So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star- Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

As a member in good standing of the generation of ‘68 I have spent much cyber-ink talking about this and that “seeking a newer world” experiment we tried, with the emphasis on “tried”, back in the day, back in the 1960s day under the sign of the 18^th century English poet William Wordworth’s response to the early stirrings of the French Revolution- “to be young was very heaven.”  And while, in the end, we were defeated by the monsters of the prevailing mores of American society we tried to rock the boat. And politics aside nowhere was this culturally more exploited by us that in our music, our second-wave rock music (Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Buddy and Jerry Lee being the first wave back in the 1950s).

Some argued, argued strenuously in the heat of 1960s chaos that “music was the revolution.”  Somehow, they argued, we would either withdraw from mainstream society and search for the gates of Eden in our own way, maybe in some Utah of our minds, or the music would drive all good-thinking youth tribesmen (tribe’s people?) to overwhelm that dangerous mainstream and bring forth that “newer world” we were so desperately seeking. Well, no, no it wasn’t, music wasn’t the revolution, but who could blame anybody at the time for thinking that lofty thought.  Nowhere was this sentiment, or parts of it, more pronounced that in the garages and family rooms of America, of suburban America when guys, and it was mainly guys then, tried to form their own rock and roll bands, especially in the wake of the “British invasion (the Beatles and The Stones, mainly)”. Formed rock and roll bands to become famous, and if not famous as was the fate of most bands that were formed then, to act as a magnet for, what else, girls.

And funny to think it could have just as easily been guys from Ames, Iowa or Winnemucca, Nevada trying for the brass ring amid the upheavals all around including the down-pressing pressing down hard on us war in Vietnam, the black liberation struggle south then north, the budding women’s and gay struggles, and our very publicly declared war, our own civil war, against parental authority. That sentiment moreover even seeped down in the crevices of society, down among my people, the working poor, as guys, corner boy guys with a little musical talent and big, big dreams saw that as a way to avoid the factory life signed, sealed and tattooed on their brains.       

Naturally, Ames, Winnemucca or Hullsville, my growing up hometown, as always with garage, family room and back of the school gym bands, there were struggles around who was, and who was not, going to be “on the bus”, going to be in the band. And what level of commitment those members were willing to pursue to make it to the “bigs.” Other issues that came up as well were how much hard time in lonely low-down joints were the band members willing to do to “pay their dues” and the big question in the break-out sixties about whether to be a cover band or concentrate, like the Beatles and the Stones, on writing their own music and not depend of Tin Pan Alley stuff, drivel really when the deal went down.    

Of course no 1960s coming-of-age reminiscence could avoid the generational conflicts as back-drop to muddy the cultural waters that a lot of us faced. You know-“what are you going to do with your life after this momentary “live free” obsession, son or daughter”-what do you mean you are dropping out of school after I have just paid X tuition”- what are you going to do about that damn draft notice”-what do you mean you’re going to just live with him, or her-well you get the drift. And as well the changing boy-girl thing in the post-pill world, the beginning of women striking out on their own guys be damned, drugs, more drugs, and of course more rock and roll. That is what it was like for a minute back then through as seen through the eyes of those who were pioneers, or just confused and “winging it”  And sometimes making great, if unheralded, music as well. Yah, if you listen to some of that stuff then you might know what I meant when I said “to be young was very heaven.”     

Recently I reviewed one of those 1960s memory mist film sagas, Not Fade Away, and I mentioned my nostalgic response to the film to my old friend, Peter Paul Markin, from up the road in North Adamsville, whom I met one summer night in 1965 I think, but it was summer and night for sure. The “for sure” part is due to the fact that I met him at the Surf Ballroom in my hometown while we were at a Friday night dance that featured the Rockin’ Ramrods, a local group that did covers of many 1960s rock groups like the Stones, the Kingsmen, and others. And that band was a band very much like the band in Not Fade Away.

Well, those remarks I made to Peter Paul brought to his mind the fate of Billy Bradley, a guy from his growing up neighborhood in the Adamsville housing projects, a guy who had plenty of ability and talent to put together a rock band and maybe make the big time. He even started to pronounce himself, trade puff himself up as the “President of Rock ‘n’ Roll” for a time. Yeah, as Peter Paul also said maybe Billy could have broken out, him and his corner boys who travelled the small-time band circuit with him, if he could have broken from that occasional armed robbery he pulled to get funds for his various music projects. A career choice that eventually led him to some serious time in the state pen, and later a fate face down in some southern hick town after trying to rob a White Hen variety store. Jesus. So, no, not everybody, make it out, made it out into the rock and roll night, or lived to tell about it. Let Peter Paul tell you one episode of his bouts with one Billy Bradley out in the be-bop 1950s night:                        

I hate Elvis, I love Elvis,” I can still hear the echo of my old “the projects” boy, William James Bradley, also known as Billie, Billie from the hills, a mad demon of a kid and my best friend down in the elementary school. We grew apart after a while, and I will tell you why in a minute, but for a long time, a long kid time long, Billie, Billie of a hundred dreams, Billie of fifty (at least) screw-ups made me laugh and made my day when things were tough, like they almost always were, at my beat down broke down family house.

You know fifty some years later Billie was right. We hated Elvis, especially at that time when all the girls, the young girls got weak-kneed over him and he made the older girls (and women, some mothers even) sweat and left no room for ordinary mortal boys, “the projects boys” most of all, on their “dream” card. And most especially, hard as we tried, for brown-haired, tow-headed, blue-eyed ten, eleven and twelve year old boys who didn’t know how to dance, or sneer. We both got pissed off at my brother because, he looked very much like Elvis and although he had no manners, and no time for girls, they were all following him. Christ there really is no justice in this wicked old world.

And we loved Elvis for giving us, at least as far as we knew then, our own music, our own "jump' and our own jail-break from the tired old stuff we heard on the radio and television but did not ‘”speak” to us. And for the songs that he left behind. Not the goofy, Tin Pan Alley or somewhere like that, inspired “happy” music that went along with his mostly maligned, and rightly so, films but the stuff from the Sun Records days, the stuff from when he was from hunger. That, as we also from hunger, was like a siren call to break-out and then we caught his act on television and that was that. I probably walk “funny”, knees and hips out of whack, today from trying way back then to pour a third-rate imitation of his moves into my body to impress the girls.

But enough of Elvis’ place in the pre-teen and teen rock pantheon this is after all about Billie, and Elvis’ twisted spell on the poor boy. Now you know Billie, or you should, from another story, a story about Bo Diddley and how Billie wanted to, as a change of pace break from the Elvis rut create his own “style.” Well, in hard, hard post-World War II Northern white "the projects" racial animosity poor unknowing Billie got blasted away by one of the older, more knowing boys about wanted to emulate a n----r for his troubles.

That sent Billie, Billie from the hills, back to Elvis pronto. See, Billie was desperate to impress the girls way before I was aware of them, or their charms. Half, on some days, three-quarters of our conversations (I won’t say monologues because I did get a word in edgewise every once in a while when Billie got on one of his rants) revolved around doing this or that, something legal something not, to impress the girls. And that is where the “hate” part mentioned above comes in. Billie believed, and he might still believe it today if he was alive, that if only he could approximate Elvis’s looks, look, stance, and substance that all the girls would be flocking to him.

Needless to say, such an endeavor required, requires money, dough, kale, cash, moola whatever you want to call it. And what twelve year old project boys (that’s the age time of this story, about late 1957, early 1958) didn’t have, and didn’t have in abundance was any of that do-re-mi. And no way to get it from missing parents, messed up parents, or just flat out poor parents. Billie’s and mine were the later, poor as church mice. No that‘s not right because church mice (in the way that I am using it, and as we used it back then to signify the respectable poor who “touted” their Catholic pious poorness as a badge of honor in this weasely old world) would not do, would not think about, would not even breathe the same air of what we were about to embark on. A life of crime, kid stuff crime but I'll leave that to the readers judgment.

See, on one of Billie’s rants he got the idea in his head, and, maybe, it got planted there by something that he read about Elvis (Christ, he read more about that guy that he did about anybody else once he became an acolyte), that if he had a bunch of rings on all his fingers the girls would give him a tumble (a tumble in those days being a hard kiss on the lips for about twelve seconds or “copping” a little feel, and if I have to explain that last in more detail you had better just move on). But see, also Billie’s idea is that if he has all those rings, especially for a projects boy then it will make his story that has set to tell easier. And that story is none other than he wrote to Elvis (possible) and spoke man to man about his situation (improbable) and Elvis, Elvis the king, Elvis from nowhere Mississippi like we were from the nowhere projects, Elvis bleeding heart, had sent him these rings to give him a start in life (outrageously impossible.) Christ, I don’t believe old Billie came up with that story even now when I am a million years world-weary.

But first you need the rings and as the late honorable bank robber, Willie Sutton, said about robbing banks-that’s where the money is-old Billie, blessed, beatified Billie, figured out, and figured out all by himself, that if you want to be a ring stealer that you better go to the jewelry store because that is where the rings are. The reader, and rightly so, now, might ask where was his best buddy during this time and why was he not offering wise counsel about the pitfalls of crime and the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility. Well, when Billie got off on his rant you just waited to see what played out but the real reason was, hell, maybe I could get a ring for my ring-less fingers and be on my way to impress the girls too. I think they call it, or could call it, aiding and abetting.

But enough of that superficial moralizing. Let’s get to the jewelry store, the best one in the downtown of the working class town we were appendaged to (literally so because it was located on a one road in and out peninsula). We walked a couple of miles to get there, plotting all the way. Bingo the Acme Jewelry Store (or some name like that) jumped up at us. Billie’s was as nervous as a colt and I was not far behind, although on this caper I am just the “stooge”, if that. I’m to wait outside to see if John Law comes by. Okay, Billie, good luck. And strangely enough his luck is good that day, and many days after, although those days after were not ring days. That day though his haul was five rings. Five shaky rings, shaky hands Billie, as we walked, then started running, away from the down town area. When we got close to home we stopped near the beach where we lived to see up close what the rings looked like. Billie yelled, “Damn.” And why did he yell that word. Well, apparently in his terror (his word to me) at getting caught he just grabbed what was at hand. And what were at hand were five women’s rings. Now, how are you going to impress girls, ten, eleven or twelve year old girls, even if as naïve as us, and maybe more so, that Elvis is you bosom buddy and you are practically his only life-line adviser with five women’s rings? Damn, damn is right.

P.S. It took a few years and some sense getting knocked into me, and a funny trip to the local library where I squirreled up and started reading books to break from the Billie, Billie from the hills habit, and his habits. We drifted away mainly because he was “hot” and I was just getting into being “cool”, or thinking I was. You read above about his fate. Damn, damn is right.

 

 

So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?
-The Byrds

So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time
and learn how to play
And with your hair swung right
And your pants too tight
It's gonna be all right

Then it's time to go downtown
Where the agent man won't let you down
Sell your soul to the company
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware
And in a week or two
If you make the charts
The girls'll tear you apart

The price you paid for your riches and fame
Was it all a strange game?
You're a little insane
The money, the fame, the public acclaim
Don't forget what you are
You're a rock 'n' roll star!

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 5, 1879-1890

06 August 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 5, 1879-1890

Sir Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer, coined the term "Veiled Protectorate." Painting by John Singer Sargent / National Portrait Gallery, London / Wikimedia Commons.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 5: 1879-1890 period -- Britain rules Egypt under 'Veiled Protectorate.'

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / August 6, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "hidden history" of Texas series on The Rag Blog.]

As Selma Botman noted in Egypt from Independence to Revolution, 1919-1952, by 1876 “in essence France and Britain began to control Egypt’s economy,” although Egypt continued to be officially part of Turkey’s Ottoman Empire.

So, not surprisingly, in September 1881, an Egyptian “military officer and Egyptian patriot, Ahmed Urabi, led an anti-government, anti-foreign revolt, directing his protest against both the Turkish pashas, who controlled most civil, military, and social posts...and the Europeans,” according to the same book. And a combined UK and French naval force of gunboats then arrived near Alexandria, Egypt on May 19, 1882, and anchored offshore.

In response, “inflamed popular resentment...exploded in Alexandria on June 11 [1882] in anti-European riots that killed over 2,000 Egyptians and 50 Europeans,” according to Jason Thompson’s History of Egypt. The French government’s naval force then sailed away from Alexandria. But the UK gunboats remained anchored offshore and shelled Alexandria and its residents on July 11, 1882; and, in August 1882, UK troops invaded the Suez Canal Zone and began the UK government’s military occupation of Egypt.

Ahmed Urabi’s troops were defeated on September 13, 1882, by the UK troops, Urabi was exiled to Ceylon/Sri Lanka by the UK government, and the son of Khedive Ismail, Khedive Tewfik (whom the UK government had pressured the Turkish sultan to name in 1879 as Egypt’s local ruler) was allowed to officially govern Egypt until 1892 as a UK puppet, until he was succeeded as the formal Egyptian ruler by Abbas Hilmy II.

But, in actuality, according to The Rough Guide To Egypt, “from 1883 to 1907, Egypt was controlled by the British Consul General, Sir Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer, who coined the term `Veiled Protectorate’ to describe the relationship between the two countries.”

A History of Egypt described in the following way how UK imperialism and Lord Cromer operated their “Veiled Protectorate” in Egypt after it was occupied militarily by UK troops in 1882:

Cromer’s official position in Egypt was...British consul general, yet he wielded power that many kings and sultans might have envied. His authority rested on no formal basis. Legally, Egypt was still a province in the Ottoman Empire... The khedive still governed nominally through his ministers, who exercised control over their ministries. In fact, the khedive could be controlled; he knew he owed his throne to the British, and alongside each of the government ministers was a British "adviser" whose advice carried the force of command.

Cromer referred to the arrangement as the "dummy-Minister-plus-English-adviser" system of government... Ministers soon learned that they would lose their posts if they paid no heed to their advisers. The long-serving prime minister during Cromer’s rule, Mustafa Fahmi, was noted for his subservience to the British. Cromer’s position was further strengthened by the presence of a British military garrison nearly 10,000 strong, while the Royal Navy could appear at Alexandria or Suez at any time, and the police forces in the cities were under European command...

The British record in education was atrocious in Egypt... He imposed tuition fees... The British never spent more than 3 percent of the budget on education. They ignored demands for a national university, fearing it would become a center of nationalism…

As Egypt from Independence to Revolution, 1919-1952 observed, the UK “occupied Egypt for both financial and strategic reasons, gaining a decisive voice in all areas of Egyptian life” and the UK imperialist “occupation” of Egypt “lasted until 1956 in various forms.”

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 3, 1805-1849

21 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 3, 1805-1849

Muhammad Ali Pasha, Ottoman ruler of Egypt. Painting by Auguste Couder, 1841 / Wikimedia Commons.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 3: 1805-1849 period -- The autocratic rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / July 21, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "hidden history" of Texas series on The Rag Blog.]

Nearly two years after Muhammad Ali began ruling the Ottoman Turkish Empire’s Egyptian province, UK troops landed in Alexandria in March, 1807, and attempted to establish a permanent military base in Egypt.

But “when the British sought to extend their control...the result was fiasco” and “many British soldiers were killed” by Muhammad Ali’s troops; and the remaining UK troops in Egypt were compelled to withdraw from Egypt after September 1807, according to Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt.

Then, according to the same book, in 1811 Muhammad Ali ended the remaining influence of the neo-Mamluk military elite in Egyptian society in the following way:

...Muhammad Ali held a celebration in the Citadel [royal palace] on Mar. 1, 1811... He invited all the principal people of Cairo, including nearly 500 Mamluk amirs. Afterward, as the Mamluks were leaving through the Citadel’s descending Interior Road...they found the exit locked... Sharpshooters [of Muhammad Ali’s loyal troops] appeared on the walls and shot them dead. Another thousand were hunted down and killed in Cairo over the next few days...

Egyptian Pasha Muhammad Ali next confiscated “the vast estates” of the slain Mamluks and the 20 percent of all Egyptian agricultural land that was owned by the religious endowments, or waqfs, and revised the Egyptian tax structure, so that “almost all of Egypt’s land came under state ownership” and he “could decree what to plant, then purchase the produce at a low price set by the state and export it for cash,” according to A History of Egypt.

Instead of just subsistence crops being grown on Egyptian agricultural land, more cash crops that earned foreign exchange -- like the cotton that became Egypt’s major export crop in the years after it was introduced in Egypt in 1821 -- were now grown on the state-owned land; and Muhammad Ali used the foreign exchange income to attempt to modernize Egypt’s economy by “building...factories and canals,” according to The Rough Guide To Egypt.

Muhammad Ali’s public works program of constructing 32 canals, 10 dikes, and 41 dams and barrages with conscripted Egyptian workers brought large amounts of new agricultural land into cultivation. In addition, as a result of his public works program of building factories in Egypt that produced textile, sugar, munitions, ships, and other manufactured goods, “Egypt became the leading industrial nation in the eastern Mediterranean” by the late 1830s, according to A History of Egypt.

By also conscripting Egyptian peasants into his military force, Muhammad Ali increased its size to 250,000 men and used his military force to occupy Sudan in the 1820, and “Egypt became the major military power in the eastern Mediterranean, making Muhammad Ali much stronger than his nominal master, the sultan in Istanbul,” according to the same book.

But after “the pasha became impatient with recognizing the sultan as his master” and “decided to move for independence” for Egypt in 1838, “a British force anchored at Alexandria” in 1839 and compelled him to reduce the size of his Egyptian military and no longer seek Egyptian independence from the Ottoman Empire of Turkey (which the UK government then supported), according to A History of Egypt.

Large numbers of Egyptians who were also drafted to work on Muhammad Ali’s various public works projects, however, lost their lives while working on the canal construction projects. As A History of Egypt, recalled:

One of the canals, the Mahmudiya, ran for 72 kilometers between Alexandria and the western branch of the Nile. It was constructed between 1817 and 1820 with...labor of as many as 300,000 conscripted workers (of whom between 12,000 and 100,000 are said to have died, according to widely varying accounts)...

And the same book also reported how large numbers of Egyptians suffered under Muhammad Ali’s undemocratic rule and his “modernization” policies:

Muhammad Ali’s accomplishments came at a heavy price to the Egyptian people. The degree of control that the pasha exerted in Egypt was probably unprecedented since ancient times... Every productive strip of land, every palm tree, every donkey, everything that could represent value was assessed and taxed at the maximum it could bear... The people complained incessantly, but they obeyed, for the pasha’s authority was absolute. A simple horizontal motion of his hand meant execution...

Although an “outbreak of bubonic plague in 1834-35 carried away as much as a third of Cairo’s population” during the years that Muhammad Ali undemocratically ruled people in Egypt, according to A History of Egypt, some improvement in Egypt’s health care system was achieved by the end of this pasha’s rule in 1848 (when he became insane) and his subsequent death in August 1849.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 2, 641-1805

11 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 2, 641-1805

Egyptian Mamluk warriors serving in the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Image from The Lost Treasure Chest.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 2: 641-1805 period -- Egypt under many rulers.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / July 11, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "hidden history" of Texas series on The Rag Blog.]

Egypt became part of the Islamic Arab Empire in 641 when Arab armies replaced Egypt’s Byzantine Empire rulers “thanks in part to aid from the indigenous [Egyptian] population of Coptic Christians,” according to Egypt from Independence to Revolution, 1919-1952 by Selma Botman.

But the indigenous Coptic Christians in Egypt eventually became a religious minority, as Egypt was Arabized and Islamized. And by 834 Egypt was an autonomous state of the Baghdad-based Islamic Arab Empire, which generally permitted it to be ruled by a locally-based elite of Turkish ethnic background.

In 969, however, the religious leaders of a Tunisia-based Shiite Islamic sect, the Fatimids, moved their troops into Egypt from western North Africa, started construction of the new city of Cairo and began ruling Egypt until 1171.

Between 1171 and 1250, Sunni Islamic religious leaders next ruled Egypt. And then, between 1250 and 1517, the Mamluks -- a military dynasty of former soldier-slaves of mostly ethnic Turkish or Caucasian origin -- were the rulers of the autonomous state of Egypt. And it was during the period when the Mamluks controlled Egypt that the bubonic plague spread from Europe to Egypt in 1347; and, by 1349, the plague had caused the death of 33 percent of the people who had lived in Egypt in 1347 and damaged the economic base of the Mamluk regime.

Then, in the 15th century, “another serious blow to the Mamluk economy came...when the Portuguese found the ocean route around Africa, providing Europe with a direct connection to India, the Far East, and the east coast of Africa, disrupting the Mamluks’ lucrative Red Sea trade and diminishing the importance of Egypt as a commercial connection between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea,” according to Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt.

But after the better organized, more disciplined, more numerous, and better-armed troops of Turkey’s Ottoman Dynasty defeated the Mamluk forces in the August 1516 Battle of Marj Dabiq in Syria and marched into Egypt in 1517, Egypt became a subject Arab province of Turkey’s Ottoman Empire for most of the next 400 years.

Yet as The Rough Guide To Egypt observed, “even after the Turkish conquest, the Mamluks remained powerful figures in the administration of what was now a province of the Ottoman Empire” and “the Mamluk army continued to grow with the import of Caucasian slaves.”

According, to A History of Egypt:

One can speak of a neo-Mamluk system that prevailed within Ottoman Egypt... The neo-Mamluks...quickly reinserted themselves into Egypt’s overall military establishment and again became the most powerful force in the land..... The Ottomans basically kept the commanding heights under their supervision, but left many administrative tasks to…religious endowments, or waqfs… About 20 percent of the land was religiously held by the end of the 18th century. The Mamluks…continued to control much of the rest.”

As a province of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt was exploited as a “breadbasket” and a “land tax” source for the Turkish imperial government’s treasury; and “Egypt also provided a valuable base for Ottoman operations in the Red Sea,” according to the same book.

But between July 1798 and September 1801, Napoleon’s French troops temporarily occupied Egypt until UK troops and Ottoman troops jointly recaptured Egypt for Turkey’s Ottoman Empire in 1801. A new local ruler, a Turkish military officer named Muhammad Ali, was then appointed as viceroy/governor/pasha of Egypt by the Turkish government in Istanbul in July, 1805; and the royal dynasty in Egypt which he founded governed Egypt -- usually as puppet rulers for foreign imperialists -- until 1952.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part I, 525 BC-641 AD

02 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part I, 525 BC-641 AD

Cleopatra VII and her son Caesarion at the Temple of Dendera. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 1: 525 BC to 641 AD period -- From the Persian invasion to the Byzantium Empire

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / July 3, 2013

[As literally millions demonstrate in Egypt in an attempt to bring down the Mohammed Morsi government, and as the Egyptian military appears poised to take action against the Morsi regime, we begin Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt." Also see Feldman's "hidden history" of Texas series on The Rag Blog.]

Most people in the United States now realize that most Egyptians want to see their society politically and economically democratized. But most people in the U.S. may not know much about the history of the over 83 million people who currently live in Egypt, beginning in 525 BC when the country was invaded by the army of the Persian Empire, led by Cambyses II, the son of Cyrus II (“Cyrus the Great”).

As The Rough Guide To Egypt observed, “the Persian invasion of 525 BC began…rule by foreigners” in Egypt that essentially lasted until 1952.

Despite a number of unsuccessful revolts by people in Egypt against their Persian rulers during the next two centuries, “Egypt remained under Persian control until 332 BC, when their entire empire succumbed to Alexander [the Great]" of Greece, according to The Rough Guide To Egypt.

And according to Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt, “so detested was the Persian yoke that when Alexander the Great arrived in Egypt, he was welcomed as a savior.” Initially, there was no resistance by people in Egypt to the rule of Alexander and -- following Alexander’s death in 323 BC -- to the rule of the Greek Ptolemaic Dynasty of General Ptolemy Soter I and his descendants between 322 and 30 BC.

But according to A History of Egypt, “the population of Ptolemaic Egypt consisted of a comparatively small number of relatively privileged Greeks superimposed onto the great masses of native Egyptians, most of whom lived around subsistence level but whose back-breaking labor supported Ptolemaic society and government;” and, not surprisingly, “Ptolemaic rule…became highly resented over time.”

As the same book recalled:

There were numerous rebellions, especially during the second and third centuries BC. Most may have resulted from economic desperation or lax central control because of dynastic infighting, but some…expressed a longing for the glorious past when Egyptians ruled Egyptians. A distinctly "nationalistic" literature appeared… Government officials extorted everything they could from the peasantry, frequently leaving them insufficient means to sustain themselves. Famine, inflation, banditry, and flight are all too abundantly attested during the later Ptolemaic Period…

The last representative of the Ptolemaic Dynasty to rule Egypt, Cleopatra VII, was made queen by the Roman General Julius Caesar after his troops killed her brother and rival for the Egyptian throne, Ptolemy XIII, in 47 BC.

But, according to A History of Egypt, Cleopatra was “so unpopular that Caesar permanently stationed three legions in Egypt ” and “when he departed in spring 47 BC to new conquests...Cleopatra was pregnant.” Then, after Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, Cleopatra formed a similar political/sexual alliance with Mark Antony.

But, after Octavius Caesar’s Roman forces defeated Antony and Cleopatra’s forces in 31 BC at the Battle of Actium (and both Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide), Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC.

As part of the pre-partitioned Roman Empire until 395 AD, Egypt was exploited as the grain-producing “breadbasket” of Rome; and during the 30 BC to 395 AD period of rule by Romans and their Roman legions, “vast amounts of Egyptian land” that had been owned by the state under the Greek Ptolemaic dynastic rule “were now mostly sold to private individuals, some of whom acquired extensive estates,” according to A History of Egypt.

As a result, “small landholders, though comprising a large proportion of the population, were increasingly hard-pressed;” and “many became little better than serfs and slaves on the estates of the privileged, who assumed powers that previously had belonged to the state, giving them even greater control over the peasantry,” according to the same book.

In 330 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine founded Constantinople; and when the Roman Empire was partitioned for the last time into East and West in 395 AD, Egypt became a province of the Constantinople-based eastern Byzantium Empire until 641 AD; and during this period “Egypt’s grain and revenue remained extremely important to Constantinople,” according to A History of Egypt.

But the same book also notes that, “the Byzantine yoke became so odious to Egyptians, both politically and religiously…that they were not averse to the change of rule that came in the seventh century.”

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

In Honor Of The 64th Anniversary Year Of The Chinese Revolution of 1949- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Problems Of The Chinese Revolution (1927) –  Max Shachtman (When He Knew How Speak Truth To Power) -Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s Problems of the Chinese Revolution-(1931)

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Markin comment (repost from 2012):

On a day when we are honoring the 63rd anniversary of the Chinese revolution of 1949 the article posted in this entry and the comment below take on added meaning. In the old days, in the days when I had broken from many of my previously held left social-democratic political views and had begun to embrace Marxism with a distinct tilt toward Trotskyism, I ran into an old revolutionary in Boston who had been deeply involved (although I did not learn the extend of that involvement until later) in the pre-World War II socialist struggles in Eastern Europe. The details of that involvement will not detain us here now but the import of what he had to impart to me about the defense of revolutionary gains has stuck with me until this day. And, moreover, is germane to the subject of this article from the pen of Leon Trotsky -the defense of the Chinese revolution and the later gains of that third revolution (1949) however currently attenuated.

This old comrade, by the circumstances of his life, had escaped that pre-war scene in fascist-wracked Europe and found himself toward the end of the 1930s in New York working with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the period when that organization was going through intense turmoil over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. In the history of American (and international) Trotskyism this is the famous Max Shachtman-James Burnham led opposition that declared, under one theory or another, that the previously defendable Soviet Union had changed dramatically enough in the course of a few months to be no longer worth defending by revolutionaries.

What struck him from the start about this dispute was the cavalier attitude of the anti-Soviet opposition, especially among the wet-behind-the-ears youth, on the question of that defense and consequently about the role that workers states, healthy, deformed or degenerated, as we use the terms of art in our movement, as part of the greater revolutionary strategy. Needless to say most of those who abandoned defense of the Soviet Union when there was even a smidgeon of a reason to defend it left politics and peddled their wares in academia or business. Or if they remained in politics lovingly embraced the virtues of world imperialism.

That said, the current question of defense of the Chinese Revolution hinges on those same premises that animated that old Socialist Workers Party dispute. And strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) on the question of whether China is now irrevocably on the capitalist road, or is capitalist already (despite some very un-capitalistic economic developments over the past few years), I find that many of those who oppose that position have that same cavalier attitude the old comrade warned me against back when I was first starting out. There may come a time when we, as we had to with the Soviet Union and other workers states, say that China is no longer a workers state. But today is not that day. In the meantime study the issue, read the posted article, and more importantly, defend the gains of the Chinese Revolution.

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Max Shachtman -Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s Problems of the Chinese Revolution-(1931)

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Trotsky’s Problems of the Chinese Revolution

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There is hardly an event of greater world historical significance since the proletarian revolution in Russia than the awakening of the cruelly exploited and oppressed Orient, which found its most dramatic and most tragic expression in the great Chinese revolutionary movement of 19256ndash;1927. For the first time in history, the capitalist countries of Europe, long ago matured for the socialist overthrow, gave way in revolutionary precedence to an Eastern land which bid fair to condense the experiences of capitalist evolution, under the titanic blows of the social revolution, into a brief span of time and, unlike the Occidental countries, enter boldly upon the path of socialist development. A more audacious enterprise, history could not imagine. Even the Russian working class was compelled to pass through a long period of capitalist development before it was peremptorily confronted with the opportunity and the need of breaking down the last barrier to the emancipation and free development of humanity. The Chinese proletariat, reaching a virile manhood at the crossroads of a revolutionary epoch, armed also with the strength of uncounted millions of insurgent peasants, was given the rare opportunity to choose between capitalist enslavement under its “own” bourgeoisie or socialist growth in alliance with the Soviet Union and the revolutionary working class of the West.

There is no point here in arguing the academic question as to whether China has matured economically for the establishment or construction of a socialist society. It is not a question to be settled statistically or statically in China – any more than it could have been established for Russia in 1917. This problem is solved primarily on an international scale, in the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist sectors of world economy. What has, however, been demonstrated since the day of the successful counter-revolution in China, if theoretical consideration and forecast were still inadequate, was that the basic problems of China, its democratic tasks of national unification and independence, self-determination for its various peoples, and the agrarian revolution included, could be solved in no other way than by the victory of the workers acting independently as a class. In other words, all the problems and antagonisms arising out of the struggle against imperialist subjection, against the remnants of feudal relationships, which could have been but were not solved by the revolution of 19256ndash;1927 or by the regime which succeeded it, will find a solution only with the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. It is in the opportunity offered for the attainment of this goal that lies the great importance of the Chinese revolution of 1925–1927.
But it is precisely in examining this opportunity that we encounter a monstrous historical anomaly. The revolution ended not with a victory, but with a horribly sanguinary defeat for the proletariat and the peasantry. How was this possible? In the European bourgeois revolutions of 1848, the young proletariat and the peasantry were the fighting troops for the equally youthful bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie triumphed over feudalism, and also over the proletariat. The latter still lived in the period of the rise of capitalism; it had not yet learned how to act independently as a class; it did not have at its head a conscious revolutionary leadership. Even the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871 is not difficult to understand, nor could anybody have expected that this first faint dawn of the proletarian revolution could, under the circumstances of time and place, see the full daylight of life. One can even go farther ahead in history, to the very end of the world war. The German proletariat overthrew the kaiser in 1918, but it did not come to power because its social democratic leadership, corrupted by the bourgeoisie, ran to the head of the marching column of mutinous workers for the purpose of turning them off to the road of bourgeois democracy.
But in China we had a partly armed proletariat. Even the peasantry was armed to a certain extent. A Communist party was in the field and had every opportunity to develop. The prestige of the Soviet Union was incalculable – every Chinese worker knew that Bolshevism had rid Russia of the imperialists and of the bankers and exploiters, every Chinese peasant knew that the Soviets had given the Russian peasant the land. The official political counsellor to the nationalist government was the Russian Communist, Borodin, just as one of its principal military directors was the Russian Communist, Galen. On every occasion, the workers and the peasants showed their desire to emulate the Russians – the former by their struggles against their own bourgeoisie, the latter by their constant attempts to carry out the first real steps of the agrarian revolution. In the Communist party itself, there was a strong current that favored breaking away from the domination of the bourgeoisie and its Kuo Min Tang and taking the path of independent class action. Yet, with all these and other favorable conditions, the proletariat not only did not come within reach of taking power, but was made the last object crushed under the heel of the bourgeois counter-revolution which did take and hold the power.
Where does the most active cause for this truly monstrous catastrophe lie? It was not so much objective difficulties that stood in the way. It was not the classic interference of the socialist agents of capital in the labor movement. The Chinese proletariat was prohibited by the policies and instructions of the leadership of the Communist International, the organizing center of the world revolution, from fulfilling the role imposed upon it by history! There is the source that must be sought to explain the bitter tragedy of the Chinese revolution.
No greater indictment can be presented against the faction of Stalin and Bucharin than this: invested with all the formal authority of the Soviet Union, of the Communist International, holding to so great an extent the destiny of China – one might say, of the whole East – in their hands, entrusted with the awful responsibility of guiding an unprecedentedly huge revolutionary movement, all they did was to translate the theories and practises of Menshevism into the language of Chinese politics, palm them off as Bolshevism, and, in the name of Lenin, pursue a course against which Lenin had fought throughout his whole political life.
All through the revolutionary period, the official leadership of the Communist International staked its cards upon the national bourgeoisie instead of upon the worker and the peasant, upon Chiang Kai-Shek, and then upon Wang Chin Wei, but not upon the Shanghai proletarian. Worse yet, the latter was told in no uncertain terms that the national bourgeoisie was the leader of the revolution, figuring as the main partner in the ill-conceived “bloc of the four classes”. The Chinese Communist Party was driven into the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang with the Stalinist whip, and there it was compelled to swear allegiance to the petty bourgeois philosophy of Sun Yat Senism. The policy of class struggle was liquidated in the interests of the “united national front”. Strikes were prohibited or else settled by “arbitration commissions” in the best class collaborationist style, for how could the worker have a conflict of interests with the Chinese employer who was his leader in the “united national front” of the Kuo Min Tang? So as not to irritate the bourgeoisie, Stalin sent telegrams to the Chinese Communist Party, instructing it to restrain the peasants from taking the land. On pain of denunciation as “Trotskyists”, the equivalent among the Stalinist churchmen to excommunication, the Chinese Communists were prohibited from forming Soviets, first under the Chiang Kai-Shek regime and later under the Wuhan government because, you see, the latter was already the revolutionary center. Even though the caliber of the man was known – he had already attempted a reactionary coup d’État early in 1926 – a veritable cult was built up for Chiang Kai-Shek by the international Communist press. What more striking condemnation of the official course is needed than the fact – characteristic of the whole policy – that on the eve of Chiang Kai-Shek’s march into Shanghai to establish the counter-revolutionary regime and to massacre the militant workers, the French Communist Party and its central organ L’HumanitÉ, sent him a solemn message of greetings, hailing the establishment of the Shanghai … Commune. Such “mistakes” are not accidental. They flowed from the whole past course. By the policy of Stalin and Bucharin, not only the Chinese Communists, but the international revolutionary movement was obliged to make the mistake of confusing a Gallifet with a Communard, the counter-revolution with the Commune.
For how many years, and how heavily has the Chinese proletarian and the Chinese peasant paid for this mistake in identity!
It would, however, be wrong to believe that this mistake was made by the whole Communist movement. No. The responsibility lies entirely upon the factions of Stalin and Bucharin, and lies doubly heavy because the Bolshevik wing of the party was wiser than they and did not trample upon the teachings of Marx and Lenin, or turn its back upon the revolutionary experiences and traditions of the past. It analyzed correctly that which was at the moment, it used Marxism not to spit at but as an instrument for probing into and preparing for the future, it warned against the consequences of the prevailing policy, and at every stage of the struggle it advanced the essentially correct course. In every important particular, it was as correct in its prospect as it has been justified a thousand times over in retrospect.
There is no possible justification, however, for the line of the officialdom. What the lessons of the past and the events of the moment might have failed to teach them, the Bolshevik-Leninists of Russia pointed out to them day in and day out. They were rewarded for this work by having abuse heaped upon them, by having their views deliberately distorted and misrepresented, by having their speeches hushed up and their writings suppressed, and, when the facts of life had accumulated into mountainous evidence of their correctness, they were finally expelled from the party, imprisoned, exiled or banished from the borders of the Soviet Union. The latter fate was reserved for the greatest living Bolshevik because he, more than anyone else, refused to regard the Gallifets of the Chinese revolution as its leaders, as its Communards.
But the bureaucratic, small-minded method of solving political and theoretical disputes solves nothing but a temporary consolidation of the power of the usurpers. Marx and his followers in the labor movement spent years, decades, in studying every phase of the ill-starred Paris Commune. In the discussion of the Commune and the defeated Russian revolution of 1905, Bolshevism became the dominant current in the movement and was finally able to lead the proletariat to power. In the same sense, it can be said today that without a thorough, all-sided study and assimilation of the lessons of the Chinese revolution, the Bolshevik regiments of tomorrow will not be assembled and trained to measure up to their tasks. For the lessons of the Chinese revolution have a living, timely application to the problems of the revolutionary movement in every country in the world. They relate to the fundamental principle questions of Marxism.
But such a study is today forbidden in the official Communist movement. This makes it all the more imperative that it be undertaken, for a real beginning has hardly been made. It is with this in mind that the following contributions by comrade Trotsky have been assembled and presented to American readers. With the exception of a few pages, none of them has even been published in the English language. As has unfortunately been the case with most of the serious Marxian writings of recent times, the works presented here have for the most part had to be sent out of the Soviet Union secretly. Their distribution has been made illegal by the Stalinist regime, and even when they were first presented to the Russian party and to the Communist International, those who listened to them or read them were confined to a select few hardened bureaucrats upon whom logic, arguments and facts made no impression. At the very height of the revolutionary events in China, the masses of the Communist workers were prevented from hearing the standpoint of the Left Opposition.
So overcome with the fear of the Apposition’s arguments were the bureaucrats, that they not only prevented the publication of the former’s documents, but even their own writings and speeches, which events proceeded so rapidly to deride, had to be kept concealed. Thus, Stalin’s speech in defense of Chiang Kai-Shek, made a few days before the coup d’État in Shanghai, has never been made public. The whole Eighth Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, at which the discussion of the Chinese question occupied the main point on the agenda, met under the conditions of a complete censorship. For the first time in the history of the Communist International, the proceedings of so signal a Plenum were not made public, in full or in part, in the party press of any country. The Communist world knew about its sessions only from the official resolution finally adopted and from a scant article in Pravda, reprinted in the International Press Correspondence. The censorship was not, it seems, completely air-tight. Some of the Opposition’s documents and a speech or two, made their way to Germany soon after the Plenum, and they were issued in pamphlet form, first by the German Left Oppositionists and later by the French. Only for the purpose of counteracting the effect of these documents did the official publishing house of the Comintern finally print, one year after the Plenum, a slim brochure containing the speeches delivered by Bucharin, Stalin, Manuilsky, Smeral, Pepper, Ferdi, Petrov, and a number of other apparatus men, plus one of Trotsky’s speeches and one of Vuyovitch’s. Aside from this, and an odd pamphlet here and there by Tang Ping Shan – the official spokesman for Stalin and Bucharin in China who later turned renegade from Communism – by Heller, and a few others, the literary contributions of the Communist International on the problems of the Chinese revolution, in modern non-Russian languages, are confined to journalistic dispatches from China which distinguished themselves in every case by the fact that a week later the events robbed them of any pretension to truth or analytical importance. In English, the official literature is more limited and more worthless: a pamphlet by Earl Browder, another by R. Doonping – kindness and mercy dictate that nothing more be said about them.
These facts, as well as the intrinsic value of the material presented in this book, make a study of it one of the main duties of the revolutionary worker today. That it deals so largely “with the past” does not rob it of one iota of its value. The present cannot be understood unless the past in which it is rooted is understood. The criminal opportunism of yesterday is being paid for by the light-hearted adventurism of the Comintern in China today. The idea of the Soviets as the instruments of the proletarian insurrection and later the dictatorship, is being abused by Stalinism today, in the period of counter-revolution, as it was in 1927, in the period of the revolutionary ascent. Yesterday, the bourgeois regime of Wuhan was passed off as a substitute for arming the workers and peasants independently and forming their Soviets. Today, the struggles of isolated, desperate peasant bands, aroused by the belated echo in the village of the revolutionary clashes of four years ago, and doomed to degeneration without the leadership of a strong, well-knit, thoroughly restored movement of proletarian revolutionists in the cities – are this time passed off by the Stalinists as the Soviet regime. And above all, the “super-historical” formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” continues to be set up against the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution so as to guarantee in advance that the coming Chinese revolution will be strangled just as fatally as the last one.
There remain three other points which require comment before these remarks are brought to an end.
Among the conceptions, or rather the misconceptions, concerning the standpoint of the Opposition in the Chinese question, as contrasted to that defended by the official spokesmen, is that the divergences were confined to an issue which is now “outlived”: the establishment of Soviets in the 1927 period. It would be more accurate to say that the differences of the kernel of the Opposition with the Stalinist standpoint were and remain concerned with all the fundamental principal questions of the Chinese revolution in all its phases and at every stage. Even in the ranks of the Opposition, particularly among the ultra-Leftists, the idea took shape that the Opposition’s struggle was confined to views which excluded any “democratic” development for China, or the imperative need for advancing in China the most resolute and extreme slogans of democracy. Especially at the present stage of the counter-revolution, the need for putting forward the slogans of democracy in China becomes unpostponable. The Communists will lead the masses of workers and peasants on to the socialist path by demonstrations in life that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve for the people all the democratic tasks which stand on the order of the day for China. In this respect, there is no conflict between the emphasis placed by the Opposition in 1925-1927 and the emphasis it places on the slogans necessary for today. The conflict really arises in the ranks of Stalinism which, while putting forward the perspective of the “democratic dictatorship”, categorically rejects the advancement of the most necessary democratic slogans!
Further, in connection with the question of the “democratic dictatorship”, an apparent conflict may be perceived in the documents which make up this book. In the later articles, comrade Trotsky counterposes the permanent revolution to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, whereas the early articles do not make such a contrast; indeed, the 1927 Platform of the Opposition speaks for the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. The conflict is more apparent than real and is derived from two sources. The first is that in the bloc established in 1926 between the “Trotsky” and the “Zinoviev” Oppositions (the Moscow Opposition of 1923 and the Leningrad Opposition of 1925), formal concessions of this kind were made by the former to the Left Centrists of Leningrad in the interests of maintaining the bloc against the Menshevik policy of Stalin and Bucharin. The second is that in 1925–1927, the slogan of the “democratic dictatorship”, borrowed literally and purely formally from Lenin’s pre-1917 writings, had not yet so clearly been filled with the reactionary content which the epigones poured into it. The Opposition, as proceeds plainly even from the early articles of comrade Trotsky, construed the slogan in the same sense that Lenin construed it in and after 1917, that is, that the “democratic dictatorship” was realized in the “democratic period” (the first six months) of the October revolution, but realized under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long before the revolution, Lenin had written that the slogan had a past and a future. For China, the epigones, looking backward only to the past – and even there with a distorted vision – filled the slogan with a reactionary content, which they still seek to apply not only to “backward China”, but to about four-fifths of the whole world … including modern Spain. One of the greatest contributions to the movement made by the Opposition, and in the first place, by comrade Trotsky, is the setting of the old Leninist slogan in its proper historical perspective, the frank – and not slavish – examination of the value of the slogan in the light of revolutionary experiences, and the restoration to its rightful place of the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution, expressed by Lenin for the East in particular, in those sections of the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International which speak of the non-capitalist path of development of the backward colonial and semi- colonial countries.
A third point which may interest readers, or arouse a certain amount of confusion, is another apparent contradiction in the standpoint of the Opposition. It is only in the later documents that comrade Trotsky speaks about the Opposition having stood against the integration of the proletarian party, the Communist Party of China, into the party of the bourgeoisie, the Kuo Min Tang. Any misunderstanding that may arise will be eliminated by reproducing part of a letter written by comrade Trotsky to the present writer on December 10, 1930, which I take the liberty of quoting.

”You are quite right when you point out that the Russian Opposition, as late as the first half of 1927, did not demand openly the withdrawal from the Kuo Min Tang. I believe, however, that I have already commented on this fact publicly somewhere. I personally was from the very beginning, that is, from 1923, resolutely opposed to the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang, as well as against the acceptance of the Kuo Min Tang into the ‘Kuomintern’. Radek was always with Zinoviev against me. The younger members of the Opposition of 1923 were with me almost to a man. Rakovsky was in Paris and not sufficiently informed. Up to 1926, I always voted independently in the Political Bureau on this question, against all the others. In 1925, simultaneously with the theses on the Eastern Chinese Railway which I have quoted in the Opposition press, I once more presented the formal proposal that the Communist party leave the Kuo Min Tang instantly. This was unanimously rejected and contributed a great deal to the baiting later on. In 1926 and 1927, I had uninterrupted conflicts with the Zinovievists on this question. Two or three times, the matter stood at the breaking point. Our center consisted of approximately equal numbers from both of the allied tendencies, for it was after all only a bloc. At the voting, the position of the 1923 Opposition was betrayed by Radek, out of principle, and by Piatakov, out of unprincipledness. Our faction (1923) was furious about it, demanded that Radek and Piatakov be recalled from the center. But since it was a question of splitting with the Zinovievists, it was the general decision that I must submit publicly in this question and acquaint the Opposition in writing with my standpoint. And that is how it happened that the demand was put up by us so late, in spite of the fact that the Political Bureau and the Plenum of the Central Committee always contrasted my view with the official view of the Opposition. Now I can say with certainty that I made a mistake by submitting formally in this question. In any case, this mistake became quite clear only by the further evolution of the Zinovievists. At that time, the split with them appeared to the overwhelming majority of our faction as absolutely fatal. Thus, the manifesto [of the International Left Opposition on the Chinese question, issued late in 1930] in no way contradicts the facts when it contends that the Russian Opposition, the real one, was against the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang. Out of the thousands of imprisoned, exiled, etc., hardly a single one was with Radek in this question. This fact too I have referred to in many letters, namely, that the great majority of the capitulators were not sure and firm in the Chinese and the Anglo-Russian question. That is very characteristic! ...”

The documents which follow are arranged more or less in chronological order. As a whole, they present a fairly thorough picture of the course of the Chinese revolution and the struggle for Bolshevism which the Opposition carried on in all the periods of its development, up to the present day. How brilliantly they demonstrate the indispensability of Marxism – which serves the revolutionist to foresee the coming day and to prepare for it – can be left to the reader to judge. As appendices, we have included articles and speeches by other comrades. The suppressed theses of Zinoviev present invaluable facts and documents, even though they present the relations between the Communist party and the Kuo Min Tang in a confused manner. The Shanghai letter by three Russian comrades, all of them opponents of “Trotskyism”, shows that the leadership of the Comintern was well aware of the real state of affairs in China. The letter is presented here for the first time. It suffered the same fate of suppression as so much other important material. Indeed, one of its authors, the youth comrade Nassonov, together with the party comrade, Mandalyan, were recalled in disgrace from China by Stalin. As punishment, Nassonov was “exiled” to the United States as representative of the Young Communist International, and I still recall how he would tell me that in spite of everything, Stalin had been “compelled in the end to carry out” his viewpoint….

In conclusion, the writer wishes to express his gratitude, and the appreciation of the publishers, to his comrades, Sam Gordon and Morris Lewit, who gave such indispensable assistance in the final checking of the translations.

NEW YORK, August 7, 1931 Max Shachtman

President Obama Pardon Private Bradley Manning Now!

Bradley Manning in his own words:

"God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms...

I want people to see the truth... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public."


The Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace proudly stands in solidarity with, and defense of, Private Bradley Manning and his fight for freedom from his jailers, the American military.

Private Manning has paid the price for his alleged acts with over three years of pre-trial confinement, including allegations of torture during this period, and is now facing life imprisonment for simple acts of humanity. For letting the American people know what they perhaps did not want to know but must know- when soldiers, American soldiers, go to war some awful things can and do happen.

For more information about the Private Manning case and what you can do to help or to sign the online petition to the Secretary of the Army for his release contact:

Bradley Manning Support Network: http://www.bradleymanning.org/ or the

Courage To Resist Website:http://www.couragetoresist.org/

Smedley Butler Brigade- Veterans for Peace Website: http://smedleyvfp.org/- on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/smedleyvfp -on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SmedleyVFP#

The Toothpick Kid-Take Three

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

They still talked about the Toothpick Kid in all the hobo camps, the railroad jungles, quarter a shot bar rooms, back alley poolrooms and skid row flophouses and Sally/Methodist/UU/Catholic Worker soup lines of the West, long years after he passed away, long after his amazing exploits had entered in entered into hobo, tramp, bum legend. By the way nobody ever called him by his real name, or maybe even knew his real name then, but only his tramp moniker derived one time when some wag noticed his addiction to chewing toothpicks. A hard luck habit he picked up when the Kid faced really hard times in order to stave off some gnawing hunger not always for food, whisky thirsts, or cigarette cravings and so it stuck. Stuck like lots of half-thought out monikers gathered from childhood on, stuck like lots of guys out on the cheapjack highways and ravines want stuck so that they can hide from wives, ex-wives, repo men, the law or the IRS. Yeah, hide from their past, mainly hide from an abandoned wife here, hide from some lonesome unpayable debt there, hide from some put upon kin, or hide from their own horrors.

Later, after the Kid ran the rack, after his number came up, after he went to that hard rock candy mountain every ‘bo, tram and bum wound up at from that song a guy was always humming around the “jungle”camp fire, someone found out his real moniker. Benson Billy maybe since as old as he was and as familiar with the ethos of the road he was always too inquisitive, found out that his real name was George Nelson a son of a small trading- post owner out in the high California desert near Barstow. However out of respect for the Kid’s exploits every skid row rooming house, every railroad jungle, every dusty, dirty barroom and every make-shift camp denizen stayed with the moniker Toothpick Kid when they mentioned his name. It was like such a straight arrow name as George Nelson could not fit in, had no place in, the Boston Blackie ,Benson Billy, Blue River Benny, Be-Bop Kid, Swagger Sid, world of the highway and that was that .

And maybe they were right to whisper among themselves his road name if only to make themselves feel better that one of their own tweaked the noses of the cops, the railroad bulls, and the respectable citizenry of the towns out there in the high desert, places like Yucca Falls, Cheyenne Flats, Winnemucca, Victorville and Barstow.

Let face it despite the romance of the road stuff that guys like Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac, and Utah Phillips were always harping on, the hoboes, bums, and tramps of the world mainly sit around their camps, warmed by the fire, warmed by the rotgut whisky or wine bottle depending on whether somebody successfully put the “touch” on a civilian, and their flops, warmed by that rotgut whiskey, and speaking endlessly of all the heroic exploits they were capable of. (Just so you know if you didn’t already paying more than a dollar for a pint, a pint of anything, was some kind of sacrilege and thus no Johnny Walker blended, or such high- shelf stuff passed through the camps and rooming houses. More likely Willie’s Premium mixed from all the highway and park- found bottles into a suitable elixir. Down to Sterno if times were tough.)

Talk, all talk when it came right down to it since the only heroic things most of them were capable of was to con some respectable citizen of Butte or someplace like that, out of a few bucks on a hard luck story, maybe do a little back alley jack-rolling, or some other two-bit cheapjack scam which they not only tell endlessly but have never gotten over since they pulled it in about 1937. The Kid put them all to shame, put them all in the shade, that was for sure. The Kid went for the big score, the one all the other guys just talked about in the light of some chilled moonless night’s campfire. Yes, for a while, a short while as far as human existence goes, the Toothpick Kid had them all, friend and foe alike, on their toes.

See the Toothpick Kid went for the big score, the big score that every guy in the skid row community dreamed of, dreamed that he was capable of, capable of doing more than dream about. He single-handedly took out the Southern Pacific-delivered payroll for the Delmo Company, the big mining company, that was supposed to be taken over to Hightower out near Needles on a late Friday afternoon by one of its agents.

The Toothpick Kid got wind of that fact, the fact that this payroll was delivered weekly on late Friday afternoons and make his plans accordingly.The routine was that Bill Hayes, the railroad agent, would deliver the dough, roughly $50,000, to the guardhouse at the entrance to the Delmo works and the guard, usually only a single guard, would take it from there to the paymaster’s office a couple of miles up the road. And in those days out in that isolated area nobody even thought the trick could be accomplished.

Simple routine, no heavy security, a piece of cake thought the Toothpick Kid. All he saw was easy street ahead, and maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong on that score, but he saw his chance, saw that his young life, aged 25 and drifting the roads since about sixteen, was going nowhere without some big score to tide him over, saw he was going to wind up some old time geezer bindle stiff buried in some potter’s field graveyard if he didn’t make his move and he was ready to stake his life on success. Life on the road, the hard camps road was, in short, nasty and brutish unlike the romance of the road stuff you read in books by guys who were on the road for a week or two, got their fill of romance and headed back just as quickly as possible to their Mayfair swell digs. So he leaped into his future and let he deal go down.

The robbery itself actually was a piece of cake. Simplicity itself. First the Kid came upon the guard standing alone in his guardhouse to ask the way to Hightower and as the guard was prepared to tell him the directions he quickly beat him over the head, beat him to a pulp, with a pipe he had acquired along the way. A few minutes later, after removing the guard’s body to his small office, taking his clothes off and then putting them on, and then stuffing the body in the toilet, Bill Hayes came up in his Southern Pacific Railroad company car.

Before Bill could even ask where Hank the regular guard was the Kid shot him point-blank with Hank’s gun. The Kid pulled Bill out of the car, placed him behind Hank’s desk in the guardhouse office, and went back to Bill’s car and checked to see that the payroll satchel was there. It was, and he was gone in Bill’s car like a flash. Beautiful, and many a lonely hobo jungle camp night, many a tramp roadside hungry day, and many a skid row rotgut whisky barroom turned electric to the thrill of some guy telling the details of the Kid’s saga. Jesus, fifty grand, and it was like taking candy from a baby.

Of course what the Kid didn’t count on, or maybe even figure on in his figuring was the Southern Pacific blowback. The hard fact of life that even in the square’s world a couple of murders and a major robbery when the railroads were going down in the hazy 1950s superhighway night required some attention. To speak nothing of the Delmo Company’s position that something, something big and right now had to be done about the murders and robbery. As so the railroads, the company, Sagamore county law enforcement, and the California Highway Patrol went at the case tooth and nail. Offered rewards, ran rough-shot over the camps, jungles, and skid row flops from the Mexican border to Eureka up in redwood country, and plastered the particulars of the case (not much) on walls, telephone poles and wherever the hobo world congregated. A massive effort.

Funny though they probably never would have caught the Kid if it hadn’t been for a woman, well, a woman, and a bum (let me tell you sometime the differences, the social, political and economic differences between bums, hoboes, and tramps and there are and are recognized in the community as such but it doesn’t affect this story so later okay). The Kid had hightailed it to Reno up on the border and was laying low, well not really laying low, but spending his dough on dope, booze, women and whatever else caught his fancy in a very private suite in a very private hotel just outside Reno, an operation well-versed in hiding out high profile wanted men for a hefty price (although nobody complained while under the protection of that hotel, since nobody from gangsters on the run back East to the Toothpick Kid ever were picked up there. After about a year of that though easy street ran out of steam, the Kid just ran out of dough.

That is where the woman part came in, the woman, Heidi, a runaway from Spokane, maybe under age maybe not, although nobody was looking for her, whom he spent most of his dough on. When funds got low he put her out on the streets to do a few tricks to keep them in clover. She agreed to it, saying fair was fair and besides she loved him, so there was nothing wrong there. What was wrong was that she tried to hustle a guy she had known, an old flame going under the moniker Black River Sid, from up around Yakima a while back, who had fallen on hard times, had been roughhoused in one of the cop raids looking for the Kid down in Lancaster and so knew the Kid legend, and asked what she had been up to of late.

More importantly, and decisively, why was she doing cheapjack tricks on the streets. So she told him the story, the Kid dough story, except she did not know how the Kid had gotten his dough (or think to ask as long as the dope, booze, casino chips and occasional off-hand piece of jewelry was around). And that was that.

Black River Sid when he put two and two together came up with reward, reward and his own getting well again (he has a serious cocaine habit that needed some attention) and so he snitched, snitched as hard and fast as a man could snitch. One early morning, before sunrise, the combined forces of law and order in California and Nevada, combined railroads of the West, and the combined mineral resources organizations and Black River Sid gathered in front of a certain low rent rooming house just outside Reno and attempted a forced assault on one Toothpick Kid and his honey.

Yes, the Kid went down, went down in a hail of bullets after a several hours gunfight (as did Heidi who stood by her man until the end, see she loved him) as he probably knew he must, or maybe should have known he must it is hard to tell the difference in such cases. But before the Kid left this good green earth he took down two railroad bulls, a couple of deputy sheriffs, and one Black River Sid (directed to his attention by Heidi once she spied him pointing in her direction ). So to the Kid, RIP, (maybe Heidi too).

And you wonder why fifty years or more later they speak of the Kid in hushed whispers wherever guys are down on their luck, down on their dreams, and down in the fellahin ditches out in the American West night.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night-Fatal Attraction- “The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers"- A Film Review

The  crime noir, The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers

DVD Review

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Paramount Pictures, 1946
Yah, a woman can get under your skin, no question, no question at all, in 1940 or 2013 makes no difference. Now two guys tugging away on heartbreak hill is an even tougher story, especially when the dame is a heartless femme fatale like Barbara Stanwyck who plays the woman under their skins in the title of this crime noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Now Barbara Stanwyck was never my beaux ideal of a femme fatale, I run more to the Rita Hayworth hot-blooded Gilda-types (with that strand of hair over the eyes) but I could see where guys, normally sensible guys, would be running through hoops in order to win her favors. And she would give them the "kiss of death," that hard-hearted kiss of death mentioned above. Take no prisoners, none.

A little plot line of the story goes a long way to figuring out those charms, those decidedly not girlish, not 1940s girlish anyway, charms. Rebellious Martha, an orphan being brought up to be a lady by an old-school rich aunt wants none of it and keeps running away, aided and abetted by ragamuffin, wrong side of the tracks Sam, played by Van Heflin. As the film opens she is being brought back after one such caper, scolded by her aunt assisted by Kirk Douglas’s father, Martha’s tutor (Douglas plays Walter, the other love interest in this dance of death combination). When dear cruel auntie (played by Judith Andersen, who knew how to play that kind of role to a tee) tried to confront Martha just as she is getting ready to fly the coop again with Sam, with Walter swore to secrecy, she just happens to fall down the long flight of stairs. After less than one shed tear the trio (Martha, Walter, and his dear old money-grubbing dad) work up a story and stick to it, stick to it to well because to make it stick ultimately they have some unnamed vagabond lug eventually go the chair for their misdeed. Meanwhile Sam, figuring that Martha has gotten cold feet, blows town on the next train out, a circus train.

Fast forward eighteen years. Sam, passing through town, decides to see what has happened since he blew town. Well Martha and Walter have gotten a loveless married (loveless on her part, naturally) to seal their part of the pact with death, Walter for crazed-out love, Martha to keep him on a leash. Martha who turns out to be a pretty good businesswoman basically runs the town now.

But here is the kicker, guilt-ridden about how they obtained their ill-gotten gains our blessed married couple think Sam is here for a shake-down thinking he saw what happened that long ago night when auntie went crashing down the stairs. Of course Sam had no idea of the sort until things start to unravel around his new-found girlfriend, sweet, husky voiced Lizabeth Scott who has her own troubles with the law. The long and short of it is that Martha is still carrying the torch for Sam, Walter is getting more drunken crazy for Martha and sweet hard-luck Liz looks to be holding an empty bag when Martha puts her whammy on Sam.

There can be no happy ending here, right? Well, right but only part right. This murder most foul has put a death grip on Martha and Walter, a death grip that is triggered by Sam's reappearance but also that nasty little deal of creating a fall guy for their misdeeds. So you know, know just as well as I do that the fates are against them. As for Sam and Liz, well they get out with the skin of their teeth but they get out. Once again, you know the routine; crime doesn’t pay, one way or the other it eats away at you. Got it.