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

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

***From The May Day 2012 Organizing Archives –May Day 2013 Needs The Same Efforts

Boston's International Workers Day 2013

BMDC International Workers Day Rally
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at Boston City Hall
Gather at 2PM - Rally at 2:30PM
(Court St. & Cambridge St.)
T stops Government Center (Blue line, Green line)

To download flyer click here. (Please print double-sided)

Other May Day events:

Revere - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pmbegin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Everett - @ City Hall - gather at 3:pm begin marching at 3:30 (to Chelsea)
Chelsea - @ City Hall - rally a 3:pm (wait for above feeder marches to arrive) will begin marching at 4:30 (to East Boston)
East Boston - @ Central Square - (welcome marchers) Rally at 5:pm

BMDC will join the rally in East Boston immediately following Boston City Hall rally

Supporters: ANSWER Coalition, Boston Anti Authoritarian Movement, Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Committee, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Harvard No-Layoffs Campaign, Industrial Workers of the World, Latinos for Social Change, Mass Global Action, Sacco & Vanzetti Commemoration Society, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Party of Boston, Socialist Workers Party, Student Labor Action Movement, USW Local 8751 - Boston School Bus Drivers Union, Worcester Immigrant Coalition, National Immigrant Solidarity Network, Democracy Center - Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington United for Justice with Peace, International Socialist Organization, Community Church of Boston

***********From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo For An Alternate Government-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- From The Pen Of Radical Journalist Joshua Lawrence Breslin-On Generals Without An Army?

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
*******
Markin comment October 1, 2011:

There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in the Occupy movement. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic, and frankly, bizarre and arcane, consensus process and relationships with the police who are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, the spirit of the movement, especially among the young and open-minded,is refreshing, its activists are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at various occupation sites. We can all learn something but in the meantime, and under all foreseeable conditions, we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.

**********
As part a comment made in this space, dated October 20, 2011, I noted the following:

“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the “new world” we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”

A couple of the people that I have talked to were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea I posed that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the“new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work checks and balances form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)

I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one. In that sense previous historical models come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
**********
Recently (see October 22, 2011 comment above) I noted the following while arguing for the General Assembly concept as a form of alternate government using historic examples like the Paris Commune (1871), the early soviets in Russia (1905 and 1917), and the early days of the antifascist militias in the Spanish Civil War (1936-37):

“However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.”

In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I have, occasionally, posted works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France. Other such examples have, and will be, posted as the occasion arises

********
Peter Paul Markin comment:

A while back my longtime friend, Josh Breslin (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those old enough to recognize that name from half the alternative presses in this country, large and small, over the past forty years or so) sent me an e-mail the contents of which I have commented on in this space under the entry “General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale.” (See post below.)The substance of the piece was that Josh felt that the Occupy idea was ripe for the picking by those bourgeois political forces that were hovering around the movement lately looking like wolves ready to feast on an easy meal. Without going into detail here he also argued that there were some very Potemkin Village-like aspects of the Occupy Boston movement since the police raid on December 10^th (2011) scattered the tribe. The most remarkable statement though, or at least the one which stuck in my mind after reading his e-mail, was his characterization of Occupy as“generals without an army.’’ That little twist has haunted me not a little since after some thought and some further investigation I find that statement to have some truth in it.

Now some readers of this post will dismiss the whole notion of generals, or at least the free-wheeling use of any military terms when speaking of the movement, out of hand. That would be unfortunate because that expression was merely a short-hand way for Josh to say what many people I have spoke to already sense. This “leaderless” movement has leaders, there is nothing wrong with leaders emerging if based on doing hard political work and winning authority, and that in a very important sense those fairly small numbers whose lives are now entwined with the Occupy movement are de facto leaders and that is just hard political realty. Period

And an equally hard fact is that through the thick and thin of committee meetings, working groups, “rump”General Assemblies (Josh’s word but there is also truth in that characterization as well) and other forms of actions (mainly small, very small) over the past period (and thus a mood that pre-dates the demise of Dewey Square) is that the Occupy movement has lost much steam. Some of this was, and should have been, expected. And perhaps with a better political focus here in Boston that may be turned around. But the hard-headed reality is that a lot of possibly very good cadres are spinning their wheels with no forces (or not many) behind them. Others are just doing what comes naturally, content to attend endless meetings, discuss endlessly, and let other hostile forces come in and pick those very good cadres clean. Ya, sometimes Josh Breslin is clueless on stuff but on this on he is preaching to the converted.

***********
General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale

Peter Paul Markin comment:

I had never seen my old friend Josh Breslin so irate (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who know him under that moniker through his various commentary columns in all kind alternative press operations over the past forty years or so). Or rather more correctly I had never read anything of his that practically steamed off the page, the computer screen page that early Monday morning (December 19, 2011, let’s see the time stamp, oh yes, 5:14 AM, Ya early, definitely early for Josh) when I was casually perusing my daily e-mail delete slaughter-house. It seems that he had attended anOccupy BostonGeneral Assembly (GA) meeting the night before over at the hallowed Community Church on Boylston Street (hallowed in leftist circles, I had first gone there long ago to attend a commemoration program for Sacco and Vanzetti). Since the police raid on the Occupy camp at Dewey Square in the early morning hours of December 11^th the GAs have been assembling helter-skelter at various locations from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common to various sympathetic indoor as winter sets in locations, mainly churches, in order to keep some continuity during these unsettled times.

At that meeting the main order of business was a simple proposal submitted by the OB Socialist Caucus, a loose group of organizationally-affiliated and unaffiliated people who identify themselves with the socialist cause. The gist of the proposal was to make a forthright statement that Occupy Boston was to be clearly identified, more clearly identified than in any previous document, as independent of the main bourgeois parties, the Democrats in particular, and by implication was not to be a front or voting cattle bloc for any particular organized political operation ready to move in like hungry wolves looking for an easy meal. This proposal never reached a vote, a yea or nay vote, that night because it was“blocked” well before such a vote could be taken by, as Josh called it in his e-mail, the “Rump” assembly (see said e-mail posted below, well the gist of it anyway). The Rump being a minority of those eighty or so brethren in attendance that evening whose maneuver in the consensus-addled GA world stopped the proposal in its tracks. This series of events triggered in Josh some kind of previously well-hidden verbal explosion about the trends that he had witnessed developing in the movement, and that had disturbed him previously. Naturally he had to send his old compadre Peter Paul his bilious e-mail as the first step in his “campaign” to get things off his chest.

A little explanation is in order to gauge the seriousness of Josh’s maddened impulse and, as well, for why I have taken the time to write this little commentary up and pushed it forward. Josh and I go back a long way, back to the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967 when I was on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster magical mystery tour freedom bus and I met Josh, then going under the moniker “Prince Of Love,” on Russian Hill in that town. Ya, I know, we were just a little too self-important on changing the name changed the person thing but that was the way it was. I was, for a while, known as Be-Bop Benny, among other names.

Josh had, after just graduating from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine hitch-hiked across the country to see “what was happening.” We hit it off right away, probably because my being from North Adamsville here in Massachusetts we were the only New Englanders “on the bus,” even though I was a few years older. In any case our friendship survived through thick and thin, even despite his “stealing” my girl, Butterfly Swirl (okay, okay I will stop with the a. k. a’s), from right under my nose during the first few days we knew each other. Part of that thick and thin has been involvement in a long series of left-wing political struggles where we have not always seen eye to eye but have generally been “on the right of the angels.”

And that, roughly, brings us to the present. Along the way, for a number of reason that shall not detain us here, I increasingly came to socialist conclusions abut the nature of American society and the ways to change it. Josh, while always on the cutting edge of those same conclusions, never crossed over and has maintained a studied non-socialist radical position very similar to many that I have run into as the Occupy movement has gathered steam. As a paid political commentator for various publications Joshhas always kept a certain skeptical distance from going overboard every time there is the slightest left breeze coming in over Boston Harbor. Until now.

As I have written elsewhere Josh, now retired, still likes to keep his hand in the mix and so has been working on a project that may turn into a book about the Occupy Boston experience. When he first he crossed the river from the wilds of Cambridge he held himself pretty aloof from the doings but soon became totally enmeshed in what was going on. I was, and still am, a lot more skeptical about where the winds are heading. Josh though spent some nights at Dewey Square and got involved in the camp life. He marched up and down the streets of Boston in every possible cause. He brought food and other goods to the site when he came over. He donated money and other resources to the efforts. He even told me that he washed dishes (once) to help out in the kitchen one day. And believe me in the old prankster days the Prince of Love was, well, too “important” to bow down and get his hands wet doing anything as lowly as dishes. So this new experiment (or rather a chance to make up for those youthful mistakes) really energized him.

So when Joshua Lawrence Breslin, on a darkened Monday morning, signals that something is wrong, something is politically wrong with the direction of the movement I listen up. And, perhaps, you should too.

*******
Below I have placed the substance of the e-mail that Josh Breslin sent to me that fateful Monday December 19th morning. This is my summarization of the document which was written by him in our usual “code” and with his usual excessive use of expletives to normal ears so that it would be not understandable to“outsiders.” In short I have edited it as best I could while retaining the political direction. If Josh doesn’t like it then he can, well, sue me. Ha ha. Or better, write his own damn translation. Peter Paul Markin.

December 19, 2011, 5:14 AMto PeterPaulMarkin@yahoo.com:

Pee Pee, [The reader is hereby warned no to make anything out of this old-time nickname, old time going back to childhood North Adamsville working-class neighborhood days, or else.] You won’t believe what those arrogant airheads did last night at the so-called GA. I call it, and you can quote me on this, the “Rump” like back in Oliver Cromwell’s time when a bunch of cronies controlled everything, or else. They“blocked” the proposal to have a clear statement of independence from the damn Democrats (and Republicans too) but we know who really wants in on this movement.

What they did was get together enough people to block the thing even though with a simple majority it could have gotten through. So much for democracy.For once you are right on this blocking and consensus b.s. Now when Miss Betty [Elizabeth Warren] comes a-courting she will have a field day. You and I have disagreed on many things but keeping the bourgeois parties the hell away from our movement (except maybe to do “Jimmy Higgins” work putting up chairs or licking envelopes, stuff like that) has always been something that has united us ever since Chicago in 1968.

You should have heard the reasons given. Naturally the old chestnut- “we don’t want to alienate anyone”(anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, I guess). “It’s too negative.” Like the bourgeoisie gives a damn about negativity as long as they keep their moola and their power. “The statement we have already posted about transparency and independence is good enough” Like that flimsy one-size-fits-all statement has any political meaning at all. And it degenerated from there.I was so mad I had to walk out and get some fresh air.

I am far from giving up on this Occupy movement but in a lot of ways it really is like that guy, that homeless camper guy, I interviewed over at Dewey Square in early November when the weather got a little cold said. He said the place was a Potemkin Village. I thought he meant about people not staying there overnight. But now I think he meant the whole experiment.They, we, are generals without any army right now and nothing that is being done lately is calculated to break out from that situation. Were we this ruthlessly obtuse back in the days?I hope not- Josh

Postscript from Markin:

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”

*****************
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

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

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

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

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

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

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

From The Boston Bradley Manning Support Committee Archives (October 2011)

From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo For An Alternate Government-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- From The Pen Of Radical Journalist Joshua Lawrence Breslin-On Generals Without An Army?

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!

There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in the Occupy movement. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic, and frankly, bizarre and arcane, consensus process and relationships with the police who are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, the spirit of the movement, especially among the young and open-minded, is refreshing, its activists are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at various occupation sites. We can all learn something but in the meantime, and under all foreseeable conditions, we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.

**********
As part a comment made in this space, dated October 20, 2011, I noted the following:

A couple of the people that I have talked to were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea I posed that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work checks and balances form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)

********
Peter Paul Markin comment:

A while back my longtime friend, Josh Breslin (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those old enough to recognize that name from half the alternative presses in this country, large and small, over the past forty years or so) sent me an e-mail the contents of which I have commented on in this space under the entry “General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale.” (See post below.)The substance of the piece was that Josh felt that the Occupy idea was ripe for the picking by those bourgeois political forces that were hovering around the movement lately looking like wolves ready to feast on an easy meal. Without going into detail here he also argued that there were some very Potemkin Village-like aspects of the Occupy Boston movement since the police raid on December 10^th (2011) scattered the tribe. The most remarkable statement though, or at least the one which stuck in my mind after reading his e-mail, was his characterization of Occupy as “generals without an army.’’ That little twist has haunted me not a little since after some thought and some further investigation I find that statement to have some truth in it.

And an equally hard fact is that through the thick and thin of committee meetings, working groups, “rump” General Assemblies (Josh’s word but there is also truth in that characterization as well) and other forms of actions (mainly small, very small) over the past period (and thus a mood that pre-dates the demise of Dewey Square) is that the Occupy movement has lost much steam. Some of this was, and should have been, expected. And perhaps with a better political focus here in Boston that may be turned around. But the hard-headed reality is that a lot of possibly very good cadres are spinning their wheels with no forces (or not many) behind them. Others are just doing what comes naturally, content to attend endless meetings, discuss endlessly, and let other hostile forces come in and pick those very good cadres clean. Ya, sometimes Josh Breslin is clueless on stuff but on this on he is preaching to the converted.

***********
General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale

Peter Paul Markin comment:

I had never seen my old friend Josh Breslin so irate (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who know him under that moniker through his various commentary columns in all kind alternative press operations over the past forty years or so). Or rather more correctly I had never read anything of his that practically steamed off the page, the computer screen page that early Monday morning (December 19, 2011, let’s see the time stamp, oh yes, 5:14 AM, Ya early, definitely early for Josh) when I was casually perusing my daily e-mail delete slaughter-house. It seems that he had attended an Occupy Boston General Assembly (GA) meeting the night before over at the hallowed Community Church on Boylston Street (hallowed in leftist circles, I had first gone there long ago to attend a commemoration program for Sacco and Vanzetti). Since the police raid on the Occupy camp at Dewey Square in the early morning hours of December 11^th the GAs have been assembling helter-skelter at various locations from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common to various sympathetic indoor as winter sets in locations, mainly churches, in order to keep some continuity during these unsettled times.

At that meeting the main order of business was a simple proposal submitted by the OB Socialist Caucus, a loose group of organizationally-affiliated and unaffiliated people who identify themselves with the socialist cause. The gist of the proposal was to make a forthright statement that Occupy Boston was to be clearly identified, more clearly identified than in any previous document, as independent of the main bourgeois parties, the Democrats in particular, and by implication was not to be a front or voting cattle bloc for any particular organized political operation ready to move in like hungry wolves looking for an easy meal. This proposal never reached a vote, a yea or nay vote, that night because it was “blocked” well before such a vote could be taken by, as Josh called it in his e-mail, the “Rump” assembly (see said e-mail posted below, well the gist of it anyway). The Rump being a minority of those eighty or so brethren in attendance that evening whose maneuver in the consensus-addled GA world stopped the proposal in its tracks. This series of events triggered in Josh some kind of previously well-hidden verbal explosion about the trends that he had witnessed developing in the movement, and that had disturbed him previously. Naturally he had to send his old compadre Peter Paul his bilious e-mail as the first step in his “campaign” to get things off his chest.

And that, roughly, brings us to the present. Along the way, for a number of reason that shall not detain us here, I increasingly came to socialist conclusions abut the nature of American society and the ways to change it. Josh, while always on the cutting edge of those same conclusions, never crossed over and has maintained a studied non-socialist radical position very similar to many that I have run into as the Occupy movement has gathered steam. As a paid political commentator for various publications Josh has always kept a certain skeptical distance from going overboard every time there is the slightest left breeze coming in over Boston Harbor. Until now.

*******
Below I have placed the substance of the e-mail that Josh Breslin sent to me that fateful Monday December 19th morning. This is my summarization of the document which was written by him in our usual “code” and with his usual excessive use of expletives to normal ears so that it would be not understandable to “outsiders.” In short I have edited it as best I could while retaining the political direction. If Josh doesn’t like it then he can, well, sue me. Ha ha. Or better, write his own damn translation. Peter Paul Markin.

December 19, 2011, 5:14 AM to PeterPaulMarkin@yahoo.com:

Pee Pee, [The reader is hereby warned no to make anything out of this old-time nickname, old time going back to childhood North Adamsville working-class neighborhood days, or else.] You won’t believe what those arrogant airheads did last night at the so-called GA. I call it, and you can quote me on this, the “Rump” like back in Oliver Cromwell’s time when a bunch of cronies controlled everything, or else. They “blocked” the proposal to have a clear statement of independence from the damn Democrats (and Republicans too) but we know who really wants in on this movement.

What they did was get together enough people to block the thing even though with a simple majority it could have gotten through. So much for democracy. For once you are right on this blocking and consensus b.s. Now when Miss Betty [Elizabeth Warren] comes a-courting she will have a field day. You and I have disagreed on many things but keeping the bourgeois parties the hell away from our movement (except maybe to do “Jimmy Higgins” work putting up chairs or licking envelopes, stuff like that) has always been something that has united us ever since Chicago in 1968.

You should have heard the reasons given. Naturally the old chestnut- “we don’t want to alienate anyone” (anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, I guess). “It’s too negative.” Like the bourgeoisie gives a damn about negativity as long as they keep their moola and their power. “The statement we have already posted about transparency and independence is good enough” Like that flimsy one-size-fits-all statement has any political meaning at all. And it degenerated from there. I was so mad I had to walk out and get some fresh air.

I am far from giving up on this Occupy movement but in a lot of ways it really is like that guy, that homeless camper guy, I interviewed over at Dewey Square in early November when the weather got a little cold said. He said the place was a Potemkin Village. I thought he meant about people not staying there overnight. But now I think he meant the whole experiment. They, we, are generals without any army right now and nothing that is being done lately is calculated to break out from that situation. Were we this ruthlessly obtuse back in the days? I hope not- Josh

Postscript from Markin:

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

*****************
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

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

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

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

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

***Pardon Private Bradley Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesdays, 5:00 PM -Update –April 23, 2013

Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Stand-Out For Bradley-Wednesdays From 5:00-6:00 PM
********
Plan to come to Fort Meade outside of Washington, D.C. on June 1^st for an international day of solidarity with Bradley before his scheduled June 3^rd trial.If you can’t make it to Fort Meade plan a solidarity event locally in support of this brave whistle-blower.
**********
Stop The Media Blackout of The Bradley Manning Trial

Despite the unprecedented and historic nature of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning’s trial, journalists have thus far been banned from recording the proceedings. Because Americans more commonly get their news through television than from any other media source, this presents a major barrier to the American public staying informed on a trial that will profoundly affect the future of our country.

It’s outrageous that the American public is being denied the right to view the trial of U.S. vs. Bradley Manning. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was appointed by President Obama to ensure civilian oversight of the U.S. military.

Go To the Bradley Manning Support Network http://www.bradleymanning.org/ and sign the petition to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel demanding that he ensure journalists can record Bradley Manning’s court martial proceedings! When you sign the petition the network e-mail system will send a message on your behalf to the office of Secretary of Defense.

********

Beginning in September 2011, in order to publicize Private Manning’s case locally, there have been weekly stand-outs (as well as other more ad hoc and sporadic events) in various locations in the Greater Boston area starting in Somerville across from the Davis Square Redline MBTA stop on Friday afternoons and later on Wednesdays. Lately this stand-out has been held each week on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 6:00 PM at Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street just outside the Redline MBTA stop, renamed Manning Square for the duration of the stand-out) in order to continue to broaden our outreach. Join us there in calling for Private Manning’s freedom. President Obama Pardon Private Manning Now!
********
Those who have followed the heroic Wikileakswhistle-blower Private Bradley Manning’s case over the past year or so, since about April 2012 when the pre-trial hearings began in earnest, know that last November the defendant offered to plead guilty to a few lesser included charges in his indictment, basically taking legal and political responsibility for the leaks to WikiLeaks that had been the subject of some of the government’s allegations against him. Without getting into the arcane legal maneuvering on this issue the idea was to cut across the government’s pretty solid case against him being the leaker of information and to have the now scheduled for June trial be focused on the substantive question of whether his actions constituted “material aid to terrorism” and “aiding the enemy” which could subject Private Manning to life in prison. We noted then that we needed to stay with Bradley on this and make sure people know that what he admitted to was that he disclosed information about American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and other diplomatic high crimes and misdemeanors and only that. We also noted that he was, and is, frankly, in trouble, big trouble, and needs our support more than ever. Especially in light of the following:

After enduring nearly three years of detention, at times under torturous conditions, on February 28, 2013 Bradley Manning confessed that he had provided WikiLeakswith a trove of military and diplomatic documents that exposed U.S. imperialist schemes and wartime atrocities. Private Manning’s guilty plea on ten of 22 counts against him could land him in prison for 20 years. A day after Bradley confessed, military prosecutors announced plans to try him on the remaining counts, including “aiding the enemy” and violating the Espionage Act. Trial is expected to begin in early June, now scheduled for June 3^rd.

In exposing the secrecy and lies with which the American government cover their depredations, Bradley Manning performed a great service to workers and oppressed around the world. All who oppose the imperialist barbarity and machinations revealed in the material he provided must join in demanding his immediate freedom. Also crucially important is the defense of Julian Assange against the vendetta by the U.S., Britain and their cohorts, who are attempting to railroad him to prison by one means or another for his role in running WikiLeaks.

In a 35-page statement he read to the military court after entering his plea (written summary available at theBradley Manning Support Network and an audio transcript as well), Manning told of his journey from nearly being rejected in basic training to becoming an army intelligence analyst. In that capacity he came across mountains of evidence of U.S. duplicity and war crimes. The materials he provided to WikiLeaks included military logs documenting 120,000 civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan and a formal military policy of covering up torture, rape and murder. A quarter-million diplomatic cables address all manner of lethal operations within U.S. client states, from the“drug war” in Mexico to drone strikes in Yemen. He also released files containing assessments of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. These documents show that the government continued to hold many who, Manning stated, were believed or known to be innocent, as well as “low level foot soldiers that did not have useful intelligence.”

The Pentagon and the Obama Administration declared war against WikiLeaks following the release of a video, now entitled Collateral Murder and widely available, conveyed by Manning, of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter airstrike in Iraq that killed at least 12 people, including two Reuters journalists. American forces are then shown firing on a van that pulled up to help the victims. Manning said he was most alarmed by the“bloodlust they appeared to have.” He described how instead of calling for medical attention for a seriously wounded individual trying to crawl to safety, an aerial crew team member “asks for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he can have a reason to engage.”

By January 2010, Manning said, he“began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year” and decided to make public many of the documents he had backed up as part of his work as an analyst. Manning first offered the materials to the Washington Post and the New York Times. Not getting anywhere with these pillars of the press establishment, the latter apparently not considering war crimes of its government, as opposed to all manner of foreign state activities, news fit to print in February 2010 he made his first submission to WikiLeaks. He attached a note advising that“this is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare. Have a good day.”

The charge of “aiding the enemy”—i.e., Al Qaeda—is especially ominous. This used to mean things like military sabotage and handing over information on troop movements to a battlefield enemy. In Manning’s case, the prosecution claims that the very act of publicizing U.S. military and diplomatic activities, some of which took place years before, amounted to “indirect” communication with Al Qaeda. Manning told the court that he believed that public access to the information “could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.” He hoped that this “might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the affected environment every day.” But by the lights of the imperialists’ war on terror, any exposure of their depredations can be construed as support to the“terrorist”enemy, whoever that might be.

The Pentagon intends to call no fewer than 141 witnesses in its show trial, including four people to testify anonymously. One of them, designated as “John Doe,” is believed to be a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. “Doe” is alleged to have grabbed three disks from bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound on which was stored four files’ worth of the WikiLeaks material provided by Manning.

Nor do charges under the Espionage Act have to have anything to do with actual spying. The law was one of an array of measures adopted to criminalize antiwar activity after U.S. imperialism’s entry into the First World War. It mandated imprisonment for any act deemed to interfere with the recruitment of troops. Among its first and most prominent victims was Socialist Party spokesman Eugene V. Debs, who was jailed for a June 1918 speech at a workers’ rally in Canton, Ohio, where he denounced the war as capitalist slaughter and paid tribute to the leaders of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Dozens of Industrial Workers of the World organizers were also thrown into prison.

In the early 1970s, the Nixon government tried, unsuccessfully, to use this law to go after Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times shed light on the history of U.S. imperialism’s losing war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants. Obama has happily picked up Nixon’s mantle. Manning’s prosecution will be the sixth time the Obama administration has used the Espionage Act against the source of an unauthorized leak of classified information—more than the combined total under all prior administrations since the law’s enactment in 1917.
*******
The Private Bradley Manning case is headed toward an early summer trial. The news on his case over the past several months has centered on the many pre-trial motion hearings including defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial. Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now well over 1000 days. That dismissal motion was ruled on by Military Judge Lind. On February 26, 2013 she denied the defense’s motion for dismissal, the last serious chance for Bradley Manning to go free before the scheduled June trial. She ruled furthermore that the various delays by the government were inherent in the nature of this case and that the military authorities, except in one short instance, had been diligent in their efforts to move the proceedings along. For those of us with military experience this is a classic, if perverse, case of that old army slogan-“Hurry up, and wait.” This is definitely tough news for Private Manning although perhaps a good appeal point in some future civilian court review.

The defense had contended that the charges should be dismissed because the military by its own statutes (to speak nothing of that funny old constitutional right to a speedy trial guarantee that our plebeian forbears fought tooth and nail for against the bloody British and later made damn sure was included in the Amendments when the founding fathers“forgot” to include it in the main document) should have arraigned Private Manning within 120 days after his arrest. They hemmed and hawed for almost 600 days before deciding on the charges and a court martial. Nobody in the convening authority, as required by those same statutes, pushed the prosecution forward in a timely manner. In fact the court-martial convening authority, in the person of one Colonel Coffman, seemed to have seen his role as mere “yes man” to each of the government’s eight requests for delays without explanation. Apparently the Colonel saw his role as a mere clearing agent for whatever excuse the government gave, mainly endless addition time for clearing various classified documents a process that need not have held up the proceedings. The defense made timely objection to each governmental request to no avail.

Testimony from military authorities at pre-trial hearings in November 2012 about the reasons for the lack of action ranged from the lame to the absurd (mainly negative responses to knowledge about why some additional delays were necessary. One “reason” sticks out as a reason for excusable delay -some officer needed to get his son to a swimming meet and was thus “unavailable” for a couple of days. I didn’t make this up. I don’t have that sense of the absurd. Jesus, a man was rotting in Obama’s jails and they let him rot because of some damn swim meet). The prosecution, obviously, argued that the government has moved might and main to move the case along and had merely waited until all leaked materials had been determined before proceeding. The judge saw it the government’s way and ruled according as noted above.
*******
The defense had also pursued a motion for a dismissal of the major charges (espionage/ indirect material aid to terrorists) on the basis of the minimal effect of any leaks on national security issues as against Private Manning’s claim that such knowledge was important to the public square (freedom of information issues important for us as well in order to know about what the hell the government is doing either in front of us, or behind our backs). Last summer (2012) witnesses from an alphabet soup list of government agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Military Intelligence, etc., etc.) testified that while the information leaked shouldn’t have been leaked that the effect on national security was de minimus. The Secretary of Defense at the time, Leon Panetta, also made a public statement to that effect. The prosecution argued, successfully at the time, that the mere fact of the leak of classified information caused irreparable harm to national security issues and Private Manning’s intent, even if noble, was not at issue.

The recent thrust of the motion to dismiss has centered on the defense’s contention that Private Manning consciously and carefully screened any material in his possession to avoid any conflict with national security and that most of the released material had been over-classified (received higher security level than necessary). Much of the materials leaked, as per those parts published widely in the aftermath of the disclosures by the New York Times and other major outlets, concerned reports of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and diplomatic interchanges that reflected poorly on that profession. The Obama government has argued again that the mere fact of leaking was all that mattered. That motion has also not been fully ruled on and is now the subject of prosecution counter- motions and has been a cause for further trial delay.
********
A defense motion for dismissal based on serious allegations of torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of command (a three-star Army general, not the normal concern of someone so far up the chain in the matter of discipline for enlisted personal) while Private Manning was first detained in Kuwait and later at the Quantico Marine brig for about a year ending in April 2011 has now been ruled on. In late November and early December Private Manning himself, as well as others including senior military mental health workers, took the stand to detail those abuses over several days. Most important to the defense was the testimony by qualified military mental health professionals citing the constant willful failure of those who held Private Manning in close confinement to listen to, or act, on their recommendations during those periods

Judge Lind, the military judge who has heard all the pre-trial arguments in the case thus far, has essentially ruled unfavorably on that motion to dismiss given the potential life sentence Private Manning faces. As she announced at an early January pre-trial hearing the military acted illegally in some of its actions. While every Bradley Manning supporter should be heartened by the fact that the military judge ruled that he was subject to illegal behavior by the military during his pre-trial confinement her remedy, a 112 days reduction in any future sentence, is a mere slap on the wrist to the military authorities. No dismissal or, alternatively, no appropriate reduction (the asked for ten to one ratio for all his first year or so of illegal close confinement which would take years off any potential sentence) given the seriousness of the illegal behavior as the defense tirelessly argued for. And the result is a heavy-handed deterrent to any future military whistleblowers, who already are under enormous pressures to remain silent as a matter of course while in uniform, and others who seek to put the hard facts of future American military atrocities before the public.
*******
An important statement in November 2012 was issued by three Nobel Peace Laureates (including Bishop Tutu from South Africa) calling on their fellow laureate, United States President Barack Obama, to free Private Manning from his jails. (Available on the Support Bradley Manning Network website.)
************
On February 23, 2013, the 1000th day of Private Bradley Manning’s pre-trial confinement, an international day of solidarity was observed with over seventy stand-outs and other demonstration held in America and internationally. Bradley Manning and his courageous stand have not been forgotten. Go to the Bradley Manning Support Network for more details about the events of that day. Another international day of solidarity is scheduled for June 1, 2013 at Fort Meade, Maryland and elsewhere just before the scheduled start of his trial on June 3rd. Check the support network for updates on that event as well.
********
6 Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-blower Private Bradley Manning

*Urgent: The government has announced, in the wake of Bradley Manning’s admission of his part in the Wikileaks expose in open court on February 28th, its intention to continue to prosecute him for the major charges of “aiding the enemy” (Espionage Act) and “material aid to terrorism.” Everyone should contact the presiding officer of the court –martial process, General Linnington, at 1-202-685-2807 and tell him to drop those charges. Once Maj. Gen. Linnington’s voicemail box is full – you can also leave a message at the DOD: (703) 571-3343– press “5″ to leave a comment.*If this mailbox is also full, leave the Department of Defense a written message. Do it today.

*Urgent: The military authorities at Fort Meade, the site of Bradley Manning’s impending June 3^rd court-martial are attempting to limit media coverage of the trial.Go to the Bradley Manning Support Network http://www.bradleymanning.org/and sign the petition to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hageldemanding that he ensure journalists can record Bradley Manning’s court martial proceedings! When you sign the petition the network e-mail system will send a message on your behalf to the office of Secretary of Defense.

*Come to our stand-out in support of Private Bradley Manning in Central Square, Cambridge, Ma (corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street near MBTA Redline station) every Wednesday between 5-6 PM. For other locations in Greater Boston, nationally, and internationally check the Bradley Manning Support Network -http://www.bradleymanning.org/ and for details of the current status of the case and future event updates as well. Also plan to come to Fort Meade outside of Washington, D.C. on June 1^st for an international day of solidarity with Bradley before his scheduled June 3^rd trial.If you can’t make it to Fort Meade plan a solidarity event locally in support of this brave whistle-blower.

*Contribute to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund- as the trial date approaches funds are urgently needed! The government has unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Bradley. And the Obama government is fully using them. We have a fine defense civilian lawyer, David Coombs, many supporters throughout America and the world working hard for Bradley’s freedom, and the truth on our side. Still the hard reality of the American legal system, civilian or military, is that an adequate defense cost serious money. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Sign the online petition at the Bradley Manning Support Network (for link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ )to the Secretary of the Army to free Bradley Manning-1000 plus days is enough! The Secretary of the Army stands in the direct chain of command up to the President and can release Private Manning from pre-trial confinement and drop the charges against him at his discretion. For basically any reason that he wishes to-let us say 1000 plus days is enough. Join the over 25,000 supporters in the United States and throughout the world clamoring for Bradley’s well-deserved freedom.

*Call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) the White House to demand President Obama pardon Bradley Manning- The presidential power to pardon is granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution:

“The President…shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in case of impeachment.”

In federal cases, and military cases are federal cases, the President of the United States can, under authority granted by the U.S. Constitution as stated above, pardon the guilty and the innocent, the convicted and those awaiting trial- former President Nixon and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for example among others, received such pardons for their heinous crimes- Now that Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to some lesser charges and is subject to further prison time (up to 20 years) this pardon campaign is more necessary than ever. Free Bradley Manning! Free the whistleblower!

Serge Eisenstein’s OCTOBER 1917

DVD REVIEW

OCTOBER 1917, SERGE EISENSTEIN, 1927

I have reviewed Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s definitive and extensive three volume work The History of the Russian Revolution elsewhere in this space. Trotsky’s work gives a grand literary expression to the same subject matter as that of the film under review. I noted in Trotsky’s case that it is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. That same standard is also applicable to the overall value of the film director Eisenstein’s work to which he was commissioned in order to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1927. Although Eisenstein has taken the usual cinematic license in presenting his spic that one has come to expect from that medium and furthermore was working in the period of the Stalinist consolidation of political power it is no the worst political documentary produced in that era, not by a long shot.

Eisenstein was the master of montage, stage direction and reenactment of historical scenes. That skill does not fail him here. In scenes such as Lenin’s arrival at Finland Station from exile in April 1917, the brutal response of the Provisional Government during the “July Days’, the Petrograd proletariat’s response to the counter-revolutionary attempt by General Kornilov and the events surrounding the storming of the Winter Palace and the sitting of the Soviets that led to the seizure of power Eisenstein uses every trick of the cinematic trade. It shows in the faces of the actors used to portray the various participants. One may criticize this work as being too didactic in its portrayal of the ‘good’and ‘bad’ guys but my friends that is what this film is all about. It is a propaganda film made in the 1920’s and reflects the state of the art and the state of working class politics. The hoary-handed Petrograd worker, the star-struck Siberian peasant and the steely-eyed Kronstadt sailor were not society’s‘beautiful’ people. And that is exactly the point. The intent of the revolution was to turn that world upside down with the forces that the Bolsheviks had to work with, warts and all.

I have endlessly pointed out that the October Revolution was the definitive political event of the 20^thcentury. The resulting change in the balance of world power with the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s is beginning to look like a definitive political event for the 21^st century. In any I have urged those interested in the fight for socialism read, yes read about the Russian Revolution in order to take some lessons from that experience. Trotsky’s history is obviously a good place to start for a pro-Bolshevik overview. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s History of the Russian Revolutionoffers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s Notes on the Russian Revolution. For a more journalistic account John Reed’s classic Ten Days That Shook the World is invaluable. If, however, you need a quick overview and does so cautiously Serge Eisenstein’s masterpiece is not a bad place to start.

***WHEN TO BE YOUNG WAS VERY HEAVEN -THE SIXTIES: YEARS OF HOPE-DAYS OF RAGE

BOOK REVIEW

THE SIXTIES: YEARS OF HOPE-DAYS OF RAGE, TODD GITLIN, BANTAM BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1987

Over the last several month this writer has alluded several times to the 1960’s movements for social change–the defense of the Cuban Revolution, the fight for nuclear disarmament, the centrally important black civil rights fight, the struggle against the Vietnam War and the emerging struggles for women’s and gay rights. And ultimately, for a few (too few) of us, the necessary struggle to change the social organization of American society-the fight for socialism. In short, all the signposts for that part of a political generation, my generation, which in shorthand I will call the Generation of ’68. Let us be clear, nostalgia and the ravages of time on the memory on the part of this writer aside, this was a short but intense period that he believes requires serious study. Militant leftists today face many, if not all, of the social problems that confronted the generation of ’68. Thus, reading the book under review written by a literate participant in many of those struggles, although then as today a political opponent of mine, can help today’s militant leftists learn the lessons of that experience.

While it is entirely possible for today’s militant leftist youth to start fresh and ignore what for all of them is at best a mythical experience- that would be short-sighted. I agree, due to the lack of a critical mass of militant leftists who could have assimilated and transmitted those experiences, that a militant movement today could get along without knowing anything about the 1960’s. However, at some point the issues, the conflicts, the struggle for a victorious strategy to fight the monster (otherwise known as American imperialism) will be replayed. Believe me it is never fruitless to learn something from the past.

Professor Gitlin has written in the currently reviewed volume what is probably the definitive general survey of the central events that roiled American (and eventually, much of Western society) in the 1960’s. That said, we are not talking about the working class 1960’s, we are not talking about the 1960’s of the mainly middle class parents of the generation of ’68. We are most definitely not talking about the Vietnamese people’s 1960’s. In fact we are not talking about an experience that most of the people during that period experienced except as media events or at the margins. What we are talking about is the youth explosions of the 1960’s, their repercussions, effects and legacies. This is the area of Professor Gitlin’s intimate personal experience and therefore is a good place to start.

In the usual case this writer spends his book reviewing time describing and analyzing events that occurred before his time. Things like the American, French and Russian Revolutions. It is therefore with certain amount of pleasant, if not nostalgia, that he can review a book that deals with events that made up not only the author’s but my youth. All the signposts of my youth are described and analyzed there from the ‘beats’ through Cuba to the civil rights movement and eventually through the struggle against the Vietnam War. That said, the author and this reviewer have very different interpretations of the meaning of the events at the time and the inevitable lessons to be drawn from then.

Professor Gitlin takes us through the necessary influences which formed the basis for the 1960’s revolt. It is always problematic whether the general cultural climate or particular prior events had much influence on what followed later. It is easier to see both influences in hindsight and to over-analyze their importance. Nevertheless he takes us through the trials and tribulations of the ‘beats’, the rise and mainstream commercialization of the original rock and roll movement and the initial youth culture rebellion through such figures as James Dean, Marlon Brando, the work of Tennessee’s Williams and other cultural figures. It strikes me that such figures rather than, let us say, Che Guevara, acted as a catalyst to more away from the mainstream society and not change it. The rise of the counterculture movement bears witness to that effect. It is easy enough to challenge the orthodoxy of the 1950’s it is another to have seen a way out. None of these phenomena pretended to or sought to do so.

Professor Gitlin gets closer to the core of the influences upon the sixties generation when he discusses the Kennedy Administration, particularly after the Bay of Pigs fiascos. Two issues galvanized youth- the struggle against nuclear war and the struggle for black civil rights. The pretensions of the Kennedy administration to form a liberal society were the legitimate and logical target for the increasing numbers of young who wanted to take the Kennedys at their word- the need to rollup your sleeves and change society. However, the Kennedys did not expect that change to start with them as the targets. The early movement started with that love/hate relationship with the liberals-it never really got resolved (and still hasn’t today).

The central organizational expression of the student/youth rebellion and the key to Professor Gitlin’s political perspective then, especially on the campuses, was Students for Democratic Society (SDS). Professor Gitlin was an early president of that organization and therefore can and generally does present the political and organizational ups and downs of SDS accurately and with a certain amount of insight. A couple of caveats though- he is very wedded to the notion that early SDS and its ‘old politicos’ network was something of Golden Age tarnished by the later craziness of Progressive Labor and Weatherman interventions that brought about the demise of the organization in 1969. In short, he takes a fundamentally social democratic side on the reformist vs. revolutionary question. Professor Gitlin also suffers from a belief that the student movement by itself could have then led the fight for social change as some kind of ‘new class’ to lead a new society. If nothing else the history of the last forty years of campus life has cruelly placed that theory in the shade. Nevertheless read this book and learn why we would both agree that in the 1960’s ‘to be young was very heaven’.

***THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

THE COMING OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, GEORGES LEFEBVRE, VINTAGE BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1947

In my study of revolutions I have always been interested in two basic questions- what were the ideas swirling around prior to the revolution that compelled people to see the need for revolution and the related question of how those ideas played out in the struggle for power. The study of the French Revolution most clearly presents those two phenomena in all their manifestations. Professor Lefebvre was a well-known and in his time a pre-eminent bourgeois historian of the French Revolution. I have reviewed his major general work on the French revolution elsewhere. Here, in this shorter work, he presents the events of 1789 as they unfolded and an analysis of what they meant in the period immediately before the revolution when all hell was breaking loose in French society.

If one can talk legitimately about sociology of revolutions then Professor LeFebvre has dramatically vindicated such sociology by presenting all of the factors that goes toward such a study in the early period of the French revolutionary experience. Clearly the Old Regime, represented in the person of King Louis XI, was no longer capable of ruling in the old way and the ‘people’ were no longer satisfied, for a myriad of reasons, with being governed under the premise of the divine right of kings. The struggle to turn from subjects of a monarch to citizens of a republic, a question of capital historic importance in human experience, finds its most dramatic expression this revolution. Furthermore, vast segments of society from the liberal nobility and clergy to the nascent bourgeoisie to the working classes (the so-called sans culottes and other plebian urban elements) to the various layers of the peasantry each in their turn were willing to unite around that premise. As clearly, once each class (or part of a class) gained its ends it turned against further extension of the revolution and in the case of the nobility and clergy very shortly turned toward counterrevolution. Professor LeFebvre documents this trend very well, especially in the case of the peasantry which he had special knowledge of and charted throughout his academic career.

This writer always tries to analyze and review each book on revolutionary experiences he considers on the basis of what lessons militant leftists can learn from the study of the old historical experiences. With that task in mind I was once again reminded by reading this book that the notion of the Popular Front as a political strategy has a lot longer history than in the France of the 1920's and 1930's when it was first formally introduced through by the French Socialist Party in an electoral alliance with the Left Radical bourgeois party. What do I mean by Popular Front? The theory of the popular front has been presented by forces such as the Socialist parties and later the Communist parties as a step in the direction of revolution. The premise of the popular front revolves around a belief that various classes can come together around a minimum social program that will somehow make the plight of the oppressed classes involved less oppressive. Generally, in such political blocs the oppressed classes do the donkey work and the other classes reap whatever benefits accrue from the taking of power. This, moreover, is basically a concept of a parliamentary path to socialism.

The long sordid history of this political device as an attempted sop by political leaderships to the working masses on one hand and a betrayal of their class interests on the other are still with us today. Even in the United States this strategy is used by what passes for the left, on its own hook mind you, when it blocs with the left-wing of the capitalist Democratic Party. Under the best of circumstances a popular front weakens and undermines the independence of the working classes. However, also remember that the Popular Front, as France and Spain in the 1930's, Chile in the 1970's and many other example show, can lead to bloody repression and destruction of the working masses for a long time. In modern times militant leftists say no to popular front ideology.

Well, that said, what does all this have to do with the French Revolution. The French Revolution of 1789 represents in almost pure form the concept of the popular front. As mentioned above several different classes were ready to take down the absolute monarchy and furthermore were generally ready to subordinate, at least for a time, their own interests to do this. This begs the question of what the attitude of militants should be toward that phenomenon in 1789. Today we say no to the popular front concept but then we would have supported such a concept with both hands. Why? At that time the nature of French society, the tasks that needed to be accomplished around the creation of a nation-state and the immaturity of the working classes both socially and politically precluded a socialist solution to the problems of the day. While our sympathies historically go to the sans culottes who then and later were the vanguard that pushed the revolution to the left and we honor Robespierre and after him Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals at the beginning militants then could have politically supported the popular front against the absolute monarchy. Later, of course, under Robespierre we would have united with him and the left elements of the bourgeoisie but we would nevertheless still have fought under the sign of the popular front. Popular Front, 1789- Yes. Today- No. Read on.

***Growing Up Absurd In The1950s- The Time Of The Great 45 RPM Clip

"Hey Jimmy have you heard the latest Sonny Knight 45, Confidential, it’s all slow, smooth, and girl close hold-able, and maybe even kissable,” yelled Sammy Rizzo across the seventh period study hall classroom. “ Christ, Sammy Whammy, where do you come up with those words, 'close hold-able,’ what does that mean, you’re poking her,” yelled Jimmy, Jimmy Cullen, back at his old friend. Just then Miss Wilmot, that old bitch thought Sammy, came into the room signaling lock-down, prison lock-down and that there would be no more talking, no more talking, period, except of course for the flurry, the massive flurry of notes, between boys and girls, girls and girls, boys and their confederates, boy or girl. Confederates like Sammy Rizzo and Jimmy Cullen, who from appearances would seem like an unlikely pair, except they had been friends, well, since way back in old Clintonville Elementary School days.

Jimmy, long, long and slender, wiry, sneaky wiry if you decided that he was an easy target in a hard fistfight, although all bets were off if you decided on switchblades, knives that every boy, every smart boy, carried, carried concealed on his person somewhere, and let’s just leave it at that. Carrying just in case he caught trouble at school in some dark back hall, or more likely, found himself on some foreign corner, some corner boy corner without his boys, and some king hell corner boy king decided he didn’t like your looks, or just didn’t like the idea of you on his corner. And Jimmy also had a handsome face set off by deep-blue eyes, a cross between Paul Newman movie star glamour eyes and the steel-blue eyes of "Stacks McGee," a serial killer now waiting to fry up in the death row of the state pen, if the appeals process ever ended. And long eyelashes, girl-driving crazy long eye lashes, to go with those eyes. Yah, Jimmy would never, probably until he was old and grey and maybe not even then, lack for female company, if that is what he wanted.

And Sammy, "Sammy Whammy," Rizzo, the Whammy part given a few years back in junior high school when the rhyming simon craze swept through Clintonville Junior High School and all the girls spent all their time making up names, double names, for every boy, and some boys did it too although not Jimmy and Sammy. So the Whammy part stuck to Sammy, like it or not, which he did. Sammy, some Sancho Panza sad-sack dumpling, stocky, hell no, kind of fat, with a non-descript face, except that it seemed to always need a shave even at eight in the morning, and no description eyes. Except that Sammy never lacked for girls, at least one date girls, or maybe two. See Sammy was the max daddy be-bop 45 record king hell king of the town of Clintonville, maybe of all Dewar County if someone decided to count.

So Sammy could use that old gag on the girls, on the be-bop rock and roll record-starved girls, about coming up to see his etchings after a date, except he actually had the records. Had them so it seemed as soon as they came off the presses. So he could work his magic, let’s say, for example, on some Born Too Late-crazed girl, some girl who liked an older guy, a guy, who had no time for, well, jail bait, and be the soul of compassion about her woes while the 45 played in the background. See it worked for that one date, maybe two, until she got tired of the song, or found a new boyfriend or that older guy said the hell with it and took his chances.

But see Sammy did not have those hundreds, seemingly hundreds, of 45s just by accident, or just by his parents having deep pockets to allow him to buy whatever he wanted right off the presses. No way. Sammy Whammy was from hunger. What Sammy was also master of, king hell king master of, was the clip. The clip from Bugsy’s Big Tent Record Shop up in Clintonville Center (in the heart of downtown Clintonville, according to Bugsy’s ads on the local 24/7/365 rock and roll radio station, WJDA, where his ads ran about every six seconds, or so it seemed, alternating with Benny’s Car Hop, a drive-in restaurant that also was owned by Bugsy).

Here is how it worked, and this is where friend Jimmy came in (and also why Jimmy didn’t care if he had three, or three hundred, records as background for one of his dates, his girl crazy eyelashes dates. He could just cop one from Sammy). Let’s say they wanted Jimmy Jones’ Handy Man (a favorite of Sammy’s, he had two copies of it because the first one got worn out from working his gag about his being a handy man- and Christ, everybody knew about it because it got all around school, all around Monday morning girls’ lav talk school to be exact, the girls went for it, strictly one date went for it). Jimmy and Sammy would make the couple of mile trek to Bugsy’s, usually on foot since car times were few and far between in the Cullen and Rizzo households, especially for no work, no want to work, clip artist kids. Most of the time Bugsy’s daughter, Cindy, would be working out front helping customers, showing people to the record booths to play the latest, or ring up the sales.

And here was the beauty of it, Cindy, a fellow classmate of theirs, was nothing but head over heels crazy for Jimmy, or maybe it was those long eyelashes and would get a little confused, or something, when Jimmy stepped up and asked her a question about a record. Maybe a weepy one like Mark Dinning’s Teen Angel, about a dizzy teenage dame who, after being led to safety from a car stranded on a railroad by her boyfriend, got the bright idea of tempting the fates and going back for the boy’s high school ring. She was last seen in heaven, or somewhere like that. Just then Sammy was looking for Ricky Nelson’s A Teenager's Romance because his upcoming date was with a girl all hung up of that twerp. So while Jimmy and Cindy were talking Sammy went to the record bin, grabbed the 45, and slipped it under his shirt. Easy, almost like taking candy from a baby. No just like it.

But being the king of the 45 record night ain’t easy, or maybe better, is filled with all kind of funny things. One time Jimmy and Sammy were in Bugsy’s for the clip and they were going through their normal paces. Jimmy started talking animatedly to Cindy about Johnny Preston’s Cradle of Love, and really laying it on in a way that made Cindy think he was making a play for her, a big play. Now Sammy was in looking for Ray Peterson’s Corrina, Corrina for a hot date. He grabbed the 45 okay but as he signaled to Jimmy that the deal was done and went to leave the store Cindy called him over and directed him to follow her to a certain record bin. Jimmy, meanwhile, waited outside. At the bin she put a record under his shirt and said, “That’s for Jimmy.” Sammy rushed out the store, called to Jimmy to move quickly, and when they got around the corner Sammy pulled out the Cindy picked record. Yah, a pristine Cradle of Love. She had it bad for Jimmy, bad indeed.

Richie Havens RIP-2013

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Left Links

About Me