Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California by Bruce Neuburger

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New from MR Press! Lettuce Wars Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California by Bruce Neuburger “Does an outstanding, exceptional job of providing the reader with an inside, on-the-ground view of the industrial farm labor experience in California and elsewhere. Bruce Neuburger’s story is compelling and often spell-binding. This is surely one of the most important contributions to the social justice literature exposing farmworker injustice at all levels.” —Dr. Ann López, Executive Director, Center for Farmworker Families; author, The Farmworkers’ Journey “In these stirring pages you will find exquisite descriptions of the work, lovely accounts of the people who do it, and a unique view of farm worker politics, all delivered in straight forward, good humored prose. Most of all, Neuburger reminds us of what it felt like to be young and believe in Revolution.” —Frank Bardacke, author, Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the UFW “In the noble tradition of narratives of protest and witness, this historical work is relevant and timely. It forces us to cast a critical eye on our American democracy, where the rights of countless workers are trampled upon by those with political and economic power.” —Alba Cruz-Hacker, author of No Honey for Wild Beasts “An extraordinary book. On one level, it is a political memoir of a young radical’s decade of immersion in the world of farmworkers—their work, their lives, and their struggles for union representation. On another level, Neuburger offers a history of the successes of the Farm Workers Union and its later degeneration. . . . a fascinating story of a young man successfully adapting to an unfamiliar culture.” —Michael Perelman, professor of economics, California State University, Chico; author, The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism “Adds a new and carefully observed chapter to the farm labor saga in Steinbeck country during the Chavez years. . . . It’s the story of Neuburger’s real life in a notoriously hardscrabble labor market, one that seemed like a vestige a generation ago but now serves as the default model in a new era of global neoliberalism. If you’ve ever felt that we’re all ‘casual labor’ now, this the book for you.” —Peter Richardson, author of A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America In 1971, Bruce Neuburger—young, out of work, and radicalized by the 60s counterculture in Berkeley—took a job as a farmworker on a whim. He could have hardly anticipated that he would spend the next decade laboring up and down the agricultural valleys of California, alongside the anonymous and largely immigrant workforce that feeds the nation. This account of his journey begins at a remarkable moment, after the birth of the United Farm Workers union and the ensuing uptick in worker militancy. As a participant in organizing efforts, strikes, and boycotts, Neuburger saw first-hand the struggles of farmworkers for better wages and working conditions, and the lengths the growers would go to suppress worker unity. Part memoir, part informed commentary on farm labor, the U.S. labor movement, and the political economy of agriculture, Lettuce Wars is a lively account written from the perspective of the fields. Neuburger portrays the people he encountered—immigrant workers, fellow radicals, company bosses, cops and goons—vividly and indelibly, lending a human aspect to the conflict between capital and labor as it played out in the fields of California. Bruce Neuburger is a former farmworker, longtime radical political activist, GI organizer, movement newspaper writer and editor, cab driver, and, for the past twenty-five years, adult school and community college teacher. This is his first book. 415 pages | $22.95 paper order online Read the introduction to Lettuce Wars, "A Cab Ride for a Lawyer," in Monthly Review visit the Lettuce Wars website

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I'm going to attend the Boston rally for Aaron Swartz

We're holding a big rally calling for Justice for Aaron Swartz and accountability for his prosecutors in Boston on Saturday, April 13th -- which is when his trial would've been coming to a close.
More details will follow in coming days.
Just add your name at right to RSVP, and please help spread this far and wide:

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At U/Mass-Boston- DO SOMETHING EASY FOR A FAIRER PARKING SYSTEM!

Dear CSU Colleague,

DO SOMETHING EASY FOR A FAIRER PARKING SYSTEM!

Our coalition negotiating committee has been working to convince management that the current parking system at UMB isn't fair, and that we need a sliding scale for parking fees, reduced shuttle bus costs, and positive incentives to encourage employees and students to use public transportation. But we need your help to make it clear to the UMB administration that we all want them to do the right thing.

As we’ve been arguing for a fairer parking and transportation system, we have just learned about more lot closures coming soon; in particular, Lot A, the South Lot, and the short-term lot will be closing permanently and the Campus Center garage will be closing temporarily, driving even more of us to Bayside, where management wants to charge us $8 a day for the extra inconvenience.

At 10:45 am on Wednesday, March 27, please show your support for a more equitable and accessible parking and transportation system by joining in a brief stand-out in the catwalk outside Healey Library. Let’s make sure management understands that we are all watching these negotiations.

Please make the commitment to being there by RSVPing to this email.

If you want to make sure your point is communicated, come help us make signs! We're gathering in the union office (Quinn 2 at the end of the catwalk) on Tuesday at 4 pm. We'll have all the materials -- you just need to bring your ideas.

Contact Shauna Manning if you have any questions: 617-287-6776 on campus or shauna.manning@umb.edu

Thank you!!!

The InterUnion Parking Coalition

***Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night-With Vince Edwards’ Murder By Contract In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Some guys had all the angels figured, not figured too closely and then have no room for some big thing to come smack and you down, but figured, figured enough. Figured out that sticking with nine to five dullsville might pay the rent, barely, but would leave you feeling about one hundred years old by the time you were thirty. Figured out though that if you changed up your life, took some chances, you had to play the percentages, maybe not carefully but you had to think about them. Figured out that if you were going to break out, jailhouse breakout from that old world you had better do it alone, better stick to the lonely rooms, the one man walks, the sit at the bar and have a couple and look straight at the mirror, take in a show alone once in a while (and watch out for those creeps, guys, guys in raincoats no matter what the weather, who wanted to, wanted to sit next you and do what for god’s sake). Figured out that if you played your card rights, some of them anyway, you would be on easy street by, say thirty-five or forty and not look like one hundred either. Yah, juts stay cool, cool in the 1950s night and things would work out okay, maybe better than okay.

Take our man Vince, Vince Edwards stuck, deeply stuck in nine to five nowhere, just scratching along, but dissatisfied, really unhappy. Not unhappy in love, he didn’t care usually whether he had a girl or not, he was just as happy to pick some dame in a bar or on the street for the night, and they were, seeing that our boy was very good looking, happy to take the ride (although many complained he was a poor lover, or worse, just threw them out after he had been depleted) and let it go at that. He was not homo, nothing like that, if that is what people thought as he made it clear when he talked to guys about women and their wanting habits. He was just not that into them. Nor was he unhappy about the cold war red scare world pulling everybody around. That was too big for him, outside his percentages, and besides other guys had that racket wrapped up. No, what had our boy in a knot was how to make dough fast and get out, go to some island somewhere and just, just exist, that’s it, that’s it exactly.

And being a smart guy, a guy who had graduated from high school and all, Vince figured it out, figured out that the best way, well maybe not the best way since there was some element of risk involved, to bring his dreams home was to hire himself out as a contract killer, a “hit man.” Although he had no experience he felt, felt strongly that he had the ability to do this work impersonally and therefore successfully. No police record, no mob connections, nothing kinky in his past , See he figured that in this wicked old world some guys needed killing, or some guys, some guys with dough, figured some other guys needed killing and he was at their service. And the beauty of it was (he had checked it out of course) that with most gangland killings or jobs that had been done by hit men (carrying that impersonal sense not found in say household killings) you either got away with it or you got blown away. Simple.

Vince, being smart, being street smart had a pretty good run, made good money and guys, guys with big dough and big wants, started calling him for big jobs, jobs that took brains as well as firepower. So he worked his way up the food chain without too much effort. See what he knew was that he had it all over the old-time sluggers, the old mobster hit men from about some ancient Al Capone time, who shot everything in sight to get one guy. Made too much noise, way too much noise. So the dons or capos or just harried businessmen who needed quiet jobs done put out the word. And he knocked off a bunch of those guys who needed to be knocked off and became, well, famous in the select hit man community.

But like all percentage things after a while Vince hit a snag, a situation where he couldn’t make the thing go right. And wouldn’t you know it involved a woman, a woman to be hit for god sakes. A woman in Los Angeles of all places, an irate ex-mistress or something he never did get all the exact details, who was ready to sing, sing loud and some Mister Big wanted no part of that song It should have been a piece of cake but as it turned out as much as Vince didn’t care about women (and maybe, as he got caught in the web of this hit, hated them, and had hated them all along since mother time if you looked to Freud to learn about such things) he couldn’t kill the woman target. Just couldn’t make it go right from the minute he learned the target was a she. And for his reticence he took the tumble, took it hard, and took it very face down in a ditch like some rag doll in the end. Yes, Vince finally cashed his check, finally lost his percentage advantage …

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- With The Dubs Could This Be Magic In Mind- Jenny Dolan Speaks Her Mind, Circa 1962

THE DUBS

"Could This Be Magic"


Could this be magic

My dear

My heart's all aglow

Could this be magic

Loving you so



Could this be magic

My dear

Having your love

My prayers were answered

So far from above



I thought it would be

Just a memory

To linger my heart in pain

But too much pride

I opened up my eyes

And I'm with you dear once again



Could this be magic

My dear

Having your love

If this is magic

Then magic is mine

Could this be magic

Then magic is mine


Jenny Dolan speaks from out of the 1960s night:

I suppose everybody in America knows, knows by heart now, that John O’Connor and I, Jenny Dolan, are an “item.” The poster boy and girl sweethearts of North Adamsville High according to one piece of gossip that I heard, or overheard, Joanne Doyle saying sarcastically in the girls’ lav at school one Monday morning when she was giving her weekend round-up report to all who would listen. What I couldn’t spread around about her and her lover boy, Frankie, but that was old Jenny, old miserable Jennie, before I got my John, and got him good. Of course Joanne only retells what the pizza pie in your eye corner boy king, so-called, Frankie, Frankie Riley if your one of the about three people in the Class of 1964 who doesn’t know him, has already started spreading around. The gist of tale is that he has lost his ace-in-the-hole (really just his bodyguard for when he makes the wrong move, Joanne Doyle not around wrong move, on some real tough guy's girl), Jumping John O’Connor (although I am putting a stop to calling him that name, and fast) to a frill (that’s me, or that’s me when Frankie does his 28 flavors of disrespect to girls thing, except to no-nonsense mistress Joanne, by calling them frills, molls, frails and everything else that he has picked up from watching too many 1930s gangster films, and reading too many Raymond Chandler crime novels). See John and Frankie go back to first grade together over at North Adamsville Elementary and somehow Frankie thought that was enough to keep the “twists” (girls again) at a distance so John could be his full-time“body-guard.”

And if Frankie hasn’t spread the news around about John and me then Peter Paul Markin, clueless Peter Paul when it comes to knowing anything about girls (and girls and guys who get together for more fun, Saturday night fun, than just some silly reading books at the library, or going to a debate about whether Red China should, or shouldn’t be admitted to the United Nations, or stuff like that) will, once Frankie unleashes him to spread it around. Now everybody respects Peter Paul for his knowledge, for his devotion to learning more about stuff, and for sticking up for the, as he calls them, the “fellow down-trodden” of the earth but he has been strictly blind-sided by Frankie ever since he came to North Adamsville. When I was lonely (lonely for my John, if you want to know) I went out with Peter Paul, once, but no thanks. So between Joanne (really Frankie), Frankie (really Joanne) and Peter Paul (really Frankie, and maybe Joanne) you’ve probably got the story all wrong. Like the why behind why John and I did not get together until just now, although we were made for each other and that’s the truth, and has been the truth for a long time.

Let me tell the story, my side, and see if it is anything like you heard from Frankie, or Peter Paul. Although now that I think about it if you got it from Peter Paul then you haven’t finished reading the treatise on the subject of John O’Connor and Jennifer Dolan yet and I can save you some time, and save your eyes too. See back in sixth grade when I was just starting to get a little shape but was still really just a stick I went to Chrissie McNamara’s twelfth birthday party. Now Chrissie and I had been friends for ages so I expected to be at the party but what really got my girl temperature up was that John was going to be there.

Now John was good-looking even then, kind of quiet, a good all-around athlete (a great football player-in-the-making even then, even then in little Pop Warner League), and, I think, shy around girls but I had eyes for him. Big eyes, and not just twelve- year old big eyes, but going way back to first communion at Sacred Heart where we were boy white suit and girl white dress paired together to walk down to the communion rail and I had to calm him down because he was scared of the idea of eating the wafer, the body and blood of Christ. No, I was not every day in every way crushed up on him, but crushed up somewhere deep inside since then. In sixth grade time though when I started getting my shape a little, you know, I couldn’t keep from thinking of him. So at Chrissie’s party I was flying high in expectation. I had my best dress on, had taken a long soapy bath, and worn some of my mother’s perfume (don’t tell her, okay). And I wasn’t disappointed because he asked me to dance, dance close, dance airless close. I almost kissed him then but I waited until the lights went out that signaled the time for some “petting”games to start and then ran over to the sofa and planted the biggest, hardest kiss I could on him. Boy, did I have my signals crossed because he pushed me aside (not hard but definitely aside) and ran out of the house. That’s how he got the name Jumping John O’Connor once Frankie got the story out. He hated the name, and I did too.

After that I didn’t run into him enough to get nervous because at school we were in different classes and, obviously, I wasn’t hanging around shabby, two-bit, greasy pizza parlors wasting my good time and energy listening to Frankie (and his lap dog, Peter Paul) play his lordship and chamberlain. Besides Joanne, Joanne Doyle, Frankie’s plain jane, so-called girlfriend, and I never got along ever since I told her that Frankie was calling me up on the telephone any time they had a “misunderstanding.” She flat-out didn’t believe me but ask Peter Paul, he knows, he knows everything about Frankie Riley and his “love” life.

This year though, sophomore year, John and I have our daily last period study class together and a couple weeks into the class I noticed that he kept looking (for a second anyway) in my direction. More than once. And I started looking in his direction (for a second anyway, and more than once). As we found out later everybody in the class, including the study class monitor, Miss Wilmot, the old dyke, knew we were “making eyes” at each other. Except, of course, maybe Peter Paul who was also in the study hall down front and reading. Still, naturally, that will not stop him from claiming in his treatise that he was the key to introducing John and me.

Believe me I didn’t know what to do at first. I was “gun-shy” from that sixth grade fiasco party so I was afraid to think that he might be interested in me. But, and I admit it, I was miserable, and had been pretty miserable since John’s rebuff that Chrissie’s party night, even though I went out with lots of boys. Then one day I figured out (and talked to Chrissie about it, and she agreed) that John, shy, quiet John wasn’t going to do anything about me unless I started the ball rolling. And here is what I figured out to do (on my own, no Chrissie help). I was going to go into the lion’s den, the holy of holies, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor where Frankie and his boys, including John, hung out a lot and just flop myself in John’s lap and dare him, no double- dare him, to throw me off in a public place. And I was going to do it too, once I got my courage up, or was miserable enough to try anything.

Well, one Friday night, one October Friday night, a few weeks ago I got so miserable at home that I decided to go for broke. I walked up the Downs and entered Salducci’s, fearful, very fearful, but then I saw John sitting on the outside of the booth with the boys (Frankie, Peter Paul, Fingers Kelly, John and a couple of other denizens) and saw my chance. I quickly walked over and flopped myself on John lap. And you know what he said. “I’m sorry” as he gently, very gently, broke my fall with his strong arms. My heart went crazy with fear. I thought that I had once again misinterpreted his looks at me in study class just like at the party and started to get up. But as I started to get up John held me close, held me close like maybe it was going to take the whole football team, both offense and defense, and scrubs and water boys thrown in, to get me off his lap before he finished his red-faced say.

And this is what he said, and said in a way that he had been thinking about it for a while. “I’m sorry, real sorry, that I pushed you away at Chrissie’s birthday party and ran out and never apologized. I just didn’t know what to do then.” And he added, “Will you forgive me?” Frankie and the boys were flabbergasted but John, red-faced and all, maybe more so after saying his piece, held his ground. I wanted to say all kinds of witty, smart things but all I could blurt out was, “yes.” I started to get up but he would not let me up (and truthfully I wasn’t trying very hard anyway) until he asked to walk me home. You know the answer so I will not be coy. As we walked and talked it seemed like an instant until we got to my house. The lights were out but John said he wanted to talk a little, and we did, boy and girl things that you don’t need to know about. And while we were talking he reached out and held my hand. And I got all red-faced, especially when every once in a while he would loosen up his grip and then gently squeeze my hand again like he was afraid to let go. And I was afraid to let him let it go. I will tell you that night, I swear, John could have done anything he wanted with me, anything, but we just held hands, tight hands. Okay, you have the story straight now.

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky - PORTRAITS-POLITCAL AND PERSONAL

PORTRAITS-POLITCAL AND PERSONAL, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1977
BOOK REVIEW
Is this an indispensable work of Leon Trotsky that no militant leftist can afford not to read? No. Is it nevertheless a supreme example of the kind of political and psychological insight that Trotsky was able to call forth concerning the political actors, great and small, of his day in the tradition of his monumental History of the Russian Revolution? Most definitely, yes. This why we can benefit from reading such personal and political sketches today.

The range of articles presented here is impressive from the martyred Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg through various political associates of his revolutionary career- Lenin and his wife Krupskaya, Zinoviev, Kamenev, his own wife Natalia Sedova, his son Leon Sedov through to Stalin. And additionally, various European writers and politicians of his time. The quality of the insights and the purpose for the writing of the sketch is a little uneven as is inevitable when dealing with this many personalities, however, two sketches stick out in this reviewer’s estimation. The two- one a political obituary for a fellow Left Oppositionist, Kote Tsintsadze (hereafter, Kote) and the other, also a political obituary, for a wavering Stalinist functionary, Abel Yenukidze (hereafter, Abel) give personal expression to what the great internal struggle in the Soviet Communist Party (and, by extension, to the Communist International) in the 1920’s and 30’s was all about.

Whatever else one can say about the fight for the Russian October Revolution the most striking aspect is how consciously planned it was both theoretically and in practice. Thus, one has to seriously look to how the cadre of the revolution developed. Trotsky, himself, presents a clear example of such development. But a few leaders do not a revolution make. Otherwise they would occur much more often than they do. What Trotsky and Lenin epitomized was the development of whole layers of like-minded cadre in turn of the 20^th century Eastern Europe. Not at their level but more than adequate to carry out the revolution. Kote, as Trotsky notes in his obituary represents just such a cadre, particularly those who did not emigrate before the October revolution. Kote fought through three revolutions, underground when necessary, above ground when possible. He fought to defend the revolution throughout the civil war. When the revolution showed signs of degeneration he joined the opposition. In short, the consummate revolutionary. Such men are dangerous. Particularly to those who want to rein in the revolutionary struggle. Trotsky posed this question concerning the life and death of Kote-Where are the revolutionaries in the West who could measure up to the tasks of the revolution like Kote? That question says all that needs to be said about the plight of the Western socialist movement. We must do better.

Trotsky wrote reams of material about the effects of Stalinization on the Soviet political system. He spent the last part of his life politically fighting that process. Yet this writer believes that Trotsky never got a full handle on Stalin’s personality. For that matter this writer is still befuddled by that personality. Why? After analyzing all the social forces that contributed to the victory of Stalinism one is still left with the problem of how Stalin, given his personal style, was able to organize his victory. The case of Abel Yenukidze provides a window in that process. If Kote represented the vanguard of the internationalist fighters, the historically-motivated then Abel represented the ex-revolutionary turned bureaucrat- with this caveat. He truly believed Stalin represented the best course for Russian socialism even though he had some sympathies for the Left Opposition. And he paid with his life for that belief in Stalin. One cannot understand the 1930’s culminating in the Great Purges without understanding this. The greatest numbers of victims were Stalinists of an earlier period- the true believers or at least those who went along. All that survived later were those who knew how to survive under any political regime- toadies. Sometimes in history there is no middle ground. This was one of those times. Read this book and draw your own conclusions on this political question.

THE HEROIC DAYS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL- THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, VOLUME I and II

BOOK REVIEW

THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, VOLUME I and II

World War I was a watershed for modern history in many ways. For the purposes of this review the following point is a predicate for understanding the revolutionary socialist response to that war during and immediately after it. The failure of the bulk of the European social democracy organized in the Socialist International - representing the masses of their respective working classes- to not only not oppose their own ruling classes’plunges into war, which would be a minimal practical expectation, but to go over and directly support their own respective ruling classes in that war indicated that sometime had gone very wrong in the European labor movement in the previous period. This failure was most famously demonstrated when the entire parliamentary fraction of the German Social Democratic party voted for the war credits for the Kaiser on August 4, 1914. This action initially left the anti-war elements of international social democracy, including Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht almost totally isolated. As the carnage of that war mounted in endless and senseless slaughter on both sides it became clear that a new political alignment in the labor movement was necessary. The old, basically useless Socialist International (also known as the Second International), which in its time held some promise of bringing in the new socialist order, needed to give way to a new revolutionary International. That eventually occurred in 1919 in the wake of the October 1917 Revolution in Russia with the foundation of the Communist International (also known as the Third International). Horror of horrors, particularly for reformists of all stripes, this meant that the international labor movement, one way or another, had to split into its reformist and revolutionary components.

It was during the war that Trotsky’s and Lenin’s political positions coalesced, although not without some lingering differences, and as a result they drew closer and began the process of several years, only ended by Lenin’s death, of close political collaboration. This is also the period of their close collaboration around the central questions facing the new International: who should (and who should not) be allowed in it; what strategic and tactical positions should be taken; and, what types of organizational forms should be the norm. These volumes contain many of Trotsky’s personal contributions to the debates in the International in the form of reports to its first four Congresses, manifestos, and additional polemics concerning the work of various national sections of the Comintern. Much of the public writing of the early period of the Comintern was Trotsky’s work and therefore it is doubly important to read to get a flavor of what the beleaguered Soviet leadership was thinking at the time.

Of particular interest the reader should note Trotsky speeches and summaries surrounding the Third World Congress. That is a time, 1921, when the signals were clear that the immediate post-war revolutionary upsurge was, at least temporarily and not necessarily everywhere, ebbing and therefore the tasks of the young Communist Parties was to go to the masses which were for the most part still under the influence of the Social Democratic Parties. However, the aim was not to just to go to those masses in a bid to outdo the socialists at their parliamentary game but to win the masses for the struggle for state power, for a workers government. This is the heyday of Lenin’s tactic of the united front, an idea that has been misused more than once, many times willfully, by communist to gain influence.

Another aspect of the Third Congress worth mentioning was the fight over the way to analyze the apparently ultra-left March 1921 actions of the young, inexperienced and poorly led German Communist party. That is, in essence, the question of the unlamented party leader of the time Paul Levi whose ‘plight’ later generations of reformist socialists have latched on in order to chart the point of the definitive degeneration of the Comintern. That action and Levi’s fate, however, are more properly a question which I will address as part of a review of the aborted German Revolution of 1923 in a later review.

I have headlined this review with the title the Heroic Age of the Communist International. Why? One can clearly see a dividing line in the history of the organization as a vehicle for revolution. The activities of the first Four Congresses represented the accumulated wisdom of the experiences of the Russian Revolution and the failure of the other efforts in Europe to pull off a socialist revolution, centrally in Germany from 1918-23. In that period the mistakes, egregious as some of them were, were mistakes due to political immaturity, carelessness, or a misunderstanding of the situation on the ground. But it was, however, still an organization committed to making an international revolution. Later after the death of Lenin, the defeat of the Left Opposition and its international allies in the Soviet Communist Party and the International, and as the process of Stalinization in both the Soviet Union and the Communist International set in this dramatically changed. The Communist International became, for all intents and purposes, merely an adjunct for Soviet foreign policy. In short, it consciously became anti-revolutionary, and as the case of Spain in the 1930’s demonstrated, at times counter-revolutionary. However, that is the wave of the future. Here read what the Communist International was like, warts and all, in its glory days.

Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume biography of the great Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky

THIS YEAR MARKS THE 73rd ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF LEON TROTSKY-ONE OF HISTORY’S GREAT REVOLUTIONARIES. IT IS THEREFORE FITTING TO REVIEW THE THREE VOLUME WORK OF HIS DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHER, THE PROPHET ARMED, THE PROPHET UNARMED, THE OUTCAST.

Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume biography of the great Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky although written over one half century ago remains the standard biography of the man. Although this writer disagrees , as I believe that Trotsky himself would have, about the appropriateness of the title of prophet and its underlying premise that a tragic hero had fallen defeated in a worthy cause, the vast sum of work produced and researched makes up for those basically literary differences. Deutscher, himself, became in the end an adversary of Trotsky’s politics around his differing interpretation of the historic role of Stalinism and the fate of the Fourth International but he makes those differences clear and in general they does not mar the work. I do not believe even with the eventual full opening of all the old Soviet-era files any future biographer will dramatically increase our knowledge about Trotsky and his revolutionary struggles. Moreover, as I have mentioned elsewhere in other reviews while he has not been historically fully vindicated he is in no need of any certificate of revolutionary good conduct.
At the beginning of the 21^stcentury when the validity of socialist political programs as tools for change is in apparent decline or disregarded as utopian it may be hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20^th century he represented only the one of the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of mainly Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20^thcentury. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky noted elsewhere this element was missing, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Deutscher using Trotsky’s own experiences tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions. Here are some highlights militant leftists should think about.

On the face of it Trotsky’s personal profile does not stand out as that of a born revolutionary. Born of a hard working, eventually prosperous Jewish farming family in the Ukraine(of all places) there is something anomalous about his eventual political occupation. Always a vociferous reader, good writer and top student under other circumstances he would have found easy success, as others did, in the bourgeois academy, if not in Russia then in Western Europe. But there is the rub; it was the intolerable and personally repellant political and cultural conditions of Czarist Russia in the late 19^th century that eventually drove Trotsky to the revolutionary movement- first as a ‘ragtag’ populist and then to his life long dedication to orthodox Marxism. As noted above, a glance at the biographies of Eastern European revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Martov, Christian Rakovsky, Bukharin and others shows that Trotsky was hardly alone in his anger at the status quo. And the determination to something about it.

For those who argue, as many did in the New Left in the 1960’s, that the most oppressed are the most revolutionary the lives of the Russian and Eastern European revolutionaries provide a cautionary note. The most oppressed, those most in need of the benefits of socialist revolution, are mainly wrapped up in the sheer struggle for survival and do not enter the political arena until late, if at all. Even a quick glance at the biographies of the secondary leadership of various revolutionary movements, actual revolutionary workers who formed the links to the working class , generally show skilled or semi-skilled workers striving to better themselves rather than the most downtrodden lumpenproletarian elements. The sailors of Kronstadt and the Putilov workers inSaint Petersburgcome to mind. The point is that ‘the wild boys and girls’ of the street do not lead revolutions; they simply do not have the staying power. On this point, militants can also take Trotsky’s biography as a case study of what it takes to stay the course in the difficult struggle to create a new social order. While the Russian revolutionary movement, like the later New Left mentioned above, had more than its share of dropouts, especially after the failure of the 1905 revolution, it is notably how many stayed with the movement under much more difficult circumstances than we ever faced. For better or worst, and I think for the better, that is how revolutions are made.

Once Trotsky made the transition to Marxism he became embroiled in the struggles to create a unity Russian Social Democratic Party, a party of the whole class, or at least a party representing the historic interests of that class. This led him to participate in the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik struggle in 1903 which defined what the party would be, its program, its methods of work and who would qualify for membership. The shorthand for this fight can be stated as the battle between the ‘hards’ (Bolsheviks, who stood for a party of professional revolutionaries) and the ‘softs’ (Mensheviks, who stood for a looser conception of party membership) although those terms do not do full justice to these fights. Strangely, given his later attitudes, Trotsky stood with the ‘softs’, the Mensheviks, in the initial fight in 1903. Although Trotsky almost immediately afterward broke from that faction I do not believe that his position in the 1903 fight contradicted the impulses he exhibited throughout his career-personally ‘libertarian’, for lack of a better word , and politically hard in the clutch.

Even a cursory glance at most of Trotsky’s career indicates that it was not spent in organizational in-fighting, or at least not successfully. Trotsky stands out as the consummate free-lancer. More than one biographer has noted this condition, including his definitive biographer Isaac Deutscher. Let me make a couple of points to take the edge of this characterization though. In that 1903 fight mentioned above Trotsky did fight against Economism (the tendency to only fight over trade union issues and not fight overtly political struggles against the Czarist regime) and he did fight against Bundism (the tendency for one group, in this case the Jewish workers, to set the political agenda for that particular group). Moreover, he most certainly favored a centralized organization. These were the key issues at that time. Furthermore, the controversial organizational question did not preclude the very strong notion that a ‘big tent’ unitary party was necessary. The ‘big tent’ German Social Democratic model held very strong sway among the Russian revolutionaries for a long time, including Lenin’s Bolsheviks. The long and short of it was that Trotsky was not an organization man, per se. He knew how to organize revolutions, armies, Internationals, economies and so on when he needed to but on a day to day basis no. Thus, to compare or contrast him to Lenin and his very different successes is unfair. Both have an honorable place in the revolutionary movement; it is just a different place.

***Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night- With Robert Mitchum And Jane Russell’s Macao In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Sometimes a guy, a guy on the lam, a guy wanted elsewhere for this and that, or just a restless guy, a guy who has seen his share of the world’s woes without even looking for them, has got to do what a guy has to do. Ditto with a gal, ditto on that on the lam, or just restless, gal has got to do what a gal has to do theme. And sometimes, not by accident I am sure, that restless guy longing for some stability meets up with that restless gal, ditto on the stability meet up, meet up in Macao (although that is not the only locale where such perhaps star-crossed meetings could take place, not by a long shot). Macao will do just as well as any other locale when the restless need the background of an open city, an exotic city, a no holds barred city, a place to not be from city, a place that is not wherever your last port of call was. That was Macao back the wild west days when Robert and Jane met up, met up to find some stability and to see if they were indeed star-crossed, or something.

Naturally a story goes with it, or rather stories when you are talking about male and female waifs, about drifters, grifters and midnight sifters (and in Macao that last category was full to the brim with candidates for the jobs). Him, Robert, a big rough, tough guy, a guy who could take a punch and throw one, who you would not mind having in your corner when the bad stuff comes down, no, who you want right behind your back on those occasions, as it will eventually come to in a wide open town, where rough-hewn guys, or guys who think they are rough-hewn guys, life is cheap in the Orient, come a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. A guy with some trouble hanging over him back in the States, probably some woman (or women) trouble, and in any case a guy who was footloose and like a lot of guys who saw heavy service during the war (World War II for those who are asking) had trouble settling down to some nine to five niche waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her, Jane, a knock-out brunette, all woman, all woman enough for any man to handle, even rough-hewn guys, a woman who could handle herself in the clinches, or be handled in those same clinches, depending on her mood, and she too of indeterminate means and where froms. She called herself a singer like a lot of white girls on the loose did in those days, and not just in Asia, a lot of girls trying to avoid the whorehouses and the pawings, trying to hit the high notes like Peggy Lee did when she grooved with Benny Goodman or the sultry Billie Holiday low and sweet did always but never having that just right mix of slavery times and hard times to pull it off. But with enough eye candy appeal to have the customers, the male customers, in any clip joint gasping for air. Yah, she had done a few round-heel things in her time to get by, just like any girl would. But working the whorehouses, the clubs, or working some rich sugar daddy she was her own woman. And she could always sing a little. So they met, met sliding one afternoon into Macao, and what of it.

The what of it was that the town was sewed up, sewed up tight by Vince, Vince Halloran, yah that Halloran, the one who ran everything from numbers, hookers, illegal liquor on up to high- grade opium like Macao was his private plantation. And it was. Everything, everything worth owning anyway was signed, sealed and delivered to Vince. And nobody, nobody alive squawked. There was the rub though the because international police were very interested in Brother Vince, very interested in taking him down a notch. They were on to something until one of their own took a Vince-inspired knife in the back. They then responded like cops everywhere do when one of their own goes down, good or bad, and the cop they had working the case was already in Vince’s right (or was it left) pocket. So they put on the heat. Sent another cop in to bust one Vincent Halloran for good.

But even an edgy, cagy, nervous guy like Vince is not going to crumble over an off-hand murder of a cop, not in Macao anyway. And not when Jane showed up at his door looking for a job (as his mistress, a singer in his Kit Kat Club, or to work in his high-end whorehouse, take your pick, she came to Macao broke) to break his concentration. And not when, cagy and all, clever guy and all, Robert turned up at same door looking, looking for something. And Vince decided two things, first, he was going to have at Jane no matter what, and no matter who he has to step over to get her in his bed full-time, and second, he decided, erroneously not having been back in the States for a long time and seen restless guys like Robert hanging off every street corner, that Robert smelled of cop. Robert had to laugh at that one.

Despite, or maybe because of, the hazards of those two driving schemes in the end guys like Vince try to stretch it too far, try to think just because they own some two-bit city that they own everything and everybody passing through. Jane did not, repeat did not tumble to Vince, not her kind, not rough-hewn enough after she eyed Robert, and not rich enough to keep her holed up like some pet in Macao. She would be the first to tell you, like she told Robert when he tried move in too fast on her, she was good in the clinches either way and she dropped Vince the first way like a piece of dirt. And Robert, reaching back into some old-fashioned memory bank remembered that he had done his military service to rid the world of the Vinces. And while one Vince in the world more or less was not going to change things it might change the balance just a little. And so Vince was served up, served up to those international police, and Vince will have many a starless night to think where his judgment went wrong. Yah, and that Jane, according to Robert, proved pretty good in the clinches… both ways.

In Honor Of The 142^nd Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-On The Barricades- Theresa Dubois’ Journey.

She had heard that they needed help over on Rue Martin, that the barricade work there had gone slowly and that if that barricade was breeched before completion then the whole northern front of Paris was in danger, was in danger from either the gruesome Germans, or worse, the vanquished Theirs government if it ever got its act together and tried retake Paris, retake their Commune, with or without German help. So she, Theresa Dubois, all of sixteen, all of sound working- class background, all of bright-eyed idealism and all of, well, all of fetching, fetching in non-revolutionary times when more than one stout-hearted working class gallant would take dead-aim at that fetching manner of hers. But these were revolutionary times, or Theresa acted on that premise and attempted, foolishly attempted, to hide that beauty beneath shabby boys clothing and unkempt hair. And nobody, no man young or old, at the Rue Moulin barricade tried to do more that out- do each other in showing one Theresa Dubois what a great barricade builder he was.

But revolutionary fervor, revolutionary elan, and revolutionary idealism would all go for naught if that Rue Martin intersection did not hold and so Theresa and her younger sister, Louise, also dressed in boys clothing slipped away to the other desperate location. Along the way, along the fifteen or twenty blocks it would take to reach Rue Martin before dark the sisters talked, mostly sisterly talked, girl talk in low voices about this or that young man who did, or did not, measure up on the barricade work at Rue Moulin but also as they drew nearer about what they expected, what they hoped for once they had secured their Commune. That got them to thinking about the new schools that were being talked about, the new schools where girls, girls like them, would be encouraged to learn, book learn, or trade learn as the case might be, and about the right to vote for women that seemed unbelievable just the previous year, and about having time to just sit along the Seine and daydream. [They also talked about whether the new government, or the doctors assigned to the problem, would be able to find a way so they didn’t have to deal with their “period” a cause of painful troubles for both girls. They weren’t sure that the government would be able to do anything about it. In any case they both agreed that they were too modest to ask anybody to anything about it even if they could.]

Upon reaching the Rue Moulin fortifications they were appalled by the sloppy and incomplete work previously done there. They immediately, with all the fervor of young revolution, went hither and yon to move the several young men who were dallying around the spot to get moving. And something in the manner of the young women (or the age- old sight of two women, young and fetching, in a man’s world) got the men moving.

Now barricades, at least in Paris, at least since the revolution of ’89 of blessed memory were something of an art form, something that in the best cases not only protected what they were intended to protect against unwanted intruders from whatever source but were hospitable as well. And so the sisters, Theresa in the lead, set about showing the young how to make their “new home” a new home. Logs and paving stones out front, varies wires, pickets, and ropes to retard any offensive advance from the opponent and behind overhangings to protect against all weathers. And then the furnishings (the young men had foolishly thrown many chairs helter-skelter on the pilings and were sitting on stumps) to make the place reasonable to while away the sentry duty hours.

When dusk settled in they stopped for the evening and one of the young men made some stew, which they all ate greedily. While sitting around the campfire that night to keep warm, Theresa noticed a young man, Laurent, a young man who had done much work strengthening the barricades once the two sisters took charge, was looking in her direction. And she flushed, was looking back…

In Honor Of The 142^nd Anniversary Of The Paris Commune –Jean-Paul Roget’s Fear

Jean-Paul Roget frankly was exhausted after coming out of the three hour meeting of the sectional committee of the Paris Commune that had just been declared a few days previously and was desperately in need of organization now that the Theirs government had fled to Versailles leaving the city to the “people.” And that idea of organization, damn, the desperate need for organization, first and foremost of the food supplies and military defense of the city against an attack by either forces loyal to Theirs or from the dreaded Prussians who just that moment had most of the capital surrounded and squeezed in was needed right then. What had Jean-Paul exhausted was not the daunting tasks of organization in front of him and his comrades, tough as they were, but that the three hour meeting that had just finished produced not resolve and purpose but only reams and reams of hot air.

Now that that people of Paris were masters of their own house every dingbat orator, lawyer, crackpot radical and not a few dandies saw their opportunity to wax and wane endlessly about the beautiful struggle that had taken place, that a new day was aborning ,and ill-witted material like that. Take Varlin, a Proudhonist who had been, in the old days back in ’48 quite the radical figure, had been seemingly on every barricade and who in the aftermath of the June Days bloodbath been transported (exiled). This day however he felt the need, and felt it for hours, to push the notion of artisan cooperatives at a time when Paris was losing that segment of the population to the every-devouring factories that were in fact more efficient in the production of goods. Moreover dear Varlin was captivated by the notion that now that Theirs had fled (and good riddance) there was no reason to pursue his troops and disband them as agents of potential counter-revolution.

Certainly Varlin had forgotten the harsh memories of’48 but he was not the worst offender against the urgency of the times. The old windbag Capet, jesus, was he still alive thought Jean-Paul when he heard that name announced from the podium, went on and on about the glory days, the glory days of ’89 like life had stopped in that blessed time. In the same vein (maybe vain) as well Dubois, an old time working-class radical, a semi-follower of Marx from over in England, kept harping on the need to take over the banks in order to finance the new affairs of the Commune. Jean-Paul himself merely a tanner, and a good one, laughed when that idea was announced for where would he, or anyone else, get the money for their daily personal and business needs. A couple of other speakers went on and on as well about how great the peoples’ needs were without however coming up with one solid working idea. At least Jean-Paul had suggested setting a maximum on the price of bread that could help the people but that was merely “taken under advisement” And so ended a day, a fruitless day by Jean –Paul’s lights in the life of the Commune…

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers- A Film Adaptation

DVD Review

The Killers, starring Edmond O’Brian, Burt Lancaster, and Ava Gardner, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway, 1946
As I have mentioned before at the start of other reviews in this genre I am an aficionado of film noir, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falconand Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they also have classic femme fatalesto add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh yah, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s) produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, femme fataleinterest and sheer duplicity the film under review, The Killers, is under that former category.

Although the screen adaptation owes little, except the opening passages, to Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name this is primo 1940s crime noir stuff. Here, although Hemingway left plenty of room for other possibilities in his plot line, the question is why did two professional killers, serious, bad-ass killers want to kill the seemingly harmless “Swede”(played by a young, rough-hewn Burt Lancaster). But come on now, wake up, you know as well as I do that it’s about a dame, a frill, a frail, a woman, and not just any woman, but a high roller femme fatale. In this case that would be Kitty Collins (played by sultry, very sultry, husky-voiced, dark-haired Ava Gardner) as just a poor colleen trying to get up from under and a femme fatalethat has the boys, rich or poor, begging for more.

As I have noted recently in a review of the 1945 crime noir, Fallen Angel, femme fatales come in all shapes, sizes and dispositions. But, high or low, all want some dough, and man who has it or knows how to get it. This is no modernist, post-1970s concept but hard 1940s realities. And duplicity, big-time duplicity, is just one of the “feminine wiles” that will help get the dough. Now thoroughly modern Kitty is not all that choosy about the dough's source, any mug will do, but she has some kind of sixth sense that it is not the Swede, at least not in the long haul, and that notion will drive the action for a bit. And if you think about it, of course Kitty is going with the smart guy. And old Swede is nothing but a busted-up old palooka of a prize fighter past his prime and looking, just like every other past his prime guy, for some easy money. No, no way Kitty is going to wind up with him in some shoddy flea-bitten rooming house out in the sticks, just waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Let’s run through the plot a little and it will start to make more sense. You already know that other shoe dropped for Swede. And why he just waited for the fates to rush in on him. What you didn’t know is that to get some easy dough for another run at Ms. Kitty’s affections he, Swede, is involved along with Kitty’s current paramour, “Big Jim”, and a couple of other midnight grifters in a major hold-up of a hat factory (who would have guessed that is where the dough, real dough, was). The heist goes off like clockwork. Where it gets dicey is pay-off time. Kitty and Big Jim are dealing the others out, and dealing them out big time. And they get away with it for a while until an insurance investigator (yah, I know, what would such a guy want to get involved in this thing) trying to figure out why Swede just cast his fate to the wind starts to figure things out. And they lead naturally to the big double-cross. But double-crossing people, even simple midnight grifters, is not good criminal practice and so all hell breaks loose. Watch this film. And stay away from dark-haired Irish beauties with no heart, especially if you are just an average Joe. Okay.

Note: This is not the first Hemingway writing, or an idea for a writing, that has appeared in film totally different from the original idea. More famous, and rightly so, is his sea tale, To Have Or Have Not, that William Faulkner wrote the screenplay and that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall turned into a steamy (1940s steamy, okay) black and white film classic.

PLEASE JOIN THE STAND OUT AGAINST ISRAELI APARTHEID!
When: Friday, March 22 at 5:30 to 7:30 PMWhere: Harvard Square in front of Au Bon Pain
This event is being held to mark the international 2013 Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW).
Boston has so many events scheduled that March is Israeli Apartheid Month –
see the list at http://boston.apartheidweek.org/

PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND SPREAD THE WORD!
Sponsored by the Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights (bcprights.org)

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Anniverary of Iraq War, and on June 1st, attend the rally at Fort Meade

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June 1: Rally for Bradley Manning at Fort Meade By exposing the truth, Bradley Manning helped end a war based on lies. Join us June 1, 2013 to rally in support of Bradley Manning at Fort Meade. A still from the Collateral Murder video which exposed the murder of two Reuters journalists This week, pundits across the political spectrum are searching for meaning in the tenth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. The decade-long campaign of bombings and occupation left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and millions wounded, displaced, or scarred. Justified with lies about biological and chemical weapons that never existed, the senseless war cost U.S. tax-payers more than 3 trillion dollars, and far more in blood and shame. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were wounded or killed, and to this day, $490 billion is owed to veterans. Many credit President Obama with the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, and almost none mention the fact that it was cables provided by Bradley Manning and published by WikiLeaks that made Obama’s attempt to keep troops there past the 2011 deadline impossible. As CNN reported in October of that year, [Iraq and U.S.] negotiations were strained following WikiLeaks’ release of a diplomatic cable that alleged Iraqi civilians, including children, were killed in a 2006 raid by American troops rather than in an airstrike as the U.S. military initially reported. Obama had wanted to keep troops beyond President Bush’s 2011 deadline, but required the condition that all U.S. soldiers be guaranteed legal immunity for their actions. Upon reading the WikiLeaks-released cables, the Iraqi government refused. By revealing the hidden realities of the Iraq War, Pfc. Bradley Manning achieved his noble goal of sparking domestic debate, and he helped begin the end of an aggressive, violent, and counterproductive war. Rally at Fort Meade, June 1. Here are a few of WikiLeaks’ revelations about the U.S war in Iraq: 15,000 more Iraqi civilians had been killed than were reported in any other count U.S. soldiers were formally commanded not to investigate reports of torture committed by the Iraqi Federal Police with whom they cooperated The American occupation of Iraq has failed to stabilize the widespread violence and corruption that has escalated following the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure Embarrassed by the exposure of its failures, the military is seeking to make an example of Bradley Manning, and for this reason we must thank, support, and defend him. The government has chosen to pursue all 22 counts, amounting to a life sentence without parole, against Bradley when his court-martial trial finally begins on June 3. We’re calling on supporters to descend in droves to Ft. Meade, MD, on June 1, 2013. President Obama and Gen. Martin Dempsey have already deemed Bradley guilty, pressuring Judge Denise Lind to follow suit, making it impossible for Bradley to receive a fair trial. The military court has failed to repudiate Bradley's unlawful torture and the violation of his right to a speedy trial. It has significantly hindered the defense's ability to discuss both Bradley’s motive to expose wrongdoing and the fact that no harm has come from WikiLeaks’ publications. So we must support Bradley both inside and outside the courtroom. We must express our outrage at the government’s attempts to send this generation’s Daniel Ellsberg to jail for life. Bradley Manning put his life and liberty on the line to inform his fellow Americans about a disturbing war’s darkest secrets, and on June 1, we must return the favor. Learn more about organizing a van or bus to Ft. Meade — grants are available. If you can’t make it to Fort Meade, organize a solidarity event in your own community. Help us continue to cover 100% of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today.