From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Out In The “Submarine Races” Saturday Night

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Capris performing There's A Moon Out Tonight.
A few years back I literarily, well maybe not literarily but close, went over the edge trying find every obscure, and not so obscure, record that I could find from the golden oldies time, the classic age of rock and roll time, the 1950s and early 1960s. I searched through flea market album bins like some ghoul out a Larry McMurtry Cadillac Jack novel. I went up into god forsaken, and maybe worst, dusty, musty, crusty attics (people really should throw out or recycle that stuff moldering away up there but that is a screed for another day) in the hopes that some errant 1950s teenager had left his or her markings and Mother was too sentimental to toss the damn things (although at the time there was civil war in many households over permission to have such “devil’s music” in the house, or within fifty yards of it). Worst, I went around to old time drugstores (any that were left in the age of Osco and CVS), steamed food diners, bent pizza parlors, and local mom and pop store hoping that in some back room they had some records left over from the 1950s jukebox days (or even better maybe still had the old jukebox). Yah, I had a jones, a big time rock and roll jones just then. I am better now, thank you. Well, thanks to YouTube and one million other Internet variations that would have saved me much shoe leather, some dough, my health and left my sunny view of previous pre-flea market- attic-pizza parlor human nature intact. The idea though was to go back to my musical roots, the real roots in classic rock not that Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, Inkspots stuff that was force-fed wafting throughout the house when my parents wanted to listen to the stuff that got them through the Great Depression (always these days meaning the 1930s one, okay) and the big one, World War II. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes, like for example Gene Pitney’s Town Without Pity that I played endlessly, it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-62, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.

And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked elsewhere about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store street corner hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big-sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor juke box coin devouring, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, as well, the drug store soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, naturally, eternally naturally. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their music, the eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing. Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working-class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them).

Yah. but see that was all basically innocent indoor stuff. Today I want to talk about the outdoors stuff, the, hell, we are all adults, the sex stuff. And just to show I am not being just another prurient interest dirty old man I would direct your attention to the very, very on point album cover art work that accompanies this sketch. What could be more on point that a guy and his honey (or a gal and her honey if you want to look at it that way) sitting, star-light nighttime sitting, nighttime after that last dance high school opening shot young love sitting, in some early 1960s model convertible (maybe dad’s borrowed, maybe in new-found teen discretionary spending America his, probably the latter from the feel of the scene) in the local lovers’ lane. And one “bashful”, befuddled, “where do we go from here?” guy getting a seemingly innocent kiss from said honey. Nice, right

Sure all that stuff is nice for public consumption but like I said before, we are all adults, and that cutesy eyewash will just not do. So here is my expose. Every town, hamlet, hell, any place that has at least one teen-aged couple had its own local lovers’ lane where more fierce lovin’ went on that I would every have time to tell about, although Billy and Sue will be glad to fill in their friends come Monday morning in the boys’ and girls’ room at school. Our local lovers’ lane happened to also double up during the daytime as a beach, a very public beach. Can you believe that? Wasting all that good natural teenage dreamy night scene on people going swimming, digging for clams or some silly sea animals, sunning themselves, or having some ill-thought out family picnic. Christ, what a scene.

No, a thousand times no, this place was meant for the sun to go down on, a big blazing sun turning fast into the blue-pink night, boy and girl in car (or poverty-bound, not privy to that discretionary spending mentioned above, walked there and are now sitting moony-eyed on the seawall). And all car-bound or wall-bound “watching the submarine races.”
What? Yes, intensely, forthrightly, intelligently watching the submarine races. Oh come on now, you all had your own local expressions for doin’ the do. Naturally, if you are from the great plains night, or rockymountain high, or some Maine forest this was not possible but doin’ the do was. And what is doin’ the do? Oh well, yes we are all adults but I just remembered this cyberspace thing allows for small, peeking eyes, so I will leave you to figure it out. Or wait until Monday morning in the “lav” and ask grinning Billy and blushing Sue. Know this though that old car radio (or transistor radio, if seawall-bound) was blasting out tunes from some of those records I found in beaten bins, infested attics, and defunct drugstores. Here’s my selection for “getting in the mood” songs in the face of the great white-waved, Atlantic Ocean submarine race night:

There’s A Moon Out Tonight, The Capris (hopefully this was a double-header, the last dance at school and kingdom come mood-setter in that old convertible); Blue Moon, The Marcels (not bad as a runner up to The Capris as everybody starts to get a little swoony); Dedicated To The One I Love and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, The Shirelles (incredible harmonies, and let me tell you sometime when the kids are not around about my own story of young love when the sun comes up in the morning, yah, the morning, and how I got my very own personal version of the will you still love me question); Runaround Sue, Dion (every boy, oops, young man’s dread a girl always ready to throw you over in a week for the next best thing that comes along, damn); Hats Off To Larry (and you know what for if what he went on and on about at Monday morning boys’ “lav” roll call was true, or better, half true); Del Shannon; Stand By Me ( a mood setter if there ever was one), Ben E. King (great lyrics); and Daddy’s Home, Shep and The Limelites (good for going home from that gentle beach night after a hard night at the races).

Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Jody Reynolds “Endless Sleep”- Billie’s View

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Jody Reynolds performing the classic Endless Sleep.

Markin comment:

This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the mad hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Yah, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own. This song, Endless Sleep, came out at a time when I my family was beginning to start the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe. I was in my 24/7 reading at the local public library branch phase in lieu of being Billie’s accomplice on various, well, let’s call them capers just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. Still Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.

JODY REYNOLDS
"Endless Sleep"
(Jody Reynolds and Dolores Nance)
The night was black, rain fallin' down
Looked for my baby, she's nowhere around
Traced her footsteps down to the shore
‘fraid she's gone forever more
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.


Why did we quarrel, why did we fight?
Why did I leave her alone tonight?
That's why her footsteps ran into the sea
That's why my baby has gone from me.
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“I took your baby from you away.
I heard a voice cryin' in the deep
“Come join me, baby, in my endless sleep.


Ran in the water, heart full of fear
There in the breakers I saw her near
Reached for my darlin', held her to me
Stole her away from the angry sea
I looked at the sea and it seemed to say
“You took your baby from me away.
My heart cried out “she's mine to keep
I saved my baby from an endless sleep.


[Fade]
Endless sleep, endless sleep
*****
Billie back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over the Adamsville Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he told me his family was going to move out of the projects and who had developed this big thing for the local library and books lately, came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of my rock universe-adorned bedroom when we got to talking about this latest record, Endless Sleep, by Jody Reynolds. All the parents around here, at least the parents that care anyway, or those who have heard the lyrics screaming from their kid’s plug-in blaring radio (that’s why they invented transistor radios-so parents wouldn’t, or couldn’t, catch on to what we are listening to- smarten up is what I say to those kids still on plug-in mode, for christ’s sake) about the not so subtle suicide theme. Yah, like that is what every kid is going to do when the going gets a little tough in the love department. Take a jump in the ocean, and call one and all to join them. Come on, will ya. It's only a song. Besides what is really good about this one is that great back beat on the guitar and Jody Reynolds' cool clothes and sideburns. I wish to high heaven I had both.

But see the pope of rock lyrics, me, can’t just leave this song like that. I have to decode it for the teeny-boppers around here or they will be clueless, including big time book guy Markin. And that is really what is going to make the difference between us here. We had a battle royal over this one. See, Markin always wants to give big play to the “social” meaning of the song, whatever that is, you know where the thing sticks in society, at least teeny-bopper society. Yah, and Markin is also the “sensitive” guy, usually. Like pulling for the girl to get her guy back, or at least go back to her old boyfriend for some back-up love, in Eddie My Love. Or has a kind thing to say about the dumb cluck of a bimbo who went back to the railroad track-stuck car to get some cheapjack class ring in Teen Angel (although he agreed, agreed fully, that the dame was a dumb cluck on other grounds).

Here though I am the sensitive guy, if you can believe that. Here’s why. It seems that Markin has some kind of exception to the “social” rule when it comes to the ocean, to the sea, christ, probably to some scum pond for all I know as the scene for suicide attempts. Apparently he is in the throes of some King Neptune frenzy and took umbrage (his word, not mind I don’t go to the library much) at the idea that someone would desecrate the sea that way, our homeland the sea was the way he put it. Like old Neptune hasn’t brought seventy-three types of hell on us with his hurricane tidal waves, his overflowing the seawalls, his flooding everything within three miles of the coast, or when he just throws his flotsam and jetsam (my words, from school, I like them) on the projects beaches whenever he gets fed up. So I have to defend this frail’s action, and gladly.

You know it really is unbelievable once you start to think about it how many of these songs don’t have people in them with names, real names, nicknames, anything to tag on them. Here it’s the same old thing. Markin would just blithely go on and makes up names but I’ll just give you the “skinny” without the Markin literary touches, okay. Rather than calling the girl every name in the book for disturbing the fishes or the plankton like Markin I am trying to see what happened here to drive her to such a rash action. Obviously they, the unnamed boy and girl, had an argument, alright a big argument if that satisfies you. What could it have been about? Markin, wise guy Markin, wants to make it some little thing like a missed date, or the guy didn't call or something. Maybe it was, but I think the poor girl was heartbroken about something bigger. Maybe boyfriend didn’t want to “go steady” or maybe he wasn’t ready to be her ever lovin’ one and only. Let me put it this way it was big, not Markin’s b.s. stuff.

Okay she went over the edge, no question, running down to the sea and jumping in. On a rainy night to boot. Hey she had it bad, whatever it was. But see old Neptune, Markin’s friend, maybe father for all I know, is taunting said boyfriend, saying he is taking his baby away. Well, frankly, and old wimpy Markin dismissed this out of hand, those are fighting words in the projects, and not just the projects either. And the girl, given the cold and what that does to you when you have been in too long is forced to taunt her lover boy, trying to bring him down too. This is the part I like though, although Markin would probably take umbrage (again), the boyfriend is ready to reclaim his honey, come hell or high water. Yah, he’s taking his baby back, and taking her no questions asked, from that nasty relentless sea. Chalk one up for our side. Yes, Billie, William James Bradley, is happy, pleased, delighted and any other words you can find in the library that this story has a happy ending. Markin be damned.

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days- Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany (1851)

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. ************* 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. ************ 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, merely smitten by late Victorian fox hunts with the upper crust. 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 specifically 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. *********

Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany

VI.
The Berlin Insurrection.
NOVEMBER 28, 1851.
THE second center of revolutionary action was Berlin, and from what has been stated in the foregoing papers, it may be guessed that there this action was far from having that unanimous support of almost all classes by which it was accompanied in Vienna. In Prussia, the bourgeoisie had been already involved in actual struggles with the Government; a rupture had been the result of the "United Diet"; a bourgeois revolution was impending, and that revolution might have been, in its first outbreak, quite as unanimous as that of Vienna, had it not been for the Paris Revolution of February. That event precipitated everything, while at the same time it was carried out under a banner totally different from that under which the Prussian bourgeoisie was preparing to defy its Government. The Revolution of February upset, in France, the very same sort of Government which the Prussian bourgeoisie were going to set up in their own country. The Revolution of February announced itself as a revolution of the working classes against the middle classes; it proclaimed the downfall of middle-class government and the emancipation of the workingman. Now the Prussian bourgeoisie had, of late, had quite enough of working-class agitation in their own country. After the first terror of the Silesian riots had passed away, they had even tried to give this agitation a turn in their own favor; but they always had retained a salutary horror of revolutionary Socialism and Communism; and, therefore, when they saw men at the head of the Government in Paris whom they considered as the most dangerous enemies of property, order, religion, family, and of the other Penates of the modern bourgeois, they at once experienced a considerable cooling down of their own revolutionary ardor. They knew that the moment must be seized, and that, without the aid of the working masses, they would be defeated; and yet their courage failed them. Thus they sided with the Government in the first partial and provincial outbreaks, tried to keep the people quiet in Berlin, who, during five days, met in crowds before the royal palace to discuss the news and ask for changes in the Government; and when at last, after the news of the downfall of Metternich, the King made some slight concessions, the bourgeoisie considered the Revolution as completed, and went to thank His Majesty for having fulfilled all the wishes of his people. But then followed the attack of the military on the crowd, the barricades, the struggle, and the defeat of royalty. Then everything was changed: the very working classes, which it had been the tendency of the bourgeoisie to keep in the background, had been pushed forward, had fought and conquered, and all at once were conscious of their strength. Restrictions of suffrage, of the liberty of the press, of the right to sit on juries, of the right of meeting-restrictions that would have been very agreeable to the bourgeoisie because they would have touched upon such classes only as were beneath them—now were no longer possible. The danger of a repetition of the Parisian scenes of "anarchy" was imminent. Before this danger all former differences disappeared. Against the victorious workingman, although he had not yet uttered any specific demands for himself, the friends and the foes of many years united, and the alliance between the bourgeoisie and the supporters of the over-turned system was concluded upon the very barricades of Berlin. The necessary concessions, but no more than was unavoidable, were to be made, a ministry of the opposition leaders of the United Diet was to be formed, and in return for its services in saving the Crown, it was to have the support of all the props of the old Government, the feudal aristocracy, the bureaucracy, the army. These were the conditions upon which Messrs. Camphausen and Hansemann undertook the formation of a cabinet.

Such was the dread evinced by the new ministers of the aroused masses, that in their eyes every means was good if it only tended to strengthen the shaken foundations of authority. They, poor deluded wretches, thought every danger of a restoration of the old system had passed away; and thus they made use of the whole of the old State machinery for the purpose of restoring "order." Not a single bureaucrat or military officer was dismissed; not the slightest change was made in the old bureaucratic system of administration. These precious constitutional and responsible ministers even restored to their posts those functionaries whom the people, in the first heat of revolutionary ardor, had driven away on account of their former acts of bureaucratic overbearing. There was nothing altered in Prussia hut the persons of the ministers; even the ministerial staffs in the different departments were not touched upon, and all the constitutional place-hunters, who had formed the chorus of the newly-elevated rulers, and who had expected their share of power and office, were told to wait until restored stability allowed changes to be operated in the bureaucratic personnel which now were not without danger.

The King, chap-fallen in the highest degree after the insurrection of the 18th of March, very soon found out that he was quite as necessary to these "liberal" ministers as they were to him. The throne had been spared by the insurrection; the throne was the last existing obstacle to "anarchy"; the liberal middle class and its leaders, now in the ministry, had therefore every interest to keep on excellent terms with the crown. The King, and the reactionary camerilla that surrounded him, were not slow in discovering this, and profited by the circumstance in order to fetter the march of the ministry even in those petty reforms that were from time to time intended.

The first care of the ministry was to give a sort of legal appearance to the recent violent changes. The United Diet was convoked in spite of all popular opposition, in order to vote as the legal and constitutional organ of the people a new electoral law for the election of an Assembly, which was to agree with the crown upon a new constitution. The elections were to be indirect, the mass of voters electing a number of electors, who then were to choose the representative. In spite of all opposition this system of double elections passed. The United Diet was then asked for a loan of twenty-five millions of dollars, opposed by the popular party, but equally agreed to.

These acts of the ministry gave a most rapid development to the popular, or as it now called itself, the Democratic party. This party, headed by the petty trading and shopkeeping class, and uniting under its banner, in the beginning of the revolution, the large majority of the working people, demanded direct and universal suffrage, the same as established in France, a single legislative assembly, and full and open recognition of the revolution of the 18th of March, as the base of the new governmental system. The more moderate faction would be satisfied with a thus "democratized" monarchy, the more advanced demanded the ultimate establishment of the republic. Both factions agreed in recognizing the German National Assembly at Frankfort as the supreme authority of the country, while the Constitutionalists and Reactionists affected a great horror of the sovereignty of this body, which they professed to consider as utterly revolutionary.

The independent movement of the working classes had, by the revolution, been broken up for a time. The immediate wants and circumstances of the movement were such as not to allow any of the specific demands of the Proletarian party to be put in the foreground. In fact, as long as the ground was not cleared for the independent action of the working men, as long as direct and universal suffrage was not yet established, as long as the thirty-six larger and smaller states continued to cut up Germany into numberless morsels, what else could the Proletarian party do but watch the—for them all-important—movement of Paris, and struggle in common with the petty shopkeepers for the attainment of those rights, which would allow them to fight afterwards their own battle?

There were only three points, then, by which the Proletarian party in its political action essentially distinguished itself from the petty trading class, or properly so-called Democratic party; firstly, in judging differently the French movement, with regard to which the democrats attacked, and the Proletarian revolutionists defended, the extreme party in Paris; secondly, in proclaiming the necessity of establishing a German Republic, one and indivisible, while the very extremest ultras among the democrats only dared to sigh for a Federative Republic; and thirdly, in showing upon every occasion, that revolutionary boldness and readiness for action, in which any party headed by, and composed principally of petty tradesmen, will always be deficient.

The Proletarian, or really Revolutionary party, succeeded only very gradually in withdrawing the mass of the working people from the influence of the Democrats, whose tail they formed in the beginning of the Revolution. But in due time the indecision, weakness, and cowardice of the Democratic leaders did the rest, and it may now be said to be one of the principal results of the last years' convulsions, that wherever the working-class is concentrated in anything like considerable masses, they are entirely freed from that Democratic influence which led them into an endless series of blunders and misfortunes during 1848 and 1849. But we had better not anticipate; the events of these two years will give us plenty of opportunities to show the Democratic gentlemen at work.

The peasantry in Prussia, the same as in Austria, but with less energy, feudalism pressing, upon the whole, not quite so hardly upon them here, had profited by the revolution to free themselves at once from all feudal shackles. But here, from the reasons stated before, the middle classes at once turned against them, their oldest, their most indispensable allies; the democrats, equally frightened with the bourgeoisie, by what was called attacks upon private property, failed equally to support them; and thus, after three months' emancipation, after bloody struggles and military executions, particularly in Silesia, feudalism was restored by the hands of the, until yesterday, anti-feudal bourgeoisie. There is not a more damning fact to be brought against them than this. Similar treason against its best allies, against itself, never was committed by any party in history, and whatever humiliation and chastisement may be in store for this middle class party, it has deserved by this one act every morsel of it.

OCTOBER, 1851.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In The Stone-Killer Night- “Railroaded”-A Film Review

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

DVD Review

Railroaded, starring John Ireland, Hugh Beaumont, Shelia Ryan, Eagle-Lion Films, 1947

I am, and I am publically on record on this question, very indulgent toward an off-hand femme fatale in a film noir shooting up a guy, even a guy trying to help her, in order to get what she wants, usually the dough. It is a cruel world out there and a girl has got to do what a girl has to do to keep the wolves from the door. So I had no problem, or maybe just a little problem, when Jane Greer in Out Of The Past shot up her fancy man (Kirk Douglas) and ran off with some of his dough and he, just to keep his manhood intact, hired Robert Mitchum to go get her (and the dough). And, of course like with all guys, guys built for heavy lifting like Mitchum or just wimps like me, once old Mitchum got a look at her, or maybe even caught her scent in the Mexican night air he was a goner. So later when they were on the run and she off-handedly put a bullet or six in some new sleuth hired to find her and him I just charged it off to overhead. And even when things got tough and she needed to go back to her sugar daddy Kirk and things didn’t work out and she had to blast him, and in the end helpful Mitchum I just chalked it up to circumstances. Even with trigger happy junior league femmes like Irene (played by Helen Walker) in the film noir Impact I could see where her being married to some major league Walter Mitty-type would keep her from full attention to her low-rent boyfriend and gave her a pass on her plot to murder the guy. That is just the way I am with cinematic femmes.

But I draw the line with stone-cold killer guys, hard boys kept around to do some heavy lifting for an off-hand mobster lets’ say, like in the film under review, Railroaded. No dice, no way. They had got to get what is coming to them. Especially when said stone killer, here one Duke Martin, framed an innocent guy in the process. Maybe it is just because in real life I was close, way too close, to some junior league hard boys when I was growing up and they were winning their spurs by some ill-designed caper, like a mom and pop store robbery, or holding up a gas station in the days when they were easy to knock off, or maybe a liquor to get some walking around money. Hell, maybe it goes back before that when they would bonk a guy for his school lunch money or just bonk a guy to do it because they could do it. No indulgences, okay, none this side of heaven.

Duke, well, Duke Martin (played by John Ireland), as the story unfold in Railroaded, wouldn’t qualify for indulgences anyway whatever I thought of hard boys, or femmes for that matter. This guy had no manners as he tried to pin a busted bookie joint (his boss’ to boot) robbery on a delivery boy (a guy who did some hard war time service while Duke was probably shooting craps with some “mark”). Worst Duke offs with about as much regret as he would for swapping a fly every person who could, or who might, or maybe who just might think in the deep recesses of his or her mind about turning him in. No, this bad guy had got to fall, and fall hard.

And as is the nature of such film noirs Duke falls due to his own hubris, and his obsessive need to overplay every situation. He gets some help in his downfall by the intrepid work of the deliveryman’s fetching and no-nonsenses sister Rosie (played by Shelia Ryan) and tough but good (of course) cop Mickey (played by Hugh Beaumont) who play on his weaknesses for good-looking women (or rather the next best thing that comes along after he finishes with a dame) and a certain need to try to intimidate everybody around him. So he falls, and good riddance. Now if Rita Hayworth in say The Lady From Shang-hai had been in that fix, well, you know where I stand. Got it.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes, Part Two- “Deception”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the melodramatic noir Deception.

DVD Review

Deception, starring Bette Davis, Claude Raines, Paul Henreid, Warner Brothers 1946

Hey, I like a soft touch egg head thriller as well as the next guy but this one, this “high brow” thing, Deception, left me cold, cold as old Claude Rains at the end. It was not that Bette Davis played, well, Bette Davis with those Bette Davis eyes (and other iconic moves) just a little too dramatically over the top as a head over heels in love budding pianist mooning over a lost love cellist in post-war Mayfair swells New York (World War II for those keeping score on the which war issue). It was not that Paul Henreid, last seen by this writer as the heroic resistance leader Victor Laszlo trying to get some damned letters of transit out of hole-in-the- wall Casablanca in the film of the same name in order to beat the Nazis in Europe, as that smitten cellist who had lost a step or two with his nerves all frayed after being cooped up in that aforementioned Nazi-occupied Europe. And it certainly was not Claude Rains, also last seen by this reviewer in that same film walking in some fogged-in hole- in- the- wall Casablanca airfield arm and arm with Humphrey Bogart after helping old Victor Laszlo break out to lead Europe back to civilization, as a world famous composer with a perchant for New Yorker magazine-induced high camp elite chatter, or what passed for it in those days. No, it was not the performances of these fines actors per se but the flow of the plot line that as it slowly and melodramatically unfolded made me hope, hope to high heaven, that someone, and that someone being Claude Rains, would end up as cold as I felt about half way through this one.

  Let me explain and see if you agree. Christine (played by Bette Davis), an aspiring pianist, who was being, well, let me put this gently, being “kept” by the eminent composer Hollenius (played by Rains) who lavished her with gifts and other expensive odds and ends for her favors. Nothing usual there and as we are all adults we know, or should know, this stuff happens all the time to Mayfair swells and mean street thugs. What upsets this nice arrangement is that an old beau, Karel (played by Henreid), a struggling but up and coming cellist in pre-war Europe whom was presumed by Christine to be dead shows up in New York right after the war trying to make a new start. Christine finds out, and wants to start up that old flame thing they had when they were young and struggling in that lost pre-war European night. All this though without telling him anything but lies about her sugar daddy Hollenius. Not a good idea.

The rest of the film centers on the tension between this trio as Karel runs to fits of confusion and jealousy over Christine’s relationship with Hollenius. Hollenius is furious, and profusely and verbally at wits end, over Christine’s tossing him, a great world renown composer, over for some two bit café musician. A subplot has Hollenius toying with the lovebirds by offering Karel a cello work compose by him that can either make or break him in the high brow music world. And Christine, well, Christine is trying to keep her past a secret from Karel at any price. That is the deception and it is played out until the merciful end when she off-handedly shot old Hollenius when he, very ungentlemanly-like, threatened, or maybe threatened, to expose the whole show. Of course this whole star-crossed lovers scene could have been averted if Christine had just come clean but no she had to play with fire, and play with it until the end. See what I mean though about not getting very weepy over this melodrama.

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International -The European Revolution and the Tasks of the Revolutionary Party-Resolution Adopted by the Sixth Contention of the Socialist Workers Party — Eleventh Convention of the American Trotskyist Movement-New York, December, 1944

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.
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The European Revolution and the Tasks of the Revolutionary Party-Resolution Adopted by the Sixth Contention of the Socialist Workers Party — Eleventh Convention of the American Trotskyist Movement-New York, December, 1944

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Adopted: November 16, 1944.
First Published:November, 1944
Source:Fourth International, New York, December 1944, Vol. 5, No. 11, pages 360-69
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Daniel Gaido and David Walters, December, 2005
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskism On-Line, 2006. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the address of this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.

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The events of the past nine months have served to underline the validity of our previous analysis of the world situation and of the perspectives in Europe as embodied in the resolution adopted on November 2, 1943 by the Fifteenth Anniversary Plenum of the National Committee. The Plenum resolution has guided our analysis of the unfolding events and helped to formulate the slogans for our agitation. This resolution is a reaffirmation and an extension of the Plenum resolution.

The Italian experiences have provided the proving ground for the development of revolutionary events in Europe, of the revolutionary temper and power of the European masses, of the status and role of the European capitalist class, as well as a preview of Anglo-American aims, methods and plans. Italy provides a key to the understanding of events in France, in Germany, in all Europe.

One year ago in August, the Italian capitalist class, faced with the prospect of a revolutionary overthrow of its rule, proceeded, through the Badoglio regime, to call in the aid of the foreign imperialists. The ruling circles decided their best chance for survival lay in throwing in their lot with the Allies, and on September 3, 1943, an armistice was signed between the Badoglio Government and the Allies. At the same time, Badoglio’s generals in the North turned over the revolutionary proletariat to the Nazi wolves. With guns and bayonets, the workers were pushed back into the factories. By the timely assistance of Allied and Nazi imperialism, the Italian revolution was, for the time being arrested.

In September 1943 Allied airmen dropped leaflets in Southern Italy which stated: “ We are coming to liberate you and not to conquer you.” But the Allies soon revealed themselves to be not liberators but tyrants, exploiters and conquerors. First, they imposed on Italy “Armistice”, terms reputed to be more Draconian than those Hitler imposed on France in 1940. To this day, neither the Allies nor the successive Italian governments have dared make public the full Armistice terms. After the Armistice, Italy was converted into a battleground of the Second World War. The Allied military campaign was organized on the basis of a twofold objective: (1) to destroy the Nazi armies, and (2) to convert Italy into a semi-colony of Allied imperialism, imposing on the Italian people a military dictatorship based on the monarchy, the Vatican and the capitalist and landlord cliques. In pursuit of their program the Allies systematically employed all their power, prestige and armed might to impose on the Italian people the dictatorship of Badoglio and the House of Savoy. To this end they conducted virtual warfare against the civilian population. While systematically disarming the fighters of the independent anti-fascist militia, they supported Badoglio in his attempt to reconstitute an army under the leadership of monarchist and ex-fascist generals. The Allies shielded the Black Shirt cutthroats from the wrath of the people and retumed to public office many of the selfsame rascals, crooks and tyrants who had lorded it over the Italian masses under the Mussolini regime. A new brazen attempt was launched to refurbish the power of the Church. Thus far the AMG has permitted only religious schools to reopen and education to be conducted under the direction of the ecclesiastical authorities. At the same time a reign of terror was carried on against the Italian masses: the suppression of strikes, the disarming of anti-fascist militants, the arrest of political opponents. Such is the sum and substance of Allied political “liberation” of Italy.

Allied Economic Policy

In the economic field, the Allies quickly dispelled the illusion that under their rule living conditions would improve. With Italy a battleground, her cities destroyed and fields devastated, with the Italian people paying the full costs of Allied occupation, if not additional huge war-indemnities, the economic situation in Allied-occupied Italy ha5 not improved but drastically worsened . One year of Allied rule of Italy has made it unmistakably clear that the Anglo-American imperialists, in this sphere, will continue the robbery, looting and oppression practiced by Nazi imperialism in its rule of occupied Europe. The Allies moreover will take advantage of the hunger of the masses and utilize their control of the food supplies at their disposal as an additional lever for counterrevolution.

The first important economic measure introduced by the Allies—in emulation of Hitler’s occupation of France—was the setting of the exchange rate at 100 lire to the dollar. This measure immediately accelerated the inflation. All metal currency vanished. The Italian farmers, losing all faith in the currency diverted their produce to the black market.

Prices immediately soared, goods were unobtainable except on the black market, the daily bread ration was reduced to 100 grams per person—three slices of bread—about a third of what the average Italian received under Mussolini. The daily food ration in Allied-occupied Naples is reputed to be one of the lowest in Europe—lower even than the food ration in Warsaw under the Nazis.

The Allied authorities declared all wages frozen as of September 1, 1943. These wages had been set under contracts during Mussolini’s regime. With prices soaring, with goods obtainable only in the black market, and black-market prices averaging ten times the legal maximum prices, the working class is reduced to abject starvation. The white-collar, salaried and professional workers, ruined by the inflation, suffer a similar fate. Conditions are further aggravated by mass unemployment. Over 100,000 workers are unemployed in Naples alone. Disease is ravaging the population. The death rate has increased about fourfold. The masses of Naples are facing famine.

In Rome the cost of living, which has gone up 749 percent between November 1940 and June 1944, registered a further sharp increase, as soon as the Allies entered, owing to the same causes that operated in Naples. Pietro Nenni, pro-Allied Social-Democratic leader in Rome, declared: “ If eight or ten more Italian cities get into the state of Naples, where three-quarters of the citizens live by beggary, prostitution, peddling and black marketing, Italy will cease to exist.”

Hunger grips the land. The thieving fascist officials and businessmen who made price control and rationing a mockery under the Mussolini regime, continue, with Allied blessings to fleece the Italian people and pile up profits through black market operations. Such is Allied “liberation” of Italy in the economic sphere.

And Italy, it must be remembered, has become a “cobelligerent” of the Allies and thus comes under the provisions of the Atlantic Charter. What the Allies plan for Germany can well be imagined from the fact that the German people have already been declared outside the pale of humanity and the Atlantic Charter declared not applicable to Germany. The projected dismemberment of Germany spells economic ruin and starvation not for the German masses alone, but for the masses of all Europe. The highly developed German industry constitutes the indispensable backbone of Europe’s economy.

The Political Crisis

The Allied program of counter-revolution and the conversion of Italy into a semi-colony of Anglo-American imperialism has produced a political crisis of the greatest tension and explosive power. The early sympathy of the Italian people for the Allies, based on the hope that conditions would improve, soon turned into consternation, bewilderment, distrust and hostility. Today the masses of Allied-occupied Italy understand that Roosevelt and Churchill are not liberators, but imperial plunderers and enslavers. Even the capitalist correspondents report that the political temper of the Italian masses is white-hot, that the masses are turning to Communism.

Politically, this is translated into the fact that of the six “opposition” parties that make up The Committee of National Liberation , only the two “working class” parties, the Social Democratic Party and the Stalinists, have any measure of mass support and following in the cities. The fact that the liberal politicians of the Sforza type continue to walk the political stage is to be explained solely by Allied support of those politicians and the perfidy of the so-called working class parties.

The Italian masses are today ready for another gigantic step forward on the road toward their political and social emancipation. What, then, accounts for the present slow tempo of development of the Italian revolution? This is explained primarily by the treachery of the so-called working class parties that at present dominate the political stage in Italy, and by the absence of a mass revolutionary party .

No sooner did the workers begin to participate actively on the political arena after the fall of Mussolini, than they brushed aside the liberal capitalist parties and politicians (who paved the way for fascism after the first World War) and in the main gave their support and allegiance to the traditional parties of the Italian working class—the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party. (Under the fascist regime the Italian masses were for twenty years forcibly deprived of the opportunity of testing the various programs, leaders and parties through their own experience.) In this was revealed the leading role of the proletariat that has characterized every revolution of modern times; it also testifies to the fact that the Italian working masses ardently desire a decisive revolutionary change . They give their backing and support to the parties that in their minds stand for Socialism and Communism, in the mistaken expectation that these parties will lead them in revolutionary struggle.

How terribly have these so-called working class parties betrayed the Italian proletariat! The workers supported the “Socialists” and “Communists” because they wanted a leadership in their fight for peace, bread and freedom. The Social Democratic and Stalinist traitors assumed the leadership of this struggle only to behead it.

Organized in the underground, the Social Democrats and the Stalinists emerged in the open immediately after Mussolini’s downfall as part of a five-party (later six-party) coalition: The Committee of National Liberation . This miserable replica of the People’s Front—the bloc of the working class with the liberal bourgeoisie—lacks even the alibi given in 1935 for the formation of the People’s Front of France. The primary power and mass following in Italy reposes in the so-called working class parties. The liberal bourgeoisie enjoy no mass support. Actually the “People’s Front” bloc has only one purpose—to rehabilitate the liberal capitalist politicians of the Sforza-Croce stamp and to use their presence in the coalition as justification for the policies of upholding capitalism and supporting the war.

In the course of a single year, The Committee of National Liberation has piled up a long record of sellouts. The Stalinists, who comprise the most important party in the coalition and exercise the most extensive influence over the working class, have already emerged as the spearhead of the counterrevolution inside the working class movement.

When in June the Badoglio government simply melted away under the hostility of the masses, it was the six-party coalition with the Stalinists in the van, who stepped in to break the deadlock for reaction. For a brief period they served to prop up the Badoglio dictatorship by providing the facade of a six-party “coalition” cabinet. When the Allies entered Rome, the city was already under the control of a working-class anti-fascist Junta which refused to tolerate a government of Badoglio and the monarchy. After the Allies disbanded the anti-fascist Junta, they called in their lackeys of the six-party coalition. A new government, headed by the liberal Bonomi, made up of the representatives of the six-party coalition, again stepped in to fill the political vacuum. In other words, the Stalinists, Social Democrats and their liberal allies directly took over the task of keeping the Italian masses subservient to the Allied invaders, of carrying through the infamous Armistice terms and acting as lackeys, helping prop up the disintegrating rule of Italian capitalism.

Already in this initial stage, the Anglo-American imperialists have been compelled in Western Europe and the Kremlin bureaucracy in Eastern Europe, to call in the Stalinist and Social Democratic lackeys in order to provide a “democratic” veneer for their hand-picked cabinets. This creation of class-collaboration coalition cabinets to screen their military dictatorships testifies not to the “popular” or “democratic” character of these regimes, but to the cynicism and corruption of the Stalinist and Social Democratic misleaders, to the shakiness and decay of capitalism in Europe and to the revolutionary temper of the masses.

The Bonomi government, like its predecessor, is a shadow government. It is a miserable caricature of a coalition government. First, it has no power. It is merely the servant of the Allied military authority, pledged to carry out the conqueror’s demands and terms. Second, it is a hand-picked government, with no mandate from the people or even its own party constituencies. It “rules” by decree. The real power continues to reside first, in the Allied military authority and in the second instance the officer corps, the monarchist camarilla, the church hierarchy. The new coalition merely serves as a screen for the military dictatorship of the Allies and their Italian accomplices.

The Bonomi government is no more able than its predecessors to solve one single problem which confronts it. It cannot give the people bread because it is committed to sup porting Allied looting of Italy under the terms of the Armistice. It cannot abolish the black market and fight the high cost of living because the Italian capitalists, with Allied protection, are making fortunes in the black market. It cannot purge the fascists and give democratic rights to the Italian people because the Allies are returning the fascists to the seats of power and are determined to prevent the masses from exercising their democratic rights and electing a government of their own choosing. The Bonomi government cannot abolish the monarchy smeared with the crimes of fascism because it is pledged not to raise the question of the monarchy until after the war. The Bonomi government cannot struggle for peace. It openly and brazenly demands that the Allies equip a new army so that the Italian people may again be hurled, as full participants, into the imperalist slaughter. The Bonomi government is a government of betrayal and impotence.

Masses learn very rapidly in a revolutionary period. In Italy they have seen several changes of ministries; they have even seen the representatives of the supposed working class parties enter the capitalist government. And yet everything remains as before. The people are still starving, they have no freedom, Italy remains a battleground. The wrath of the masses is sure to rise against the new government of repression and hunger, the pitiful lackey of the Allied imperialists and the Italian capitalists. The Bonomi government will prove no more stable or durable than did its predecessors.

The Paramount Task

The proletariat of the Northern cities has for many months fought with the greatest heroism against the Nazi butchers and their Black Shirt accomplices. In March this struggle culminated in the calling of a general strike. 6,000,000 workers downed tools and presented their demands to the Nazi command. Despite the Nazi terror, they won significant concessions.

As soon as the separation between Northern and southern Italy ends, the Northern proletariat, imbued with the ideas of Socialism and comprising the most militant and decisive section of the population, will take its rightful place at the head of the struggle. Italy stands on the verge of a new forward development of the revolution.

This makes the creation of a new revolutionary party the most immediate and unpostponable task for the Italian proletariat. The pernicious influence of the Social Democrats and the Stalinists must be fought and destroyed. For victory in the struggle, the Italian proletariat must have a firm, honest, devoted, revolutionary leadership. Such a leadership can be provided only by the Marxist revolutionary party.

The sources for the formation of the new revolutionary party exist and are numerous: among revolutionary elements inside the Communist and Socialist Left who have become disillusioned by the treachery of their leaders; among the leading militants of the trade union movement; in the ranks of the anti-fascist militia.

The advanced workers of Italy do not have to invent a new program and a new banner for the revolutionary party of Italy. Such a revolutionary program and banner exist. The revolutionary working class party will be organized on the tested program and methods of Lenin and Trotsky, the program and methods of the Great Russian Revolution of 1917. The revolutionary workers party of Italy will be a Trotskyist party, because Trotskyism is the only movement of genuine Marxist Internationalism today.

The Trotskyist have prepared themselves during the years of reaction for the revolutionary upsurge. The Trotskyist movement has a tested program, a firm cadre and an international organization. Upon its shoulders rests an historic responsibility. It must render every assistance to our Italian and European co-thinkers to assemble the forces for the revolutionary Marxist parties and strengthen those that already exist. Toward this end, the Trotskyist will pay the chest attention to all the new manifestations of the European labor movement, and work with the greatest energy to attract all leftward-moving groups to the Trotskyist program and banner. This work the Trotskyist will carry through with the greatest tactical flexibility and in a comradely spirit. At the same time the Trotskyist intend to wage unremitting struggle against centrist charlatans, professional confusionists and sterile sectarians. Through all the abrupt turns and tactical readjustments necessary to aid the rapid crystallization of the revolutionary forces, the Trotskyist will remain programmatically irreconcilable.

Today the Fourth International is confronted with tremendous tasks, opportunities and responsibilities. The decks must be cleared for action. There is no room for careerists, adventurers, cowards, philistines, petty-bourgeois windbags and quacks or sectarian incorrigible. Long ago the Fourth International turned its face toward the fresh revolutionary forces of the European proletariat. All its time will be devoted to rallying the fresh layers of workers in the struggle for Socialist emancipation. That is how the Trotskyist parties will grow strong!

The Italian revolutionary party, unfurling the glorious banner of Trotskyism, will call on the masses to struggle for the program of Socialist revolution and working class internationalism. The party will explain that Italy can avoid disaster and famine only by a program that leads to the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of a Socialist Italy based on the workers’ and peasants’ councils; that only by a firm alliance with the revolutionary masses of the rest of Europe can the imperialist invaders be driven out and peace, economic security and freedom be achieved in Europe. Herein lies the motive power of the slogan of the Socialist United States of Europe.

The Central Unifying Slogan

The Socialist United States of Europe is the central unifying slogan of the European revolution; the cooperation of the European proletariat and their combined forces are needed to drive out the imperialist invaders and oppressors; the proletariat of any single European country will be forced to safeguard and secure their victorious Socialist revolution from the military assaults of the imperialists by calling for immediate revolutionary assistance and support of the European proletariat, by boldly disregarding the outlived and reactionary national boundaries and working to extend their revolution on a continental scale. The Socialist United States of Europe is the revolutionary answer, the only alternative to the imperialist schemes of Balkanizing Europe and enslaving its peoples. It corresponds to the needs and experiences of the European masses who are learning that only by the destruction of the outlived and reactionary national state and through the economic unification and Socialist collaboration of the free peoples of Europe can the menace of recurrent, devastating wars be abolished and freedom and economic well-being assured. The slogan Socialist United States of Europe will become the great rallying cry to unite the European masses against the despotic schemes and counter-revolutionary designs of Anglo-American imperialism; and to inspire and guide the working class, through every stage of the struggle for Socialist emancipation.

To rally the masses for the revolutionary struggle, the revolutionary Marxist party will elaborate a bold program of transitional and democratic demands corresponding to the consciousness of the masses and the tempo of developments, e.g. free election of all officials, freedom of the press, armed workers’ militia, nationalization of industry under workers’ control, etc. It will audaciously put forward those partial, sharp fighting slogans dictated by the circumstances of the day and the mood of the masses in order to advance the struggle and prepare the proletariat for power. It will become the leader of the masses in all their partial struggles, strikes, demonstrations, protests. It is in the tumultuous revolutionary battles that the proletariat will gather experience, cohesion and strength, that the revolutionary party will win the masses to its program and establish its right to revolutionary 1eadership.

The revolutionary Marxist party will be the leader in agitating for and building Soviets (Workers’ Councils).

Soviets may begin on a very modest and elementary scale. They may begin with Consumers and Price Committees to fight the black market and the high cost of living. They may be set up as factory committees to establish workers’ control and to fight unemployment. They may be set up as committees to fight for the free election of all officials. They may be set up as unions of farm workers to confiscate the landlords’ estates and to operate them cooperatively or to combat and resist the disarming of the masses and to organize an armed workers’ militia.

Thus in the very process of propaganda, agitation and struggle, the revolutionary fighters will become not only the propagandists but the foremost organizers of the Soviets (Workers’ Councils). The Soviets, in the course of the struggle, will clash with the government apparatus and the Allied military authorities. They will be forced to reach out ever further in their fight for the people’s rights. Thus, and only thus, will real meaning and revolutionary significance be lent to the slogan, “ All Power to the Workers’ Councils!” Only through the struggle and in the struggle will the Italian revolutionary party grow, learn how to lead the masses and how to conquer. There are no blueprints on how to make a revolution. We do have, however, the program, strategy and tactics which brought victory to the Russian Revolution. These need to be mastered and correctly applied. What is necessary now is to organize the party and plunge into battle!

The Task Ahead

Let skeptics shrug their shoulders! The Trotskyist fighters will conduct their revolutionary struggle with the conviction that they have every opportunity to build, in the crucible of events, a revolutionary party, fully capable of leading the revolution to victory. The Trotskyist need only display the necessary programmatic intransigence and loyal adherence to Marxist principles, the necessary audacity and energy in action, the necessary flexibility in their agitation and organization.

Trotsky taught us that:

“ The October Revolution also once began with its swaddling clothes. . . The mighty Russian parties of Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks who made up the ‘People’s Front’ with the Cadets [the Russian Sforzas] crumbled into dust in the course of a few months under the blows of a ‘handful of fanatics’ of Bolshevism.”

The Trotskyist in the United States, as well as our British co-thinkers, bear an especially heavy responsibility. They must expose and struggle relentlessly against the counterrevolutionary aims of American and British Big Business. Around the slogans: Hands Off the Italian Revolution! Hands Off the European Revolution! the Trotskyist will conduct an energetic campaign to rouse the working class to fight against all counter-revolutionary intervention.

Despite the degeneration of the Soviet Union under the rule of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy, the Red Army and the Soviet masses have found sufficient resources within the economy nationalized by the October revolution to deal devastating blows to the Nazi military machine and to smash Hitler’s attempt to destroy the Soviet Union and subject this one-sixth of the earth to capitalist exploitation and oppression. The heroic feats of the Red Army soldiers and the Soviet masses in the field of battle have revealed to all who have eyes to see that the Russian Revolution, though stifled and desecrated, still lives. The Soviet masses who have rallied to the defense of the remaining conquests of the October Revolution, have proved that their instinctive understanding of the class nature of the Soviet Union is far superior to that of all the renegades, skeptics and turncoats who deserted the Soviet Union in its hour of mortal peril and gave up the Russian Revolution for lost.

The Trotskyists stand for the unconditional defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist attack. Despite Stalin’s crimes and betrayals, the Trotskyists everywhere urge the masses to work and fight for the victory of the Red Army against the military forces of imperialism, for the preservation of the nationalized property relations of the Soviet Union against all imperialist assaults from without or counterrevolution from within.

Stalin’s Counter-Revolutionary Program

The victories of the Red Army have inspired the masses of Europe and provided a powerful impulse to their revolutionary struggle. The Stalinist bureaucracy, nationalistic and counter-revolutionary through and through, has utilized its enhanced prestige derived from these victories, to seize control of the liberating movements in Europe in order to betray them and sell them out to the capitalists as chattels of Stalinist diplomacy.

In Yugoslavia, the Stalinists, headed by Tito, took the leadership of the revolutionary mass movement under the guise of aiding and organizing it and then proceeded to bend it to their own reactionary purposes. They were able to do this because they are still able to cloak their reactionary designs with the moral authority of the October Revolution. The Yugoslav Partisan movement originated as an indubitable movement of the masses, whose worker-peasant sections aspired not only to drive the Nazi conquerors out of their country, but to abolish the rule of the rapacious and reactionary landlord and capitalist cliques represented by King Peter and his Government-in-Exile. The determination of the masses to drive out the imperialist invaders and to win national freedom was fused with the social struggle against the native exploiters. The Stalinists have betrayed the aspirations of the masses; they have already united with the hated regime of King Peter, set up a class-collaborationist government, and have proclaimed their intention of preserving the capitalist setup, dominated by the same old crew of monarchists, landlords and capitalists. Utilizing the slogan of national liberation, the Stalinists are working to deliver the Yugoslav masses into the hands of their oppressors.

The Stalinist program of betrayal is not, however, proceeding unchallenged. Already in Greece active opposition and resistance has appeared in the ranks of the Greek Partisan movement to the Stalinist leaders who have conspired to perpetrate a betrayal similar to Tito’s and to unite with the Greek Government-in-Exile, representative of the Greek capitalists and landlords. Undoubtedly, similar developments, to one degree or another, are taking place in all the movements of struggle which the Stalinist head in order to behead. In Rumania, the Stalinists are carrying through the program proclaimed by Molotov in April 1944 when the Red Army first entered Rumanian territory. Molotov assured the capitalists that the Stalin bureaucracy will not alter “the existing social structure of Rumania.” Stalin is keeping this promise. The Stalinist military authority is preserving the totalitarian filth of the semi-fascist regime of the Rumanian landlords and capitalists. The Stalinists are pursuing similar reactionary aims in Poland and are pledged to the same policy in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Stalin thus assures the Allies that under his file the Red Army will be used in Europe as a gendarme of capitalist property. The catastrophic defeats which the Red Army has dealt the Nazi military machine, the impending defeat of Nazi Germany and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a first-class military power has dazzled many and provided the Soviet Union with the appearance of unlimited strength. The appearance does not correspond with reality.

Stalin’s foreign policy was based on an attempt to avoid war, to secure for the Soviet Union neutrality in the coming world conflict. For this, Stalin perpetrated his worst betrayals of the international proletariat. In the Utopian quest for “peace” in a world dominated by imperialism, the Kremlin’s agents were assigned the task of organizing pacifist show congresses, pretentious disarmament conferences, “Peoples Front” Leagues against war—all for the sake of currying favor with the “democratic” imperialists. This “peace” program was crowned by the Soviet Union’s joining the “thieves kitchen of imperialists,” the League of Nations. Stalin’s policy thus consisted in selling out the proletarian masses, the only reliable allies of the Soviet Union, for the sake of illusory “Peace Pacts” with the “democratic” imperialists. This course of betrayal was carried through under the slogan “Collective Security Against Aggressors.” The Kremlin’s “Peace” policy collapsed ignominiously at the 1938 Munich Conference. Stalin then frantically turned to Hitler. He granted impermissible concessions to Nazi Germany in the shameful Stalin-Hitler Pact, which provided the signal for the opening of the Second World War. All of Stalin’s treacherous maneuvers and betrayals proved impotent, however, in securing peace for the Soviet Union, that was converted for more than three years into the main battlefield of the second World War. As in all other spheres, Stalin’s foreign policy proved thoroughly bankrupt.

The Soviet Union is emerging from the war a devastated country. Millions of the flower of its manhood are dead, wounded or missing. A great deal of its industry is destroyed, and innumerable cities as well as great sections of the countryside lie in ruins. Far from having increased its independent strength, under Stalin the Soviet Union has been debilitated and is today weaker than ever in relation to the capitalist world.

The Kremlin bureaucracy is fully aware of the fact that with the defeat of the Axis, their ability to maneuver between the imperialist groups becomes very sharply restricted and the Soviet Union will face the concentrated pressure of the victorious Anglo-American imperialist camp. Stalin attempts to secure himself against this new threatening danger by guaranteeing the preservation of the capitalist system in Europe while employing the Soviet military power to establish “friendly” governments under its influence on the periphery of the Soviet Union (Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc.).

At the same time, fearing the independent action of the masses and the approaching Socialist revolution, Stalin has given guarantees to Roosevelt and Churchill—and that is the major significance of the Teheran Conference—that he will join with them in their program of trying to strangle the European revolution, dismembering Europe, subjugating its peoples and propping up subservient regimes.

Soviet Reaction

Paralleling his program of counter-revolution and capitalist rehabilitation in Europe, Stalin has taken further steps inside the Soviet Union toward the destruction of the remaining conquests of the October Revolution and toward arrogating to the Kremlin bureaucracy added powers and new privileges. In the past year the Stalinist bureaucracy has issued new reactionary decrees governing education and other fields; the Bolshevik divorce laws and much of the progressive legislation for women have been abolished. Alongside of this increased regimentation of Soviet life, Stalin is making renewed frantic efforts to build up stable bases of sup port for the parasitic bureaucracy. The past year has witnessed a monstrous extension of the highly privileged officer caste, standing above the population. The bureaucracy is further attempting to strengthen its hold on the most backward sections of the population by encouraging the Holy Synod and Greek Orthodox Hierarchy to extend its influence and by facilitating the campaign of glorification of the church institutions and “holy places.”

Stalin seeks to preserve his rule by reintroducing, encouraging and propping up all that is most reactionary and backward. In place of the liberating internationalist ideas of Bolshevism, Stalin disseminates among the Soviet masses the doctrines of Pan-Slavic chauvinism and war revanche , deifies the old Czarist butchers and oppressors, glorifies a privileged military caste, reintroduces the obscurantism of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Stalin’s program both internal and external is reactionary through and through. It represents a terrible danger for the European revolution, and to the further existence of the Soviet Union itself. This program only plays into the hands of world capitalism and, if successful, would help convert Europe into the vassal of Anglo-American imperialism. If the dastardly conspiracy which Stalin hatched with Roosevelt and Churchill at Teheran to crush the European revolution were to succeed, it would simply open the road to capitalist restoration inside the Soviet Union itself, by internal counterrevolution or military intervention or both. The Anglo-American imperialists cannot—any more than could the Nazis—reconcile themselves to the existence of nationalized property for any extended period in the territory comprising one-sixth of the earth’s surface. As for the “friendly” coalition capitalist governments, which the Kremlin bureaucracy is propping up with the Red Army bayonets, they will prove no more trustworthy than the alliance with Anglo-American imperialism. In the event of future conflict, these spurious “friends” of the Soviet Union, representing the capitalists and landlords of Eastern Europe, will act in accordance with their class interests and needs: they will join with the Anglo-American imperialists in the assault against the Soviet Union. Stalin’s elaborate structure will collapse like a house of cards. The alliance of the Soviet proletariat with the insurgent masses of Europe is thus indispensable for the preservation of the Soviet Union,

The Bolshevik fighters inside the Soviet Union face the paramount task of organizing the revolutionary forces to oust Stalin and his arch-reactionary gang and to restore the Soviet Union on the principles of its founders, Lenin and Trotsky. In the words of the 1940 Manifesto of the Fourth International on The Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution : “ The preparation of the revolutionary overthrow of the Moscow ruling caste is one of the main tasks of the Fourth International.” We call on the Soviet workers to organize the forces for the revolutionary overthrow of the oligarchy in the Kremlin and set up a genuine Soviet democracy as the essential condition for the preservation of the Soviet Union and of Socialist construction.

Character of the Bureaucracy

The Stalinist bureaucracy is not a new class with a historic mission to perform, but simply a parasitic caste, transitory in nature, which has no future. This caste came to power only as a result of an entirely exceptional conjuncture of historic circumstances. The theory of the emergence of a new “bureaucratic class”—the managers—who will interpose themselves between defeated capitalism and the Socialist society has received annihilating refutation with the collapse of Italian Fascism after a rule of twenty years and the imminent collapse of German Nazism after a rule of eleven years. This theory of Bruno R., Burnham etc., not to speak of their Shachtmanite imitators, with their “theory” of the new managerial class “only in one country,” has already been consigned by events themselves to the garbage heap of history.

The Social Democrats and renegades from Marxism who propagate the idea that the Kremlin bureaucracy intended to “Sovietize” Europe under Stalin’s Bonapartist dictatorship misrepresent both the nature of Stalinism and the meaning of Stalinist foreign policy and they slander the European proletariat. The European revolution cannot be harnessed by any bureaucracy. If Stalin with the aid of his henchmen succeeds in betraying and beheading the proletarian revolution, he can do so only for the benefit of the bloodthirsty capitalists and the Allied imperialists. Out of a defeated revolution will arise not a Stalinist dictatorship but the most savage capitalist military dictatorship. This theory of the social Democrats, which can only disorient the proletariat and divert it from its necessary tasks, represents in essence a theoretical “justification” for their own abject surrender to Allied imperialism.

Stalin is betraying the European revolution through his agents from within and has given clear warning that he will if necessary attempt to drown it in blood from without. The decisions of the Teheran Conference as well as the actions of Stalin’s agents in Yugoslavia, Greece, Rumania, Poland, Italy, etc., constitute unmistakable danger signals that Stalin is prepared to repeat his hangman’s work in Spain on a continental scale.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. The advanced workers of Europe must sound the alarm! They have the clear duty of warning the working class against the counterrevolutionary schemes of Stalin and his native henchmen. The working class must be prepared to combat Stalinist treachery and sellouts. The Fourth Internationalists will work unceasingly to destroy the Stalinist influence in the labor movement. This is an indispensable prerequisite for healthy growth and all future successes. In the countries under Red Army occupation, the advanced workers will have to organize workers and peasants councils, factory committees, trade union bodies, etc. in a spirit of deepest distrust of the Stalinist agents. They will warn that Stalinist promises of fundamental reforms are lies. They will urge the masses to organize their independent actions to confiscate the landlords’ estates, to place factories under workers’ control, to arm the masses. In this independent activity of the masses lies the only guarantee for the success of the European revolution and its protection from the Stalinist hangmen.

Through these measures and in no other way, will the European masses be able to approach the Red Army soldiers and organize fraternization with them in order to protect the European revolution. Only in this way, and in no other, will the European proletariat be able to forge bonds of solidarity with the Red Army soldiers and the Soviet masses and help the latter settle accounts with the murderous Stalinist bureaucracy.

And what if Stalin nevertheless succeeds in using Red Army troops to suppress workers revolts? How will we reconcile our position on the defense of the Soviet Union with support of the European revolution? There is no contradiction between the two. The Trotskyist movement has long since given a precise answer to this question. Trotsky wrote in 1939:

“What does ‘unconditional’ defense of the USSR mean? It means that we do not lay any conditions upon the bureaucracy. It means that independently of the motive and causes of the war we defend the social basis of the USSR if it is menaced by danger on the part of imperialism... And if the Red Army tomorrow invades India and begins to put down a revolutionary movement then shall we in this case support it? ... Is it not simpler to ask: If the Red Army menaces workers’ strikes or peasant protests against the bureaucracy in the USSR shall we support it or not? Foreign policy is the continuation of the internal. We have never premised to support all the actions of the Red Army which is an instrument in the hands of the Bonapartist bureaucracy. We have promised to defend only the USSR as a workers’ state and solely those things within it which belong to a workers’ state. . . In every case the Fourth International will know how to distinguish where and when the Red Army is acting solely as an instrument of the Bonapartist reaction and where it defends the social basis of the USSR.” ( In Defense of Marxism , pp. 29-30.)

The independent revolutionary action of the European masses, in deadly combat against the Stalinist scoundrels, will assure the victory of the European revolution and the survival and further development of the October Revolution inside the Soviet Union.

Of all the “programs” and “theories” on the Soviet Union and the Kremlin bureaucracy, only the Trotskyist analysis and program have been confirmed by events and have provided the revolutionary vanguard with a correct guide to action. The fair weather “friends” of the Soviet Union, the petty-bourgeois confusionists and cowards turned their backs on the Soviet Union in its hour of mortal peril, thereby going over to the other side of the barricades in the class struggle. Only the Fourth International remained true to the program of revolutionary defense of the Soviet Union.

Our active political slogans of the day are always consistent with our program and are derived from it, but express that phase of the program which has the greatest urgency. Therein is the art of politics; to apply the general program to the specific questions of the day.

Throughout the period when the Nazi military machine threatened the destruction of the Soviet Union, we pushed to the fore the slogan: Unconditional Defense of the Soviet Union Against Imperialist Attack . Today the fight for the defense of the Soviet Union against the military forces of Nazi Germany has essentially been won. Hitler’s “New Order in Europe” has already collapsed. The present reality is the beginning of the European revolution, the military occupation of the continent by the Anglo-American and Red Army troops, and the conspiracy of the imperialists and the Kremlin bureaucracy to strangle the revolution. We therefore push to the fore and emphasize today that section of our program embodied in the slogan: Defense of the European Revolution Against All Its Enemies . The defense of the European revolution coincides with the genuine revolutionary defense of the USSR

The Soviet Union is today more than ever confronted with the sharp alternative: Forward to Socialism or Backward to Capitalism . The present transition period cannot long endure. We, mindful of the counter-revolutionary role of the Kremlin bureaucracy both inside and outside of the Soviet Union, remain ever vigilant to all developments in the Soviet Union. Our policy of unconditional defense of the Soviet Union against imperialist attack retains all its validity, however, while the nationalized property relations remain. The struggle for the preservation of the first workers’ state remains an essential task of the world proletariat. We fulfill this task by working to develop and heighten the European revolution and to secure its victory .

Revolutionary Perspectives

European capitalism has been in a state of sharp decline since the first World War. Today, after five years of slaughter, Europe is in the throes of disaster.

Hitler, as the representative of resources-starved and colonies-hungry German imperialism, attempted to unite all of European industry and agriculture around the highly industrialized economy of Germany. Despite German economic and military hegemony in Europe and the tremendous initial victories, which established Nazi Germany as the temporary master of the continent, Hitler could only bring havoc to the occupied countries. Nazi imperialism could not unite Europe and stimulate economic development. It only enslaved the European masses, further wasted the resources of European economy and converted the unhappy continent into a prison-house of tortured peoples.

Today, the Allies, under the hegemony of the Wall Street plutocracy, enter Europe as the new imperialist overlords. For their part, they aim not to unify Europe, but to keep it Balkanized. The Allied imperialists do not desire the revival of European economy to a competitive level. On the contrary, the program of the Allies calls for the dismemberment of the continent to render impossible the revival of an economically strong Europe. Their program of dismemberment, despoliation and political oppression can only deepen Europe’s ruination. Allied occupation, as already demonstrated in Italy, spells not the mitigation of Europe’s catastrophic crisis, but its aggravation.

This cold-blooded program of the Anglo-American imperialists is supplemented by Stalin’s program of chauvinism, oppression and brutality. Stalin proposes to plunder Germany and her war-partners by the imposition of war reparations and slave labor. Stalin has joined with the imperialists in their efforts to plunge Europe into permanent ruin.

The program of the economic and political unification of Europe, under the aegis of the Socialist United States of Europe is today the only alternative to a descent into barbarism. Working class internationalism is thus no academic issue in Europe today, but an imperative necessity. By their combined efforts the European masses will drive out the foreign conquerors and succeed in tearing power from the hands of the capitalist exploiters. Economic and political necessity pushes the masses of Europe toward the acceptance of the Socialist United States of Europe as the only program that can save Europe.

The Italian proletariat was the first to take the revolutionary road. One year after the downfall of Mussolini and the destruction of the fascist apparatus, Nazi Germany finds itself in the throes of a similar mortal crisis. A group of Junker generals, fearing the collapse of German capitalism, organized a coup d’etat to remove the Nazi leaders and make peace with the Allies. The fact that this initial conspiracy failed does not detract from its deep symptomatic significance.

That section of the German ruling class which seeks to overthrow Hitler, aims solely to preserve German capitalism by setting up a Badoglio-type dictatorship in order to forestall the maturing uprising of the German masses. The fact that the Junker and capitalist circles have initiated and carried through this desperate conspiracy, in the midst of Germany’s colossal military defeats, is an unmistakable indication that the pressure of the masses is reaching the bursting point and that the revolutionary explosion is near.

The German revolution is the key to the European revolution. Because German industry is the backbone of European economy and above all because of the dominant position of the German proletariat, by virtue of its numbers, its revolutionary traditions and organizing capacities.

Role of the German Masses

Both the imperialists and the Kremlin bureaucracy are fully aware of the preponderant position of Germany in Europe and the decisive role which the German proletariat is destined to play in the coming revolution. That is why they attempt to saddle the German masses with responsibility for the crimes of Hitler and German imperialism. The formula of “unconditional surrender” is directed first and foremost against the anticipated workers’ revolution.

The German masses, who have been tortured by Nazism for eleven years, are not moving to overthrow Hitler in order to accept the rule of foreign dictators. In 1918, over twenty-five years ago, the German toilers first proceeded to take their destinies into their own hands and set up Workers’ Councils. The Social Democratic traitors aborted the revolution and cheated the workers out of their victory. This time the workers will secure their victory and carry though the revolution to the very end.

The Anglo-American imperialists as well as the Kremlin bureaucracy, fearing the sweep of the proletarian revolution, are preparing in advance to isolate the German workers. They seek to utilize the hatred of the European masses toward Nazism and all its fiendish works as a weapon against the German masses, who were the first victims of Hitlerism. The German workers will break through this dike of hatred by raising the banner of the Socialist United States of Europe. The German working class will find allies in their revolutionary struggle throughout Europe, including the ranks of the occupying troops. The proletariat, not of this or that country, but of the entire continent is in a revolutionary mood. The German masses, as the masses throughout Europe, will frustrate the plans of the counter-revolution, by organizing systematic fraternization with the rank and file of the occupying forces.

The petty bourgeoisie, especially the peasantry, are likewise seeking a way out of the madhouse of capitalism, starvation and war. In the course of the last years they have lost faith and hope in the capitalist system. Fascism, the last bulwark of capitalism, has pauperized and disillusioned one layer of the population after the other. Bereft in its last days of all mass support, fascism could rule only as a naked military-police dictatorship. The leading capitalist circles have discredited themselves in the eyes of the masses by collaborating with Hitler and will disgrace themselves further by collaborating with the Allied invaders.

In the Twenties it was possible for American imperialism, whose economy was still rising and expanding, to stabilize capitalism in Europe on a lower foundation through loans and credits. This stabilization was achieved on the basis of the defeated revolutions and by means of a bourgeois democratic regime in Germany. American capitalism, however, began its absolute decline in 1929 and for ten years thereafter found itself in the throes of a major crisis. Unable to extricate itself, it plunged into the war to secure world domination. Torn by its own contradictions and driven by its necessities, American imperialism today has no program for Europe other than its further dismemberment and degradation, and the propping up of the capitalist system with American bayonets. Here is a measure of the further terrible decay of world capitalism in the last 20 years.

The disintegration of British imperialism and the insuperable contradictions of American imperialism have already led to the sharpening of the class struggle in both England and the United States, especially the former country. This sharpening class conflict will be increasingly reflected inside the armed forces. The American and British Trotskyist movements will conduct a bold propaganda exposing the reactionary aims of Anglo-American imperialism and will work in a spirit of international solidarity to de fend the European revolution.

Bourgeois democracy, which flowered with the rise and expansion of capitalism and with the moderation of class conflicts that furnished a basis for collaboration between the classes in the advanced capitalist countries, is outlived in Europe today. European capitalism, in death agony, is torn by irreconcilable and sanguinary class struggles.

The Anglo-American imperialists understand that democracy is today incompatible with the continued existence of capitalist exploitation. Economic and political conditions forbid the restoration of bourgeois democracy for any extended period, even to the extent that it existed after the last war. Bourgeois democratic governments can appear in Europe only as interim regimes, intended to stave off the conquest of power by the proletariat. When the sweep of the revolution threatens to wipe out capitalist rule, the imperialists and their native accomplices may attempt, as a last resort, to push forward their Social Democratic and Stalinist agents and set up a democratic capitalist regime for the purpose of disarming and strangling the workers’ revolution.

Such regimes, however, can only be very unstable, short-lived and transitional in character. They will constitute a brief episode in the unfolding of the revolutionary struggle. Inevitably, they will be displaced either by the dictatorship of the proletariat emerging out of triumphant workers’ revolution or the savage dictatorship of the capitalists consequent upon the victory of the counter-revolution.

There will be no lack of opportunities in Europe to lead the masses in victorious struggle. The only question is: Will the advanced workers succeed in building strong revolutionary parties, and will the revolutionary parties display the necessary courage, energy, programmatic firmness and tactical flexibility to unite the masses behind their leadership and successfully lead the fight for the Socialist revolution?

We cannot anticipate how long the revolutionary process will take. That will be decided only in the struggle. The European revolution is not to be viewed as one gigantic apocalyptic event, which with one smashing blow will finish with capitalism. The European revolution will probably be a more or less drawn out process with initial setbacks, retreats and possibly even defeats.

The might of the Anglo-American imperialists and the Kremlin oligarchy, and their joint plans of counter-revolution represent only one side of the European situation. Far more decisive is the other side; the continued disintegration of capitalism, the inexhaustible resources of the European proletariat and the power of the European revolution. There is absolutely no foundation for pessimistic conclusions.

The Trotskyist fighters build on the heritage of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik Party, as well as Leon Trotsky’s struggle for re-creation and rebuilding of the international revolutionary movement. The Trotskyist fighters of all countries are part and parcel of the programmatically grounded and organizationally stable international Trotskyist movement. They have the opportunity of telescoping their revolutionary tasks and building the revolutionary party by bold methods, in the very heat of the coming revolutionary battles.

The Fourth International stands today on the eve of its greatest struggles and triumphs. Europe is on the verge of stupendous revolutionary developments. The reserves of capitalism are melting before our eyes. Out of the agony of the battlefields, out of the devastation, horrors and ruins of the second World War, is being shaped the anger and determination of the peoples which will burst in a revolutionary storm. When that avenging storm breaks, it will sweep away all the tyrants and exploiters. The Trotskyist party of the Socialist revolution, like the Bolsheviks of 1917, will take its place at the head of the people and ride the revolutionary storm to victory. Under the banner of Trotskyism, the people of Europe will wipe out the rule of the capitalists and rebuild the continent on new Socialist foundations.