AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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

Monday, April 01, 2013

Marxists Internet Archive Newsletter JANUARY 1-15, 2013

NEW: ENTIRE MIA ON160 GB PORTABLE HD! GO TO
http://www.marxists.org/admin/hd-external/index.htm

__________________________________________

New Items in: SPANISH, ENGLISH, PORTUGUESE Sections

_______________________________________________

For daily updates on the MIA (and mirrors of the MIA itself) see:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/new [main site]
http://www.marxistsfr.org/ [French mirror]
http://marxists.catbull.com/ [German mirror]
http://marxists.anu.edu.au/admin/new [Australian mirror]
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/admin/new [US, East Coast mirror]
http://marxists.architexturez.net/ [US, Southern/Gulf Coast mirror]
http://marxists.kgprog.com/ [US, West Coast Mirror]
_______________________________________________
We are now taking orders for the MIA Published hard-copy books. These books were
published by Marxists Internet Publications
<http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm> and all proceeds benefit
the MIA, ensuring our continued operation and enhancement.

Regular monthly donations to the Marxists Internet Archive is now
possible! Seehttp://marxists.org/admin/donate/index.htm for details.
Support the MIA!*Get our 2011/2012 DVD*.
See:http://marxists.org/admin/cd/index.htm

We are now taking orders for the NEW 3 disk 2012,
DVD of the Marxists Internet Archive.
Contains MIA contents up through February of 2012!

Regular monthly donations to the Marxists Internet Archive is now
possible! See:
http://marxists.org/admin/donate/index.htm for details.

Support the MIA! Purchase the ENTIRE MIA ON 160 GB PORTABLE HD!
GO TO http://www.marxists.org/admin/hd-external/index.htm

We are now taking orders for the 3 disk 2013,
DVD of the Marxists Internet Archive.

Please click here <http://marxists.org/admin/cd/index.htm> for further
information.

———————————————————————————————————
31 March 2013: The ongoing and rapidly growing Left Opposition Digitization Project (LODP) of the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line has started or continued with a variety of projects germane to Trotskyism in the United States. The LODP is a joint project of the Riazonov Library Project, the Holt Labor Library and the ETOL along with a growing number of volunteers from a variety of organizations and locations:

We have started to digitize a variety of internal publications of the Workers Party/Independent Socialist League. These include internal bulletins and factional newsletters after the creation of the WP in 1940 and up through the demise of this movement in 1959.

Additionally we have started putting up copies of the New Inernational a publication associated with the Workers Party and functioned as it's main theorectical organ. Writers for this journal included Max Shachtman, James Burhnam, James T. Farrell and C.L.R. James, among others. So far the volumes from 1942, 1945 and 1946 are online at the link above. These issues are high resolution PDFs.

The LODP has a long term goal of copying or mirroring the journals of all Trotskyist organizations, those that no longer exist or existing ones. To this end, work has begun with the collaboration of the International Socialist Organization to mirror their archive of Socialist Worker the newspaper of the ISO started in 1977. The first 2 years, 1977 and 1978, is now up and we expect over the next several months to add more and more of these as they become available to the public and ETOL volunteers.

Lastly, work has continued on the indexing and digitization of the next set of internal discussions bulletins of the US Socialist Workers Party. The first set, 1938 through 1945, has been up for a month. The next set, 1946-1959 is now completely indexed awaiting digitization of the documents themselves by the Riazonov Library Project comrades.
[Thanks to Marty Goodman, Einde O’ Callahan, David Walters, the Raizanov Library Project, the Holt Labor Library and the ETOL and MIA volunteers]

30 March 2013: Added to the Portuguese Prestes Archive:

Estudar e Aplicar as Resoluções de Fevereiro do Comitê Nacional para Entrarmos no Bom Caminho da Construção do Partido, 1951.
[Thanks to Fernando Araújo]

29 March 2013: Added to the Portuguese Stalin Archive:

Os Fatores Nacionais na Construção do Partido e do Estado, 1923.
[Thanks to Fernando Araújo]

27 March 2013: Added to the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Writers Index:

Fascism: What Is It?, Frank Ridley 1941
Socialism and Religion, Frank Ridley 1940s
The Basic Reasons for the Degeneration of the October Revolution, Sam Levy 1962
Permanent Revolution Since 1945, Sam Levy 1965
China: Three Thousand Years of History, Fifty Years of Revolution, Robert Louzon
[Thanks to Paul Flewers]

27 March 2013: Added to the Christopher Caudwell Archive:

Chapter Three of Man and Nature: A Study in Bourgeois History
There has been a slight re-organisation of the Caudwell Archive, as some chapters were misplaced,
plus a link to Ralph Dumain's bibliography
[Thanks to Ted Crawford]

27 March 2013: Added to the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line:

27 March 2013: Added to the Portuguese Kalinin Archive:

Discurso no Ato de Entrega de Condecorações aos Jornais Komsomólskaia Pravda e Pionérskaia Pravda, 1945.
[Thanks to Fernando Araújo]

22 March 2013: Added to the new Edward Aveling Archive:

Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: A Comparison, 1897
[Thanks to Eric Egerton]

22 March 2013: Added to the Portuguese Martens Archive:

Quando o Vampiro dos Cárpatos atacou Timisoara from the book A URSS e a Contra-Revolução de Veludo.
[Thanks to Para a História do Socialismo and Fernando Araújo]

21 March 2013: Added to the Victor Serge Archive:

A Subscription in Support of Victor Serge, Par delà la Mêlée, 1917
[Thanks to Mitchell Abidor]

21 March 2013: Added to the Portuguese Marx/Engels Archive:

A Situação Política na Europa, 1857
[Thanks to Edições Avante! and Fernando Araújo]

21 March 2013: Added to the Christopher Caudwell Archive:

Illusion and Reality, 1937
[Thanks to Ted Crawford]

20 March 2013: Added to the Spanish section's Archivo Lin Biao:

Discurso en el mitin celebrado el 31 de agosto en Pekín para recibir a los profesores y estudiantes revolucionarios que vinieron de diversos lugares del país (1966)
Discurso en la concentración de masas realizada en Pekín para celebrar la Gran Revolución Cultural Proletaria (1966)
Discurso en el mitin celebrado el 15 de septiembre en Pekín para recibir a los profesores y estudiantes revolucionarios que vinieron de diversos lugares del país (1966)
[Thanks to Gran Marcha Hacia el Comunismo]

20 March 2013:Added to the Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line are the complete fulling indexed Internal Bulletins of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party scanned into high resolution PDFs. This set of complete bulletins starts in 1938 and goes to 1945. At some point we will continue onwards, doing another set, 1946 through 1959. At the moment we are putting together the International Bulletins published by the SWP durng this same period.
[Thanks to Marty Goodman of the Riazanov Library Project and the Holt Labor Library that provided most of the original bulletins for scanning]

20 March 2013: Added to the French Lev Sedov archive :

Le livre rouge du procès de Moscou [1936]
[Thanks to the French language volunteers]

20 March 2013: Added to the Portuguese Stalin Archive:

De Uma Carta ao Camarada Kaganovitch e a outros Membros do Comitê Central do Partido Comunista (bolchevique) da Ucrânia, 1926.
[Thanks to Fernando Araújo]

19 March 2013:Added to the Portuguese Marx/Engels Archive:

Capítulo II — A Metafísica da Economia Política § I — O Método chapter of Miséria da Filosofia, 1847.
[Thanks to Fernando Araújo]

18 March 2013:Added to the Portuguese Kalinin Archive:

A Fisionomia Moral de Nosso Povo, 1945.
[Thanks to Fernando Araújo]

17 March 2013: We start a Lithuanian-language section, with:

K. Marx & F. Engels, Komunistų partijos manifestas (1848)
V. I. Lenin, Trys marksizmo saltiniai ir trys jo sudedamosios dalys (1913)
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, Lietuvos Tarybų Socialistinės Respublikos Konstitucija (1978)
[Thanks to Juan Fajardo]

17 March 2013: Added to the Portuguese Mao Zedong Archive:

Entrevista com três Correspondentes da Agência Central de Informação e dos Jornais Saotampao e Sinmimpao, 1939
[Thanks to Fernando Araújo]

16 March 2013: Added to the Spanish Archivo Li Xiannian:

Extractos del discurso en el banquete de bienvenida al Primer Ministro Eric Williams de Trinidad y Tobago (1974)
[Thanks to Juan Fajardo]

16 March 2013: We start the Archivo Yao Wenyuan in the Spanish section, with:

Sobre la base social de la camarilla antipartido de Lin Piao (1975)
[Thanks to Juan Fajardo]

16 March 2013: We start an archive in the Spanish section for the works of Jiang Qing, with:

Discurso en mitin de masas revolucionarias de Beijing (1968)
[Thanks to Juan Fajardo]

16 March 2013: Added to the Siraj Sikder Internet Archive:

On some slogans (1971)
Establish independent, democratic, peaceful, non-aligned, progressive People's Democratic Republic of East Bengal! (1971)
Rely upon peasants in National Liberation War! Smash the winter campaign of the Pak military bandits and the anti-people activities of the six mountains' lackey, the Awami League Liberation Force fascist reactionaries! Spread Guerrilla war to broader regions! (1971)
Six Mountains' lackeys disguised as patriots (1971)
Cadres of East Bengal Workers Movement, Be brave! Firmly seize political power! Annihilate national enemies! Build National Liberation Army! Implement program! (1971)
Open letter of East Bengal Workers Movement to Sheikh Mujiv and Awami League (1971)
East Bengal Workers Movement on the "Government of People's Republic of East Bengal" formed in India led by sheikh Mujiv and Taj Uddin (1971)
Draft Constitution of the Proletarian Party of East Bengal (1971)
Class Analysis of East Bengal Society (1972)
[Thanks to Communist Party Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Bangladesh]

_______________________________________________________

ENTIRE MIA ON 160 GB PORTABLE HD! GO TO
http://www.marxists.org/admin/hd-external/index.htm

FLASH DRIVE OF THE ENTIRE MIA AVAILABLE. GO TO
http://www.marxists.org/admin/flash/index.htm
______________________________________________

Published by SocialistAlternative.org

Read online at: www.SocialistAlternative.org/news/article14.php?id=2084

New Edition of "Manifesto of the Fastfood Worker" Out Now!

Mar 30, 2013
Jesse Lessinger

For most people in the U.S., the Occupy movement may be a fading memory, but the tremendous gulf between rich and poor that Occupy brought to the surface only continues to grow. No one knows more about the depths of poverty in the U.S. than the sprawling low-wage work force: serving food, stocking shelves, cleaning buildings, washing dishes, ringing up customers, and all the other basic services which keep this country running.
If minimum wage today had the same buying power as the minimum wage in 1968 it would be $10.55 an hour. Yet one in four workers in the U.S. are paid less than $10 an hour and most have no benefits or job security.¹ The last three decades have seen a steady erosion of medium-income jobs with basic benefits, and the Great Recession that began in 2008 has destroyed millions more of these jobs.
But the fast food industry weathered the economic storm just fine. Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC) and McDonald's are the second and third largest employers in the country after Walmart. In the last four years, they saw profits increase by 45 percent and 130 percent, respectively.² But while their shareholders' banks accounts ballooned, their employees didn't see an extra dime of those profits.
These days, fast food work is not done simply by teenagers who are looking for some extra spending cash, as is commonly believed. The median age of fast food workers is 28 years, and 32 years for women, who make up two-thirds of the fast food industry. And it's more than just flipping burgers. Workers in fast food kitchens have to deal with hazards like hot grease, which often burns them, and they have the scars to prove it. Many depend on food stamps and other government assistance, and with so little weekly take-home pay some are even forced to live in shelters. In fact, McDonald’s is reported to have recruited workers at homeless shelters.
Because of the deepening crisis of the capitalist system and the drive of big business to defend their profits at the expense of the working class, low-wage jobs are becoming a bigger portion of the total economy. The vast majority of sectors expected to see job growth are low-wage, so there's little to no hope of escaping poverty by climbing the ladder. For thousands if not millions of workers, this is the only work they can find. They struggle to make ends meet and it's nearly impossible to raise a family on these low wages especially if you only make the federal minimum. Put simply, they “can't survive on $7.25,” which is the main slogan of the new Fast Food Forward campaign.
Fast Food Workers in New York Fight Back
On November 29, 2012, workers at dozens of fast food restaurants in New York City walked off the job, formed pickets outside, and raised demands for higher wages, better hours, and union rights as part of the Fast Food Forward campaign. It was a truly inspiring moment to see workers who suffer silently in the margins come forward to speak up for themselves.
These heroic workers are taking a stand, and we, as socialists, give them our unconditional support. Fast Food Forward, backed by New York Communities for Change (NYCC), UnitedNY.org, the Black Institute, and SEIU, is the biggest attempt ever to organize fast food workers, and this is only the beginning in New York.
One of their demands is for $15 per hour in pay. This is significant, as many low-wage battles have called for much more modest pay increases. By asking for $15 they're going beyond saying they want a little more. The message is: “we deserve a living wage.” In truth, $15 per hour in New York City is not enough to live on for some, especially those with families, but it’s an enormous step in that direction.
Fast food workers are not the only ones taking bold measures to fight for better conditions. On November 23, 2012, Black Friday, there were actions at upwards of 1,000 Walmarts across the country, with workers demanding no retaliation for speaking up, better hours, and $13 per hour in pay. These actions were not just one-off events, but are part of an on-going campaign of Walmart workers.
Taking On Corporate Giants
Fast food companies were expected to bring in $200 billion in revenue in 2012. Walmart's revenues in 2011 totaled $477 billion with $15.7 billion of that being pure profit. The Walton family alone now owns more wealth than the entire bottom 42 percent of families in the U.S. This obscene wealth is not created by smart business people making smart business decisions; it comes off the backs of their highly exploited workers, who are rewarded for their hard work with poverty wages.
In New York there have also been a number of battles recently to organize low-wage workers, predominantly among immigrants. Six grocery stores have been organized in Brooklyn. There are now four recently unionized car washes as well. They are fighting for higher wages and back pay. Also, in September and October, workers at a Hot & Crusty bakery staged an occupation and 55-day picket to win union recognition. These are examples of the new self-organizing of workers into action, backed by the support of the community. Their employers caved because of their bold action.
But fast food companies and Walmart are much bigger employers and enormously powerful corporations that have and will continue to fight tooth and nail to prevent a union from forming. The fast food walkouts in November received media attention all across the country and even forced McDonald’s to issue a statement saying they were committed to dialogue to be an “even better employer”. Do they really expect us to believe that? But it will take more than just bad publicity.
The Fast Food Forward campaign is a step in the right direction. Rather than organizing a single restaurant or chain, the campaign is aiming to organize the entire industry in New York City at once. If New York were organized it would set a major precedent for organizing fast food workers all around the country.
A dynamic strategy is needed to organize highly coordinated actions on a truly massive scale if we're going to bring these corporations to heel. We'll need strikes and walkouts at hundreds of fast food stores, with visible pickets outside every one, backed up by thousands of Occupy and trade union activists and other supporters. This will require preparation and the workers themselves taking ownership of their struggle by forming their own workplace committees and linking them together to develop a strategy and coordinate action.
The struggle at these massive companies should be linked to a broader struggle to mobilize millions for a living wage and rights for all workers. Imagine if there were rolling walkouts at hundreds of restaurants, shops, groceries, and retail outlets all across the country demanding an across-the-board wage increase and union recognition for all!
Organizing Unions
By oneself, no worker, or even small group of workers, has any chance of taking on the bosses and these powerful corporations. But by uniting together in collective mass action, and by being prepared to walk off the job on a massive scale, workers can hit management where it really hurts: in their pocketbook. The strike as a tactic to pressure the bosses and force them to make concessions remains an essential weapon in the arsenal of workers’ struggles.
In order to make this a reality, workers need to form their own organizations which can collectively discuss strategy and carry out actions to defend their interests and take on the bosses. This is the basic idea of a union, and the history of the union movement has shown that when workers have unions they can win higher wages, benefits, job security, and a voice in the workplace.
There’s no question that the union movement today is saddled with problems. In the private sector, only 7 percent of workers have unions, and unions have been ineffective at defending workers against the decades-long onslaught on wages and rights. But this not a problem inherent to unions; it is a failure of the leadership of these unions. Most unions today are led by over-paid bureaucrats with six-figure salaries, who maintain their cushy careers by cutting rotten deals with bosses. This approach also extends to the political plane, where they weaken unions by supporting political parties following a corporate agenda: the Democrats, and at times Republicans.
The union leaders keep the membership largely demobilized instead of relying on the tremendous potential power of bring out their millions of members for bold action. When they do mobilize their members, it’s often only as an auxiliary to their usual strategy of negotiating with the boss, rather than seeing the power of conscious and mobilized members as the main weapon in the struggle to force the boss to concede to the demands of the members.
At times, the union leaders also redirect the energy of the union members in a vain attempt to make the corporate-funded Democrats into “friends of labor.” Fast food workers, while energetically participating in campaigns to fight for higher wages and linking up with unions, should at the same time be somewhat wary of the union leadership using some of these actions as a launching pad for supporting Democrats in the 2013 local elections and 2014 midterm elections.
The key to building strong unions is for the workers to build strong local organizing committees where they discuss issues and make the key decisions – not giving up that power to top-down decision-making by union leadership. Low-wage workers should also reach out to seek assistance from existing unions and union-backed organizations, prioritizing linking up with their rank-and-file members. But at the same time, they should insist on organizing their own workplace committees and having a democratic say in how their fight is waged.
Equally important will be mobilizing wider support from workers in other workplaces and industries, community members, labor activists, and Occupy activists. This can build much-needed solidarity with the broader community and working class in order to build a truly massive movement that is strong enough to take on the powerful fast-food corporations.
The Role of Democrats
Workers can only rely on their own collective strength. Working-class movements should have no faith in Democrats, who like the Republicans are a party of Wall Street and big business. In New York City, for example, the mayoral hopeful and current Democratic city councilor, Christine Quinn, has made gestures of support for fast food workers, seeking to tap the support of workers for her 2013 election bid. But Quinn is deep in the back pockets of rich business owners. She even opposes legislation requiring employers to give all workers sick pay. So how can she be trusted to support a living wage? This method of operations employed by Democratic Party politicians is repeated in city after city.
In 2008, Obama made an election promise to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011. $9.50 an hour is still not enough to get by, but even that modest promise was broken. The federal minimum is still $7.25 and there's little indication that Obama plans to do anything about it in his second term.
Workers need to rely on their numeric strength and the social power that comes with their role as the true wealth creators, as the economic foundation of the capitalist system. This power should not be delivered to corporate politicians at the ballot box. A far better way to impact government policies would be to run independent candidates who publicly challenge the corporate agenda. Slates of independent working-class candidates need to be run across the county as a step towards building a new working-class party in the U.S.
A Sleeping Giant
Despite the corporate character of the Democratic Party, the defeat of the right wing in the 2012 elections is likely to give workers some confidence. The struggles in Wisconsin and the emergence of Occupy Wall Street in 2011 show a new mood of struggle emerging among the 99%. None of the underlying problems that gave birth to the Occupy movement have been solved, and 2013 is likely to be a year of renewed and potentially explosive struggles in the U.S.
The huge mass of low-wage workers is like a sleeping giant that when roused could strike a mighty blow at the 1% and help radically transform U.S. society. These young, energetic class fighters can also provide essential fresh energy to revitalize the labor movement as organizations of class struggle, not class collaboration. Having been through the experience of what capitalism in the 21st century means – i.e. low wage jobs and miserable working conditions – their growing confidence and class consciousness can also provide increased support for democratic socialism as an alternative to this failing capitalist system.
It may be too early to say that we're on the cusp of a low-wage worker rebellion, but one thing is for certain: this type of resistance is the music of the future, and right now low-wage workers’ struggles should be an important rallying point for Occupy activists looking to fight for the 99%. Trade unionists looking to reinvigorate the labor movement and others looking to fight for the interests of working people and youth should join this struggle to help build a powerful movement among fast food workers.
Lesson of the Past
There is no blueprint for organizing unions and fighting for better conditions, but there is a rich history of workers’ struggles and many lessons learned. This pamphlet is about an experience of workers attempting organize a Pizza Hut store in Tacoma, Washington in 2003. Though this took place over 10 years ago, and while it was eventually defeated by a vicious anti-union campaign by Pizza Hut, Socialist Alternative is republishing this pamphlet because the lessons drawn out from this struggle still hold true and are perhaps even more relevant today.
Manifesto of the Fast Food Worker includes a description of the history of the fast food industry and how major companies get away with paying such low wages while raking in such huge profits. It discusses the need for unions and how to organize them while answering the lies that bosses will inevitably tell their workers to scare them away from organizing.
At the end of this pamphlet, there is also a chapter on how the root cause of low wages and poverty is the whole system of capitalism itself, and thus the need to link a struggle for union rights and higher wages to a struggle for democratic socialism. We've also added a short piece in the beginning written by Ryan Mosgrove, a young worker whose experience in the low-wage service sector led him to become an activist and a socialist in order to fight not only the boss, but also capitalism itself.
No experience is exactly the same, but many of the ABCs of union organizing in fast food and the low-wage service sector in general can be found in the pages of this pamphlet, and we hope that low-wage workers and activists will find this useful in arming them with a strategy to win.
Jesse Lessinger
January 2013

Footnotes:
1 http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/24/573671/one-in-four-private-sector-workers-earn-less-than-10-an-hour/?mobile=nc
2 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/mcjobs-should-pay-too-its-time-for-fast-food-workers-to-get-living-wages/265714/

Read the pamphlet online here.

Published by SocialistAlternative.org

Read online at: www.SocialistAlternative.org/news/article11.php?id=2080

South Africa: Workers & Socialist Party launched in Pretoria

Mar 25, 2013
CWI reporters, South Africa

Launch surpassed all expectations

Over 500 Tshwane workers, mineworkers’ delegates, trade union and community activists packed Lucas Van Den Bergh Community Hall in Pretoria for the launch of the Workers & Socialist Party today. The hall could not accommodate the turnout and attendees over-spilled onto the neighboring field.
The launch surpassed all expectations. It is without a doubt that WASP is striking a chord with working class people. Today’s launch will have worried many in the establishment – the ANC and their partners in government, the Cosatu leadership and big business. A new power is rising. The working class are getting organised and they are preparing a mighty challenge to the status quo. The ideas of socialism are being re-embraced.

The meeting was chaired by Weizmann Hamilton, the general secretary of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM). Headline speakers included Mametlwe Sebei (WASP spokesman & DSM executive member), Elias Juba (chairman of the national mineworkers committee), Ephraim Mphahlela (president of the National Transport Movement NATAWU), Elmond Magedi (Socialist Youth Movement), Liv Shange (DSM) and Joe Higgins (Socialist Party MP in Ireland).

Speakers from supporting organisations included workers’ delegates from Klerksdorp Uranium, Kumba Iron Ore in Northern Cape, Bokoni Platinum, Gold Fields KDC, Harmony Gold, Mpumalanga coal mines, Anglo Gold Ashanti amongst others.
WASP outlined the following manifesto points and principles:
WASP’s five point manifesto
Kick out the fat-cats. Nationalize the mines, the farms, the banks and big business. Nationalized industry to be under the democratic control of workers and working class communities. Democratic planning of production for social need, not profit.
End unemployment. Create socially-useful jobs for all those seeking work. Fight for a living wage of R12,500 per month.
Stop cut-offs and evictions – for massive investment in housing, electricity, water, sanitation, roads, public transport and social services.
For publicly funded, free education from nursery to university.
For publicly funded free health care accessible to all.
WASP’s principles
We reject outright the corruption of pro-capitalist politicians and political parties.
All WASP candidates for publicly elected positions – whether councilors, MPLs or MPs – are elected subject to the right of immediate recall.
For workers’ representatives on workers’ wages. All officials elected on the basis of the WASP manifesto will only take the wage of an average skilled worker. The remainder will be donated back to WASP.

WASP will now prepare for its next phase of development. WASP will shortly announce a date for convening of a conference to establish democratic structures, a leadership and flesh out its manifesto. There are many other fronts WASP plans to open up: a campaign to re-call corrupt councilors, taking up the issue of labor broking, the collection of one million signatures in support of WASP, and preparing the ground for a general strike should the mine bosses and government dare to enact mass retrenchments in the mining industry.

***Those Oldies But Goodies…Out In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night- Warren Smith’s “Rock And Roll Ruby”

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

WARREN SMITH ROCK´N´ ROLL RUBY LYRICS

Well I took my Ruby jukin'

On the out-skirts of town

She took her high heels off

And rolled her stockings down

She put a quarter in the jukebox

To get a little beat

Everybody started watchin'

All the rhythm in her feet

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

When Ruby starts a-rockin'

Boy it satisfies my soul

Now Ruby started rockin' 'bout one o'clock

And when she started rockin'

She just couldn't stop

She rocked on the tables

And rolled on the floor

And Everybody yelled: "Ruby rock some more!"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

When Ruby starts a-rockin'

Boy it satisfies my soul

It was 'round about four

I thought she would stop

She looked at me and then

She looked at the clock

She said: "Wait a minute Daddy

Now don't get sour

All I want to do

Is rock a little bit more"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

When Ruby starts a-rockin'

Boy it satisfies my soul

One night my Ruby left me all alone

I tried to contact her on the telephone

I finally found her about twelve o'clock

She said: "Leave me alone Daddy

'cause your Ruby wants to rock"

She's my rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

Rock'n'roll Ruby, rock'n'roll

When Ruby starts a-rockin'

Boy it satisfies my soul

Rock, rock, rock'n'roll

Rock, rock, rock'n'roll

Rock, rock, rock'n'roll

Rock, rock, rock'n'roll

When Ruby starts a-rockin'

Boy it satisfies my soul
*****
Nobody had seen Billie (William James Bradley for those who are sticklers for detail and, by the way, not Billy, not some billy-goat thing like the boys in first grade called him, called him the last time anybody did so and he made Billie stick, and you will call him that too unless you want more, much more, than you can handle from a wiry, deceptively strong guy) for a while, a few months anyway back then, back in the late 1950s. I had drifted away from his circle, his corner boy circle, when my family moved across town to the other side of Adamsville, North Adamsville a couple of years before. And when Billie got into some stuff, some larceny stuff, mainly “clipping” things (you know five-finger discount at jewelry stores and drugstore mainly to get his girls, that’s plural, not a typo, some pretty “gift to show his Billie love), and stealing cars if you must know, and when I decided, decided almost at the last minute, that I wanted no part of that scene that pretty much ended our best friend friendship. I still kept in touch with him for about a year or so after that and then when he got into his new “jag,” robbing stores, gas stations and the like, through keeping in touch others.

Rumor had it, and it was always rumor with Billie whether he was right in the room or got his fate reported by one of his boys, one of his legend-producing boys which definitely including me at one time (I was the fawning flak par excellence and would have made Tony Curtis’s Sydney Falco in the film Sweet Smell Of Success look like nothing but kid’s stuff with my Billie build-ups), that he was shacked up with some “broad.” I admit I did my fair share to build up the Billie legend but that’s all, he just naturally filled in the empty spaces, empty spaces that he hated, and that characteristic goes a long way in telling why we hadn’t heard from him for a while except through that rumor mill.

The rumor mill also had it, to fill in the particulars, that he had stolen some car, a classic hopped-up 1949 Nash owned by a tough guy, real tough guy, named “Blindside” Buckley (that moniker tells you all you need to know about that august gentleman just keep clear of him, alright. So that’s two hombres to stay clear of in this sketch) or something like that, or maybe it was that he had stolen one car, abandoned it, and had stolen another. Either way sounds about right. Stole the cars and was holed up somewhere with a honey, Lucy (description to follow), that he had met down at the Sea and Surf teen nightclub across from the Paragon Park Amusement Park in Nantasket, a few miles outside of the town limits of Adamsville. Now this honey, this Lucy honey, was a little older than Billie but, and like I say this is rumor, she jumped on him from minute one when he walked in the door, leaving the guy she was with looking kind of stupid. And in the scheme of things he was probably prepared to commit mayhem on Billie (no brother, bad move, bad career, hell, bad life move).

Billie, no question, was a good-looking guy, was a real good dancer and, best of all, he had a great voice, a great rock and roll voice, that fit nicely, very nicely into the music that we were all listening to, listening to like crazy, on our little transistor radios back in the 1950s, mostly late 1950s. So maybe, for all I know, Lucy had heard Billie sing, sing at one of the two billion talents shows that he was always entering in order, as he constantly said, to win his fame and fortune. Like I said he was good, good at covering Top Forty stuff, but just short, just a short, I guess, of making that “projects” jail break-out move that he was always confident would occur once the talent guys heard him, really heard. At some point that dream faded like a lot of projects dreams faded early and hence his alternative career as a stick-up man.

And this honey, this red-headed Lucy, a luscious red-lipped honey was, reportedly, just the exact kind of honey that Billie dreamed of grabbing for his own. Great shape (great shape then meaning all fill-out curves and leggy legs, or something like that), great boffo hair (dark red, an obviously Irish girl), kittenly sexy, and most importantly ready to go all night whether dancing, doing this and that (figure it out, okay ), or helping plan some caper. Just the kind of girl the priests and parents of even the projects neighborhood were always warning us against but which we boys still secretly dreamed of running up against, dreamed of hard. Yah, this Lucy was just Billie’s action, just his catnip. And so when I first heard that rumor, that Billie holed- up and out of sight rumor, I said yah, that seemed about right.

See Billie one night, one twelve- year old summer night, down in back of old Adamsville South Elementary School where we used to hang out because that was the only real hang-out place around, and talk, talk of futures, talk of dreams just like everybody else, every twelve- year old everybody else Billie kind of laid the whole thing out for us. He was going to parlay his singing voice, his rock and roll singing voice, into fame and fortune and when his ship came in he was going to search for his rock and roll soul-mate. He didn’t put it just this way but the idea was to get the hottest, sexiest, dancing-est girl around and sail off into the sunset leaving that dust of the projects behind, way behind.

So it looked like Billie had one part of his dream coming true, although being on the lam, being big time on the lam, from the cops, the owner of that hopped-up classic 1949 Nash, and maybe even that guy Lucy left looking stupid, take your choice, wasn’t part of the description back in those twelve- year old summer nights. But being sixteen, being in some dough, and being with the rock and roll queen of the seaside night still seems like a bargain worth having made with whatever devil Billie needed to consult to pull the caper off. Hell, it makes me think that maybe I made a mistake moving away from Billie’s orbit. But just call that a rumor too in case any cops are around, alright. Anyway, my reaction was now that Billie was holed up, any girls, red-headed or otherwise, who wanted to dance the night away please just call out my name. Hey, I could dream too.

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Literature and Revolution

Trotsky once wrote that of the three great tragedies in life- hunger, sex and death- revolutionary Marxism, which was the driving force behind his life and work, mainly concerned itself with the struggle against hunger. That observation contains an essential truth about the central thrust of the Marxist tradition. However, as Trotsky demonstrates here, Marxist methodology cannot and should not be reduced to an analysis of and prescription for that single struggle. Here Trotsky takes on an aspect of the struggle for mass cultural development.

In a healthy post-capitalist society mass cultural development would be greatly expanded and encouraged. If the task of socialism were merely to vastly expand economic equality, in a sense, it would be a relativity simple task for a healthy socialist society in concert with other like-minded societies to provide general economic equality with a little tweaking after vanquishing the capitalism mode of production. What Marxism aimed for, and Trotsky defends here, is a prospect that with the end of class society and economic and social injustice the capacity of individual human beings to reach new heights of intellectual and creative development would flourish. That is the thought that underpins Trotsky’s work here as he analyzes various trends in Russian literature in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. In short, Marxism is certainly not a method to be followed in order to write great literature but it does allow one to set that literature in its social context and interrelatedness.

You will find no Deconstructionist or other fashionable literary criticism here. Quite the contrary. Here Trotsky uses his finely tuned skill as a Marxist to great effect as he analyzes the various trends of literature as they were affected (or not affected) by the October Revolution and sniffs out what in false in some of the literary trends. Mainly at the time of writing the jury was still out about the prospects of many of these trends. He analyzes many of the trends that became important later in the century in world literature, like futurism and constructivism, and others- some of which have disappeared and some of which still survive.

The most important and lasting polemic which Trotsky raised here, however, was the fight against the proponents of ‘proletarian culture’.The argument put forth by this trend maintained that since the Soviet Union was a workers state those who wrote about working class themes or were workers themselves should in the interest of cultural development be given special status and encouragement (read a monopoly on the literary front). Trotsky makes short shrift of this argument by noting that, in theory at least as its turned out, the proletarian state was only a transitional state and therefore no lasting ‘proletarian culture’ would have time to develop. Although history did not turn out to prove Trotsky correct the polemic is still relevant to any theory of mass cultural development.

One of the results of the publication of this book is that many intellectuals, particularly Western intellectuals, based some of their sympathy for Trotsky the man and fallen hero on his literary analysis and his ability to write. This was particularly true during the 1930’s here in America where those who were anti-Stalinist but were repelled by the vacuity of the Socialist Party were drawn to him. A few, like James T. Farrell (Studs Lonigan trilogy), did this mostly honorably. Most, like Dwight MacDonald and Sidney Hooks, etc. did not and simply used that temporary sympathy as a way station on their way to anti-Communism. Such is the nature of the political struggle.

A note for the politically-inclined who read this book. Trotsky wrote this book in 1923-24 at the time of Lenin’s death and later while the struggle for succession by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev was in full swing. While Trotsky did not recognize it until later (nor did others, for that matter) this period represented the closing of the rising tide of the revolution. Hereafter, the people who ruled the Soviet Union, the purposes for which they ruled and the manner in which they ruled changed dramatically. In short, Thermidor in the classical French revolutionary expression was victorious. Given his political position why the hell was he writing a book on literary trends in post-revolutionary society at that time.

LEON TROTSKY DEFENDS HIS REVOLUTIONARY HONOR- THE STALIN SCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION,

BOOK REVIEW
THE STALINSCHOOL OF FALSIFICATION, Leon Trotsky, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1971

Today in 2006, at first glance it is not obvious why militant leftists should read about Leon Trotsky’s fight in the 1920’s not only to save and extend the gains of the Russian Revolution but to vindicate his revolutionary honor against the attempts by Stalin and others to diminish his role in it. Fair enough. However, aside from the need to set the historical record straight as a matter of elementary political hygiene (which is a worthy endeavor in itself) a close reading of this work will demonstrate to militants leftists the need to fight for their own politics despite attempts by forces inside and outside the ostensibly socialist movement to call those politics into question. Although the last serious ideological fight against the bogie of “Trotskyism” occurred in the 1960’s and 70’s ( granted a long time ago) when various international Maoist and guerilla warfare tendencies went to the stockpile that does not eliminate a resurgence of such falsification if revolutionary socialist struggle comes back on the agenda. This writer notes that every time ostensibly socialist tendencies want to denigrate currents to their left they take their arguments from the stockpile of falsifications that Trotsky fought to correct here.

The attempts to discredit the revolutionary role and political leadership of Trotsky went through various stages depending on the various alignments in the Russian Communist Party in the 1920’s (and by extension in the Communist International as well when it became an adjunct to Soviet foreign policy rather than a vehicle for international revolutionary strategy). The issues, however, remained fairly constant; Trotsky’s alleged Menshevism (he stood outside of the Bolshevik Party until 1917); his ‘underestimation of the peasantry’ (a particularly charged issue in a peasant-dominated country like Russia); his theory of permanent revolution which put the socialist revolution on the immediate agenda both for Russian and later, by extension, internationally; his flair for administrative solutions to Soviet economic problems, for example, on the militarization of labor during the late stages of war communism and his later dispute with Lenin on the role of trade unions in the Soviet state; and, not unimportantly, his willingness to step on some very big toes to get tasks done i.e. his ardent , if prickly, personality.

These issues mingled together in the various disputes first as Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (known as the triumvirate) tried to keep Trotsky from leadership after Lenin’s death by attempting to drive an unbridgeable chasm between Lenin’s policies and his. Then as Zinoviev and Kamenev went into opposition (and for a time joining Trotsky) Stalin and Bukharin did the same. Later, the victorious Stalinist faction put all these previous factional lineups in the shade by their rewriting of the history of the revolution to exclude Trotsky. The final efforts culminated in the charges against Trotsky (in absentia) during the frame-up Moscow Trials of the late 1930’s. Underlying all these efforts was the attempt to eliminate Trotsky’s role as leader of the October Revolution and the Red Army and ultimately to build up Stalin’s slight role in them. And when it counted, in the 1920’s, these efforts were successful.

Trotsky, as an individual revolutionary trying to defend his revolutionary honor, faced the same problem then as the various left oppositions which he led in the Russian Bolshevik Party faced. That is the ability of the Stalin-dominated bureaucracy to set the terms and tone of the debate in the struggle for power by the weight of sheer numbers and by control of the state media and propaganda apparatus. Given the vast disproportion of forces Trotsky, in the end, was not able to fully vindicate himself before the party and Russian public opinion. But, as this book demonstrates, he did leave those who want to learn a record. Unfortunately, before the demise of the Soviet Unionin 1990-91 Trotsky was still not vindicated before history. The best the latter day Stalinists under Gorbachev could come up with is that he was a dangerous“ultra-left” visionary- a global class warrior. Trotsky may still wait his vindication before history. He is, however, in no need of a certificate of revolutionary good conduct by his political opponents, this writer or the reader.

Today we expect political memoir writers to take part in a game of show and tell about the most intimate details of their private personal lives on their road to celebrity. Refreshingly, you will find no such tantalizing details in Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky's memoir written in 1930 just after Stalin had exiled him to

Turkey

. Instead you will find a thoughtful political self-examination by a man trying to draw the lessons of his fall from power in order to set his future political agenda. This task is in accord with his explicitly stated, and many times repeated, conception of his role as that of an individual agent at service of the historical struggle toward a socialist future. Thus, underlying Trotsky’s selection of events highlighted in the memoir such as the rise of the revolutionary waves in Russia in 1905 and 1917, the devastation to the traditional socialist program caused by the capitulation of European social democracy to their individual national capitalist classes at the start of World War I and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, especially in the aftermath of the failure of the German Revolution of 1923 and Lenin’s untimely death is a sense of urgency about the need for continued struggle for a socialist future. The book also provides Trotsky, as always, a platform for polemics against those foes and former supporters who have either abandoned or betrayed that struggle.

That said, Trotsky really comes into his own as a revolutionary leader in the Revolution of 1905 not only as a publicist but as the central leader of the Soviets (workers councils) which made their first appearance at that time. In a sense it is because he was a freelancer that he was able to lead the Petrograd Soviet during its short existence and etch upon the working class of Russia (and in a more limited way, internationally) the need for its own organizations to seize state power. All revolutionaries honor this experience, as we do the Paris Commune, as the harbingers of October, 1917. As Lenin and Trotsky both confirm, it was truly a ‘dress rehearsal’ for that event. It is in 1905 that Trotsky first wins his stars by directing the struggle against the Czar at close quarters, in the streets and working class meeting halls. And later in his eloquent and ‘hard’ defense of the experiment after it was crushed by the Czarism reaction. I believe that it was here in the heat of the struggle in 1905 where the contradiction between Trotsky’s ‘soft’position in 1903 and his future ‘hard’ Bolshevik position of 1917 and thereafter is resolved. Here was a professional revolutionary who one could depend on when the deal went down.

No discussion of this period of Trotsky’s life is complete without mentioning his very real contribution to Marxist theory- that is, the theory of Permanent Revolution. Although the theory is over one hundred years old it still retains its validity today in those countries that still have not had their bourgeois revolutions. This rather simple straightforward theory about the direction of the Russian revolution (and which Trotsky later in the 1920’s, after the debacle of the Chinese Revolution, made applicable to what today are called“third world” countries) has been covered with so many falsehoods, epithets, and misconceptions that it deserves further explanation. Why? Militants today must address the ramifications of the question what kind of revolution is necessary as a matter of international revolutionary strategy. Trotsky, taking the specific historical development and the peculiarities of Russian economic development as part of the international capitalist order as a starting point argued that there was no ‘Chinese wall’ between the bourgeois revolution Russian was in desperate need of and the tasks of the socialist revolution. In short, in the 20^th century ( and by extension, now) the traditional leadership role of the bourgeois in the bourgeois revolution in a economically backward country, due to its subservience to the international capitalist powers and fear of its own working class and plebian masses, falls to the proletariat. The Russian Revolution of 1905 sharply demonstrated the outline of that tendency especially on the perfidious role of the Russian bourgeoisie. The unfolding of revolutionary events in 1917 graphically confirmed this. The history of revolutionary struggles since then, and not only in ‘third world’countries, gives added, if negative, confirmation of that analysis.

World War I was a watershed for modern history in many ways. For the purposes of this review two points are important. First, the failure of the bulk of the European social democracy- 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. This position 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 initially left the anti-war elements of international social democracy, including Lenin and Trotsky, 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 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 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 is during the war that Trotsky and Lenin, not without some lingering differences, drew closer and begins the process of several years, only ended by Lenin’s death, of close political collaboration.

Secondly, World War I marks the definite (at least for Europe) end of the progressive role of international capitalist development. The outlines of imperialist aggression previously noted had definitely taken center stage. This theory of imperialism was most closely associated with Lenin in his master work Imperialism-The Highest Stage of Capitalism but one should note that Trotsky in all his later work up until his death fully subscribed to the theory. Although Lenin’s work is in need of some updating to account for various technological changes and the extensions of globalization since that time holds up for political purposes. This analysis meant that a fundamental shift in the relationship of the working class to the ruling class was necessary. A reformist perspective for social change, although not specific reforms, was no longer tenable. Politically, as a general proposition, socialist revolution was on the immediate agenda. This is when Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution meets the Leninist conception of revolutionary organization. It proved to be a successful formula in Russia in October, 1917. Unfortunately, those lessons were not learned (or at least learned in time) by those who followed and the events of October, 1917 stand today as the only ‘pure’ working class revolution in history.

An argument can, and has, been made that the October Revolution could only have occurred under the specific condition of decimated, devastated war-weary Russia of 1917. This argument is generally made by those who were not well-wishers of revolution in

Russia

(or anywhere else, for that matter). It is rather a truism, indulged in by Marxists as well as by others, that war is the mother of revolution. That said, the October revolution was made then and there but only because of the convergence of enough revolutionary forces led by the Bolsheviks and additionally the forces closest to the Bolsheviks (including Trotsky’s Inter-District Organization) who had prepared for these events by the entire pre-history of the revolution. This is the subjective factor in history. No, not substitutionalism, that was the program of the Social Revolutionary terrorists and the like, but if you like, revolutionary opportunism. I would be much more impressed by an argument that stated that the revolution would not have occurred without the presence of Lenin and Trotsky. That would be a subjective argument, par excellent. But, they were there.

Again Trotsky in 1917, like in 1905, is in his element speaking seemingly everywhere, writing, organizing (when it counts, by the way). If not the brains of the revolution (that role is honorably conceded to Lenin) certainly the face of the Revolution. Here is a revolutionary moment in every great revolution when the fate of the revolution turned on a dime (the subjective factor). The dime turned. (See review dated April 18, 2006 for a review of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution).

Oneof the great lessons that militants can learn from all previous modern revolutions is that once the revolutionary forces seize power from the old regime an inevitable counterrevolutionary onslaught by elements of the old order (aided by some banished moderate but previously revolutionary elements, as a rule). The Russian revolution proved no exception. If anything the old regime, aided and abetted by numerous foreign powers and armies, was even more bloodthirsty. It fell to Trotsky to organize the defense of the revolution. Now, you might ask- What is a nice Jewish boy like Trotsky doing playing with guns? Fair enough. Well, Jewish or Gentile if you play the revolution game you better the hell be prepared to defend the revolution (and yourself). Here, again Trotsky organized, essentially from scratch, a Red Army from a defeated, demoralized former peasant army under the Czar. The ensuing civil war was to leave the country devastated but the Red Army defeated the Whites. Why? In the final analysis it was not only the heroism of the working class defending its own but the peasant wanting to hold on to the newly acquired land he just got and was in jeopardy of losing if the Whites won. But these masses needed to be organized. Trotsky was the man for the task.

Both Lenin’s and Trotsky’s calculation for the success of socialist revolution in Russia (and ultimately its fate) was its, more or less, immediate extension to the capitalist heartland of Europe, particularly Germany. While in 1917 that was probably not the controlling single factor for going forward in Russiait did have to come into play at some point. The founding of the Communist International makes no sense otherwise. Unfortunately, for many historical, national and leadership-related reasons no Bolshevik-styled socialist revolutions followed then, or ever. If the premise for socialism is for plenty, and ultimately as a result of plenty to take the struggle for existence off the agenda and put other more creative pursues on the agenda, then Russia in the early 1920’s was not the land of plenty. Neither Lenin, Trotsky nor Stalin, for that matter, could wish that fact away. The ideological underpinnings of that fight centered on the Stalinist concept of ‘socialism in one country’, that is Russia going it alone versus the Trostskyist position of the absolutely necessary extension of the international revolution. In short, this is the fight that historically happens in great revolutions- the fight against Thermidor (from the overthrow of Robespierre in 1794 by more moderate Jacobins). What counts, in the final analysis, are their respective responses to the crisis of the isolation of the revolution. The word isolation is the key. Do you turn the revolution inward or push forward? We all know the result, and it wasn’t pretty, then or now. That is the substance of the fight that Trotsky, if initially belatedly and hesitantly, led from about 1923 on under various conditions until the end of his life by assassination of a Stalinist agent in 1940.

Although there were earlier signs that the Russiarevolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate).backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germanyin 1923 and which thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Unionfor the foreseeable future.

While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely with the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the triumvirate. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled it and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.

In a sense if the fight in 1923-24 is the decisive fight to save the Russian revolution (and ultimately a perspective of international revolution) then the 1926-27 fight which was a bloc between Trotsky’s forces and the just defeated forces of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin’s previous allies was the last rearguard action to save that perspective. That it failed does not deny the importance of the fight. Yes, it was a political bloc with some serious differences especially over China and the Anglo-Russian Committee. But two things are important here One- did a perspective of a new party, which some elements were clamoring for, make sense at the time of the clear waning of the revolutionary ebbing the country. No. Besides the place to look was at the most politically conscious elements, granted against heavy odds, in the party where whatever was left of the class-conscious elements of the working class were. As I have noted elsewhere in discussing the 1923 fight-that “Lenin levy” of raw recruits, careerists and just plain thugs which enhanced the growing power of the Stalinist bureaucracy was the key element in any defeat. Still the fight was necessary. Hey, that is why we talk about it now. That was a fight to the finish. After that the left opposition or elements of it were forever more outside the party- either in exile, prison or dead. As we know Trotsky went from expulsion from the party in 1927 to internal exile in Alma Ata in 1928 to external exile to Turkey in 1929. From there he underwent further exiles in France,Norway, and

Mexico

when he was finally felled by a Stalinist assassin. But no matter when he went he continued to struggle for his perspective. Not bad for a Jewish farmer’s son from the Ukraine.

The last period of Trotsky’s life spent in harrowing exiles and under constant threat from Stalinist and White Guard threats- in short, on the planet without a visa -was dedicated to the continued fight for the Leninist heritage. It was an unequal fight, to be sure but he waged it and was able to cohere a core of revolutionaries to form a new international, the Fourth International. That that effort was essentially militarily defeat by fascist or Stalinist forces during World War II does not take away from the grandeur of the attempt. He himself stated that he felt this was the most important work of his life- and who would challenge that assertion.

But one could understand the frustrations, first the failure of his correct analysis of the German debacle then in Franceand Spain. Hell a lesser man would have given up. In fact, more than one biographer has argued that he should have retired from the political arena to, I assume , a comfortable country cottage to write I do not know what. But, please reader, have you been paying attention? Does this seem even remotely like the Trotsky career I have attempted to highlight here? Hell, no.

Many of the events such as the disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the attempts by the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the Civil War after their seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can still learn something from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds. As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky he was one of the most feared men of the early 20^th century to friend and foe alike. Nevertheless, I do not believe that he took his personal fall from power as a world historic tragedy. Moreover, he does not gloss over his political mistakes. Nor does Trotsky generally do personal injustice to his various political opponents although I would not want to have been subject to his rapier wit and pen. Politicians, revolutionary or otherwise, in our times should take note.

REVISED JULY 25, 2006

***Out In The 1920s Baseball Night- Ring Lardner’s You Know Me, Al

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Book Review

The Ring Lardner Reader, including You Know Me Al, Ring Lardner

The first paragraph of this review was written for the series of stories in Ring Lardner’s You Know Me, Al that is contained in the present book under review as well. In addition to You Know Me, Al there some other classic baseball stories here, particularly Alibi Ike (about a ball player, of course, who can’t seem to do anything except blush and well alibi when he is not perfect, even when he is not perfect with a little blush romance thrown in which throws the whole team into fits) and My Roomy (naturally about the screwball characters, and they were, if the stories about them are half-true) that can be covered by the comments in the first paragraph. The other, non-baseball, stories in this book are reviewed in the second paragraph.

At one time early in the first part of the 20^th century there was no question that baseball was the American pastime. Now eclipsed by, ah, texting or some such thing, okay, maybe football. That was a time when the name Ring Lardner was well known in sports writing and literary circles. The sports writing part was easy because that was his beat. The literary part is much harder to recognize but clearly the character of Jack Keefe in You Know Me, Al has become an American classic. Does one need to be a baseball fan to appreciate this work? Hell, no. We all know, in sports or otherwise, this Keefe guy, right?

You know the guy with some talent who has no problem, no problem at all, blaming the other guy, or happenstance, for mistakes while he (or she) is pure as the driven snow. That is the concept that drives these stories told in the form of letters to Al, his buddy back home. Back home in the heartland, the place of certain quintessential American values honored, perhaps, more in the breech than the observance. The language, the malapropisms and the schemes all evoke an earlier more innocent time in sport and society. I do not believe that you could create such a character based on today’s sport’s ethic. The athletes would have a spokesperson ‘spinning’ their take on the matters of the day for their respective clients. The only one that might come close is Nuke LaRouche in the movie Bull Durhambut as that movie progressed Nuke was getting ‘wise’. Read these stories, read them more than once on those hot stove winter nights between seasons.

There is no question that aside from a deft ear as a sportswriter that Ring Lardner also had an ear for the foibles and frustrations of the newly rising middle class of the post- World War I Midwestern heartland. This is not the land of Fitzgerald’s or Hemingway’s “Lost Generation” scripted in such works as The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and The Damned, and The Sun Also Rises but of those left behind trying to scratch out an existence anyway they could in the first edition of go-go consumer America. However, rather than beat up on the ‘yokels’ straight up Lardner pokes and prods at their pretensions in a fairly harmless way, at least on the surface, but on re-reading these stories recently I found myself saying ‘ouch’ to the literary stabs in the backs that he thrust at his victims in stories like Gullible’s Travels (a title which aptly sums up my comment) and The Big Town where the small city ethos is smothered by the big one . Read on.

Out In The Be-Bop Night- With Nelson Algren’s Walk On The Wild Side In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Hoke Stover (Hoke his real first name, his Christian name if he was a Christian, and if a Christian he had been baptized, a cause of some dispute since no church records showed such an event, in fact no civil records showed he had been born in the county that he had grown in all his youth pestered life) had no kin to speak of so leaving home, leaving Ardmore out in the Appalachia hill country, the hills and hollows of mountain legend, would no cause for tears or frets. Hoke had no kin so it was told, or rather, better, he had some very attenuated kinship relationships. His mother, well his mother as far as he knew, was a whore, who let any man at her whether he had the price or not, she was so addled- brained she let them have at her on credit and forget who owed her what come settling time, usually Friday, mine pay day, or if she “took at shine to a man,” she might give just as freely and so a whore, a whore in deep fundamentalist Protestant mountain talk, although she was long gone to Philadelphia and some two bit whorehouse, or something like that.

His father, Zeke, was unclear, or better uncaring about her fate, and therefore didn’t want to talk about it or bother about it at all when Hoke was young and full of such mother questions (although Zeke had been one of her “take a shining too” free loves, that part was known far and wide when mountain shaming time came). Zeke had in any case taken up with another woman (it was not clear as well whether Zeke had married his mother or they had just cohabitated for a time not a fine distinction in hill and hollow country where some such relationships might come under some kinship legal ban), Ella, who had a brood of her own, and in his turn Zeke had taken off with yet another woman leaving Hoke behind at her house to fend for himself. So, yes, Hoke had no kin to speak of as he set off one day to seek his fame and fortune in the world. All he knew for certain, all his father knew for certain when he passed on the information, was that the Stover clan had originally come to these American shores around 1800 after being kicked out of England for pig-stealing or some such stealing and had been just one step ahead of the law in any case so being kicked out would have occurred sooner or later. His mother’s people, some off-center Irish mix, maybe Anglo-Irish Catholic had been forced out of Ireland starving or close to it during the Great Famine of the 1840s and once off the famine ships in New York had drifted west with the land hungry and wound up in Appalachia, Not having the sense or wherewithal to move further west when the land turned sour they had settled in the human sink until his mother’s whorish generation. And she headed east.

So one bright sunny morning Hoke headed to center of Ardmore, hopped on the local ramshackle bus that would take him to Louisville and then from there take a big old Greyhound bus to Memphis, the Memphis of his dream fame and fortune. His father having been there once when on leave during the war (World War II for anybody who was asking) and had never gotten over it and passed on that dream scene to his son .Of course Zeke had been there merely on a three day pass and so had no thought of trying to make his fame or fortune there (or anywhere else as it turned out since he was nothing but a rolling stone) and so left no wisdom to his son about how to go about such a task. In fact Hoke was singularly ill-prepared for almost any dream search since no one had bothered to tell to go to school and learn something, learn a trade or craft and so all he knew was how to scavenge, scavenge for soda bottles, cooper bits, silver this and that, lost pennies and moving odd lots of moonshine when he was old enough (fourteen) to handle a car on those back roads. Nevertheless unread and unlearned he was off to the bright lights of the city and he, like all youth, at least all youth that had been subject to some dream quest, figured he would be able to wing it. He would have to.

Hoke did have one thing going for him, going strong if things got tough. He was good-looking, girl swooning good-looking, country girls anyway, and while he might not be smart or learned he never lacked for female company when he wanted it (or better when he had money since country girls were not difference from their city brethren when it came to their wanting habits). He figured if he was the son of a whore (he knew from Zeke whores were bad but in his moral universe only bad because they had left guys like Zeke and Hoke to fend for themselves when the next best thing came along) then the worst thing that could happen was that he would work, ah, servicing woman ( be a gigolo but he did not know the word, where would a simple country boy come across such an word, or the concept, all he knew was that he could make money at it or be put up by some woman if things got tough).

Things did get tough since nobody was hiring illiterates, white illiterates anyway, in the dead air 1960s night and so he found himself sliding down to Memphis’ skid row as his money ran out, his prospects went dead and even his one feeble attempt to scavenge went awry when he found out you had to be “connected” to run even such a nondescript operation as that in the big city, hell, even soda bottles. And so as night follows day he wound up on Beale Street, first trying to pimp himself off to the passing clientele, to the ladies, but since he did not have the “front,” he was all soiled jeans and sweaty stained shirt, maybe hadn’t showered in a while and needed a shave, they passed him by. Although the queer boys, the homos, the sissy boys, seemingly every one, every “different” boy from good homes or bad, in the South who could make it to Memphis (from Tupelo, Selma, Greenwood, Clarksville and points south, took a run at him), No sale, no dice, he was not that way. No sale for a while.

But one night, one desperate night, only change in his pocket, Christ,dimes, room rent due in a day or too he was almost ready to face that indignation, to let a sissy boy have at him, when he met Mister Jonathan Tucker, Mister Jonathan Tucker, a sissy boy scion of the famous Memphis Tucker family who after trying to proposition him without success (although that was a close thing) took him under his wing. And that wing included an undisclosed Tucker family interest in, among other things, Fanny Mae’s high-end whorehouse over on Beale and Main. Hoke, suitably dressed and given a little polish by Mister Jonathan Tucker was to be a “protector” for the girls who worked there. And Hoke took to the job like a magnet although he felt since he was a protector he shouldn’t have had to pay for an evening with one of the girls when he got frisky. Still after hanging around the ladies, a couple who had taken to him as an older brother, in that establishment for a while he found he had a little more respect for his mother, thought a little less unkindly when the word whore was spouted forth by some walking daddy with big eyes, greenbacks and quirky habits. Maybe he would start a stable of his own, a couple anyway, maybe Mister Jonathan Tucker would stake him to some flash dough. Yes, he, Hoke Stover, was on his way to fame and fortune, no question…

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Monday, April 01, 2013

Left Links

About Me