme limit; it requires merely one or two more sharp shocks to set the contradictions detonating in revolution. The news of Mussolini's fall immediately had its repercussions throughout Europe. Tremendous strikes have been announced in Portugal. Franco held emergency meetings of his cabinet as he felt the ground under his feet shake. Boris of Bulgaria waited fearfully to see if the revolts would begin. The Balkan countries are rotten-ripe for revolution. But it is not a question of this or that country. It is the whole continent of Europe that waits only for sonic beginning to burst forth in revolt from end to end.

The swaying fortunes of the war have produced the fantastic situation when with the defeat of Germany, there will not he a single belligerent country in Europe which to all practical purposes, will not he defeated. In 1918 the ruling class precariously balanced the smaller powers in the Balkans against one another. Though shaky, the Italian army, and the French especially, remained props of "law and order", which could offset the countries in which revolution broke out. Today Giraud in north Africa and the Turks are being built as armies of counter-revolution. But these are weak reeds to lean on. With the collapse of the Nazi armies, there will not be a single army in Europe upon which the imperialists can rely for the purposes of counter-revolution. It is out of the question that the Red Army could be used for this purpose. Indeed the coming revolution in the West would be the beginning of the end for Stalin and the bureaucracy. It could mean the beginning of the political revolution in Russia as well. To smash the revolution the British army would not be a reliable instrument, but would be liable to crack in the process. Only American imperialism has a fairly stable base and a backward army on which to rely. But for how long in the red-hot atmosphere of Europe? The American army would also disintegrate and decompose. We are on the verge of a revolutionary wave in Europe which will last for years and which will affect the whole world by its grandiose sweep.

'Spanish' warning to Italian workers

It is on this background that the situation in Italy must be viewed. Even in the worst event-that of defeat of the revolution and military occupation, this is but the first uprising in Europe. An Allied or a German occupation of Italy might temporarily smash the movement. But to invade in a war and to intervene against a revolution are two different tasks. The Stalinists and Social-democrats will attempt to guide the movement into Popular Front channels in the interests of Allied imperialism. The Spanish tragedy is the warning of where such policies will lead the Italian working class.

The Italian masses have placed themselves at the head of the revolutionary upsurge of all Europe. The honour which fell to the Russian proletariat in the last war falls to them today. But Russia had a Bolshevik Party and a Bolshevik leadership. This alone guaranteed victory. It will be the task of the advanced workers in Italy to forge such a party in the fire of events. Tens of thousands of the heroic militants who continued the struggle against fascism despite everything are really Trotskyists, though the majority may never have heard that name. They will find the way to the program of International Socialism.

With the fresh breeze of the revolution blowing from across the Mediterranean, a new enthusiasm and a new resolve must pervade the activities of the advanced workers in Britain. Our tasks are complicated. Britain is one of the keys if not the key, to the revolution in Europe. The main task of the revolutionaries now consists in aiding the Italian workers by fighting against intervention against the revolution in Italy. To read the press of vile Stalinism on the Italian situation cannot but arouse a sense of disgust in any conscious Socialist worker. Against these traitors! For the revolution in Italy! No intervention by British Imperialism must be the rallying cry for the working class.

Transcribers notes:

1) Giacomo Matteolti (1885-1924)-A Socialist deputy in the Italian Parliament who was murdered by fascists in June 1924.

2) The Abyssinian adventure - This refers to Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, or Ethiopia, in October 1935, the first step in his plans for a `Second Roman Empire'. In 1939 Italy annexed Albania.

3) Primo de Rivera ruled Spain from the military coup of 1923 to January 1930 when he resigned as the pressure of the masses grew. This, however, did not save King Alfonso XIII who fled into exile following the Socialist and Republican municipal election victory in April 1931, heralding the beginning of the Spanish revolution.

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days-Frederick Engels-On The History of the Communist League-(1885)

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

The foundation article by Marx or Engels listed in the headline goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space. Just below is a thumbnail sketch of the first tentative proceedings to form a communist organization that would become a way-station on the road to building a Bolshevik-type organization in order fight for the socialist revolution we so desperately need and have since Marx and Engels first put pen to ink.
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Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
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Markin comment on this series:

No question that today at least the figures of 19th century communist revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are honored more for their “academic” work than their efforts to build political organizations to fight for democratic and socialist revolutions, respectively, as part of their new worldview. Titles like Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Peasants Wars In Germany, and the like are more likely to be linked to their names than Cologne Communist League or Workingmen’s International (First International). While the theoretical and historical materialist works have their honored place in the pantheon of revolutionary literature it would be wrong to neglect that hard fact that both Marx and Engels for most of their lives were not “arm chair" revolutionaries or, in Engels case, smitten by fox hunts. These men were revolutionary politicians who worked at revolution in high times and low. Those of us who follow their traditions can, or should, understand that sometimes, a frustratingly long sometimes, the objective circumstances do not allow for fruitful revolutionary work. We push on as we can. Part of that pushing on is to become immersed in the work of our predecessors and in this series the work of Marx and Engels to create a new form of revolutionary organization to fight the fights of their time, the time from about the Revolutions of 1848 to the founding of various socialist parties in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.
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Frederick Engels-On The History of the Communist League-1885

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First Published: Nov 12-26, 1885 in Sozialdemokrat;
Source: Marx and Engels Selected Works, Volume 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1970;
Transcribed by: zodiac@io.org.


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London
October 8, 1885

With the sentence of the Cologne Communists in 1852, the curtain falls on the first period of the independent German workers’ movement. Today this period is almost forgotten. Yet it lasted from 1836 to 1852 and, with the spread of German workers abroad, the movement developed in almost all civilized countries. Nor is that all. The present-day international workers’ movement is in substance a direct continuation of the German workers’ movement of that time, which was the first international workers’ movement of all time, and which brought forth many of those who took the leading role in he International Working Men’s Association. And the theoretical principles that the Communist League had inscribed on its banner in the Communist Manifesto of 1847 constitute today the strongest international bond of the entire proletarian movement of both Europe and America.

Up to now there has been only one source for a coherent history of that movement. This is the so-called Black Book, The Communist Conspiracies of the Nineteenth Century, by Wermuth and Stieber, Erline, two parts, 1853 and 1854. This crude compilation, which bristles with deliberate falsifications, fabricated by two of the most contemptible police scoundrels of our century, today still serves as the final source for all non-communist writings about that period.

What I am able to give here is only a sketch, and even this only in so far as the League itself is concerned; only what is absolutely necessary to understand the Revelations. I hope that some day I shall have the opportunity to work up the rich material collected by Marx and myself on the history of that glorious period of the youth of the international workers’ movement.

* In 1836 the most extreme, chiefly proletarian elements of the secret democratic-republican Outlaws’ League, which was founded by German refugees in Paris in 1834, split off and formed the new secret League of the Just. The parent League, in which only sleepy-headed elements à la Jakobus Venedey were left, soon fell asleep altogether; when in 1840 the police scented out a few sections in Germany, it was hardly even a shadow of its former self. The new League, on the contrary, developed comparatively rapidly. Originally it was a German outlier of the French worker-Communism, reminiscent of Babouvism and taking shape in Paris at about this time; community of goods was demanded as the necessary consequence of “equality”. The aims were those of the Parisian secret societies of the time: half propaganda association, half conspiracy, Paris, however, being always regarded as the central point of revolutionary action, although the preparation of occassional putsches in Germany was by no means excluded. But as Paris remained the decisive battleground, the League was at that time actually not much more than the German branch of the French secret societies, especially the Societe des saisons led by Blanqui and Barbes, with which a close connections was maintained. The French went into action on May 12, 1839; the sections of the League marched with them and thus were involved in the common defeat.

Among the Germans arrested were Karl Schapper and Heinrich Bauer; Louis Philippe’s government contented itself with deporting them after a fairly long imprisonment. Both went to London. Schapper came from Weilburg in Nassau and while a student of forestry at Giessen in 1832 was a member of the conspiracy organized by Georg Buchner; he took part in the storming of the Frankfort constable station on April 3, 1833, escaped abroad and in February 1834 joined Mazzini’s march on Savoy. Of gigantic stature, resolute and energetic, always ready to risk civil existence and life, he was a model of the professional revolutionist that played an important role in the thirties. In spite of a certain sluggishness of thought, he was by no means incapable of profound theoretical understanding, as is proved by his development from “demagogue” to Communist, and he held then all the more rigidly to what he had once come to recognize. Precisely on that account his revolutionary passion sometimes got the better of understanding, but he always afterwards realized his mistake and openly acknowledged it. He was fully a man and what he did for the founding of the German workers’ movement will not be forgotten.

Heinrich Bauer, from Franconia, was a shoemaker; a lively, alert, witty little fellow, whose little body, however, also contained much shrewdness and determination.

Arrived in London, where Schapper, who had been a compositor in Paris, now tried to earn his living as a teacher of languages, they both set to work gathering up the broken threads and made London the centre of the League. They were joined over here, if not already earlier in Paris, by Joseph Moll, a watchmaker from Cologne, a medium-sized Hercules — how often did Schapper and he victoriously defend the entrance to a hall against hundreds of onrushing opponents! — a man who was at least the equal of his two comrades in energy and determination, and intellectually superior to both of them. Not only was he a born diplomat, as the success of his numerous trips on various mission proved; he was also more capable of theoretical insight. I came to know all three of them in London in 1843. There were the first revolutionary proletarians whom I met, and however far apart our views were at that time — for I still owned, as against their narrow-minded equalitarian Communism [by equalitarian Communism I understand, as stated, only that Communism which bases itself exclusively or predominantly on the demand for equality], a goodly does of just as narrow-minded philosophical arrogance — I shall never forget the deep impression that these three real men made upon me, who was then still only wanting to become a man.

In London, as in a lesser degree in Switzerland, they had the benefit of freedoms of association and assembly. As early as February 7, 1840, the legally functioning German Workers’ Educational Association, which still exists, was founded. This Association served the League as a recruiting ground for new members, and since, as always, the Communists were the most active and intelligent members of the Association, it was a matter of course that its leadership lay entirely in the hands of the League. The League soon had several communities, or, as they were then still called, “lodges”, in London. The same obvious tactics were followed in Switzerland and elsewhere. Where workers’ associations could be founded, they were utilized in like manner. Where this was forbidden by law, one joined choral societies, athletic clubs, and the like. Connections were to a large extent maintained by members who were continually travelling back and forth; they also, when required, served as emissaries. In both respects the League obtained lively support through the wisdom of the governments which, by resorting to deportation, converted any objectionable worker — and in nine cases our of ten he was a member of the League — into an emissary.

The extent to which the restored League was spread was considerable. Notably in Switzerland, Weitling, August Becker (a highly gifted man who, however, like so many Germans, came to grief because of innate instability of character) and others created a strong organization more or less pledged to Weitling’s communist system. This is not the place to criticize the Communism of Weitling. But as regards its significance as the first independent theoretical stirring of the German proletariat, I still today subscribe to Marx’s words in the Paris Vorwarts of 1844:

“Where could the (German) bourgeoisie — including its philosophers and learned scribes — point to a work relating to the emancipation of the bourgeoisie — its political emancipation — comparable to Weitlings’ Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom? If one compares the drab mealy-mouthed mediocrity of German political literature with this immeasurable and brilliant debut of the German workers, if one compares these gigantic children’s shoes of the proletariat with the dwarf proportions of the worn-out political shows of the bourgeoisie, one must prophesy an athlete’s figure for this Cinderella.”

This athlete’s figure confronts us today, although still far from being fully grown.

Numerous sections existed also in Germany; in the nature of things they were of a transient character, but those coming into existence more than made up for those passing away. Only after seven years, at the end of 1846, did the police discover traces of the League in Berlin (Mentel) and Magdeburg (Beck), without being in a position to follow them further.

In Paris, Weitling, who was still there in 1840, likewise gathered the scattered elements together again before he left for Switzerland.

The tailors formed the central force of the League. German tailors were everywhere: in Switzerland, in London, in Paris. In the last-named city, German was so much the prevailing tongue in this trade that I was acquainted there in 1846 with a Norwegian tailor who had travelled directly by sea from Trondhjem to France and in the space of eighteen months had learned hardly a word of French but had acquired an excellent knowledge of German. Two of the Paris communities in 1847 consisted predominantly of tailors, one of cabinetmakers.

After the centre of gravity had shifted from Paris to London, a new feature grew conspicuous: from being German, the League gradually became international. In the workers’ society there were to be found, besides German and Swiss, also members of all those nationalities for whom German served as the chief means of communication with foreigners, notably, therefore, Scandinavians, Dutch, Hungarians, Czechs, Southern Slavs, and also Russians and Alsatians. In 1847 the regular frequenters included a British grenadier of the Guards in uniform. The society soon called itself the Communist Workers’ Educational Association, and the membership cards bore the inscription “All Men Are Brothers”, in at least twenty languages, even if not without mistakes here and there. Like the open Association, so also the secret League soon took on a more international character; at first in a restricted sense, practically through the varied nationalities of its members, theoretically through the realization that any revolution to be victorious must be a European one. One did not go any further as yet; but the foundations were there.

Close connections were maintained with the French revolutionists through t he London refugees, comrades-in-arms of May 12, 1839. Similarly with the more radical Poles. The official Polish emigres, as also Mazzini, were, of course, opponents rather than allies. The English Chartists, on account of the specific English character of their movement, were disregarded as not revolutionary. The London leaders of the League came in touch with them only later, through me.

In other ways, too, the character of the League had altered with events. Although Paris was still — and at that time quite rightly — looked upon as the mother city of the revolution, one had nevertheless emerged from the state of dependence on the Paris conspirators. The spread of the League raised its self-consciousness. It was felt that roots were being struck more and more in the German working class and that these German workers were historically called upon to be the standard-bearers of the workers of the North and East of Europe. In Weitling was to be found a communist theoretician who could be boldly placed at the side of his contemporary French rivals. Finally, the experience of May 12th had taught us that for the time being there was nothing to be gained by attempts at putsches. And if one still continued to explain every event as a sign of the approaching storm, if one still preserved intact the old, semi-conspiratorial rules, that was mainly the fault of the old revolutionary defiance, which had already begun to collide with the sounder views that were gaining headway.

However, the social doctrine of the League, indefinite as it was, contained a very great defect, but one that had its roots in the conditions themselves. The members, in so far as they were workers at all, were almost exclusively artisans. Even in the big metropolises, the man who exploited them was usually only a small master. The exploitation of tailoring on a large scale, what is now called the manufacture of ready-made clothes, by the conversion of handicraft tailoring into a domestic industry working for a big capitalist, was at that time even in London only just making it appearance. On the one hand, the exploiters of these artisans was a small master; on the other hand, they all hoped ultimately to become small masters themselves. In addition, a mass of inherited guild notions still clung to the German artisan at that time. The greatest honor is due to them, in that they, who were themselves not yet full proletarians but only an appendage of the petty bourgeoisie, an appendage which was passing into the modern proletariat and which did not yet stand in direct opposition to the bourgeoisie, that is, to big capital — in that these artisans were capable of instinctively anticipating their future development and of constituting themselves, even if not yet with full consciousness, the party of the proletariat. But it was also inevitable that their old handicraft prejudices should be a stumbling block to them at every moment, whenever it was a question of criticizing existing society in detail, that is, of investigating economic facts. And I do not believe there was a single man in the whole League at that time who had ever read a book on political economy. But that mattered little; for the time being “equality”, “brotherhood” and “justice” helped them to surmount every theoretical obstacle.

Meanwhile a second, essentially different Communism was developed alongside that of the League and of Weitling. While I was in Manchester, it was tangibly brought home to me that the economic facts, which have so far played no role or only a contemptible one in the writing of history, are, at least in the modern world, a decisive historical force; that they form the basis of the origination of the present-day class antagonisms; that these class antagonisms, in the countries where they have become fully developed, thanks to large-scale industry, hence especially in England, are in their turn the basis of the formation of political parties and of party struggles, and thus of all political history. Marx had not only arrived at the same view, but had already, in the Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher (1844), generalized it to the effect that, speaking generally, it is not the state which conditions and regulates the civil society at all, but civil society which conditions and regulates the state, and, consequently, that policy and its history are to be explained from the economic relations and their development, and not vice versa. When I visited Marx in Paris in the summer of 1844, our complete agreement in all theoretical fields became evident and our joint work dates from that time. When, in the spring of 1845, we met again in Brussels, Marx had already fully developed his materialist theory of history in its main features form the above-mentioned basis and we now applied ourselves to the detailed elaboration of the newly-won mode of outlook in the most varied directions.

This discovery, which revolutionized the science of history and, as we have seen, is essentially the work of Marx — a discovery in which I can claim for myself only a very insignificant share — was, however, of immediate importance for the contemporary workers’ movement. Communism among the French and Germans, Chartism among the English, now no longer appeared as something accidental which could just as well not have occurred. These movements now presented themselves as a movement of the modern oppressed class, the proletariat, as the more or less developed forms of its historically necessary struggle against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie; as forms of the class struggle, but distinguished from all earlier class struggles by this one thing, that the present-day oppressed class the proletariat, cannot achieve its emancipation without at the same time emancipating society as a whole from division into classes and, therefore, from class struggles. And Communism now no longer meant the concoction, by means of the imagination, of an ideal society as perfect as possible, but insight into the nature, the conditions and the consequent general aims of the struggle waged by the proletariat.

Now, we were by no means of the opinion that the new scientific results should be confided in large tomes exclusively to the “learned” world. Quite the contrary. We were both of us already deeply involved in the political movement, and possessed a certain following in the educated world, especially of Western Germany, and abundant contact with the organized proletariat. It was our duty to provide a scientific foundation for our view, but it was equally important for us to win over the European and in the first place the German proletariat to our conviction. As soon as we had become clear in our own minds, we set about the task. We founded a German workers’ society in Brussels and took over the Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung, which served us as an organ up to the February Revolution. We kept in touch with the revolutionary section of the English Chartists through Julian Harney, the editor of the central organ of the movement, The Northern Star, to which I was a contributor. We entered likewise into a sort of cartel with the Brussels democrats (Marx was vice-president of the Democratic Society) and with the French social-democrats of the Réforme, which I furnished with news of the English and German movements. In short, our connections with the radical and proletarian organizations and press organs were quite what one could wish.

Our relations with the League of the Just were as follows: The existence of the League was, of course, known to us; in 1843 Schapper had suggested that I join it, which I at that time naturally refused to do. But we not only kept up our continuous correspondence with the Londoners but remained on still closer terms with Dr Ewerbeck, then the leader of the Paris communities. Without going into the League’s internal affairs, we learnt of every important happening. On the other hand, we influenced the theoretical views of the most important members of the League by word of mouth, by letter and through the press. For this purpose we also made us of various lithographed circulars, which we dispatched to our friends and correspondents throughout the world on particular occasions, when it was a question of the internal affairs of the Communist Party in process of formation. In these, the League itself sometimes came to be dealt with. Thus, a young Westphalian student, Hermann Kriege, who went to America, came forward there as an emissary of the League and associated himself with the crazy Harro Harring for the purpose of using the League to turn South America upside down. He founded a paper in which, in the name of the League, he preached an extravagant Communism of love dreaming, based on “love” and overflowing with love. Against this we let fly with a circular that did not fail of its effect. Kriege vanished from the League scene.

Later, Weitling came to Brussels. But he was no loner the naive young journeyman-tailor who, astonished at his own talents, was trying to clarify in his own mind just what a communist society would look like. He was now the great man, persecuted by the environs on account of his superiority, who scented rivals, secret enemies and traps everywhere — the prophet, driven from country to country, who carried a recipe for the realization of heaven on earth ready-made in his pocket, and who was was possessed with the idea that everybody intended to steal it from him. He had already fallen out with the members of the League in London; and in Brussels, where Marx and his wife welcomed him with almost superhuman forbearance, he also could not get along with anyone. So he soon afterwards went to America to try out his role of prophet there.

All these circumstance contributed to the quiet revolution that was taking place in the League, and especially among the leaders in London. The inadequacy of the previous conception of Communism, both the simple French equalitarian Communism and that of Weitling, became more and more clear to them. The tracing of Communism back to primitive Christianity introduced by Weitling — no matter how brilliant certain passages to be found in his Gospel of Poor Sinners — had resulted in delivering the movement in Switzerland to a large extent into the hands, first of fools like Albrecht, and then of exploiting fake prophets like Kuhlmann. The “true Socialism” dealt in by a few literary writers — a translation of French socialist phraseology into corrupt Hegelian German, and sentimental love dreaming (see the section on German of “True” Socialism in the Communist Manifesto — that Kriege and the study of the corresponding literature introduced in the League was found soon to disgust the old revolutionaries of the league, if only because of its slobbering feebleness. As against the untenability of the previous theoretical views, and as against the practical aberrations resulting therefrom, it was realized more and more in London that Marx and I were right in our new theory. This understanding was undoubtedly promoted by the fact that among the London leaders there were now two men who were considerably superior to those previously mentioned in capacity for theoretical knowledge: the miniature painter Karl Pfander from Heilbronn and the tailor Georg Eccarius from Thuringia.

[Engels footnote: Pfander died about eight years ago in London. he was a man of peculiarly fine intelligence, witty, ironical and dialectical. Eccarius, as we know, was later for many years Secretary of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association, in the General Council of which the following old League members were to be found, among others: Eccarius, Pfander, Lessner, Lochner, Marx and myself. Eccarius subsequently devoted himself exclusively to the English trade union movement.]

It suffices to say that in the spring of 1847 Moll visited Marx in Brussels and immediately afterwards me in Paris, and invited us repeatedly, in the name of his comrades, to enter the League. He reported that they were as much convinced of the general correctness of our mode of outlook as of the necessity of freeing the League from the old conspiratorial traditions and forms. Should we enter, we would be given an opportunity of expounding our critical Communism before a congress of the League in a manifesto, which would then be published as the manifesto of the League; we would likewise be able to contribute our quota towards the replacement of the obsolete League organization by one in keeping with the new times and aims.

We entertained no doubt that an organization within the German working class was necessary, if only for propaganda purposes, and that this organization, in so far as it would not be merely local in character, could only be a secret one, even outside Germany. Now, there already existed exactly such an organization in the shape of the League. What we previously objected to in this League was now relinquished as erroneous by the representatives of the League themselves; we were even invited to co-operate in the work of reorganization. Could we say no? Certainly not. Therefore, we entered the League; Marx founded a League community in Brussels from among our close friends, while I attended the three Paris communities.

In the summer of 1847, the first league Congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. Whatever remained of the old mystical names dating back to the conspiratorial period was now abolished; the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a Central Committee and a Congress, and henceforth called itself the “Communist League”.

“The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old, bourgeois society based on class antagonisms and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property”

— thus ran the first article. The organization itself was thoroughly democratic, with elective and always removable boards. This alone barred all hankering after conspiracy, which requires dictatorship, and the League was converted — for ordinary peace times at least — into a pure propaganda society. These new Rules were submitted to the communities for discussion — so democratic was the procedure now followed — then once again debated at the Second Congress and finally adopted by the latter on December 8, 1847. They are to be found reprinted in Wermuth and Stieber, vol.I, p.239, Appendix X.

The Second Congress took place during the end of November and beginning of December of the same year. Marx also attended this time and expounded the new theory in a fairly long debate — the congress lasted at least ten days. All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto. This was done immediately afterwards. A few weeks before the February Revolution it was sent to London to be printed. Since then it has travelled round the world, has been translated into almost all languages and today still serves in numerous countries as a guide for the proletarian movement. In place of the old League motto, “All Men Are Brothers”, appeared the new battle cry, “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!” which openly proclaimed the international character of the struggle. Seventeen years later this battle cry resounded throughout the world as the watchword of the International Working Men’s Association, and today the militant proletariat of all countries has inscribed it in its banner.

The February Revolution broke out. The London Central Committee functioning hitherto immediately transferred its powers to the Brussels leading circle. But this decision came at a time when an actual state of siege already existed in Brussels, and the Germans in particular could no longer assemble anywhere. We were all of us just on the point of going to Paris, and so the new Central Committee decided likewise to dissolve, to hand over all its powers to Marx and to empower him immediately to constitute a new Central Committee in Paris. Hardly had the five persons who adopted this decision (March 3, 1848) separated, before police forced their way into Marx’s house, arrested him and compelled him to leave for France the following day, which was just where he was wanting to go.

In Paris we all soon came together again. There the following document was drawn up and signed by all the members of the new Central Committee. It was distributed throughout Germany and many a one can still learn something from it even today:

Demands of the Communist Party in Germany
The whole of Germany shall be declared a single indivisible republic.
Representatives of the people shall be paid so that workers also can sit in the parliament of the German people.
Universal arming of the people.
The estates of the princes and other feudal estates, all mines, pits, etc., shall be transformed into state property. On these estates, agriculture is to be conducted on a very large scale and with the most modern scientific means for the benefit of all society.
Mortgages on peasant holdings shall be declared state property; interest on such mortgages shall be paid by the peasants to the state.
In the districts where tenant farming is developed, land rent or farming dues shall be paid to the state as a tax.
All means of transport: railway, canals, steamships, roads, post, etc., shall be taken over by the state. They are to be converted into state property and put at the disposal of the non-possessing class free of charge.
Limitation of the right of inheritance.
Introduction of a steeply graded progressive taxation and abolition of taxes on consumer goods.
Establishment of national workshops. The state shall guarantee a living to all workers and provide for those unable to work.
Universal free elementary education.
It is in the interest of the German proletariat, of the petite Bourgeoisie and peasantry, to work with all possible energy to put the above measures through. For only by their education can the millions in Germany, who up to now have been exploited by a small number of people and whom it will be attempted to keep in further subjection, get their rights and the power that are their due as the producers of all wealth.

The Committee: Karl Marx, Karl Schapper, H. Bauer, F. Engels, J. Moll, W. Wolff

At that time the craze for revolutionary legions prevailed in Paris. Spaniards, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Poles and Germans flocked together in crowds to liberate their respective fatherlands. The German legion was led by Herwegh, Bornsted, Bornstein. Since immediately after the revolution all foreign workers not only lost their jobs but in addition were harassed by the public, the influx into these legions was very great. the new government saw in them a means of getting rid of foreign workers and granted them l'etape du soldat, that is, quarters along their line of march and a marching allowance of 50 centimes per day up to the frontier, whereafter the eloquent Lamartine, the Foreign Minister who was so readily moved to tears, quickly found an opportunity of betraying them to their respective governments.

We opposed this playing with revolution in the most decisive fashion. To carry an invasion, which was to import the revolution forcibly from outside, into the midst of the ferment then going on in Germany, meant to undermine the revolution in Germany itself, to strengthen the governments and to deliver the legionnaires — Lamartine guaranteed for that — defenceless into the hands of the German troops. When subsequently the revolution was victorious in Vienna and Berlin, the legion became all the more purposeless; but once begun, the game was continued.

We founded a German communist club, in which we advised the workers to keep away from the legion and to return instead to their homes singly and work there for the movement. Our old friend Flocon, who had a seat in the Provisional Government, obtained for the workers sent by us the same travel facilities as had been granted to the legionnaires. In this way we returned three or four hundred workers to Germany, including the great majority of the League members.

As could easily be foreseen, the League proved to be much too weak a lever as against the popular mass movement that had now broken out. Three-quarters of the League members who had previously lived abroad had changed their domicile by returning to their homeland; their previous communities were thus to a great extent dissolved and they lost all contact with the League. One part, the more ambitious among them, did not even try to resume this contact, but each one began a small separate movement on his own account in his own locality. Finally, the conditions in each separate petty state, each province and each town were so different that the League would have been incapable of giving more than the most general directives; such directives were, however, much better disseminated through the press. In short, from the moment when the causes which had made the secret League necessary ceased to exist, the secret League as such ceased to mean anything. But this could least of all surprise the persons who had just stripped this same secret League of the last vestige of its conspiratorial character.

That, however, the League had been an excellent school for revolutionary activity was now demonstrated. On the Rhine, where the Neue Rheinische Zeitung provided a firm centre, in Nassau, in Rhenish Hesse, etc., everywhere members of the League stood at the head of the extreme democratic movement. The same was the case in Hamburg. In South Germany the predominance of petty-bourgeois democracy stood in the way. In Breslau, Wilhelm Wolff was active with great success until the summer of 1848; in addition he received a Silesian mandate as an alternate representative in the Frankfort parliament. Finally, the compositor Stephan Born, who had worked in Brussels and Paris as an active member of the League, founded a Workers’ Brotherhood in Berlin which became fairly widespread and existed until 1850. Born, a very talented young man, who, however, was a bit too much in a hurry to become a political figure, “fraternized” with the most miscellaneous ragtag and bobtail in order to get a crowd together, and was not at all the man who could bring unity into the conflicting tendencies, light into the chaos. Consequently, in the official publications of the association the views represented in the Communist Manifesto were mingled hodge-podge with guild recollections and guild aspirations, fragments of Louis Blanc and Proudhon, protectionism, etc.; in short, they wanted to please everybody [allen alles sein]. In particular, strikes, trade unions and producers’ co-operatives were set going and it was forgotten that above all it was a question of first conquering, by means of political victories, the field in which alone such things could be realized on a lasting basis. When, afterwards, the victories of the reaction made the leaders of the Brotherhood realize the necessity of taking a direct part in the revolutionary struggle, they were naturally left in the lurch by the confused mass which they had grouped around themselves. Born took part in the Dresden uprising in May, 1849 and had a lucky escape. But, in contrast to the great political movement of the proletariat, the Workers’ Brotherhood proved to be a pure Sonderbund [separate league], which to a large extent existed only on paper and played such a subordinate role that the reaction did not find it necessary to suppress it until 1850, and its surviving branches until several years later. Born, whose real name was Buttermilch, has not become a big political figure but a petty Swiss professor, who no longer translates Marx into guild language but the meek Renan into his own fulsome German.

With June 13, 1849, the defeat of the May insurrections in Germany and the suppression of the Hungarian revolution by the Russians, a great period of the 1848 Revolution came to a close. But the victory of the reaction was as yet by no means final. A reorganziation of the scattered revolutionary forces was required, and hence also of the League. The situation again forbade, as in 1848, any open organization of the proletariat; hence one had to organize again in secret.

In the autumn of 1849, most of the member of the previous central committees and congresses gathered again in London. The only ones still missing were Schapper, who was jailed in Wiesbaden but came after his acquittal, in the spring of 1850, and Moll, who, after he had accomplished a series of most dangerous missions and agitational journeys — in the end he recruited mounted gunners for the Palatinate artillery right in the midst of the Prussian army in the Rhine Province — joined the Besancon workers’ company of Willich’s corps and was killed by a shot in the head during the encounter at the Murg in front of the Rotenfels Bridge. On the other hand, Willich now entered upon the scene. Willich was one of those sentimental Communists so common in Western Germany since 1845, who on that account alone was instinctively, furtively antagonistic to our critical tendency. More than that, he was entirely the prophet, convinced of his personal mission as the predestined liberator of the German proletariat and as such a direct claimant as much to political as to military dictatorship. Thus, to the primitive Christian Communism previously preached by Weitling was added a kind of communist Islam. However, the propaganda of this new religion was for the first time being restricted to the refugee barracks under Willich’s command.

Hence, the League was organized afresh; the Address of march 1850 was issued and Heinrich bauer sent as an emissary to Germany. The Address, composed by Marx and myself, is still of interest today, because petite-bourgeois democracy is even now the party which must certainly be the first to come to power in Germany as the savior of society from the communist workers on the occasion of the next European upheaval now soon due (the European revolutions, 1815, 1830, 1848-52, 1870, have occurred at intervals of 15 to 18 years in our century). Much of what is said there is, therefore, still applicable today. Heinrich Bauer’s mission was crowned with complete success. The trusty little shoemaker was a born diplomat. He brought the former members of the League, who had partly become laggards and partly were acting on their own account, back into the active organization, and particularly also the then leaders of the Workers’ Brotherhood. The League began to play the dominant role in the workers’, peasants’ and athletic associations to a far greater extent than before 1848, so that the next quarterly address to the communities, in June 1850, could already report that the student Schurz from Bonn (later on American ex-minister), who was touring Germany in the interest of petty-bourgeois democracy, “had found all fit forces already in the hands of the League”. The League was undoutbedly the only revolutionary organization that had any significance in Germany.

But what purpose this organization should serve depended very substantially on whether the prospects of a renewed upsurge of the revolution were realized. And in the course of the year 1850 this became more and more improbable, indeed impossible. The industrial crisis of 1847, which had paved the way for the Revolution of 1848, had been overcome; a new, unprecedented period of industrial prosperity had set in; whoever had eyes to see and used them must have clearly realized that the revolutionary storm of 1848 was gradually spending itself.

“With this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as is at all possible within bourgeois relationships, there can be no talk of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible in the periods when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois productive forms, come in collision with each other. The various quarrels in which the representatives of the industrial factions of the continental party of order now indulge and mutually compromise themselves, far from providing the occassion for new revolutions are, on the contrary, possible only because the basis of the relationships is momentarily so secure and, what the reaction does not know, so bourgeois. From it all attempts of the reaction to hold up bourgeois development will rebound just as certainly as all moral indignation and all enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats”.

Thus Marx and I wrote in the “Revue of May to October 1850” in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Politisch-okonomische Revue, Nos.V and VI, Hamburg, 1850, p.153.

This cool estimation of the situation, however, was regarded as heresy among many persons, at a time when Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Mazzini, Kossuth and, among the lesser German lights, Ruge, Kinkel, Gogg and the rest of them crowded in London to form provisional governments of the future not only for their respective fatherlands but for the whole of Europe, and when the only still still necessary was to obtain the requisite money from America as a loan for the revolution to realize at a moment’s notice the European revolution and the various republics which went with it was a matter of course. Can anyone be surprised that a man like Willich was taken in by this, that Schapper, acting on his old revolutionary impulse, also allowed himself to be fooled, and that the majority of the London workers, to a large extent refugees themselves, followed them into the camp of the bourgeois-democratic artificers of revolution? Suffice it to say that the reserve maintained by us was not to the mind of these people; one was to enter into the game of making revolutions. We most decidedly refused to do so. A split ensued; more about this is to be read in the Revelations. Then came the arrest of Nothjung, followed by that of Haupt, in Hamburg. The latter turned traitor by divulging the names of the Cologne Central Committee and being slated as the chief witness in the trial; but his relatives had no desires to be thus disgraced and bundled him off to Rio de Janerio, where he later established himself as a businessman and in recognition of his services was appointed first Prussian and then German Consul General. He is now again in Europe.

[Engels footnote: Schapper in London at the end of the sixties. Willich took part in the American Civil War with distinction; he became Brigadier-General and was shot in the chest during the battle of Murfreesboro (Tennessee) but recovered and died about ten years ago in America. Of the other persons mentioned above, I will only remark that Heinrich Bauer was lost track of in Australia, and that Weitling and Ewerbeck died in America.]

For a better understanding of the Revelations, I give the list of the Cologne accused:

(1) P. G. Roser, cigarmaker; (2) Heinrich Burgers, who later died a progressive deputy to the Landtag; (3) Peter Nothjung, tailor, who died a few years ago a photographer in Breslau; (4) W. J. Reiff; (5) Dr. Hermann Becker, now chief burgomaster of Cologne and member of the Upper House; (6) Dr. Roland Daniels, physician, who died a few years after the trial as a result of tuberculosis contracted in prison; (7) Karl Otto, chemist; (8) Dr. Abraham Jacoby, now physician in New York; (9) Dr. I. J. Klein, now physician and town councillor in Cologne; (10) Ferdinand Freiligrath, who, however, was at that time already in London; (11) I. L. Ehrhard, clerk; (12) Friedrich Lessner, tailor, now in London.

After a public trail before a jury lasting from October 4 to November 12, 1852, the following were sentenced for attempted high treason: Roser, Burgers and Nothjung to six, Reiff, Otto and Becker to five, and Lessner to three years’ confinement in a fortress; Daniels, Klein, Jacoby and Ehrhard were acquitted.

With the Cologne trial the first period of the German communist workers’ movement comes to an end. Immediately after the sentence we dissolved our League; a few months later the Willich-Schapper separate league was also laid to eternal rest.

* A whole generation lies between then and now. At that time Germany was a country of handicraft and of domestic industry based on hand labor; now it is a big industrial country still undergoing continual industrial transformation. At that time one had to seek out one by one the workers who had an understanding of their position as workers and of their historico-economic antagonism to capital, because this antagonism itself was only just beginning to develop. Today the entire German proletariat has to be placed under exceptional laws, merely in order to slow down a little the process of its development to full consciousness of its position as an oppressed class. At that time the few persons whose minds had penetrated to the realization of the historical role of the proletariat had to forgather in secret, to assemble clandestinely in small communities of 3 to 20 persons. Today the German proletariat no longer needs any official organization, either public or secret. The simple self-evident interconnection of like-minded class comrades suffices, without any rules, boards, resolutions or other tangible forms, to shake the whole German Empire to its foundations. Bismarck is the arbiter of Europe beyond the frontiers of Germany, but within them there grows daily more threatening the athletic figure of the German proletariat that Marx foresaw already in 1844, the giant for whom the cramped imperial edifice designed to fit the philistine is even now becoming inadequate and whose mighty stature and broad shoulder are growing until the moment comes when by merely rising from his seat he will shatter the whole structure of the imperial constitution into fragments. And still more. The international movement of the European and American proletariat has become so much strengthened that not merely its first narrow form — the secret League — but even its second, infinitely wider form — the open International Working Men’s Association — has become a fetter for it, and that the simple feeling of solidarity based on the understanding of the identity of class position suffices to create and to hold together one and the same great party of the proletariat among the workers of all countries and tongues. The doctrine which the League represented from 1847 to 1852, and which at that time could be treated by the wise philistines with a shrug of the shoulders as the hallucinations of utter madcaps, as the secret doctrine of a few scattered sectarians, has now innumerable adherents in all civilized countries of the world, among those condemned to the Siberian mines as much as among the gold diggers of California; and the founder of this doctrine, the most hated, most slandered man of his time, Karl Marx, was, when he died, the ever-sought-for and ever-willing counsellor of the proletariat of both the old and the new world.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Watch Your Back Brother This Dame Is Murder- “Impact” –A Film Noir Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir Impact.

DVD Review

Impact, starring Brian Donlevy, Helen Walker, Charles Coburn, Ella Raines, United Artists, 1949

I am on record, maybe not a swear on the bible take it to court under oath type record but on record, as being very much enthralled by (from a safe cinematic distance ) the bad femme fatales of film noir. I have spent no little ink mooning over Jane Greer in Out Of The Past as she off-handedly shots a bullet or six in any stray guy like Robert Mitchum who thinks maybe he can help her or glamorous Rita Hayworth as she frames, frames big time, one Orson Welles in Lady From Shang-hai just because his was a little smitten with her after smelling that come hither fragrance. Yah, these guys had it coming because they went with their eyes open, took their chances and took the fall, took the fall big time. But what about a guy, a regular nine to five guy, a soft guy with eyes closed who gets waylaid by his femme wife. Well, said femme may just enter into the pantheon with Ms. Greer and Ms. Hayworth as Helen Walker does in this film noir Impact. While the story line is not nearly as riveting as the two films mentioned above low down Irene (Ms. Walker) saves the day.

Here is the beauty of this little noir. Walter (played by Brian Donlevy) a regular love-infected hard working executive ready to move might and main to keep his bosses happy and the nation productive is totally clueless that his wife, Irene, is two-timing him with some callow young guy, Jim. Moreover she has hatched a plan to cut Walter lose. Her lover-boy, if he is up to it is going to take down poor Walter and they will then go off into the sunset and spend Walter’s hard earned dough until she gets tired of him. Yah dames like Irene tire easily so watch your back if you happen to run across such a femme. As it turns out Jim is not up to the job or at least at up to having enough sense to keep his wits about him when he is doing murder. He leaves Walter for dead but in his rush has a rather nasty head on collision with a gas truck. So long Jim it probably wouldn’t have worked out with Irene any way.


But this is where our Irene really takes off. Naturally under the circumstances Walter, who was left for dead in some rotten ravine by the late unlamented Jim, starts to put two and two together to figure out that faithless Irene maybe doesn’t love him and if he heads back to hometown ‘Frisco he is liable to take another tumble from some new Jim before long. So he blows town, blows his whole upward mobile history and winds up in Podunk Idaho as a grease monkey where the air is pure, people are straight and off-hand war widow, Marsha (played by Ella Raines) is pining away to put some life back into our poor Walter Mitty.

Meanwhile back in ‘Frisco Irene is in some trouble, some jail trouble, since one very pesky police detective, played by Charles Coburn, has put two and two together and found that it comes out murder, the murder of her “undead husband. Here is where we get back to the beautiful part again though. Ms. Goody out in Podunk, after finding out who Walter really is, naturally makes him go back to face the music. And just as naturally old wifey Irene when he shows up undead starts to frame old regular guy Walter for her late boyfriend’ untimely demise.

And that is all that needs to be said. Sure Walter is going to beat the rap but isn’t it something that femme Irene, without batting an eye, is ready to send hubby to the chair to revenge her late lover. One of the great femme noir twists. Yes, Helen step right up with Jane and Rita they are waiting with open arms. This is one bad femme but I sure hope she beats that attempted murder rap they are going to hang on her.