From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future- Not One Person, Not One Penny for the Imperialist Military!-ROTC Off Campus!

 

Logo Of The Communist Youth International

 

Markin comment on this series:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.

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Workers Vanguard No. 1029	6 September 2013

Not One Person, Not One Penny for the Imperialist Military!-ROTC Off Campus!

(Young Spartacus pages)

The U.S. military’s Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) is now returning to the City College of New York (CCNY) for the first time in over 40 years. Forced off CCNY and over 100 other campuses by the militant struggles against the Vietnam War, ROTC is a program that trains students to become the next generation of officers whose job will be to carry out U.S. imperialist slaughter around the globe. The Spartacus Youth Clubs oppose the imperialists, their war aims and their armed forces, upholding German revolutionary Wilhelm Liebknecht’s call: “Not a man and not a penny” for bourgeois militarism!

From the atomic incineration of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the dirty wars in Central America that slaughtered leftist insurgents, to today’s global “war on terror,” U.S. imperialism—under both Democratic and Republican administrations—has proven to be the most powerful terrorist force on the planet. It sits on the largest stockpile of operational nuclear weapons and has a military budget greater than that of the next 19 countries combined.

The Democratic Obama administration is infamous for its “Terror Tuesday” meetings to decide which Pakistanis, Yemenis and U.S. citizens to assassinate in drone strikes. The Commander-in-Chief orders his officers to oversee the torture of Guantánamo prisoners, including through force-feeding. And as we go to press, Obama is putting the finishing touches on his plan to bombard Syria. Hands off Syria! U.S. out of the Near East!

Domestically, the military is a key tool for suppressing dissent and carrying out strikebreaking. The U.S. rulers sent the National Guard to Los Angeles to crush the 1965 Watts ghetto rebellion and the 1992 upheaval sparked by the acquittal of the LAPD cops who beat black motorist Rodney King. In 1970, the same troops who massacred four antiwar protesters at Kent State University had been dispatched straight from strikebreaking duty against Cleveland Teamsters. In 2011, Obama deployed the military against ILWU Local 21 during the struggle between the longshoremen’s union and the bosses in Washington State. At home and abroad, these are the jobs for which ROTC is training students.

While carrying out its crimes against the world’s peoples, the Obama White House has prosecuted twice as many whistle-blowers as all previous administrations combined. U.S. Army Pfc. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, a 25-year-old hero, was tortured, subjected to a military show trial and sentenced to 35 years under the Espionage Act for the “crime” of releasing to the world classified documents showing only a fraction of the horrors carried out by the U.S. military. Through its treatment of Manning and its unrelenting war on Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, the White House is sending a message that it will tolerate no dissent or exposure of its war crimes, its massive spy operations and its shredding of basic democratic rights. Free Manning now! Hands off Snowden and Assange!

Petraeus, ROTC, Military Recruiters Off Campus!

The City University of New York (CUNY), which has 24 campuses including CCNY, has granted General David Petraeus a visiting professorship at Macaulay Honors College. The résumé of this former CIA director and commander in Iraq and Afghanistan includes overseeing the torture of insurgents and civilians; directing drone strike assassinations; and heading up the CIA spy apparatus that, for decades, has organized to destabilize and overthrow elected governments that are not to Washington’s liking, and to install its lackeys.

The halls of CUNY campuses are crawling with academic ideologues for U.S. imperialism. But Petraeus is different: he has the blood of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans and others on his hands. He should be driven off campus—not for his views, but for his deeds. We are in favor of students, teachers and campus workers driving imperialist war criminals off campus through protest and exposure. Last fall, when NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen came to campus, the SYC initiated a protest against him (see “SYC Protests NATO at CCNY,” WV No. 1011, 26 October 2012).

Many campuses have been welcoming back ROTC, especially after Obama’s 2011 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). For years, many reformists and liberals based their protests against ROTC solely on the U.S. military’s institutionalized anti-gay bigotry. We protest all forms of discrimination, including in the military. At the same time, our opposition to ROTC is based not on the multitude of anti-democratic features of the U.S. armed forces, but on our dedication to the destruction of imperialism and opposition to its depredations worldwide.

We fight against every attempt by the ruling class to use college campuses as direct training grounds for the agents of U.S. imperialism. But academic institutions are not “ivory towers” isolated from the rest of capitalist society; rather they serve the needs of the capitalists. The CCNY administration was never against ROTC or the U.S. military. When it dropped ROTC from campus in 1971 in response to student protests, it simultaneously encouraged the setup of a regional ROTC center to serve CCNY off-campus. The administration is the agent of the ruling class on campus. Abolish the administration! For student, teacher, worker control of the universities!

The Revolutionary Student Coordinating Committee (RSCC), a Maoist student group active at CUNY campuses, wants the administration to be wielded for “revolutionary” ends. The RSCC Platform states, “We want teachers who suppress progressive and revolutionary ideas to be removed.” This is a despicable call to purge teachers and feeds into the nationwide crusade against the teachers unions, spearheaded by the White House and directed in New York City by Bloomberg’s administration. We side with the teachers unions against the wholesale attacks on public education, including the attempts to shred seniority rights and tenure.

In its July 13 leaflet “Hands off Assata Shakur! Eyes on David Petraeus! Stop the Militarization of CUNY!” the RSCC claims, “We find two tendencies within the legacy of CUNY: one revolutionary and one reactionary.” It fatuously declares: “We must view CUNY as an ideological front against the bourgeoisie and imperialism, particularly US imperialism!” While the RSCC peddles the myth of a potentially anti-imperialist state-run college, the SYCs expose and protest the administrators, who unleash the cops to quash student protest. In 2005, three CCNY students and one staff member were arrested and brutalized by the cops for protesting military recruiters during a career fair. The students were also suspended (see “ROTC, Military Recruiters Off Campus Now!” WV No. 846, 15 April 2005).

We oppose signing up for the volunteer army. Correspondingly, we also oppose military conscription, which serves to turn the bulk of working-class youth into cannon fodder for imperialist wars. Since their humiliating military defeat in the Vietnam War, the U.S. rulers have been hesitant to reinstate the draft for fear of the public outrage this would cause. Yet, sooner or later, the U.S. ruling class will find it necessary to reinstate the draft. The duty of revolutionaries, if drafted, is to go into the military with the mass of young workers and seek to win the working-class ranks to the fight for socialist revolution (see “On Draft Resistance: You Will Go!” Spartacist No. 11, March-April 1968).

The U.S. rulers today catch poor and minority students in the vise of minimum-wage jobs and skyrocketing tuition, and many youth see no alternative to eternal debt peonage other than through a tuition break offered by joining ROTC and carrying out the imperialists’ bidding. What is necessary is a fight to abolish the student debt! For free, quality education and a state-paid living stipend for all!

Democrats—The Other Party of Racism and War

Reformists and antiwar liberals would have you believe that imperialism is just a militaristic “policy” that the ruling class can scrap if they are pressured hard enough through protests, elections or moral suasion. In his classic work on the subject, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin explained why imperialism is not a set of particular policies, but the final stage of capitalism in its decay. The words of our Trotskyist forebears, written over 80 years ago, are still true:

“It is necessary, however, to understand that war is an integral part of capitalism. Every national section of capitalism depends upon its military arm for the defense of the same. War is the practical means through which one or the other capitalist state acquires control of the world market. The armed forces of a capitalist state has a twofold function: on the one hand the defense of the interests of the state externally, and on the other, the weapon by which the working class is kept in subjection at home. When this is understood it will become quite clear why the ‘outlawing’ of war can come about only through the destruction of capitalism.”

— “Imperialist War and the Class Struggle,” Young Spartacus, March 1932

To abolish imperialist militarism and capitalist exploitation, it is necessary to organize the social power of the working class for socialist revolution. Students by themselves do not have the social power necessary to transform society. They must ally themselves with the multiracial working class, which can physically bring capitalist production to a halt. The working class has the capacity to drive the bosses from power and establish workers rule. Only workers revolution can smash U.S. imperialism!

Returning a fifth of the world’s population in China to capitalist enslavement is today the ultimate prize sought by the imperialists. Anyone who is seriously committed to fighting U.S. imperialism must take a firm stand in defense of China and the other bureaucratically deformed workers states—Vietnam, North Korea, Laos and Cuba—without giving any political support to the Stalinist bureaucracies. Genuine opposition to U.S. imperialism requires the unconditional military defense of the countries where capitalism has been overthrown.

Fighting against imperialism means fighting for the working class and militant youth to break from the parties of the class enemy. But the RSCC is doing the exact opposite. Founded in February 2012, the RSCC was or is affiliated with the pro-Democrat Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO). RSCC supporters have verbally claimed to us that this relationship has ended, but we have looked in vain for any evidence of such a rupture. Where is the RSCC’s written position on the FRSO’s 2008 endorsement of Obama, the candidate of the class enemy? (See “Freedom Road Socialist Organization: Democrats’ Loyal Maoists,” WV No. 1004, 8 June 2012.) So stung were they by this exposure of the FRSO that, on March 16, the RSCC organizers outrageously threatened to call the cops on our comrades who were distributing this WV article outside an RSCC forum!

The Democratic Party, in fact, is the bourgeoisie’s preferred party to lead it into war. Democratic Party administrations led World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the wars against Serbia and Libya. And it is on Obama’s watch that the ruling class is waging its ideological war to mop up any vestiges of the “Vietnam syndrome” and get the ROTC operations back up and running openly rather than in a semi-covert way.

For all their “revolutionary” rhetoric, red flag waving and occasional criticisms of Obama, these Maoists do not breathe a word of opposition to the capitalist Democratic Party in the RSCC Platform, Constitution, or Points of Unity. Currently the RSCC, together with the centrist Internationalist Group (IG), is spearheading the “Ad-Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY” and called two protests this month against ROTC and General Petraeus. Given the RSCC’s politics—as well as those of the IG, which chases almost any reformist tail to wherever it leads—it is no surprise that the Ad-Hoc Committee’s 500-word manifesto (“CUNY Must Not Be a War College!” undated leaflet) manages the nearly impossible feat of failing to mention the Democratic Obama administration for which Petraeus worked, which is now overseeing the return of ROTC, and which is terrorizing the planet.

The fight against ROTC is part of a necessary fight for workers revolution to expropriate the capitalist class. We seek to join in concrete action with those who want to drive ROTC and Petraeus off campus, while always maintaining our separate political program and freedom of criticism. The SYCs, youth auxiliaries of the Spartacist League/U.S., section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), seek to break young workers and students from the ideological chains that bind them to illusions in capitalism and the warmongering Democratic Party. Young militants must study the lessons of history and understand that the world as it is today is not how it has always been, nor will always be. The capitalists may seem omnipotent today, but they are not so powerful as to prevent class struggle from breaking out. We stand for building a revolutionary Trotskyist party to lead a workers revolution that will replace today’s dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the working class.

From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin -Leader Of The Russian October 1917 Revolution    

 

 

Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/

Markin comment from the American Left History blog:

DVD REVIEW

LENIN-VOICE OF THE REVOLUTION, A&E PRODUCTION, 2005

Every militant who wants to fight for socialism, or put the fight for socialism back on the front burner, needs to come to terms with the legacy of Vladimir Lenin and his impact on 20th century revolutionary thought. Every radical who believes that society can be changed by just a few adjustments needs to address this question as well in order to understand the limits of such a position. Thus, it is necessary for any politically literate person of this new generation to go through the arguments both politically and organizationally associated with Lenin’s name. Before delving into his works a review of his life and times would help to orient those unfamiliar with the period. Obviously the best way to do this is read one of the many biographies about him. There is not dearth of such biographies although they overwhelmingly tend to be hostile. But so be it. For those who prefer a quick snapshot view of his life this documentary, although much, much too simply is an adequate sketch of the highlights of his life. It is worth an hour of your time, in any case.

The film goes through Lenin's early childhood, the key role that the execution of older brother Alexander for an assassination attempt on the Czar played in driving him to revolution, his early involvement in the revolutionary socialist movement, his imprisonment and various internal and external exiles, his role in the 1905 Revolution, his role in the 1917 Revolution, his consolidation of power through the Bolshevik Party and his untimely death in 1924. An added feature, as is usual in these kinds of films, is the use of ‘talking heads’ who periodically explain what it all meant. I would caution those who are unfamiliar with the history of the anti-Bolshevik movement that three of the commentators, Adam Ulam, Richard Daniels and Robert Conquest were ‘stars’ of that movement at the height of the anti-Soviet Cold War. I would also add that nothing presented in this biography, despite the alleged additional materials available with the‘opening’ of the Soviet files, that has not been familiar for a long time.

From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 94th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)

 Click below to link to the Communist International Internet Archives"

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

 Markin comment from the American Left History blog (2007):

BOOK REVIEW

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001

An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.

Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.

The Russian Revolution and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.

Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".

However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.

From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Website

Click below to link to the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty website.

http://www.mcadp.org/

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Markin comment:

I have been an opponent of the death penalty for as long as I have been a political person, a long time. While I do not generally agree with the thrust of the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Committee’s strategy for eliminating the death penalty nation-wide almost solely through legislative and judicial means (think about the 2011 Troy Davis case down in Georgia for a practical example of the limits of that strategy) I am always willing to work with them when specific situations come up. In any case they have a long pedigree extending, one way or the other, back to Sacco and Vanzetti and that is always important to remember whatever our political differences.

From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon-

 

 

 

Click below to link to the “James P. Cannon Internet Archives.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/index.htm

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Markin comment on founding member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party taken from a book review on the “American Left History” blog:

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.

At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.

For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party.

These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates ;trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the late 1920’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles in America this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.

As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-The Doors "Unknown Soldier"

 

In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
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WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin
My old friend from the summer of love 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point of answering, or rather arguing with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music was the revolution.” Meaning, of course not that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance,Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would do the trick, would change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some prelapsian Eden. No, meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down, Olde Saco Park, would feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the enemies of good, kindness, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too into the moment, too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exile on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about. Now it makes perfect sense that music or any mere cultural expression would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden. Although I guess that I would err on the side of the angels and at least wish they could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day.                

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue –pink dawn came rising to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia.  

The origin of that roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House , Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Roy, Big Joe and Ike, and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Joan Baez, etc. As I said I have often wondered about the source of this interest. I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bone) and so on.
And all those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads when I mentioned in passing that the Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase epitomized roots music. That hurt, a momentary hurt then but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors is roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of the Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up the Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition. I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic the Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Jim was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour)- Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then. Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments, felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by his protégés, hangers-on and their descendants has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin will surely endorse this sentiment. Enough.

The Other 9/11 - Forty years after Pinochet's coup in Chile

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

The Other 9/11 - Forty years after Pinochet's coup in Chile

 

 

Allende can no longer hope to satisfy the owners of industry and the working class. He will have to choose to side with one or the other.

But one side is armed, the other not. And Allende shows no inclination at all to break his pledges to the middle class of a year ago not to “interfere” with the state machine.

Instead he will probably use his influence, and that of the bureaucrats within Chile’s working-class based parties and trade unions, to persuade workers to put up with harsh conditions and an erosion of last year’s reforms.

Such a course will tend to create confusion and a lack of direction among many workers. But it is not likely to lead to any great loss in the spontaneous militancy in the factories and mines. Because of that it will not satisfy those who continue to hold real power in Chile. In the past we have seen a number of examples of regimes in some ways similar to Allende’s.

After a period their mass support became demoralised and the government themselves were easily overthrown by right-wing military coups.

Socialist Worker, 20 November 1971

Tragically, that analysis of 'the Chilean road to socialism' as led by Salvador Allende was proved correct and forty years ago today - as the current issue of Socialist Worker reminds us - on 11 September 1973, the Chilean military led by General Pinochet organised a bloody military coup and killed some 30,000 people as it overthrew Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity (UP) government - killing Allende himself. Like the Egyptian military takeover recently, this had the blessing of the United States. As Henry Kissinger had famously put it in June 1970,

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

The lessons of Chile remain important - if contested ones - for the coup is a classic demonstration of the classical Marxist analysis of the state machine as fundamentally an instrument of class oppression and domination designed to defend the rich - and a reminder of the fallacies behind the notion of a 'parliamentary road to socialism'. As Ian Birchall and Chris Harman noted in September 1973 just after Pinochet's coup,

The lessons of the Chilean experience, are not particularly original ones. They were first drawn by Marx, at the time of the Paris Commune more than 100 years ago, and they were reiterated by Lenin writing ‘State and Revolution’ on the eve of October: there is no way of carrying through a socialist transformation of society without first destroying the old state apparatus, with its standing army, its police, its judiciary, its bureaucratic hierarchy. In its place has to be established the rule of directly elected and recallable workers’ delegates, backed up by a workers’ militia.
Many would-be marxists have claimed that under modern conditions the bourgeois state can be reformed peacefully, at least in countries with strong parliamentary traditions.
These were the arguments used by Allende and the Communist Party in Chile. They are also the arguments of the labour left and the Communist Party in Britain. The Chilean coup has proved their fallacy. The ruling class will not just sit back and accept in-roads into its privileges, however ‘constitutionally’ reforms are carried through or however deep-rooted parliamentary traditions. The state machine in even the most democratic bourgeois states is built on strictly hierarchic principles, with control over the activities of the army, the police and the civil service concentrated in the hands of the relatives and friends of those who hold economic power. And the ruling class will use this state machine to re-establish its own, untrammelled domination the moment it feels the balance of forces are favourable to it.

That said, as the Chilean socialist Mario Nain notes today, if Pinochet's Chile was subsequently the laboratory for testing the ideas of 'neoliberalism' in practice, then in recent years anti-capitalist resistance and revolt have swept the country, led by new generations of workers. If there is hope today in Chile after the memories and legacy of Pinochet's tyranny, it lies with them.

Edited to add: See the Chile 40 Years On website for some anniversary events etc in the UK around this.

No Change in Obama's War Plans

by Stephen Lendman

Obama's Tuesday night address didn't surprise. It featured demagogic boilerplate. Defending the indefensible took center stage.

Bombast assured business as usual. More on his speech below.

War plans remain on track. They're delayed. They're not deterred. They're prioritized. Obama wants another country ravaged and destroyed.

He hides behind a shield of humanitarian intervention. He does so through cruise missile diplomacy.

He's no peace president. He's hell bent for war. He's waging one after another. He's done so since day one in office. Ahead of his Tuesday night address, Francis Boyle said:

Reports suggest he'll "argue that his threat of war has produced this offer by Syria to eliminate chemical, and therefore he needs a resolution to authorize war in order to promote diplomacy."

"Of course, this is nonsense. Bush Jr. made the same argument to get his War Power Resolution authorization knowing full well he was going to use that to go to war."

He "told Rice in March 2002: F..k Saddam. We're going to take him out."

"Obama et al" decided the same thing for Assad. "It took Bush Jr. maneuvering from October 2002 until March of 2013 before he launched the war."

"So in the event Obama gets his WPR against Syria, it might take a few more weeks of maneuvering."

The die is cast. It's written in stone. There's no stopping it. Assad must go. "It does not really matter what (he) does from here on in."

"Like Bush, (Obama) will simply (tell) Congress that the conditions (for war) have been fulfilled when he (launches) cruise missiles."

"The test for circumstantial evidence cases is 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' " It's based on the World Court's Corfu Chanel case. Obama's alleged evidence doesn't exist. His claims don't pass the smell test.

America's "in material breach of its solemn obligation to dismantle all its chemical weapons by April 2012," said Boyle

So is Israel. On September 11, Voice of Russia headlined "CIA document indicates Israel likely to have chemical weapons," saying:

It "secretly developed a range of (them) in the 1960s and 70s." It's one of seven non-signatory Chemical Weapons Convention states. Others include Angola, Egypt, Myanmar, North Korea, South Sudan and Syria.

Its arsenal includes large stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It's a non-signatory Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty state. It's a rogue state.

Obama plans lawless aggression on Syria. Israel's very much involved. "This is not even a case of preemptive self defense or anticipatory war," said Boyle.

The Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles rejected waging war for either reason. It called doing so the supreme crime against peace.

Obama's in violation multiple times. Attacking Syria will add another high crime to his rap sheet.

"Kosovo was the model for Libya (and same one) for Syria," said Boyle. Shock and awe cruise missile attacks are planned. So is high altitude B1, B2 and B52 bombing.

Enormous damage will be caused. Thousands may be killed. Many more will be injured and displaced. Civilians will suffer most.

"No legal" national security issue is at stake. Syria threatens no one. Claiming otherwise is false. Assad's defending his nation responsibly.

He's doing it against Western-enlisted death squads. They bear full responsibility for mass killing, chemical weapons use, destruction, torture and other atrocities.

"Like Iraq (Afghanistan and Libya), there will be no political solution," said Boyle. "Syria will be destroyed as a state." It'll be balkanized.

I'll be "carved into its ethnic units. Chaos and genocide will prevail against Alawites and Christians." Lawless aggression operates that way.

Obama intends it. His Tuesday night address wreaked of duplicitous fabrications. It repeated one Big Lie after another.

It was typical Obama. Syria is his war. It was planned years ago. Stopping it's as simple as calling off his dogs.

It's cutting off their weapons, funding, training and direction. It's going all out for peace. It's polar opposite of what Obama's pursuing.

He lied calling Syria's conflict "civil war." There's nothing "civil" about it. Syria was invaded. Western-enlisted death squads are employed. Salvador Option rules apply.

They include no holds barred mass killing, destruction, torture and other brutal atrocities. Assad's wrongfully blamed for insurgents' crimes.

On Tuesday, Obama strung one Big Lie after another together, saying:

Assad turned "peaceful protests into a brutal civil war." He killed (o)ver 100,000 people."

America's "work(ing) with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition, and to shape a political settlement."

"But I have resisted calls for military action, because we cannot resolve someone else's civil war through force."

On August 21, "(t)he situation profoundly changed when Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children."

Fact check

Obama bears full responsibility for two and a half years of bloody conflict, mass killing, destruction, brutal atrocities, and appalling human suffering.

He obstructs humanitarian aid. He doesn't provide it.

No political settlement is planned. He rejects it out of hand.

Western-enlisted death squads bear full responsibility for killing scores, perhaps several hundred, not over a thousand Ghouta residents. Cause of death remains to be determined.

Obama lied claiming otherwise. He's responsible for crimes of war, against humanity and genocide against Syrian civilians.

His entire address turned truth on its head. It was beginning to end lies. He abhors peace. He's selling war.

"If we fail to act," he said, "the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons."

"(O)ther tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using (it)."

"If fighting spills beyond Syria’s borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan, and Israel."

"And a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction, and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran - which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon, or to take a more peaceful path."

"This is not a world we should accept. This is what's at stake."

"And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike."

"The purpose of this strike would be to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime’s ability to use them, and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use."

Fact check

Annual US intelligence assessments call Iran's nuclear program peaceful. No evidence suggests a military component.

Tehran's in full compliance with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty provisions. America and Israel are serial violators.

Obama wants war. Peaceful conflict resolution proposals are dead on arrival. He intends massive shock and awe attacks.

He plans ravaging and destroying Syria entirely. He wants another imperial trophy. Mass killing and destruction are small prices to pay.

Obama lied saying he "will not put American boots on the ground in Syria." CIA and special forces already operate there covertly. They've done so for months. Plans are readied to deploy thousands of troops if needed.

"I will not (repeat) Libya or Kosovo," he said. He claimed his only objective is "deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad's capabilities."

False! Deposing Assad and replacing him is planned. So is full-scale war. Before it ends, hundreds of thousands may die. Greater mass destruction will be inflicted.

Charnel house conditions writ large will follow. Syria's already a humanitarian disaster. Obama bears full responsibility. He represents the worst of rogue governance. Stopping him matters most.

He deplores political solutions. He rejects diplomacy. He claims otherwise. He rages for more war.

"I've ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad," he said. He stopped short of explaining it's to wage war.

It's to violate core international law principles. It's to pistol whip independent nations into submission. It's to replace them with pro-Western puppet governance.

It's to control global resources. It's to exploit people everywhere as serfs. It's to destroy fundamental freedoms. It's to institute police state ruthlessness.

It's to crack down hard on nonbelievers. It's to make the world safe for capital. It's to do so through the barrel of a gun. It's to do it with the world's largest gulag.

It's by making torture official policy. It's by practicing death squad diplomacy. It's by ravaging the world one country at a time.

It's by stealing public wealth for corporate favorites. It's by consigning millions to poverty, unemployment, hunger, homelessness and unspeakable human misery.

It's by waging war on humanity. It's by risking destroying it altogether. Imperial priorities come first. Rogue leaders think that way.

Obama's by far the worst. It bears repeating. Stopping him matters most. Everything else pales by comparison.

A Final Comment

John Pilger said "(t)he great unmentionable is that humanity's most dangerous enemy resides across the Atlantic."

"John Kerry's farce and Barack Obama's pirouettes are temporary."

"Russia's peace deal over chemical weapons will, in time, be treated with (derision and) contempt that all militarists reserve for diplomacy."

Obama "intends to crush the last (remaining) independent" Middle East states. "Syria first, then Iran," Lebanon's Hezbollah governance, and Palestine's Hamas.

No holds barred terror bombing is planned. It's longstanding US policy. So-called humanitarian intervention is cover for crimes of war, against humanity and genocide.

Militarism is America's way of life. Obama's its latest exponent. He hides behind a facade of lies. He represents fascism writ large.

He's comfortable about inflicting dystopian harshness. Nuremberg judges were clear and unequivocal, saying:

"Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity."

"The ordinary people of Syria, and countless others, and our own self respect, deserve nothing less now," said Pilger.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/change-obamas-war-plans/

***When Radio Ruled The Waves-Woody Allen's "Radio Days"

DVD REVIEW

Radio Days, Directed by Woody Allen, 1987
I am a first generation child of the television age, although in recent years I have spent more time kicking and screaming about that fact than watching the damn thing. Nevertheless I can appreciate Director (and narrator) Woody Allen’s valentine to the radio days of his youth. I am just old enough, although about a half generation behind Allen, to remember the strains of songs like Paper Dolls and Autumn Leaves that he grew up with and that are nicely interspersed throughout his story as backdrop floating in the background of my own growing up house.

I am also a child of Rock and Roll but those above-mentioned tunes were the melodies that my mother and father came of age to and the stuff of their dreams during World War II and its aftermath. The music that formed the backdrop to the young lives of Joe and Evelyn Jackman, he of the rifle on ths shoulder sloshing through Europe and she, well, she waiting hoping that other show would not drop, not with a child on the way. The rough and tumble of my parents raising a bunch of kids might have taken the edge off it but the dreams remained. In the end it is this musical backdrop that makes Radio Days most memorable to me.

Let’s be clear- there something very different between the medium of the radio and the medium of the television. As Allen’s film poignantly points out the radio allowed for an expansion of the imagination (and of fantasy) that the increasingly harsh realities of what is portrayed on television does not allow one to get away with. There is, for example, the funny sketch here involving the ‘scare’ caused by Orson Welles narration of War of the Worlds. Today the space wanderers would have to be literally in one’s face before one accepted such a tale.

Allen’s youth, during the heart of World War II, was time when one needed to be able to dream a little. The realities of the world at that time seemingly only allowed for nightmares. My feeling is that this film touched a lot of sentimental nerves for the World War II generation (that so-called ‘greatest generation’) whether it was his Jewish families (as portrayed here) on the shores of New York’s Far Rockaway or my Irish families on the shores of Hullsville, Massachusetts. Nice work, Woody.

***From The Time Of Radio Days- Sentimental Journey- The Forties-A CD Review

 

A YouTube film clip of Lena Horne performing Stormy Weather. Wow!

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

CD Review

Sentimental Journey, Volume 1 (1942-1946), Rhino Records, 1993

I am a child of rock ‘n’ roll, no question. And I have filled this space with plenty of material about my likes and dislikes from the classic period of that genre, the mid-1950s, when we first heard that different jail-break beat, a beat our parents could not “hear,” as we of the generation of ’68 earned our spurs and started that long teenage process of going our own way. Still, as much as we were determined to have our own music on our own terms, wafting through every household, every household that had a radio in the background, and more importantly, had the emerging sounds from television was our parents’ music- the music, mainly of the fighting World War II period. The music of Joe and Evelyn Jackman, he of the rifle on the shoulder through bloody Europe and she of th eeternal wait at home for other shoe to drop. And that is what this Sentimental Journey volume evokes in these ears.

These are songs, not jitter-bugging songs like when Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington or Harry James and their orchestras started to “jump” to high heaven but the midnight mood songs, the songs of soldiers leaving for wherever and uncertain futures, the songs of old-fashioned (now, seemingly, old-fashioned) boy meets girl love, the songs of lonely nights waiting by the fireside, waiting for Johnny to come home. A very different waiting sound than rock, be-bop or hip-hop. A sound driven more by melody in synch with the Tin Pan Alley lyrics than anything later produced.

Some of these tunes still echo way back in my young teenager brain, some don’t, but here are the stick outs:

Swing On A Star, Bing Crosby (a much underrated, by me, singer, especially before I heard him do his rendition of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? on the fly, him on the fly); Paper Doll, The Mills Brothers (this one I heard endlessly in the background radio and has great harmonics by these guys and the one Evelyn hummed while washing dishes or whatever household chore can her way with four growing children); There I’ve Said It Again, Vaughn Monroe (old Vaughn was the prototype, even more than Frank Sinatra, for the virile male singer who carried the “torch,” the one who drew the straw for the last dance swing around the floor for that generation); Stormy Weather, Lena Horne (I was mad for this song even in my “high rock” days and if you get a chance watch the late Lena Horne do her thing with this one on YouTube for which I hav eprovided a link above, Wow! again); Night and Day, Frank Sinatra (classic Cole Porter, although I like Billie Holiday’s version better, Frank’s phrasing is excellent). Now if we just had Stardust Memories here we really would be back in the 1940s.

 

***Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"-In Honor Of Those Who Fought To "Seek A Newer World"

To Those Born After

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.
*******
Markin comment:

To Those Who Come After

History in the conditional is always a funny tricky little thing. You can get wrapped up it in so bad that you begin to deny the hard reality of what really happened, what really bad happened usually. On the other hand you can do as most historians do and just plod along assuming because X, Y, or Z happened that was that. That’s the facts, jack and that’s it. Obviously to resolve this thing, or rather to get a real sense of the possibilities, some combination, some mix and matching needs to be placed in the maelstrom. And it is under that sign that I wish to understand Bertolt Brecht’s great poem, his great big tied-up with ribbons and bows valentine to future generations really, To Those Who Come After, that I have posted above.

Of course it is a matter of generations, no question. And what that generation could have, or could not have, done, and done differently to sway the funny little rhythms of history. For his, Bertolt’s generation, if they only could have held out against the imperialist imperative onslaught of World War I, or at least not gone alone like sheep until almost the very end. More germane, if they could have carried out to completion one of those big-time revolutionary possibilities in Germany that they had in the early 1920s. Or ceased their, Communists and Social-Democrats alike, willfully myopic view that the Weimar regime would hold out against the bootjack of Hitler’s storm streets without having to unite for an all-out fight to the death against the Nazi menace.

Moving forward to my parent’s generation, the generation that scarecrow survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and went on to survive, or wait on the survivors, of the D-Day and Pacific bloodbaths of World War II. If only they could have seen clearly enough that that Roosevelt guise was sheer deception to save his class in power (even if he had to fight them, the economic royalists, the one percent of his time, tooth and nail to do it) and create their own party, a workers party, after the tremendous class battles of the mid to late 1930s when they had the bosses on the run, a little anyway. Or hadn’t bought, bought hard into that white picket fence post-war dream and let the red scare dark night wash away whatever big (or little, but I think big) spark got them through the dustbowl miseries and war shellshock.

Once again moving forward to my generation, my disposable income record store soda fountain be-bop high school confidential night with some undiagnosed teen angst mixed with teen alienation generation, the generation of ’68, who didn’t want, well, didn’t start out wanting to anyway, buy into that red scare night white picket fence dream. If we could have just, a big “could have just” I agree, not thrown everything out with the bathwater and read some history we could have realized that it wasn’t just about us. Well, one way or the other, the Vietnamese taught us that lesson, that lesson about perseverance, about a sense of history and about using every tool around to get free. Or, closer to home, if we could have remembered where we had come from, most of us anyway, and dug our working class heels in sooner we could have left some kind of social movement worthy of the name instead of leaving future generations to start from scratch.

And moving on to our children’s generation. Oh, well, history records many retrogressions in the uphill struggle.

And now on to the generation that I am really directing this little “history” lesson to, the real subject of my “to those who come after,” those who roughly are students today, and are moreover the heart and soul of the Occupy movement that has suddenly jumped up onto the historic stage giving them a chance to change the course of history- on their terms. And, by the way incidentally giving to me (and others) from the generation of ’68 a second chance to make things right. Each generation I am firmly convinced must (and will) find its own ways to fight the monster. But know this, know this from first-hand experience, there is a monster on the loose out there, and that monster has a name, the American imperial state just now being captained by one Barack Obama. Whoever the captain is though the monster remains and that is where the “to the death” fight is.

And this is where Brother Brecht and I can share the same sentiments about being ill-equipped in our times to face those hard realities, to worry over half-measures, to not stay the course we knew we had to stay. So forgive us for not doing better, not doing a lot better. But forgive, or not, go slay that damn dragon.

*From The Jazz Age-Fitzgerald Is In The House

BOOK REVIEW

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Random House, New York, 2002

One would have to be rather pedantic not recognize that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an important, if not the most important, novelistic voice of the Jazz Age in post World War I America. Nobody, with the possible occasional exception of Ernest Hemingway, has chronicled the end of the age of American innocence signaled by the Jazz Age better than Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald certainly was not the only voice of that age, think Hemingway again, but the voice that best exemplified the tensions between the mores of `old wealth' and the emerging sources of `new wealth' that were produced by the huge amount of money available, mainly through government contracts, as result of the war or riches gained through the illegal liquor trade. That is the sociological underpinning that drives Fitzgerald's work.

There is no better example of those tensions than the hero (or is it anti-hero?) of this book, Jay Gatsby. If nothing else it is a dramatic enactment of the strivings of the new money to `make it' in the world of high society, one way or another. And what better way to do that than in the age old tradition of buying one's way into that society through marriage. This is the modern American version of that old story.

And the story itself? One Jay Gatsby, the former Jimmy Ganz, freshly reinventing himself after indeterminate service in the American military in World War I and loaded with cash from questionable financial resources, attempts to win, or rather re-win the affections of one Daisy Buchanan his vision of the perfect life companion and exemplar of the `old money' crowd that he wishes to crash. One little complication, however, gets in the way. She has found herself married to a brutish but very wealthy member of that `old money' crowd. Gatsby's lavish but fumbling attempts to lure her away from the high society of Long Island, then the summer watering hole of the `old money', forms the core of the story.

Gatsby's trial and tribulations on the way as narrated by Nick Carroway (and Gatsby's somewhat unwitting accomplice in the Daisy matter) keeps the story line going until the final deadly ending. The morale- the very rich are indeed very different from you or I. Moreover, someone else will always have to pick up the messes they have made for themselves. They merely move on. This may serve as a cautionary tale for that time and, possibly, today.

A word on literary merits. According to the inevitable changes in literary fashion as well as literary politics Fitzgerald, for long a leading figure in the canon of American literature, has been somewhat eclipsed by other more post-modernist trends. While I firmly believe that the Western canon is in dire need of expansion to include `third world', woman and minority voices Fitzgerald's literary merits stand on their own. His tightly- crafted story line, his sense of language and the flat-out fact that that he knew the subject matter that formed the basis of his expositions merit renewed consideration by today's reader.

Simply put, if you want to understand part of what was going on in America in the 1920's before the Great Crash of 1929 then you have to read the man. If nothing else read the last few pages of Gatsby. If there is a better literary expression of the promise of America as seem by the early Dutch settlers of New York (and the New World) as the last best hope of civilization and the failure of that promise at the hands of the later "robber barons" and their descendants I have not read it.