From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-The Struggle For The Communist League-Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League-June 1850

Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.

Markin comment:

I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

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Markin comment:

This foundation article by Marx or Engels goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.

Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

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

Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League-June 1850

Brothers!

In our last circular, delivered to you by the League’s emissary, we discussed the position of the workers’ party and, in particular, of the League, both at the present moment and in the event of revolution.

The main purpose of this letter is to present a report on the state of the League.

For a while, following the defeats sustained by the revolutionary party last summer, the League’s organization almost completely disintegrated. The most active League members involved in the various movements were dispersed, contacts were broken off and addresses could no longer be used; because of this and because of the danger of letters being opened, correspondence became temporarily impossible. The Central Committee was thus condemned to complete inactivity until around the end of last year.

As the immediate after-effects of our defeats gradually passed, it became clear that the revolutionary party needed a strong secret organization throughout Germany. The need for this organization, which led the Central Committee to decide to send an emissary to Germany and Switzerland, also led to an attempt by the Cologne commune to organize the League in Germany itself.

Around the beginning of the year several more or less well-known refugees from the various movements formed an organization in Switzerland which intended to overthrow the governments at the right moment and to keep men at the ready to take over the leadership of the movement and even the government itself. This association did not possess any particular party character; the motley elements which it comprised made this impossible. The members consisted of people from all groups within the movement, from resolute Communists and even former League members to the most faint-hearted petty-bourgeois democrats and former members of the Palatinate government.

In the eyes of the Baden-Palatinate careerists and lesser ambitious figures who were so numerous in Switzerland at this time, this association presented an ideal opportunity for them to advance themselves.

The instructions which this association sent to its agents — and which the Central Committee has in its possession — give just as little cause for confidence. The lack of a definite party standpoint and the attempt to bring all available opposition elements together in a sham association is only badly disguised by a mass of detailed questions concerning the industrial, agricultural, political and military situations in each locality. Numerically, too, the association was extremely weak; according to the complete list of members which we possess, the whole society in Switzerland consisted, at the height of its strength, of barely thirty members. It is significant that workers are hardly represented at all among the membership. From its very beginning, it was an army of officers and N.C.O.’s without any soldiers. Its members include A. Fries and Greiner from the Palatinate, Korner from Elberfeld, Sigel, etc.

They sent two agents to Germany. The first agent, Bruhn, a member of the League, managed by false pretences to persuade certain League members and communes to join the new association for the time being, as they believed it to be the resurrected League. While reporting on the League to the Swiss Central Committee in Zurich, he simultaneously sent us reports on the Swiss association. He cannot have been content with his role as an informer, for while he was still corresponding with us, he wrote outright slanders to the people in Frankfurt, who had been won over to the Swiss association, and he ordered them not to enter into any contacts whatsoever with London. For this he was immediately expelled from the League. Matters in Frankfurt were settled by an emissary from the League. It may be added that Bruhn’s activities on behalf of the Swiss Central Committee remained fruitless. The second agent, the student Schurz from Bonn, achieved nothing because, as he wrote to Zurich, he found that all the people of any use were already in the hands of the League. He then suddenly left Germany and is now hanging around Brussels and Paris, where he is being watched by the League. The Central Committee does not see this new association as a danger, particularly as a completely reliable member of the League is on the committee, with instructions to observe and report on the actions and plans of these people, in so far as they operate against the League. Furthermore, we have sent an emissary to Switzerland in order to recruit the people who will be of value to the League, with the help of the aforementioned League member, and in order to organize the League in Switzerland in general. This information is based on fully authentic documents.

Another attempt of a similar nature had already been made earlier by Struve, Sigel and others, at the time that they joined forces in Geneva. These people had no compunction about claiming quite flatly that the association they were attempting to found was the League, nor about using the names of League members for precisely this end. Of course, they deceived nobody with this lie. Their attempt was so fruitless in every respect that the few members of this abortive association who stayed in Switzerland eventually had to join the organization previously mentioned. But the more impotent this coterie became, the more it showed off with pretentious titles like the ‘Central Committee of European Democracy’ etc. Struve, together with a few other disappointed great men, has continued these attempts here in London. Manifestoes and appeals to join the ‘Central Bureau of German Refugees’ and the ‘Central Committee of European Democracy’ have been sent to all parts of Germany, but this time, too, without the least success.

The contacts which this coterie claims to have made with French and other non-German revolutionaries do not exist. Their whole activity is limited to a few petty intrigues among the German refugees here in London, which do not affect the League directly and which are harmless and easy to keep under surveillance. All these attempts have either the same purpose as the League, namely the revolutionary organization of the workers’ party, in which case they are undermining the centralization and strength of the party by fragmenting it and are therefore of a decidedly harmful, separatist character, or else they can only serve to misuse the workers’ party for purposes which are foreign or straightforwardly hostile to it. Under certain circumstances the workers’ party can profitably use other parties and groups for its own purposes, but it must not subordinate itself to any other party. Those people who were in government during the last movement, and used their position only to betray the movement and to crush the workers’ party were it tried to operate independently, must be kept at a distance at all costs.

The following is a report on the state of the League:

i. Belgium
The League’s organization among the Belgian workers, as it existed in 1846 and 1847, has naturally come to an end, since the leading members were arrested in 1848 and condemned to death, having their sentences commuted to life imprisonment with hard labour. In general, the League in Belgium has lost strength since the February revolution and since most of the members of the German Workers Association were driven out of Brussels. The police measures which have been introduced have prevented its reorganization. Nevertheless one commune in Brussels has carried on throughout; it is still in existence today and is functioning to the best of its ability.

ii. Germany
In this circular the Central Committee intended to submit a special report on the state of the League in Germany. However, this report can not be made at the present time, as the Prussian police are even now investigating an extensive network of contacts in the revolutionary party. This circular, which will reach Germany safely but which, of course, may here and there fall into the hands of the police while being distributed within Germany, must therefore be written so that its contents do not provide them with weapons which could be used against the League. The Central Committee will therefore confine itself, for the time being, to the following remarks:

In Germany the league has its main centres in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Hanau, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Hamburg, Schwerin, Berlin, Breslau, Liegnitz, Glogau, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Munich, Bamberg, Wurzburg, Stuttgart and Baden.

The following towns have been chosen as central districts: Hamburg for Schleswig-Holstein; Schwerin for Mecklenburg; Breslau for Silesia; Leipzig for Saxony and Berlin; Nuremberg for Bavaria, Cologne for the Rhineland and Westphalia. The communes in Gottingen, Stuttgart and Brussels will remain in direct contact with the Central Committee for the time being, until they have succeeded in widening their influence to the extent necessary to form new central districts.

A decision will not be made on the position of the League in Baden until the report has been received from the emissary sent there and to Switzerland.

Wherever peasant and agricultural workers’ association exist, as in Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg, members of the League have succeeded in exercising a direct influence upon them and, in some cases, in gaining complete control. For the most part, the workers and agricultural workers’ associations in Saxony, Franconia, Hesse and Nassau are also under the leadership of the League. The most influential members of the Workers Brotherhood also belong to the League. The Central Committee wishes to point out to all communes and League members that it is of the utmost importance to win influence in the workers’, sports, peasants’ and agricultural workers’ associations, etc. everywhere. It requests the central districts and the communes corresponding directly with the Central Committee to give a special report in their subsequent letters on what has been achieved in this connection.

The emissary to Germany, who as received a vote of commendation from the Central Committee for his activities, has everywhere recruited only the most reliable people into the League and left the expansion of the League to their greater local knowledge. It will depend upon the local situation whether convinced revolutionaries can be enlisted. Where this is not possible a second class of League members must be created for those people who are reliable and make useful revolutionaries but who do not yet understand the full communist implications of the present movement. This second class, to whom the association must be represented as a merely local or regional affair, must remain under the continuous leadership of actual League members and committees. With the help of these further contacts the League’s influence on the peasants’ and sports associations in particular can be very firmly organized. Detailed arrangements are left to the central districts; the Central Committee hopes to receive their reports on these matters, too, as soon as possible.

One commune has proposed to the Central Committee that a Congress of the League be convened, indeed in German itself. The communes and districts will certainly appreciate that under the present circumstances even regional congresses of the central districts are not everywhere advisable, and that a general Congress of the League at this moment is a sheer impossibility. However, the Central Committee will convene a Congress of the Communist League in a suitable place just as soon as circumstances allow. Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia recently received a visit from an emissary of the Cologne central district. The report on the result of this trip has not yet reached Cologne. We request all central districts to send similar emissaries round their regions and to report on their success as soon as possible. Finally we should like to report that in Schleswig-Holstein, contacts have been established with the army: we are still awaiting the more detailed report on the influence which the League can hope to gain here.

iii. Switzerland
The report of the emissary is still being awaited. it will therefore not be possible to provide more exact information until the next circular.

iv. France
Contacts with the German workers in Besancon and other places in the Jura will be re-established from Switzerland. In Paris Ewerbeck, the League member who has been up till now at the head of the commune there, has announced his resignation from the League, as he considers his literary activities to be more important. Contact has therefore been interrupted for the present and must be resumed with particular caution, as the Parisians have enlisted a large number of people who are absolutely unfitted for the League and who were formerly even directly opposed to it.

v. England
The London district is the strongest in the whole League. It has earned particular credit by covering single-handedly the League’s expenses for several years — in particular those for the journeys of the League’s emissaries. It has been strengthened recently by the recruitment of new elements and it continues to lead the German Workers Educational Association here, as well as the more resolute section of the German refugees in England.

The Central Committee is in touch with the decisively revolutionary parties of the French, English and Hungarians by way of members delegated for this purpose.

Of all the parties involved in the French revolution it is in particular the genuine proletarian party headed by Blanqui which has joined us. The delegates of the Blanquist secret society are in regular and official contact with the delegates of the League, to whom they have entrusted important preparatory work for the next revolution.

The leaders of the revolutionary wing of the Chartists are also in regular and close contact with the delegates of the Central Committee. Their journals are being made available to us. The break between this revolutionary, independent workers’ party and the faction headed by O'Connor, which tends more towards a policy of reconciliation, has been considerably accelerated by the delegates of the League.

The Central Committee is similarly in contact with the most progressive section of the Hungarian refugees. This party is important because it includes many excellent military experts, who would be at the League’s disposal in the event of revolution.

The Central Committee requests the central districts to distribute this letter among their members as soon as possible and to submit their own reports soon. It urges all League members to the most intense activity, especially now that the situation has become so critical that it cannot be long before another revolution breaks out.

transcribed by gearhart@ccsn.edu

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Peter Paul Markin’s Stew

Jesus, Peter Paul Markin was in a fine stew. I had, over the part forty plus years that I have known him since we first met on a Russian Hill park in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, 1967, seen him in a dither on many occasions, most not worthy of discussion , or mention, but this was different. This was one of those furies that might not past, especially since it involved his very essence as he called it. A few weeks back on one lonely night he called me up and said he wanted to talk, talk seriously, which tipped me off that I was in for an earful. Later that night at the Surfside Bar over on Main in Ocean City after a few preliminary drinks he let go. For the next two or so hours he, calmly mostly, ran through his life time of grievances, tics, weird allusions and just plain funk. I tried to take notes as I as is my wont in these infrequent tirades but I make no claim that I got everything right. Here is the gist of his complaint.

First off Peter Paul Markin said he was tired, tired of remembering and writing about remembering. On the top of that list was remembering writing and remembering, fatally remembering, those femme fatales that he was addicted to watching on old time black and white film noir flicks. He spoke of the addiction like it was a curse that befell him and that he, and he alone, needed to clear the memories of those ancient females who did what they had to do, come hell or high water. See, he said, in those days, and maybe now too although frails (women in his old-time corner boy remembrance Billie Bradley working class Adamsville, Ma. projects days term) have their own dough more now, a woman had to look out for herself, especially working women who it didn’t take much to put on cheap street and so they had to take the main chance when they got it. Especially good- looking frills (another Billie-ism, okay) who maybe didn’t finish high school, maybe were faced with serving them off the arm in some cheap jack hash house, maybe charging a dime a dance in some clip joint, or maybe just avoiding the boss’passes while taking dictation in some seventh floor seedy run down office building but who had, well, had looks, and a certain way of carrying herself, but mainly the scent, that scent that told every guy, rich or poor, that here comes trouble and what are you going to do about it.

Naturally when old Pee-Pee (his nickname from those Billie day neighborhoods) got into second gear about femme fatales he (and I) knew that the subject of one Jane Greer would come up. I braced myself although I too could have recited the story he would relate chapter and verse. See I had seen (at his suggestion) Jane Greer in the 1946 classic Old Of The Past although he conveniently forgot that hard fact when he was in the stews. Of course Ms. Greer’s dilemma touched old Pee-Pee’s larcenous heart. Seemed that hard pressed working girl Jane (if you want to cut to the chase here and look the story up at its Wikipedia entry feel free to do so and as well get the character names because I am using their acting names here) was just the slightest bit trigger happy and put a slug in her sugar daddy, one Kirk Douglas. She split but not without taking a fistful of his dough (Pee-Pee loved that part, the “for services rendered” part).

Naturally one sugar daddy, one connected don, did not get, or keep, his sugar by being a patsy, especially not to some twisted gunsel dame. So he hired gumshoe Robert Mitchum (and his partner) to get the damn dough, and bring milady back into the fold . And so the chase was on, well, almost was on because once old Robert got a look at her down in some dusty old Mexican cantina, no, got a whiff of that gardenia , or whatever perfume, even before she came through the door he knew he was hooked. Hooked by a femmejust as bad as a man can be hooked. So they ran away and lived happily ever after. Right?

No way. You forgot about Kirk and his little sense of manhood, and maybe Jane and her wants to. He sent the gumshoe partner off to get this pair and he does finally find them. Except then Jane’s little problem with guns came back into play. Boom, boom dead partner and she skipped town letting Robert play the fall guy, or at least a prime candidate for that distinction. But all comes out well in the end, the noir end. Jane found her way, as a struggling girl must, back to Kirk, Kirk accidently found out where Robert was holing up, they have a powwow and Jane in one last gallant act shot Kirk in order to run away with Robert. But dear Robert had by then learned a lesson or two in life, kind of, and so he crossed up the deal. Jane in one last blaze of glory puts a couple in Robert for double-crossing her. In the end all three are RIP. What a woman Pee-Pee said almost in a sacred whisper before stating that, hell, he had told that story seventeen different ways and enough was enough. Yah, the stews.

Almost enough that is. Before I could get a yah in edgewise he was off on another femme binge this time whimpering about Miss Lana Turner , damn Miss Turner, who played some California (by way of Okie/Arkie dust bowl beginnings) tramp who picked up some gabacho old guy and who was serving them off the arm at his seaside diner when Mister John Garfield went left instead of right at the stop where he was left off by some hobo-saving trucker in The Postman Always Rings Twice. When our boy John saw her coming through the door, all dressed in white and ready, ready for anything, and started licking his chops he was doomed just like probably ten million Lana guys before him. Yes Lana had seen the dark side of life and she wanted her’s, wanted it all. And John bought into her dreams, or maybe just that jasmine scent that kept him awake every night until, well, just until, I told you he was hooked, hooked as bad as a man could be hooked, maybe even worst that Robert Mitchum. Jesus. So when dear Lana suggested that all that stood between them and happiness was old hubby the plan was hatched, hatched to perfection.

Except don’t trust amateurs in the murder racket. This pair screwed up about six- way to Sunday, screwed it up so bad that it was only just when the deal went down that Frank, Frank was left alone to take the rap. Taking the rap and begging for long gone Lana’s smile up in some death row prison cell. The way Pee-Pee told it though was like Lana was some Madonna of the streets, some virginal vestige of all the bad that could happen to a woman and so she needed, more, she was entitled, to grab, and grab hard for whatever small solace she could dig out of this wicked old world. But Pee-Pee yelled, one of his very few eruptions that, he had done that story about eighteen different ways and while Lana, and her ilk, deserved better that is the way that kind of story went. Basta,

So finally he was done with the femme tale stuff, right? No, no way he still had the trifecta to complete, the ankle bracklet story. Well that ankle bracklet doesn’t play much of a part in the story but that is what Pee-Pee always called it when he cornered somebody long enough to tell this tale this Double Indemnity plot line and how poor Barbara Standwyck really did get the short end of the stick when all was said and done. Barbara needed dough, well she just needed dough, don’t ask the reason maybe just some depraved childhood or something. But what she really needed was a guy who could do some heavy lifting, was ready to jump hoops for her, and like it. Enter one Fred MacMurray who once he got a load of the ankle bracklet and looked up he was hooked, need I say it, hooked as bad as a man could be hooked and still breath. See Fred sold insurance, life insurance, with nice little riders for double indemnity in case of some accidental death, like falling off the club car of a slow-moving train fell from the sky. Manna, pure manna. So Fred and Barbara were going to be on easy street after this little caper, no problems. Problem is the insurance company that Fred works for has a tenacious fraud investigator, Edward G. Robinson (more frequently seen working the bang-bang bad guy, guys like mobbed-up Johnny Rico in Key Largo) who almost fouls the plan up except the pair start distrusting each other and save him the trouble by shooting each other up, bang, bang. Yes, Barbara was a queen-sized femme maybe having had a hand in off-handedly knocking off hubby’s first wife to get to the prize and then tripping up poor Fred. But that crime doesn’t pay thing Pee-Pee complained had been done by him about nineteen different ways before. Enough of femmes, enough of driving guys crazy perfumes (or ankle bracelets for that matter), and enough of guys trying figure them out. Including Pee-Pee.

With those several mouthfuls you would have thought that Pee-Pee had exhausted his venomous ways. No, not by a long shot. Once he had gotten film noirqueens out of the way he was just getting up to speed. I will spare the reader a little eyesight though and summarize that he went through just about every frill that had done him wrong since about childhood, some bath soap thing named Rosalind, some perfumed pre-teen named Maria, a couple of college girls who sounded to me like they were just doing it as a lark, more south of the border senorita failed drug deal stuff, and about six others that even I couldn’t keep straight by the time the tirade ended. He even brought in Butterfly Swirl, a Botticelli girl that I had “stolen” from him out in San Francisco back in the ‘60s. Then he finished up, finished up classic Pee-Pee, with this beauty- “What’s a guy to do when that scent gets to a man” What, indeed. Jesus, the stews.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Reflections On A Birth Of Rock And Roll Night. #3

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing a rock national anthem, Rock Around The Clock.

CD Review

The Golden Age Of Rock ‘n’Roll:1953-63, Volume 2, various artists, Ace Records, 1993

Rock and roll was (is) big, sweaty cities, hot time summertime and the living is easy cities, New York-sized outlandish cities, be-bop cities, kids sitting around Washington Square, Central Park, Union Square, name your square or be square, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting impatiently, waiting out of their shoes impatiently for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath, to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter, head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Majestic on that cool off Saturday popcorn afternoon. Stag (stag, meaning no girl not solo but with full corner boy regiment), later, intermission later, seeing she, Public School 63 sweet Madonna and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Zooey (not frozen Irish Madonna thank god but not caring not caring a fig just following that bath soap, could it be perfume smell that has hooked guys since, well. Adam), and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to Zooey, boy) off to Schrafft’s corner lunchroom and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges; play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Zooey (he heard) sweat (and Zooey, cool bathsoap smell Zooey does not sweat even in sweaty New York cities) and do things up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran Mr. Sam’s ragged looking for just the right look, and old Mr. Mack too benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

Rock was (is) small Podunk towns, every boy knows every girl (and maybe desires each too although that would cause a scandal in monogamous protestant-driven podunk), small , sweaty towns and villages, hell, one street main street crossroads down in Texas, pass throughs for Greyhound buses and oil tankers, summertime and the living is easy crossroads, Podunk outlandishly named towns, Boise, Helena, Ponticello, Big Sur (before the invasion), Olde Saco filled with French-Canadian boys calling out the songs in patois French (no Arcadia here), be-bop (okay, half be-bop towns, dusty old towns soon, how soon, to be de-populated by every boy and girl and off to the big sweaty rock and roll cities). Kids sitting around the village green, the fourth of july bandstand, the monument to the civil war, maybe on ocean edge towns down some salty beach, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting just like big sweaty city waiting, for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter (or under old time mahogany inkwell desks for real Podunk towns), head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell out of that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Bijou (imitation big city Majestic, really doubling for Sunday morning pancake socials too), on that cool off Saturday popcorn (popcorn addicted same as in sweaty cities) afternoon. Stag (ditto, cities, maybe corner boys, maybe no), but later, intermission later, seeing she, Olde Saco South Junior High School, for example, (no blank big city Public School X number here) sweet Madonna (same as big city on that) and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Betty (or Jane, Mary, nothing as exotic as city, city Zooey and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to BettyJane Mary, boy) off to Doc’s corner drugstore and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges, play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Betty (he heard) sweat (and Betty, Zooey-like, cool Betty does not sweat even in sweaty summer midday corn-picking fields) and do things, universal do things, private girl things, up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran the Sears catalogue (and Ma) ragged looking for just the right look, and old Doc and his fuddy-duddy drugstore with odd medicines for sick people what-a- drag- to- be-old-and-it- ain’t- never- going- to- come- to- that- for- me benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

Rock was (is)… And thus this compilation.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Reflections On A Birth Of Rock And Roll Night. #2

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing a rock national anthem, Rock Around The Clock.

CD Review

The Golden Age Of Rock ‘n’Roll:1953-63, Volume 8, various artists, Ace Records, 1993

Rock and roll was (is) big, sweaty cities, hot time summertime and the living is easy cities, New York outlandish cities, be-bop cities, kids sitting around Washington Square, Central Park, Union Square, name your square or be square, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting impatiently, waiting out of their shoes impatiently for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath, to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter, head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Majestic on that cool off Saturday popcorn afternoon. Stag (stag, meaning no girl not solo but with full corner boy regiment), later, intermission later, seeing she, Public School 63 sweet Madonna and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Zooey (not frozen Irish Madonna thank god but not caring not caring a fig just following that bath soap, could it be perfume smell that has hooked guys since, well. Adam), and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to Zooey, boy) off to Schrafft’s corner lunchroom and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges; play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Zooey (he heard) sweat (and Zooey, cool bathsoap smell Zooey does not sweat even in sweaty New York cities) and do things up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran Mr. Sam’s ragged looking for just the right look, and old Mr. Mack too benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

Rock was (is) small Podunk towns, every boy knows every girl (and maybe desires each too although that would cause a scandal in monogamous protestant-driven podunk), small , sweaty towns and villages, hell, one street main street crossroads down in Texas, pass throughs for Greyhound buses and oil tankers, summertime and the living is easy crossroads, Podunk outlandishly named towns, Boise, Helena, Ponticello, Big Sur (before the invasion), Olde Saco filled with French-Canadian boys calling out the songs in patois French (no Arcadia here), be-bop (okay, half be-bop towns, dusty old towns soon, how soon, to be de-populated by every boy and girl and off to the big sweaty rock and roll cities). Kids sitting around the village green, the fourth of july bandstand, the monument to the civil war, maybe on ocean edge towns down some salty beach, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting just like big sweaty city waiting, for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter (or under old time mahogany inkwell desks for real Podunk towns), head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell out of that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Bijou (imitation big city Majestic, really doubling for Sunday morning pancake socials too), on that cool off Saturday popcorn (popcorn addicted same as in sweaty cities) afternoon. Stag (ditto, cities, maybe corner boys, maybe no), but later, intermission later, seeing she, Olde Saco South Junior High School, for example, (no blank big city Public School X number here) sweet Madonna (same as big city on that) and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Betty (or Jane, Mary, nothing as exotic as city, city Zooey and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to BettyJane Mary, boy) off to Doc’s corner drugstore and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges, play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Betty (he heard) sweat (and Betty, Zooey-like, cool Betty does not sweat even in sweaty summer midday corn-picking fields) and do things, universal do things, private girl things, up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran the Sears catalogue (and Ma) ragged looking for just the right look, and old Doc and his fuddy-duddy drugstore with odd medicines for sick people what-a- drag- to- be-old-and-it- ain’t- never- going- to- come- to- that- for- me benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

Rock was (is)… And thus this compilation.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Reflections On A Birth Of Rock And Roll Night. #1

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Reflections On A Birth Of Rock And Roll Night.

 

 

 

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing a rock national anthem, Rock Around The Clock.

The Golden Age Of Rock ‘n’Roll:1953-63, Volume 9, various artists, Ace Records, 2001

Rock and roll was (is) big, sweaty cities, hot time summertime and the living is easy cities, New York outlandish cities, be-bop cities, kids sitting around Washington Square, Central Park, Union Square, name your square or be square,  be-bopping away, waiting, waiting impatiently, waiting out of their shoes impatiently for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and  provide some fresh air to breath, to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter, head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Majestic on that cool off Saturday popcorn afternoon. Stag (stag, meaning no girl not solo but with full corner boy regiment), later, intermission later, seeing she, Public School 63 sweet Madonna and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Zooey (not frozen Irish Madonna thank god but not caring not caring a fig just following that bath soap, could it be perfume smell that has hooked guys since, well. Adam), and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to Zooey, boy) off to Schrafft’s corner lunchroom and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges; play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Zooey (he heard) sweat (and Zooey,  cool bathsoap smell Zooey does not sweat even in sweaty New York cities) and do things up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran Mr. Sam’s ragged looking for just the right look, and old Mr. Mack too benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.        

 

Rock was (is) small Podunk towns, every boy knows every girl (and maybe desires each too although that would cause a scandal in monogamous protestant-driven podunk), small , sweaty towns and villages, hell, one street main street crossroads down in Texas, pass throughs for Greyhound buses and oil tankers, summertime and the living is easy crossroads, Podunk outlandishly named towns, Boise, Helena, Ponticello, Big Sur (before the invasion), Olde Saco filled with French-Canadian boys calling out the songs in patois French (no Arcadia here), be-bop (okay, half  be-bop towns, dusty old towns soon, how soon, to be de-populated by every boy and girl and off to the big sweaty rock and roll cities). Kids sitting around the village green, the fourth of july bandstand, the monument to the civil war, maybe on ocean edge towns down some salty beach, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting just like big sweaty city waiting, for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter (or under old time mahogany inkwell desks for real Podunk towns), head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell out of that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Bijou (imitation big city Majestic, really doubling for Sunday morning pancake socials too), on that cool off Saturday popcorn (popcorn addicted same as in sweaty cities) afternoon. Stag (ditto, cities, maybe corner boys, maybe no), but later, intermission later, seeing she, Olde Saco South Junior High School, for example, (no blank big city Public School X number here) sweet Madonna (same as big city on that) and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Betty (or Jane, Mary, nothing as exotic as city, city Zooey and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to BettyJane Mary, boy) off to Doc’s corner drugstore and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges, play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Betty (he heard) sweat (and Betty, Zooey-like, cool Betty does not sweat even in sweaty summer midday corn-picking fields) and do things, universal do things, private girl things, up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran the Sears catalogue (and Ma) ragged looking for just the right look, and old Doc and his fuddy-duddy drugstore with odd medicines for sick people what-a- drag- to- be-old-and- it- ain’t- never- going- to- come- to- that- for- me  benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.        

 

Rock was (is)… And thus this compilation.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Reflections On A Birth Of Rock And Roll Night.#1

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bill Haley and The Comets performing a rock national anthem, Rock Around The Clock.

The Golden Age Of Rock ‘n’Roll:1953-63, Volume 9, various artists, Ace Records, 2001

Rock and roll was (is) big, sweaty cities, hot time summertime and the living is easy cities, New York outlandish cities, be-bop cities, kids sitting around Washington Square, Central Park, Union Square, name your square or be square, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting impatiently, waiting out of their shoes impatiently for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath, to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter, head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Majestic on that cool off Saturday popcorn afternoon. Stag (stag, meaning no girl not solo but with full corner boy regiment), later, intermission later, seeing she, Public School 63 sweet Madonna and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Zooey (not frozen Irish Madonna thank god but not caring not caring a fig just following that bath soap, could it be perfume smell that has hooked guys since, well. Adam), and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to Zooey, boy) off to Schrafft’s corner lunchroom and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges; play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Zooey (he heard) sweat (and Zooey, cool bathsoap smell Zooey does not sweat even in sweaty New York cities) and do things up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran Mr. Sam’s ragged looking for just the right look, and old Mr. Mack too benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

 

Rock was (is) small Podunk towns, every boy knows every girl (and maybe desires each too although that would cause a scandal in monogamous protestant-driven podunk), small , sweaty towns and villages, hell, one street main street crossroads down in Texas, pass throughs for Greyhound buses and oil tankers, summertime and the living is easy crossroads, Podunk outlandishly named towns, Boise, Helena, Ponticello, Big Sur (before the invasion), Olde Saco filled with French-Canadian boys calling out the songs in patois French (no Arcadia here), be-bop (okay, half be-bop towns, dusty old towns soon, how soon, to be de-populated by every boy and girl and off to the big sweaty rock and roll cities). Kids sitting around the village green, the fourth of july bandstand, the monument to the civil war, maybe on ocean edge towns down some salty beach, be-bopping away, waiting, waiting just like big sweaty city waiting, for the big freeze red scare cold war night to turn warm and provide some fresh air to breath to breath a not parentcoppriestteacherauthority, not air raid shelter (or under old time mahogany inkwell desks for real Podunk towns), head down, ass up breathe. Clapping hands by twos and threes as some bopping horn, or better sax, always sax wails, whales, wales, away with that big beat, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday (the day exactly), some guitar riff out of Les Paul or some jazz Charlie Christian saint, trying to make sense of that off-beat Bill Haley and the Comets Rock Around The Clock beat that framed, hell, beat to hell out of that Asphalt Jungle movie seen down at the Bijou (imitation big city Majestic, really doubling for Sunday morning pancake socials too), on that cool off Saturday popcorn (popcorn addicted same as in sweaty cities) afternoon. Stag (ditto, cities, maybe corner boys, maybe no), but later, intermission later, seeing she, Olde Saco South Junior High School, for example, (no blank big city Public School X number here) sweet Madonna (same as big city on that) and then to Eddie Cochran Sitting in the Balcony, Betty (or Jane, Mary, nothing as exotic as city, city Zooey and off to private upstairs balcony screening. Later, maybe four o’clock later, strolling (got to learn how to get the hang of that damn thing, the stroll, if you want to hang on to BettyJane Mary, boy) off to Doc’s corner drugstore and quarters for jukebox, endless cadges, play this and that six, twelve, infinite times. And our father, Elvis, Elvis, all shakes, shiver, making girls, making Betty (he heard) sweat (and Betty, Zooey-like, cool Betty does not sweat even in sweaty summer midday corn-picking fields) and do things, universal do things, private girl things, up in cloistered rooms (so he heard) when they (boys they in case you didn’t figure that out) ran the Sears catalogue (and Ma) ragged looking for just the right look, and old Doc and his fuddy-duddy drugstore with odd medicines for sick people what-a- drag- to- be-old-and-it- ain’t- never- going- to- come- to- that- for- me benefited selling combs, gels, and six other things, except correctives for two left feet.

Rock was (is)… And thus this compilation.

Bush/Obama and the Bank Bailout

Workers Vanguard No. 1011	26 October 2012

Bush/Obama and the Bank Bailout

During the 2008 election campaign, we called Barack Obama a “Wall Street Democrat” when the bulk of the left was openly or backhandedly pushing his candidacy. During the intervening four years, Obama has amply confirmed our characterization. Nevertheless, right-wing demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck castigate Obama as a “socialist,” and Mitt Romney and other Republican politicians denounce him as “anti-business.” On the other side, some leading Democrats are using pseudo-populist rhetoric in attacking the Republicans for favoring the rich. At the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Joseph Biden lambasted the GOP for opposing “even one dollar—one cent—in new taxes for millionaires.” Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senatorial candidate in Massachusetts and a hero in liberal circles, declaimed: “Republicans say they don’t believe in government. Sure they do. They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends.”

In reality, the Obama administration has been just as subservient to Wall Street bankers as its Republican predecessor. That reality is described in a factually detailed, firsthand account: Neil Barofsky’s Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street (Free Press, 2012). Barofsky is the former Special Inspector General for the bank bailout program, initially called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). His efforts to impose somewhat more stringent conditions on the banks receiving hundreds of billions in government money—greater transparency, limits on executive pay—were continually opposed and obstructed by Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, and his cohorts. With the fervor of the newly enlightened, Barofsky exclaims:

“I had no idea that the U.S. government had been captured by the banks and that those running the bailout program I’d be charged with overseeing would come from the very same institutions that both helped cause the crisis and became the beneficiaries of the generous terms of the bailout.”

As a liberal, Barofsky believes that the U.S. government can and should serve the interests of the American people even at the expense of Wall Street. His assertion that the government “had been captured by the banks” implies that this was a relatively recent development, a notion currently widespread among liberals and reinforced by many reformist “socialists” who have cheered on the populist Occupy movement. However, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto over 150 years ago: “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” In capitalism’s imperialist epoch, which emerged in the late 19th century, the bourgeoisie as a whole is dominated by the lords of finance.

The financial abuses that concern Barofsky are but a small aspect of the system of exploitation, immiseration and oppression that is capitalism. Even if all of the policies advocated by him had been implemented and strictly enforced, they would have had little effect on the worsening conditions of the working class and poor amid the deepest and most prolonged global economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Here one can clearly see the destructive irrationality of the capitalist system. To overthrow that system and with it the political rule of the bourgeoisie, under both the Democrats and Republicans, requires a social revolution carried out by the working class allied with the impoverished black and Latino masses, establishing a workers government. Such a government would expropriate the productive wealth now in the hands of the capitalist class and establish a planned socialist economy, one based on meeting social needs, not maximizing private profit.

The Bipartisan Financial Elite

When the financial crisis hit Wall Street in the fall of 2008, Barofsky was a senior federal prosecutor, specializing in mortgage fraud, at the office of the U.S. Attorney in New York City. He was then offered the job of “SIGTARP,” special inspector general of the newly established TARP, by the outgoing Bush administration. Barofsky was surprised that as a known Obama supporter he was selected by this right-wing Republican administration for a supposedly important financial post.

In its own way, Barofsky’s appointment illustrates how the two capitalist parties, despite their sometimes heated rhetorical exchanges, collaborate when the vital interests of the capitalist ruling class are at stake. Bush’s treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs (the country’s premier investment bank), needed support for the bailout from the then Democratic majority of the House of Representatives and Senate. He was willing to pay a small political price by making one of their own the program’s “watchdog.” As it happened, this particular “watchdog” was rendered toothless by the subsequent Obama administration.

The top government financial officials, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, are mainly drawn from the same small pool of the Wall Street elite. A good example was Barofsky’s immediate boss, Herb Allison, head of TARP under Obama. A former CEO of Merrill Lynch, he was brought to Washington by Paulson during the financial crisis in late 2008 and made head of Fannie Mae. A giant government-sponsored corporation involved in mortgage finance, Fannie Mae was effectively nationalized to prevent it from going bankrupt. When the Obama team took over, they retained Allison, shifting him to another component of the government’s bailout of finance capital.

In his own naive way, Barofsky reveals the cynical manipulation of public opinion by the Democrats as well as Republicans. After Obama was elected but before he took office in January 2009, his main economic point man, Lawrence Summers, urged Congress to release the second $350 billion cache of the TARP funds. In doing so he said that the new administration would impose tougher conditions on the recipient banks. Barofsky recounts a conversation at the time with Neel Kashkari (also a Goldman alumnus), who was head of TARP in the lame-duck Bush administration:

“Kashkari dismissed the point, saying ‘Those new conditions are purely political. And I strongly suspect, even if they’re adopted, the new administration may not want you looking too closely at them.’ I was somewhat surprised that Kashkari was essentially accusing his incoming bosses of making false promises to Congress just to get their hands on the second cache of TARP funds. But he was ultimately correct; those ‘commitments’ never saw the light of day.”

Barofsky implicitly assumes that unlike the cynical Republican financial operative Kashkari many members of Congress, presumably mainly Democrats, were taken in by Summers’ “false promises.” They really weren’t that gullible. The main thing driving Obama’s men was to dampen popular opposition to and even outrage over the bailout of the bankers amid increasing immiseration for working people.

Barofsky looked forward to the new administration only to be bitterly disappointed by the replacement of the Republican Paulson by Democrat Timothy Geithner: “Whereas Paulson appeared to view SIGTARP as a potential ally that could help protect TARP and enhance its credibility, Geithner was utterly dismissive.” Geithner is another example of the bipartisan character of the financial elite. A career government functionary, Geithner started out at a think tank established by Henry Kissinger, a major Republican power broker. He then became a protégé of Summers, who served as an economic consigliere in the Clinton administration in the 1990s. Under Bush II, Geithner was president of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve (U.S. central bank). Along with Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, he initiated and organized the massive bank bailout.

An early instance of Barofsky’s disillusionment with Geithner’s Treasury Department concerned executive pay for the bailed-out firms. An especially egregious case was that of AIG (American International Group). A global insurance giant, AIG was a major provider of so-called credit default swaps (CDSs), a kind of insurance against the default of various types of bonds. When the financial crisis hit, AIG could not pay off the hundreds of billions it contractually owed to Goldman, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and other banks that had purchased its CDSs. The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve duly “rescued” the fallen insurance giant to the tune of $170 billion, money that went to pay off the holders of its CDSs.

In March 2009, Treasury officials approved $168 million in annual “retention bonuses” for executives in AIG’s Financial Products division, in Barofsky’s words, “the very unit whose reckless bets had brought down the company.” Pointing to the AIG bonus scandal, Barofsky comments:

“The Wall Street fiction that certain financial executives were preternaturally gifted supermen who deserved every penny of their staggering paychecks and bonuses was firmly ingrained in Treasury’s psyche. No matter that the financial crisis had demonstrated just how unremarkable the work of those executives had turned out to be, that belief system endured at Treasury across administrations.”

The Treasury officials’ dogged defense of the “staggering paychecks and bonuses” of Wall Street executives is not, however, motivated by the ideological biases that Barofsky ascribes to them. Rather, the false ideology—“these executives are worth every cent they make”—acts as a rationale for their material self-interest. The top officials of the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and other government financial agencies typically come from and return to the boardrooms and executive suites of the big Wall Street firms. For example, when Neel Kashkari resigned as head of TARP, he moved on to a senior position in PIMCO, the world’s largest investment fund specializing in corporate and government bonds.

The Bank Bailout and Other Financial Scams

The official justification for the bailout was that it would enable and encourage banks to start lending again, especially to businesses, and thereby pull the economy out of the sharply deepening downturn. At the time, we predicted that was not going to happen. Right after Obama was inaugurated we wrote:

“Bank executives are fearful that additional loans will become additional losses. Through the massive sell-off of financial stocks...capitalist investors are forcing bank executives to rebuild their capital base however they can, including by reducing their outstanding loan volume. So any government bailout money is going to be hoarded, used to pay down the bank’s own debt or to take over weaker, failing competitors.”

— “Obama: CEO of Bankrupt American Capitalism,” WV No. 930 (13 February 2009)

Barofsky, who closely monitored how banks were using the bailout money, substantiates this prediction:

“Banks were beginning to talk to the press, and they were saying that they were using their taxpayer-supplied funds for just about everything other than increased lending that had been Treasury’s justification for CPP [Capital Purchase Program]. Buying securities, great; buying other banks, no problem; saving it for a rainy day, sure; but lending? It wasn’t happening.”

One of the few financial programs instituted by the Obama administration that was supposed to directly help working people hurt by the economic downturn was HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program). Announcing the program immediately after taking office, Obama claimed that it would enable up to four million homeowners to modify their mortgages to avoid foreclosure. To begin with, excluded from this program were people who were faced with losing their homes because they had lost their jobs and couldn’t find another one. To qualify for HAMP required a certain level of income from current employment.

Barofsky explains how this program mainly benefited the banks and their underlings, an especially sleazy type of financial operator called mortgage servicers. The latter collected the mortgage payments and, after taking their cut, transferred the money to the banks. Under HAMP there were two levels of mortgage modification (reduction): trial and permanent. A trial modification was much more lucrative for the banks and servicers than a permanent one. Under a trial modification all mortgage payments, even if made on time, were legally considered “late” because the amount was less than the originally scheduled amount. Participants were therefore charged a late fee that was waived only if the trial status was made permanent.

Servicers naturally used every means available to them, including outright fraud, to prevent trial modifications from becoming permanent. Many families were subjected to a lengthy trial period only to be denied permanent status. The banks then demanded they pay a huge “deficiency” bill—the accumulated difference between the reduced and original mortgage amount—plus late charges. Many families lost their homes because they participated in HAMP! Barofsky writes: “Borrowers who might otherwise never have missed a payment found themselves hit with whopping bills that they couldn’t pay and now faced foreclosure. It was a disaster.”

The HAMP scam demonstrated on a small scale the different ways by which the Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of Wall Street. The Republicans openly express hostility to and contempt for the working class, poor and oppressed minorities. Witness Romney’s recent rant against almost half the U.S. population because they “believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.” The Democrats claim to stand for the interests of working people, sometimes even at the expense of financial capitalists. But that claim is fraudulent.

In opposition to both parties of capital, we stand for a revolutionary workers party, part of a Leninist-Trotskyist international dedicated to fighting for socialist revolution to overthrow the capitalist order worldwide. This will lay the basis for a rationally planned international economy. Only then will productive forces be developed and utilized such that poverty, scarcity and want are eliminated, creating the conditions for an egalitarian and harmonious society. 

SYC Protests NATO at CCNY

Workers Vanguard No. 1011	26 October 2012

SYC Protests NATO at CCNY

(Young Spartacus pages)

On September 27, City College of New York (CCNY) president Lisa Coico and her administration rolled out the red carpet for war criminal Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The New York Spartacus Youth Club protested outside Shepard Hall where Rasmussen, who presided over the 2011 NATO war on Libya, gave his talk “Why NATO Matters for You.” The slogans for the SYC speakout were: Protest Anders Rasmussen at CCNY—Secretary General of Blood-Soaked NATO War Alliance! U.S./NATO Forces Out of Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa! Imperialist Hands Off Syria! Down With Imperialist Sanctions Against Iran!

An SYC speaker addressed the protest: “The U.S.-dominated NATO alliance was forged after World War II—after the Soviet Red Army’s victory over Hitler’s Third Reich—as part of the imperialists’ drive to ‘roll back communism’.” She emphasized that in the post-Soviet world, NATO has served as an all-purpose tool for the imperialist subjugation of dependent capitalist countries, from Serbia in 1999 to Afghanistan and Libya today. Another SYC speaker called for all cops and military recruiters off campus and for abolishing the university administration.

A leading activist for Freedom Road Socialist Organization conspicuously stood apart from our protest and refused to join it. A supporter of the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP) did join and take up some of our chants against imperialism. But the fact is, the LRP was in the same camp as NATO against the Soviet Union when it counted. By contrast, we communists gave unconditional military defense to the Soviet Union and fought for political revolution to oust the corrupt Stalinist bureaucracy. U.S./NATO hands off the world! 

California Prop 32 and Labor’s Ties to the Democrats-No on Prop 32!

Workers Vanguard No. 1011	26 October 2012

California Prop 32 and Labor’s Ties to the Democrats-No on Prop 32!

We print below, excerpted and edited for publication, the remarks of a Spartacist League supporter in the discussion at the L.A. forum on the elections. Proposition 32, cynically dubbed the “Paycheck Protection” act, is an anti-union initiative on the ballot in the November California state election.

The union bureaucracy has been pushing really hard for a no vote on Prop. 32. This proposition would make it illegal for any corporation or labor union to “make a contribution to any candidate” or to give money for a candidate’s use. As well, it would make illegal any payroll deductions for political purposes.

We say: vote no on Prop. 32! Government hands off the unions! We oppose this proposition because we oppose any and all intervention by the capitalist state—which is a machinery of repression defending the tiny class of exploiters against the working class—into the labor movement. The capitalist state has no business telling the unions what they should or should not do with their money. State intervention only works to subordinate the unions to the bosses’ government and to weaken their ability to wage class struggle.

For the misleaders of the unions, Prop. 32 is the devil because it undermines their entire strategy: support to the Democrats as illusory “friends of labor.” As one union paper stated, “If we are unable to support our political friends and fight our political foes, then the hard-core anti-union, anti-working people conspiracy will work to destroy the prevailing (union) wage, our benefits, and our pensions.” Of course, whom they see as their political “friends” are the Democrats and “foes” the Republicans.

The union bureaucracy’s strategy is actually a direct route to the graveyard. In fact, the Democrats today are in the forefront of the attacks against the unions. In California, it’s been [Governor] Jerry Brown and [L.A. mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa who have led the charge against teachers as well as public workers generally. Villaraigosa recently celebrated a success for his agenda: the city council increased the retirement age and decreased pensions for new city workers.

What is necessary is a fight for the complete independence of the unions from the state agencies and political parties of the class enemy. The question of where a union sends its money is a fight that must be waged within the union, as part of a political struggle to oust the labor misleaders and replace them with a revolutionary leadership committed to the fight to build an independent party of the working class. Such a party would not be an electoral vehicle but an instrument for leading a socialist revolution.

Students Must Ally With The Working Class

Workers Vanguard No. 1011	26 October 2012

SYC Presentation at Bard College

Students Must Ally with the Working Class

(Young Spartacus pages)

We print below an edited presentation given by comrade Irene Gardner to students and campus workers at a May 9 Student Labor Dialogue meeting at Bard College in New York State. Although the liberal Occupy movement has dissipated during the 2012 drive to re-elect Obama, the central illusions propagated during these protests are still commonly shared among young activists.

Thanks for inviting us to speak with your group. Since you are interested in supporting workers, we are here to address the question: how to bring about the end of the exploitation of workers, of wage slavery, and bring about the liberation of all humanity? Well, you can’t do it by trying to fundamentally reform the capitalist system, by putting Band-Aids on it, by trying to pressure capitalist parties like the Democrats or by carrying out civil disobedience. The only way to ensure jobs and decent living standards, including free, quality medical care and education for all, is by seizing the wealth from the hands of the capitalist class through proletarian socialist revolution.

In 1848, Marx and Engels indicted the bourgeoisie as “unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society.” If the bourgeoisie of that time was unfit to rule, the imperialist rulers today have long passed their “sell by” date. It is high time that working people, who create the wealth in this society, run this society! We need an all new ruling class—the workers! Labor must rule!

A question that comes up a lot these days is what is the definition of class. A Marxist analysis is that social class is defined by your relationship to the means of production, not from a state of mind, nor how rich or poor you are. For example, a unionized worker in the building trades may make as much or more income than a yuppie supervisor in an office. Nevertheless, the worker still has an economic interest in overthrowing his capitalist exploiter, while the supervisor is an accessory to capitalist production and thus bound to its ongoing material success. The real, fundamental division in capitalist society is between the working class, which sells its labor power to survive, and the capitalist class, which is actually a very small fraction of the “1 percent.” In order to survive, workers have no choice but to sell their labor power as a commodity to the capitalists, who own the banks and the means of production, such as factories and mines.

Consciously or not, labor seeks to resist capitalist exploitation. It seeks to maintain and even raise its standard of living. It comes into constant conflict with the uncontrollable drive of capitalist production, which is the drive for the accumulation of more and more capital, and the production of more and more profit. This is the basis for class struggle: the irreconcilable class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. These class interests are counterposed and cannot be harmonized.

Uniquely, the international working class possesses the social power—its ability to shut off the flow of profit by withholding its labor—and the collective interest to expropriate the bourgeoisie and reorganize society globally on a socialist basis. The intermediate social layers are part of the petty bourgeoisie—a heterogeneous class encompassing professionals, shopkeepers, students and others—who have no direct relationship to the means of production. Lacking social power, the petty bourgeoisie cannot provide an alternative to capitalism and, depending on which way the wind is blowing, will align either with the workers or against them. If the working-class leadership shows that it has the resolve and program to lead society out of its crisis, it can pull much of the petty bourgeoisie behind the workers in struggle.

For International Workers Revolution!

V. I. Lenin, who along with Leon Trotsky led the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, described how modern capitalism in the late 19th century reached its highest stage—imperialism. He described how the means of production came to be monopolized by fewer and bigger conglomerates with ever-growing needs for investment funds and other financing, leading to the dominance of finance capital, centrally the giant banks. As the capitalists in the advanced industrial countries strove for newer markets to exploit, they carried out wars to redivide the world and secure spheres of exploitation in less-developed countries. In their competition for world domination, the imperialist powers engulfed people around the world in the barbarism of World Wars I and II and waged countless bloody wars in colonial and semicolonial countries.

Reformist left groups like the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and Workers World Party raise the demand, “Money for jobs & education, not for war.” These slogans simply build illusions that mass protest can somehow pressure capitalism to stop being imperialist by somehow redirecting the budget. This is a total fallacy. As long as capitalism survives, there will be imperialist wars of depredation like Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way out of the endless cycle of capitalist economic crises and imperialist wars was shown by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, when workers took power in their own hands, expropriating the bourgeoisie and establishing the Soviet workers state.

Today the bourgeoisie uses every opportunity to proclaim that the destruction of the Soviet Union in the early ’90s proved Marxism to be a “failed experiment.” But the collectivized economy in the Soviet Union worked! Despite its isolation in a world dominated by imperialism, the Soviet Union, arising from deep backwardness and the destruction of world war, civil war and imperialist intervention, became an industrial and military powerhouse, even under Stalinist bureaucratic misrule.

When the capitalist world was in the midst of the Great Depression, the Soviet Union actually increased its industrial output. Now, two decades after counterrevolution destroyed the Soviet degenerated workers state, many in Russia long for the days when they were guaranteed a job, education, housing, health care and vacations, regretting that they were taken in by the myth of capitalist “democracy.” What undermined the collectivized economy, and ultimately laid the basis for the destruction of the Soviet Union itself, was the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy, which beginning in 1923-24 robbed the workers of their political power and vainly sought to appease the imperialists by selling out workers struggles in other countries.

As Trotskyists, we continue to defend the existing bureaucratically deformed workers states—China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Laos—against imperialism and capitalist counterrevolution. These are countries where capitalism was overthrown and the economies collectivized. But they are run by nationalist, Stalinist bureaucracies that need to be thrown out by workers political revolution to institute workers democracy under the banner of revolutionary internationalism.

The Myth of “Pure Democracy”

Many of you may be involved with the Occupy movement, which raises calls for classless “democracy” and liberal reform, especially of the financial sector. But what is democracy in a class-divided society? Under capitalism, it is democracy for the ruling class, the owners of the means of production who construct and carry out laws to defend their private property. There are no laws that will establish equality between the capitalists and the working class. We fight against any attacks on democratic rights for the oppressed under capitalism, but it is futile to call for classless “democracy.” Real democracy for the working class, black people, immigrants and the poor can only be accomplished by the proletariat smashing the rule of the bourgeoisie and establishing its own class rule.

The Occupy protests have tapped into the widespread anger against the increasing destitution brought on by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But the populist notion that the struggle is about “reclaiming our democracy” from greedy bankers and corporate magnates is erroneous. This country was founded on the enslavement of black people and the genocide of Native Americans. Its history is riddled with the bodies of working-class fighters killed at the hands of the police or the courts. The banks and corporations didn’t “hijack” the government in the last couple of decades or with the onset of the Wall Street crash. The purpose of this government has always been to defend the property and profits of the ruling class.

The wealth of this country is actually overwhelmingly concentrated in the handful of families—far less than 1 percent of the population—that own the corporations and the banks and whose profits are derived through the exploitation of labor. This capitalist class runs both the Democratic and Republican parties, whose main difference is not what they do but how they do it. The Republicans make no bones about being the party of “big business” in viciously going after the labor movement and minorities. The Democrats lie and do the same thing. The “choice” at election time is simply which capitalist party will oversee the brutal repression of the working class and oppressed at home and prosecute U.S. imperialism’s bloody wars and occupations abroad.

The ubiquitous slogan of the Occupy movement—“We are the 99 percent”—is based on a populist notion of the “people,” which falsely lumps together everyone except for a small, rich elite, the so-called “1 percent.” According to this outlook, workers and the oppressed supposedly share common interests with the managers who fire their employees, cops who gun down black people and religious leaders who preach obedience to authority. This “99 percent” populism dissolves any understanding of the fundamental class line between workers and their capitalist exploiters.

Especially in the beginning of the Occupy protests, there were lots of illusions in the cops, with slogans like “NYPD is a layoff away from joining us.” Cops are not workers. The police are an essential part of the repressive state apparatus that exists (along with the prisons, courts and military) to defend the interests and rule of the capitalist class against workers and the oppressed. They break strikes, terrorize black and Latino youth and carry out vicious police repression of political movements. Contrary to illusions built by the reformist left and others, no amount of civilian review boards, “community control” or federal oversight is going to change that. We call for cops, prison guards and security guards out of the unions!

No Substitute for Labor’s Power

It’s good that many Occupy activists want to solidarize with labor, but for the most part workers are seen as simply another victimized sector of the “99 percent.” Protesters have been led to believe that solidarity with workers means setting up community pickets to shut down port operations (like on the West Coast), or calling for a “General Strike” (like on May Day with the call for no school, no work, no shopping). To be clear, these Occupy protests were not genuine strikes, and they did nothing to advance the workers’ consciousness of their power as a class. In a real general strike, workers actually shut down production and run various aspects of society themselves, thus posing the question of which class shall rule.

Some anarchists, like the Black Orchid anarchist collective in Seattle, openly try to pit Occupy against the unions, saying that Occupy represents a “new movement of the working class.” The unions, which were built in this country through hard class battles, must be defended, and there is no substitute for waging a political fight within the unions to build a new class-struggle leadership. During the Great Depression, when there was a brief upturn in the economy, workers began to engage in hard-fought battles to organize industrial unions. The sit-down strikes, mass pickets and other actions that built the CIO and the mass movement for integrated industrial unions were ignited by the 1934 San Francisco general strike and mass strikes in Toledo and Minneapolis the same year. All of those strikes were led by reds. New Deal social programs such as Social Security were implemented to head off the threat that continuing class battles would challenge capitalist rule. Following World War II, Cold War red purges in the unions drove out socialists and communists, including the Stalinist Communist Party which had channeled workers’ discontent into support for Roosevelt’s Democratic Party.

It will take a leadership committed to the political independence of the working class to pull the struggle forward. At times, the union tops can be pressured by labor’s ranks or by provocations of the bosses into carrying out strikes and other work actions. But within the labor movement, the proletariat is saddled with a pro-capitalist, protectionist union bureaucracy that promotes the lie that the interests of labor and capital are compatible. Instead of mobilizing in struggle, they tie working people and the oppressed to the capitalist system, especially through support to the Democratic Party. The trade-union tops poured a whopping $450 million into the 2008 elections, backing capitalist politicians like Obama as a “friend of labor.” Even though the Obama Democrats have stomped on unions, the trade-union officialdom will do the same thing this time around.

Reformist groups like the ISO argue that “many labor leaders have correctly seen Occupy as a key to a revival of the union movement” [“The Unions Weigh In for Occupy,” socialistworker.org, 10 November 2011]. To the contrary, the labor tops embrace the Occupy movement not to revive workers struggle but to divert workers’ discontent once again into the Democratic Party. This was put clearly in a [seiu.org, 16 November 2011] statement by SEIU president Mary Kay Henry: “We agree, all across SEIU, that we need to stand for a 99 percent agenda and re-elect our president, Barack Obama, and that those two steps are on the same path…so that we can make the 2012 election about the agenda for the 99 percent.”

It is absolutely necessary to forge a workers party to mobilize labor in struggle for its class interests; to fight against all forms of discrimination and for full citizenship rights for immigrants (and we’re not talking about a party like France’s Socialist Party or the British Labour Party, parties that administer the capitalist system). A revolutionary workers party is the critical instrument for leading the battle to sweep away capitalist class rule through proletarian socialist revolution.

Students can play an important role by allying with the working class and helping to build a revolutionary party. Student struggle can also provide a spark for broader social struggles. But there is no such thing as genuine “student power”—during the ’60s and early ’70s there were massive student strikes across this country against the Vietnam War, but in fact the bourgeoisie escalated the war. What ended the Vietnam War was the military defeat of U.S. imperialism by the Vietnamese workers and peasants.

Student power illusions are usually tied to the idea that the universities can become morally pure “ivory tower” communities isolated from the exploitation of bourgeois society if students apply enough pressure. But as university administration union-busting campaigns across the country show, capitalism doesn’t stop at the campus gates—immigrants and all workers are still exploited at institutions of higher education.

Under capitalism, colleges and universities serve an irreplaceable function: training the future administrative, technical and ideological personnel of bourgeois society. For the most part, children of the working class and minorities are excluded from quality higher education. We are for nationalizing private institutions and making them open to all, free of charge, with a state-paid living stipend so that all working-class youth have access to higher education. We also call for abolishing the administration, including the Board of Trustees—colleges and universities should be run by those who work and study there.

To conclude: the crisis of capitalism will not in and of itself catapult the proletariat to power. It is crucial that we build a revolutionary vanguard party that will bring the critical element of consciousness to the working class, to transform it from a class in itself to a class for itself, to do away with this entire system of wage slavery. The Spartacist League and its youth section, the Spartacus Youth Clubs, part of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), are committed to this task. Check us out, and join us in the fight for a socialist future!