***The "Max Daddy” Blues Shootout- Alan Lomax’s "Blues At Newport 1966"-Take Three (Finally With Film Clips)

Above A YouTube Film Clip Of Skip James Doing "Devil Got My Woman" At The Newport Folk Festival In 1966. Wow!

Son House

Howlin'Wolf

Bukka White

Reverend Pearly Brown

DVD REVIEW

Devil Got My Woman: Blues At Newport 1966, Skip James, Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Bukka White and the Reverend Pearly Brown, Vestapol Productions, 1996

I have spent some considerable effort in this space reviewing various trends in the blues tradition, including both the country blues and the later electrified urban sound most closely associated with places like Memphis and Chicago. As is fairly well known country blues got its start down in the South during the early part of the 20th century (if not earlier) as a way for blacks (mainly) to cope with the dreaded, deadly work on the plantations (picking that hard to pick cotton). The electric blues really came of age in the post- World War I period and later when there was a massive black migration out of the south in search of the, now disappearing, industrial jobs up north (and to get out from under old Mister Jim Crow racial segregation). In this volume (and similarly in a couple of other previously reviewed volumes in this series) Stefan Grossman, the renowned guitar teacher and performer in his own right, has taken old film clips and segments from an Alan Lomax experiment at the Newport Folk Festival of putting exemplars of both traditions together under one roof and has produced an hour of classic performances by some masters of the genre. Wow.

Let me set the stage on this one to give you a small, small sense of what an historic blues cultural occasion this was. Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist and folk performer, put the then recently "rediscovered" Skip James and Son House and the already well known and powerful voice of Howlin' Wolf together under one roof. Oh yes, and then added Bukka White and the Reverend Pearly Brown to the mix. The motif: an attempt to recreate an old fashioned "juke joint'" from back in the days on a Down South rural Saturday night complete with dancing and plenty of liquor. Watch out.

Needless to say anyone even vaguely familiar with the long and storied history of the early blues knows that this was indeed an historic, and fleeting, occasion. 1966 might have been one of the few years that such an event could have been put together as the old country blues singers were starting to past from the scene. But as fate would have it we got one last chance to look at these five performers going head to head, everyone one way or another a legend. With the partial exception of the Reverend Pearly Brown and his religiously- oriented country blues done in the shout and response style of the old Baptist churches reflecting the tradition made popular by the Reverend Blind Willie Johnson, all the other performers have rated plenty of ink in this space as members of one or another branch of the blues pantheon.

A few of the highlights. Skip James' rendition of his classic "I'd Rather Be The Devil That Be That Woman's Man" (also known by the title of this documentary "Devil Got My Woman"). I have gotten more mileage out of my use of that title in various political commentaries in this space than I deserve. Thanks, Skip. Son House brought out his classic "Death Letter Blues" that I always go crazy over. Howlin' Wolf is, well, Howlin' Wolf as he almost inhales the harmonica on "How Many More Years" and does an incredible cover of the old Robert Johnson/Elmore James song "Dust My Broom". Reverend Brown does a very soulful rendition of the tradtional religious blues classic "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning".

So who is left? Well Bukka White, of course. Bukka is a recent addition to my personal blues pantheon and I have spend some effort praising his work, especially his smoking guitar work on that old National Steel guitar that he makes hum. Hell, I would have walked to Mississippi to hear that. This documentary has a separate songs section so that one can replay any song that one wants to without having to replay the whole film (although I did that as well). So who got replayed? Yes Bukka on "100 Men" (with Howlin' Wolf doing the response and some unknown washboard player as backup). Yes indeed, this was the blues shootout to end all shootouts. If you want to know what it was like to see men play the blues for keeps look here.

*********
Devil Got My Woman lyrics

You know, I'd rather be the ol' devil
Well, I'd rather be the devil
Then to be that woman' man
You know, rather be the devil
Than to be that woman' man

You know, I'm so sorry
You know, so sorry
That I ever fell in love wit' you-ooo-hoo-oo
Because you know you don't treat me
Baby, like you used ta do-hoo

You know, I laid down last night
You know, I laid down last night
And I thought to take me some rest
But my mind got to rambling
Like a wild geese from the west

You know the woman that I love
The woman that I love
I stol't her from my best friend
But you know he done got lucky
An he done got her back, again

You know, I used to cut your kindleing
You know, I used to cut your kindleing
Baby, then I made you some fire
Then I would tote all your water
Way, way, way, from the bogy brier

You know, my baby she don't drink whiskey
My baby, she don't drink no whiskey
An I know she ain't crazy about wine
Now, it was nothin' but the ol' devil
He done changed my baby's mind

You know, I could be right
You know, I could be right
Then again, I could be wrong
But it was nothin' but the ol' devil
He done got my baby
Now he done gone.

I'm So Glad lyrics

Eee, an I'm so glad
Yes sir, I'm glad
Until I just don't know
What to do

An I am tired a-weeping
I'm so tired a-moanin'
I'm so tired of groanin' for you

(guitar)

Eee, an I am so -
Yes, I am mighty glad
Until I just don't know what -

Would you be my little darlin'?
Would you be my dear?
Would you be my darlin'
Be my dear?

Then I would be mighty -
I would be mighty glad
Then I just wouldn't know
What to do

When I say, 'Coo-coo-coo'
Just like a little baby, do
I would love to have
A lovely kiss from you

Then I would be mighty -
Then I would be so -
Until I just wouldn't know -

You know, I'm tired a-weeping
I'm so tired of a-moanin'
I'm so tired of groanin' for you

(guitar)

Eee, an I am so glad
Yes, I'm so glad
Until I just don't know
What to do-ooo-woo-ooo-ooo.

Cherry Ball Blues lyrics

I love my little cherry ball
Better than I love myself
I love my cherry ball
Better than I love myself
Then if she don't love me
She can't love nobody else

Cherry ball, she quit me
Quit me in a nice, good way
Cherry ball, she quit me
Quit me in a nice, good way
You know, what it take to get her back
I carries it ev'ryday

Now, I left cherry ball standin'
Standin' in the back do' cryin'
Now, I left cherry ball
Standin' in the back do' cryin'
Of course, I feel her condition
But her trouble ain't none a-mine

She's just like a spider
She's hangin' on the wall
She's like a spider
She's hangin' on the wall
You know, she done quit me
She quit me without a cause

Now, when she left me
She left tears in my eye
Now, when she left me
She left tears in my eye
You know, that I love her
But her disposition I do dispise

Now, you can take the Southern
I'm 'on take the Sante Fe
Now, you take the Southern
I'm 'on take the Sante Fe
I'm gon' ride an gon' ramble
'Till cherry ball come back to me

She got to come on back home to me-ee-ee.

Son House - Death Letter lyrics

Lyrics to Death Letter :

I got a letter this mornin, how do you reckon it read?
It said, "Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead"
I got a letter this mornin, I say how do you reckon it read?
You know, it said, "Hurry, hurry, how come the gal you love is dead?"

So, I grabbed up my suitcase, and took off down the road
When I got there she was layin on a coolin' board
I grabbed up my suitcase, and I said and I took off down the road
I said, but when I got there she was already layin on a coolin' board

Well, I walked up right close, looked down in her face
Said, the good ol' gal got to lay here 'til the Judgment Day
I walked up right close, and I said I looked down in her face
I said the good ol' gal, she got to lay here 'til the Judgment Day

Looked like there was 10,000 people standin' round the buryin' ground
I didn't know I loved her 'til they laid her down
Looked like 10,000 were standin' round the buryin' ground
You know I didn't know I loved her 'til they damn laid her down

Lord, have mercy on my wicked soul
I wouldn't mistreat you baby, for my weight in gold
I said, Lord, have mercy on my wicked soul
You know I wouldn't mistreat nobody, baby, not for my weight in gold

Well, I folded up my arms and I slowly walked away
I said, "Farewell honey, I'll see you on Judgment Day"
Ah, yeah, oh, yes, I slowly walked away
I said, "Farewell, farewell, I'll see you on the Judgment Day"

You know I went in my room, I bowed down to pray
The blues came along and drove my spirit away
I went in my room, I said I bowed down to pray
I said the blues came along and drove my spirit away

You know I didn't feel so bad, 'til the good ol' sun went down
I didn't have a soul to throw my arms around
I didn't feel so bad, 'til the good ol' sun went down
You know, I didn't have nobody to throw my arms around

I loved you baby, like I love myself
You don't have me, you won't have nobody else
I loved you baby, better than I did myself
I said now if you don't have me, I didn't want you to have nobody else

You know, it's hard to love someone that don't love you
Ain't no satisfaction, don't care what in the world you do
Yeah, it's hard to love someone that don't love you
You know it don't look like satisfaction, don't care what in the world you do

Got up this mornin', just about the break of day
A-huggin' the pillow where she used to lay
Got up this mornin', just about the break of day
A-huggin' the pillow where my good gal used to lay

Got up this mornin', feelin' round for my shoes
You know, I must-a had them old walkin' blues
Got up this mornin', feelin' round for my shoes
Yeah, you know bout that, I must-a had them old walkin' blues

You know, I cried last night and all the night before
Gotta change my way a livin', so I don't have to cry no more
You know, I cried last night and all the night before
Gotta change my way a livin', you see, so I don't have to cry no more

Ah, hush, thought I heard her call my name
If it wasn't so loud and so nice and plain
Ah, yeah
Mmmmmm

Well, listen, whatever you do
This is one thing, honey, I tried to get along with you
Yes, no tellin' what you do
I done everything I could, just to try and get along with you

Well, the minutes seemed like hours, hours they seemed like days
It seemed like my good, old gal outta done stopped her low-down ways
Minutes seemed like hours, hours they seemed like days
Seems like my good, old gal outta done stopped her low-down ways

You know, love's a hard ol' fall, make you do things you don't wanna do
Love sometimes leaves you feeling sad and blue
You know, love's a hard ol' fall, make you do things you don't wanna do
Love sometimes make you feel sad and blue

Son House - Preachin' Blues lyrics
Lyrics to Preachin' Blues :

Oh, I'm gonna get me a religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist Church
Oh, I'm gonna get me a religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist Church
I'm gonna be a Baptist preacher, and I sure won't have to work

Oh, I'm a-preach these blues, and I, I want everybody to shout
I want everybody to shout
I'm gonna do like a prisoner, I'm gonna roll my time on out

Oh, I went in my room, I bowed down to pray
Oh, I went in my room, I bowed down to pray
Till the blues come along, and they blowed my spirit1 away

Oh, I'd-a had religion, Lord, this every day
Oh, I'd-a had religion, Lord, this every day
But the womens and whiskey, well, they would not set me free

Oh, I wish I had me a heaven of my own
Hey, a heaven of my own
Till I'd give all my women a long, long, happy home

hey, I love my baby, just like I love myself
Oh, just like I love myself
Well, if she don't have me, she won't have nobody else

Son House - Pony Blues lyrics
Lyrics to Pony Blues :

Why don't you catch my pony, now saddle up my black mare?
...my pony, saddle up, up my black mare?
You know, I'm gonna find my baby, well, in the world somewhere

You know, he's a travelin' horse, an' he's too black bad
He's a travelin' pony, I declare, he's too black bad
You know, he got a gait, now, no Shetlan' ain't never had

You know, I taken him by the rein an' I led him around and 'round
I say, I taken him by the reins an' I, I led him, him 'round and 'round
You know, he ain't the best in the world, but he's the best ever been in this town

You know, he's a travelin' horse and he don't deny his name
He's a travelin' pony and he don't deny his name
You know, the way he can travel is a low-down, old, dirty shame

Why don't you come up here, pony, now come on, please let's us go
I said, "Come up, get up now, please pony, now let's us go"
Let's we saddle on down on the Gulf of, of Mexico

You know, the horse that I'm ridin', he can fox-trot, he can lope and pace
I say, the pony I'm ridin', he can fox-trot, he can lope and pace
You know, a horse with them many gaits, you know, I'm bound to win the race

He's a travelin' horse an' he don't deny his name
He's a travelin' pony, he don't deny his name
the way he can travel is a low-down, old, dirty shame

Howlin' Wolf

All songs written by Willie Dixon (Arc Music Corp- BMI) except * by Chester Burnett (Arc Music Corp- BMI) and ** by James B. Oden (Arc Music Corp- BMI)

SHAKE FOR ME

Sure look good, but it don't mean a thing to me
Sure look good, but it don't mean a thing to me
I got a hip-shaking woman, shake like a willow tree

You better wait baby, you got back a little too late.
You better wait baby, you got back a little too late.
I got a cool-shaking baby, shake like jello on a plate

When my baby walk, you know she's fine and mellow
When my baby walk, you know she's fine and mellow
Every time she stops, her flesh it shake like jello

Shake it baby, shake it for me
Shake lil' baby, shake it for me
Oh, shake it little baby, shake like a willow tree


THE RED ROOSTER

I had a little red rooster too lazy to crow for day
I had a little red rooster too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the barnyard upset in every way

Oh, them dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl
Oh, them dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl
Oh, Watch out strange kin people, little red rooster's on the prowl

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him on home
If you see my little red rooster, please drag him on home
There ain't no peace in the barnyard since my little red rooster's been gone


YOU'LL BE MINE

You so sweet, you so fine
How I wish you were mine
Honey I'll be your love
You'll be mine
You'll be mine
You'll be mine

You so nice, you so true
I'm so glad I love you
Honey I'll be your love
You'll be mine
You'll be mine
You'll be mine

Tell me pretty baby is you gonna try
If you say it baby, hang on baby
till the day I die

It's so true I love you
I don't care what you do
Honey I'll be your love
You'll be mine
You'll be mine
You'll be mine

Tell me pretty baby is you gonna try
If you say it baby, hang on baby
till the day I die

That is true I love you
I don't care what you do
Honey I'll be your love
You'll be mine
You'll be mine
You'll be mine (fade out)


WHO'S BEEN TALKIN' *

My baby caught the train, left me all alone
My baby caught the train, left me all alone
She knows I love her, she doin' me wrong

My baby bought the ticket, long as her right arm
My baby bought the ticket, long as my right arm
She says she's gonna ride long as I been from home

Well who been talking, everything that I do
Well who been talking, everything that I do
Well you is my baby, I hate to lose

Well goodbye baby, hate to see you go.
Well goodbye baby, hate to see you go.
You know I love you I'm the causin of it all.
I'm the causin' of it all.
I'm the causin' of it all.
I'm the causin' of it all.


WANG DANG DOODLE

Tell Automatic Slim , tell Razor Totin' Jim
Tell Butcher Knife Totin' Annie, tell Fast Talking Fanny
A we gonna pitch a ball, a down to that union hall
We gonna romp and tromp till midnight
We gonna fuss and fight till daylight
We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long
All night long
All night long
All night long

Tell Kudu-Crawlin' Red, tell Abyssinian Ned
Tell ol' Pistol Pete, everybody gonna meet
Tonight we need no rest, we really gonna throw a mess
We gonna to break out all of the windows, we gonna kick down all the doors
We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long
All night long
All night long
All night long

Tell Fats and Washboard Sam, that everybody gonna to jam
Tell Shaky and Boxcar Joe, we got sawdust on the floor
Tell Peg and Caroline Dye, we gonna have a time.
When the fish scent fill the air, there'll be snuff juice everywhere
We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night long

SPOONFUL

It could be a spoonsful of diamonds,
Could be a spoonful of gold,
Just a little spoon of your precious love,
Satisfies my soul.

Men lies about little,
Some of them cries about little,
Some of them dies about little,
Everything fight about little spoonful.

It could be a spoonful of coffee,
Could be a spoonful of tea,
But a little spoon of your precious love,
Good enough for me.

Men lies about that,
Some of them dies about that,
Some of them cries about that,
But everything fight about that spoonful.

That spoon, dat spoon, dat spoonful.

It could be a spoonsful of water,
Saved from the deserts sand,
But one spoon of them fortifies.
Save you from another man.

Men lies about that,
Some of them cries about that,
Some of them dies about that,
Everybody fightin' about that spoonful.

That spoon, dat spoon, dat spoonful.


BACK DOOR MAN

I am a back door man.
I am a back door man.
Well the men don't know, but the little girls understand.

When everybody's sound asleep,
I'm somewhere making my midnight creep.
Yes in the morning, the rooster crow.
Something tell me, I got to go.

I am a back door man.
I am a back door man.
Well the men don't know, but little girls understand.

They take me to the doctor. Shot full o' holes.
Nurse cried, please save the soul.
Killed him for murder, first degree.
Judge's wife cried. Let the man go free.

I am a back door man.
I am a back door man.
Well the men don't know, but little girls understand.

Stand out there. Cop's wife cried.
Don't take him down. Rather be dead.
Six feets in the ground.
When you come home you can eat pork and beans.
I eats mo' chicken any man seen

I am a back door man.
I am a back door man.
Well the men don't know, but the little girls understand.


HOWLIN' FOR MY BABY

Pretty baby. Come on home. I love you.
If you hear me howlin', calling on my darlin'.

She's hot like red pepper. Sweet like cherry wine.
I'm so glad she love me. Love me all the time.
She's my little baby, sweet as she can be.
All this love she's got, do belongs to me.
If you hear me howlin', calling on my darling.

My baby. Come on home. I love you. Come on home.
If you hear me howlin', calling on my darling.

Every time she kiss me, she makes the lights go out.
From early in the morning, she makes me jump and shout.
This bad love she got, makes me laugh and cry.
Makes me really know, that I'm too young to die.
If you hear me howlin', calling on my darling.

Come on. I love you. Pretty baby.

Reverend Pearly Brown doing Blind Willie Johnson - In My Time Of Dyin' lyrics

Lyrics to In My Time Of Dyin' :

Well, in my time of dyin', don't want nobody to moan
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Well, well, well, so I can die easy
Well, well, well, well, well, well, so I can die easy
Jesus goin' make up
Jesus goin' make up
Jesus goin' make my dyin' bed

Well, meet me, Jesus, meet me, meet me in the middle of the air
If these wings should fail me, Lord, won't you meet me with another pair
Well, well, well, so I can die easy
Well, well, well, well, well, well, so I can die easy
Jesus goin' make up
Jesus goin' make up
Jesus goin' make my dyin' bed

Lord, in my time of dyin', don't want nobody to cry
All I want you to do, is take me when I die
Well, well, well, so I can die easy
Well, well, well, well, well, well, so I can die easy
Jesus goin' make up
Jesus goin' make up
Jesus goin' make my dyin' bed


Reverend Pearly Brown doing Blind Willie Johnson - It's Nobody's Fault But Mine Lyrics to It's Nobody's Fault But Mine :

Nobody's fault but mine,
nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read it my soul be lost

I have a bible in my home,
I have a bible in my home
If I don't read it my soul be lost

Mmm, father he taught me how to read,
father he taught me how to read
If I don't read it my soul be lost, nobody's fault but mine

Ah, Lord, Lord, nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read it my soul be lost

Ah, I have a bible of my own,
I have a bible of my own
If I don't read it my soul be lost

Oh, mother she taught me how to read,
mother she taught me how to read
If I don't read it my soul be lost, nobody's fault but mine

Ah, Lord, Lord, nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read it my soul be lost

And sister she taught me how to read,
sister she taught me how to read
If I don't read it my soul be lost, nobody's fault but mine

Ah, mmm, Lord, Lord, nobody's fault but mine
If I don't read it my soul'd be lost, mmm


Aberdeen Mississippi 2:33 Trk 9

Bukka White (Booker T. Washington White)
Bukka White - vocal & guitar
& Washboard Sam (Robert Brown) - wshbrd.
Recorded: March 7th & 8th 1940 Chicago, Illinois
Album: Parchman Farm Blues, Roots RTS 33055
Transcriber: Awcantor@aol.com


I was over in Aberdeen
On my way to New Orlean
I was over in Aberdeen
On my way to New Orlean
Them Aberdeen women told me
Will buy my gasoline

Hey, two little women
That I ain't ever seen
They has two little women
That I ain't never seen
These two little women
Just from New Orlean

Ooh, sittin' down in Aberdeen
With New Orlean on my mind
I'm sittin' down in Aberdeen
With New Orlean on my mind
Well, I believe them Aberdeen women
Gonna make me lose my mind, yeah

(slide guitar & washboard)

Aber-deen is my home
But the mens don't want me around
Aberdeen is my home
But the men don't want me around
They know I will take these women
An take them outta town

Listen, you Aberdeen women
You know I ain't got no dime
Oh-oh listen you women
You know'd I ain't got no dime
They been had the po' boy
All up and down.

(guitar & washboard to end)


Fixin' To Die Blues lyrics

I'm lookin' funny in my eyes
And I believe I'm fixin' to die
Believe I'm fixin' to die
I'm lookin' funny in my eyes
Now, I believe I'm fixin' to die, yeah
I know I was born to die
But I hate to leave my children around cryin'
Yeah

Just as sho' we live
It's a, sho' we's born to die
Sho' we's born to die
Just as sho's we live
Sho' we's born to die
Yeah
I know I was born to die
But I hate to leave my children around cryin'
Yeah

Yo mother treated me, children
Like I was her baby child
Was her baby child
Yo mother treated me
Like I was her baby child
That's why's I sighed
Sighed so hard
And come back home to die
Yeah

So many nights at the fireside
How my chillen's mother would cry
How my chillen's mother would cry
So many nights at the fireside
How my chillen's mother would cry
Yeah
'Cause I told the mother I had to say, goodbye

Look over yon-der
On the buryin' ground
On the buryin' ground
Look over yonder, on the burying ground
Yon' stand ten thousand
Standin' still to let me down
Yeah

(washboard & guitar)

Mother, take my chillen back
Before they let me down
Before they let me down
Mother, take my chillen back
'Fore they let me down
Ain't no need a-them screamin' an cryin'
On the graveyard ground.

(washboard & guitar to end)


Shake 'em On Down lyrics

Yes, you're a nice girl, mama
And little girl
Night before day
We gonna
Shake 'em on down

I need some time holler, now
Oh, must I shake 'em on down
I done shout hollerin', now
Must I shake 'em on down

Too much is debted to me
Through the week
Save these chili peppers
Some ol' rainy day, here

Best I'm hollerin', now
Ooh, must I shake 'em on down
I done shout hollerin', now
Must I shake 'em on down, now

Fix my supper
Let me go to bed
This white lightnin' done gone
To my head

Oh, must I holler now
Ooh, must I shake 'em on down
I done shout hollerin', now
Must I shake 'em on down

I ain't been in Georgia, babe
I been told
Georgia women got the best
Jellyroll

These nights time holler, now
Oh, must I shake 'em on down
I done shout hollerin', mama
Must I shake 'em on down

See See mama, heard
You, done-done
Made me love you, now I know
Man done coming

Best I'm hollerin', now
Oh, must I shake 'em on down
I done shout hollerin', mama
Must I shake 'em on down

Pretty girl's got
They don't know
What it is
Make me drunk at that old
Whiskey still

It's best I'm hollerin', now
Oh, must I shake 'em on down
I done shout hollerin'
Must I shake 'em on down.

Poor Boy Long Way From Home by Bukka White Lyrics

Poor boy a long way from home
Poor boy I'm a long way from home
Poor boy I'm a long way from home
I don't have no happy home to go home to

When I left my home my baby's in my arms
When I left my home my baby's in my arms
When I left my home my baby's in my arms
She wanna know, 'Daddy, when you comin' back home?'

(guitar)

They got me down here on the farm
Got me down here on old farm
I don't have no one to come and go my bail
Baby, I wanna come back home to you

(guitar)

Sorry, baby I can't call you over the phone
Sorry, I can't call you over the phone
'Cause they got me down here long distance phone
But I can't call you baby over the phone.

(guitar to end)

***On Becoming Allen Ginsberg- Kill Your Darlings-A Film Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Kill Your Darlings, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Sony Pictures, 2013

I am prepared, as a child of the generation of ’68, to pay due homage to, or at least look at, any book, film or play that even tangentially deals with my forbear heroes from the beat generation, you know mill town million word Jack Kerouac, mad monk sage of the new dispensation Allen Ginsberg, jaded drugstore- cowboy William S. Burroughs, street gunsel poet Gregory Corso, the father we never knew Neal Cassady and the usual suspects. Although that cultural movement was just a tad bit early for me to appreciate as a youth in the early 1960s (taking the faux-beat scene around Harvard Square coffee- houses and blessed midnight Hayes-Bickford eateries as the real deal) since then I have come to greatly appreciate what literary delights that crowd produced for us. Thus no one should be ashamed, in fact far from it, to go back to that period and mine any nuggets they can from those forbears given the vast cultural wasteland that confronts us these days. Those guys (and it was mainly guys) might have been madmen but they did it with style, freeform style not some studied pose. One wishes that the literati of the generation of '68 fifty years out could still generate such interest.

Those who put together this film under review, Kill Your Darlings, centered on some episodes in the life of one cosmic poet Allen Ginsberg have tried their hand at mining some nuggets from the formative period of his life, his college days, in the wartime 1940s in New York City years . Mostly they have succeeded in contrast to any earlier effort by others to do so for later period in Howl(from the title of his ground-breaking poem) and his sidekick role in last year’s frankly disappointing film adaptation of Kerouac’s On The Road.

Of course any effort to figure out what one Allen Ginsberg was about, or trying to be about, has to focus on his struggle to write poetry very different from his father’s formal stuff, to break loose from the poetic norms, his unsuccessful struggle to defend his mother against her demons, and as well his attempts to deal with his sexual orientation when unlike today the closet was the place of bitter choice for homosexuals, or the sexual different of any type. Add on drug experimentation and his friendship with one fellow mad monk Lucien Carr and the circle is complete. Well almost complete since that mad monk Carr was being pursued by an older man, an older man who wound up very dead one night. At Carr’s hand? Well that is the mystery, a mystery that drags Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs (whose druid-ness, if there is such a word, seemed always to be present when the going got weird) and half of the Village literati in its wake. Strange, strange indeed. But a well-acted portrayal by Radcliffe and DeHaan as the two headliners Ginsberg and Carr here. But read, read like crazy all the stuff the beats wrote, wrote when men (and a few women) wrote literature for keeps.

An Old Geezer Sighting-Part Two- Another  50^th Anniversary –Of Sorts

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Writers, or at least people who like to write, know, know deep in their souls, or hell, maybe only know by instinct that some things should not be written. Or if written then discarded (and in the age of cyberspace one can just press the DELETE button, praise be). That was my initial response when my old friend from back in high school days (actually we had both graduated that year, that 1964 year, so let’s say at the end of high school days), Peter Paul Markin (hereafter just Markin which is what everybody except nerdy girls called him refusing to play to that Peter Paul thing like he was descended from Mayflower people or something), asked me to write a little something celebrating a 50th anniversary that he was all exercised about. Now I know his request wasn’t about our respective 50^th high school graduation anniversaries since that is not until next year. I figured that it must have been, knowing Markin, some political event, the historic civil rights March on Washington, the fall of the Diem regime in Vietnam that led to all hell breaking out there, and here, or the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination that brought about a sea- change in American culture, brought down the “nights of the long knives” that we are still fighting a rearguard action against. But no Markin had nothing so exalted in mind. What he wanted was to commemorate, if that is the right word here, the 50^th anniversary of the last year that he ran the storied North Adamsville course as a member of the North Adamsville cross-country team. Jesus.      

Yes I know, although these days the media and others on slow news days are prone to commemorate all kinds of anniversary of events including odd-ball years like 30^th and 40^th, this was a weird request. But Markin argued his case as he does when he is exercised about something and I had to hear him out. It seems that he had actually run that course this fall after 50 years of statutory neglect and so wanted to tout that fact to all who would listen.  He said that he had taken up jogging a while back to while the time away and keep the pounds off and somehow expected that would soften me up. That explanation left me non-plussed even though I personally would have a hard time running one hundred yards (or meters, whatever the short distance is they run these days) without crying out desperately for oxygen and many other medicals services. So I was ready to give the devil his due with a pat on the back, see you later and move on, especially that move on part.

Markin then went into high gear. He mentioned that a few years back, it must have been 2010, he had written a sketch about his current running prowess to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of when he began to run as a sport. He had run a mile over at some practice field, the “dust bowl” he called it which gives you an idea of the condition of the track, then and now, to prove that he was not over the hill, or something. Yes, I know again, like this was some fleet-footed ancient marathon feat worthy of notice. His point was that the sketch was well received by the AARP-worthy audience of ex-classmates and others in need of elderly care he was addressing thus throwing down the gauntlet about my ability to match that result. No sale, brother, no sale.

That negative response on my part set him off, had him seeing red.  He went into his classic “you owe me” rant. That “you owe me” stems from way back in the summer of 1964 when we first met down in my hometown of Hullsville which is about thirty miles south of North Adamsville. We had met at the Surf Ballroom where there was a weekly live band dance (rock and roll, of course, now called classic rock, damn) and I “stole” a girl from him that we were both interested in. The girl eventually faded but our friendship began. And with that little tidbit he won his argument. Not on the merits of his case, and not even to shut him up, but because I told him that if I wrote something now about his silly anniversary then next year, next summer, I get to write the real story about the 50th anniversary of the night that I supposedly “stole” that girl from him. And will not be pretty, brother, it will not be pretty.                              

*******

Markin spent the better part of an hour telling me the story of his “mock heroic” run, including some back story information about that “historic” mile run at the dreaded “dust bowl” in 2010 to add, what did he call it, oh yeah “color”. Mostly though what he had to say was filler, you know, stuff, supposedly profound stuff, about memory, aging, mortality and other such lofty sentiments as he jogged along. After all how much can one write about an old geezer going at snail’s pace, sweating, swearing and huffing and puffing. Maybe a quick paragraph and done. As usual I only listened half-heartedly once I saw where he was heading so some of the material I jotted down may be off but here is the gist of it:          

The year 2010 was decisive for one Peter Paul Markin’s return to the running roads and fields. One day, one January day while he was walking along the Charles River in Boston he remembered that it had been 50 years before that he had first started running, running to get out of the cramped tiny single family seen-better-days house that he shared with three brothers and his parents, running to chase the blues away, running to get rid of about sixteen tons of thirteen year old teen angst and alienation, hell, running just to hear the sound of his feet setting a beat on the road and his breathe becoming steady after the first huffing and puffing. That angst running for the heck of it eventually led to a high school career in cross-country and indoor and outdoor track where he had successes and failures like a lot of others who pursued sports at some level. That up and downs of that career need not detain us except to give reason to why he was commemorating some woe-begotten anniversary. After high school he had given up running and went on to pursue more natural things like wine, women and song, including “stealing” a couple of young women on his own, a little dope (actually some times a lot of dope when hippiedom was in high flower, some counter-cultural things, a tour in the army, work, seven kinds of work, some marriages and other relationships. You know an ordinary life, lived well or poorly but lived as time marched on.    

Later that month Markin had an epiphany. He had been back in his old North Adamsville hometown on some unrelated business when he decided to walk around some of the streets adjacent to the old high school. While doing so, while taking this memory walk as it turned out, he walked past the old track (that “dust bowl” of blessed memory) where he had practiced long ago and that is where the idea of seeing whether he could still run a mile took form. A couple of weeks later, weeks when you and I and any rational AARP-er would be in sunny Florida or sunny some place Markin was ready to run for the roses out in the frostbitten air. He has already regaled one and all with the description of that run so I will keep it short here. Naturally he had picked a day and time when every dog-owner in the area was walking his or her day so he was to have no private agony as he ran his laps. From his description of the thing it was clear that he was foolishly ill-prepared to do a mile having not practiced, or even run except for a wayward bus in twenty-five years, and it was a close thing that he actually finished the distance. I will spare the reader the medical details and just note that the one funny thing Markin said when I asked him his time for the mile was that information was top secret in the interest of national security. But enough of ancient filler.           

That haphazard run for the roses got Markin back to running, or rather jogging is the better term on regular basis.  Jogging to get out of the cozy single- family house in the leafy suburbs that he shared with his third wife, jogging to chase the blues away, jogging to get rid of about sixteen tons of sixty plus years of angst and alienation, hell, jogging just to hear the sound of his feet setting a beat on the road and his breathe becoming steady after the first huffing and puffing. Now you have to know this about Markin, despite his quirky nature he is intensely committed to a sense of history, to a sense of memory whether for large events or small. For example when he talks about John Brown and his heroic raid in 1859 (date provided by Markin as I did not remember it) at Harpers Ferry you would think he had been there as an eye-witness he gave so much detail, stuff like that. So naturally when the small anniversary of his last year of competitive cross-country running came up of course he was going to commemorate it, although this time be better prepared than that ill-fated mile on the dusty old track.

Markin had mentioned to me before, maybe several years ago, that this North Adamsville cross-country course was storied, although not his story. The reason for that distinction was that his best friend, his running mate in both senses, running around the track and running around town, was Frankie Riley. Frankie was a great runner who over his career won many races on the course and for many years held the course record. Markin stood in his shadow, stood deep in his shadow. That fact is neither here nor there now, except that this course of two and one-half miles which they had run together in practice many times was laid out along the streets of old North Adamsville in a way that Markin had not noticed back in the day when running the thing. There were many landmarks of his youth as he ran it this time, this time when he was running, oops, jogging slowly enough to see things. To reflect on things, to remember. And those recollections, that filler, is what I will finish this sketch with. Except to tell anybody who will listen, anybody who wants to know, that yes Markin finished the course, and did not, I repeat did not need medical attention, none.         

The first part of the course starts on the side of the high school, the Yarmouth Street side. Just seeing the old high school reminded Markin of the tough times he had getting through the place. Not academically, not even socially, except a little, a little shy and unknowing about girls (now called young women, thank you), no knowledge shy with four boys and no girls in the family to ease the way. And a deep-crusted Catholic studied ignorance of things sexual, how to deal with the subject, okay. He was moreover, and Frankie too, which is why they got along, filled with all kinds of teenage angst and alienation, feelings of being isolated, and feeling out of sorts with the world. He said he laughed as he thought about that, thought about how someday, now someday he might get over that angst and alienation. Yah, he said he to laugh about that, about how they all said back in the day he would get over it when he got older. The only thing better now was that he had a small handle on it, and some helpful medication.

The second leg of the course goes down Bayview Road, a road strewn with house of relatives, some that he liked and some, who later when he joined, joined with abandon (as did I), the “youth nation” that was a-borning in the late 1960s shut their doors to him, called him renegade, called him in the parlance of the times, “red,” “commie,” and “monster.” Jesus. But that street also had houses filled with budding romances, or flirtations in that close- packed community, romances and flirtations. Flirtations that he, girl-shy, had trouble picking up on when the boys’ “lav” Monday morning before school bull sessions (emphasis on the bull) and he came up on the radar as someone that Sally, Susie, or Marie “liked” on that preternatural teen grapevine that had Facebook beat six ways to Sunday. He wondered as he passed Faxon, Daley and Kelly Streets, cross streets off of Bayview what had happened to Sally, Susie, and Marie. Did they too fade from the town’s memory like he had, Had they, like many in their nomadic generation shaken the dust off of that town unlike their parents, his parents, better grandparents who stayed anchored to the town and took a certain pride in that fact. He had to laugh again, why not, he was moving slow enough to laugh and look and feel about things, and about that dog ahead who for a time was moving faster than he was, that even now it always came down to girls, oops, women,  even after three marriages and a million short- haul things. And he still was trying to figure them out, especially this last one, his soul-mate finally found.                   

The third leg travelled along Adamsville Boulevard, along the ocean, along the one piece of geography that had defined his life; the old days remembrances of running along in the sand, a task too tough now with those wobbly knees and aching ankles, with Frankie running a mile ahead, him Frankie getting all  red from the sun; summer afternoons spent on the beach between the Adamsville Yacht Club and the North Adamsville Boat Club the “spot” to hang in waiting around for, what else, that certain she you had had your eye on in school, or just what came in on the ocean; Saturday night parking steamed cars with the roar of the ocean drowning out love’s call; end of night stops at Joe’s for burgers and fries to placate a different hunger. Later, later walks (not runs, hell, no) along Pacific beaches, Malibu, Carlsbad, LaJolla, Magoo Point, with love Angelica, Angelica from Indiana and ocean- deprived, her almost drowning in some riptide not knowing the fierceness of Mother Nature, Uncle Neptune when the furies were up; solo walks, lonely walks when the booze and dope almost broke him (and he called me, desperately called me for help, and I said “I’ll meet you in Malibu and we’ll get you dried out, brother.” Much later solitary walks along endless Maine beaches trying to figure out what went wrong with that second marriage, and right with the third. Simple stuff that the rush of the foam-flecked waves called out for serenity. As he made turn for home, the fourth leg heading back to the school he laughed again, twice laughed, first that he was going to finish running the whole course and secondly that no matter what, no matter how soul-mate love Laura better make sure that he is not buried some place like Kansas when his time comes. He had come from the muck of sea and let him lay his head down there.    

As Markin travelled that last leg, the leg that brought him to the corner of his old neighborhood he cringed, cringed at the thought of all the misbegotten things that had happened in that still-standing shack of a cramped house and of his estrangement from his running thirteen days on from his family, a shame, a crying shame (and I, Hullsville –born thirty miles away from the same kind of neighborhood, with the same family grievances will not go into detail here -see we do not “air our family linens in public,” got it). But he also had a certain nostalgia, a certain sadness as he remembered the various generations of cats that helped make life a little bearable when cursed mother got on her sway, father silent, silent as the grave. Joy Smokey, Snowball, Blackie, Big Boy, Sorrowful, Grey Boy, Calico, and many others making him think of later long gone beloved Mums who had helped him get through drugs, booze, depression, angst, a bad marriage and about seven other maladies, and recently gone and still filled with sorrows and sadnesses his companion shadow Willie Boy shed a tear for him, and them all.

Then past Atlantic Avenue and many miles walked getting up the courage to  talk to Lydia the first girl he fell hard for, and wonder, wonder too what happened to her, doing well he hoped. And last stop before the finishing hill and kick to the line Grandma’s Walker Street house, savoir sainted (everybody agreed, sainted especially with devil Grandpa) Grandma who saved his tender teens from total despair, from starvation too and blessed memories. And regrets, regrets too that he had not been better at the end for her. Sorrows there, joys too.

Ah, streets, all known streets, all blessed streets (not church-blessed but still blessed), all ocean-breezed streets, all memory streets, as he chugged up that hill. A hill where in memory time, fifty years ago time, he would put a rush kick to the finish. That day he ambled across the ancient imaginary finish line, fist in the air like some Olympic champion. Done.           

********

After Markin had finished his story, his ordinary man down memory lane story, I asked him how long it took him to complete the course. (Markin had told me at an earlier time his course times from the old days and I suspected that he had kept the time. I knew my man.) He replied that in the interest of national security that tidbit shall remain top secret. Some things don’t change. We both laughed.

 

Well I suppose since I wrote this sketch that I should wish Markin a happy 50^th anniversary and I do so here. But remember brother that other 50^th anniversary coming up next summer, and that story will not be pretty, no not at all.

 

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) –Hankow and Moscow-May 28, 1927- Moscow

Click on link below to read on-line all of Leon Trotsky's book, Problems Of The Chinesee Revolution

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/pcr/index.htm

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.

********

Leon Trotsky

Problems of the Chinese Revolution

---

Hankow and Moscow-May 28, 1927- Moscow

What is happening in Hankow now? We can only judge from the telegraphic fragments which Tass does not give to the press.

The Left Guomindang continues to chew the cud of the theory of the solidarity of the workers, peasants and the bourgeoisie in the “national revolution” and recommends to the workers and peasants to observe discipline – towards the bourgeoisie.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party (or the Executive Committee of the Guomindang?) calls upon the trade unions to mind “their own affairs” and to leave to the authorities of the Guomindang the struggle against the counter-revolution.
The leader of the Communist Party, Chen Duxiu, adjures the peasants to wait for land until the external foe is conquered.
From Moscow comes the warning not to create soviets “prematurely”.
In the meantime, imperialism exerts pressure upon Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang Kai-shek, through the bourgeoisie of Hankow, upon the Left Guomindang.
The Left Guomindang demands discipline and patience from the workers and the peasants.
This is the general picture. Its meaning is completely clear.
What is the Moscow leadership doing these days? We know nothing about it. But we need not doubt that under the influence of the recent extremely disquieting telegrams from Hankow, Moscow is sending advice there with approximately the following content: “As much of the agrarian revolution as possible”; “as many of the masses as possible in the Guomindang”, and so forth. The Communist ministers transmit these counsels to the government and to the Central Executive Committee of the Guomindang.
In this manner, the work of the Communist Party is divided into two parts: aloud, it implores the workers and peasants to wait; but in an undertone it whisperingly adjures the bourgeois government to make haste. But the revolution is a revolution precisely because the masses do not want to wait. The bourgeois “radicals” are afraid to make haste precisely because they are bourgeois radicals. And the Communist Party, instead of bringing the masses to their feet, instead of occupying the land, and building soviets, loses time with sterile counsels to both sides, in accordance with the sacrosanct prescription of Martynov on the bloc of four classes and on the replacement of the revolution by an arbitration committee.
The collapse of this policy is absolutely inevitable. Unless we correct it sharply, instantly and resolutely, the collapse will take place in the immediate future. Then a lot of papers, with Moscow’s advice on them, will be brandished before our eyes: “As much of the agrarian revolution as possible, as many of the masses as possible in the Guomindang.” But then we will repeat just what we say today: Such counsels are humbug. The whole revolution cannot be made dependent upon whether or not the pusillanimous bourgeois leadership of the Guomindang accepts our well-meaning advice. It cannot accept it. The agrarian revolution cannot be accomplished with the consent of Wang Jingwei, but in spite of Wang Jingwei and in struggle against him.
That is why the first task is to free our hands, to withdraw the Communist ministers from the national government, to call upon the masses to occupy the land immediately and to build up soviets.
But for this we need a really independent Communist Party, which does not implore the leaders, but resolutely leads the masses. There is no other road and there can be none.

Problems of the Chinese Revolution Index

From The Marxist Archives-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The John Brown-Led Raid On Harpers Ferry-
Palestinian Trotskyists on the Partition of Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israel War

 

STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

Reclaiming John Brown for the Left

BOOK REVIEW

JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST, DAVID S. REYNOLDS, ALFRED A. KNOPF, NEW YORK, 2005
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed,I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.

That said, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I can recommend Mr. Reynolds’s book detailing the life, times and exploits of John Brown, warts and all. Published in 2005, this is an important source (including helpful end notes) for updating various controversies surrounding the John Brown saga. While I may disagree with some of Mr. Reynolds’s conclusions concerning the impact of John Brown’s exploits on later black liberation struggles and to a lesser extent his position on Brown’s impact on his contemporaries, particularly the Transcendentalists, nevertheless on the key point of the central place of John Brown in American revolutionary history there is no dispute. Furthermore, Mr. Reynolds has taken pains to provide substantial detail about the ups and downs of John Brown’s posthumous reputation.

Most importantly, he defends the memory of John Brown against all-comers-that is partisan history on behalf of the ‘losers’ of history at its best. He has reclaimed John Brown to his proper position as an icon for the left against the erroneous and outrageous efforts of modern day religious and secular terrorists to lay any claim to his memory or his work. Below I make a few comments on some of controversies surrounding John Brown developed in Mr. Reynolds’s study.

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As Mr. Reynolds’s points out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harpers Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) also cloud his image. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerrilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs.

The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harpers Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist avenging angel in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. In short, he was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported him and kept his memory alive in hard times.

In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. Now this animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown. These results are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order and one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy which led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful, reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. That is still our fight. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Black people are now a part of "free labor," and the key to their liberation is in the integrated fight of labor against the current one-sided class war and establishing a government of workers and their allies. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown (and of his friend Frederick Douglass). We need to complete the unfinished democratic tasks of the Civil War, not by emulating Brown’s exemplary actions but to moving the multi-racial American working class to power. Finish the Civil War.
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Workers Vanguard No. 981 27 May 2011 From the Archives of Marxism   Palestinian Trotskyists on the Partition of Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israel War   Each May, as the Zionist rulers celebrate the anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, Palestinians across the Near East mark the nakba, or catastrophe: the expulsion in 1948 of more than 700,000 Arabs from their homeland in Palestine. The United Nations General Assembly had voted the previous year in favor of ending the British mandate in Palestine and creating two independent states, one Zionist and the other Palestinian Arab. Through mass killings and terror, the Zionists drove out most of the Palestinian population from their homes and villages. Following the declaration of the founding of the Israeli state in May 1948, a number of bourgeois Arab regimes intervened militarily, not to defend the Palestinians but to seize land that had been allotted to them under the UN partition plan. The small Palestinian Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), upheld the position of communist internationalism in the 1948 War between Israel and the Arab states. While recognizing the right of both the Hebrew-speaking and Palestinian Arab peoples to national self-determination, the RCL resolutely opposed the imperialist-imposed partition and took a position of revolutionary defeatism toward both sides in the war. That position is today upheld by the International Communist League. We reprint below an excerpted editorial, titled “Against the Stream,” that was originally published in the RCL’s Hebrew organ Kol Ham’amad (Voice of the Class). The English translation was published by the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in Fourth International (May 1948). The excerpts refer to Ernest Bevin, who was foreign minister in Britain’s Labour Party government; Chaim Weitzmann (Weizmann), Israel’s first president; and the Husseinis, a clan of Palestinian landowners and political leaders. * * * Politicians and diplomats are still trying to find a formula for the disastrous situation into which Palestine has been plunged by the UNO [United Nations Organization] deciding upon partition. Is this a “breach of international peace” or are we dealing with merely “hostile acts”? As far as we are concerned there is no point in this distinction. We are daily witnessing the killing or maiming of men and women, old and young, Jew or Arab. As always, the working masses and the poor suffer most. Not so very long ago the Arab and Jewish workers were united in strikes against a foreign oppressor. This common struggle has been put to an end. Today the workers are being incited to kill each other. The inciters have succeeded…. “Keeping order” in Palestine costs England over 35 million Pounds a year, an amount which exceeds the profit she can extort from this country. Partition will release her from her financial obligations, enable her to employ her soldiers in the productive process while her source of income will remain intact. — But this is not all. By partition a wedge is driven between the Arab and Jewish worker. The Zionist state with its provocative lines of demarcation will bring about the blossoming forth of irredentist (revenge) movements on either side, there will be fighting for an “Arab Palestine” and for a “Jewish state within the historic frontiers of Eretz Israel (Israel’s Land).” As a result, the chauvinistic atmosphere created thus will poison the Arab world in the Middle East and throttle the anti-imperialist fight of the masses, while Zionists and Arab feudalists will vie for imperialist favors…. If the Anglo-American imperialists had forced this “solution” on Palestine of their own, the rotten game would have been patent in the whole Arab East. However, they dodged: the “problem” was passed on to the UNO. The function of the UNO was to sweeten the bitter dish cooked in the imperialist cuisine, dressing it, in Bevin’s words, with the twaddle of the “conscience of the world that has passed judgment.” Exactly! And the diplomats of the lesser countries danced to the tune of the dollar flute, reiterating the “public opinion of the world.” And the peculiar casts in this performance enabled Great Britain to appear as the Guardian Angel overflowing with sympathy for either side. And the Soviet Union? Why did not her representatives call the UNO game the swindle it really is?—Apparently, the present foreign policy of the SU is not concerned with the fighting of the colonial masses. And as the Palestine question is a second-rate affair for the “Big,” the Soviet diplomats saw fit to dwell upon what Stalin had said about “the Soviet Union being ready to meet America and Britain halfway, economic and social differences notwithstanding.”… The Jewish worker having been separated from his Arab colleague and prevented from fighting a common class struggle will be at the mercy of his class enemies, imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie. It will be easy to arouse him against his proletarian ally, the Arab worker, “who is depriving him of jobs and depressing the level of wages” (a method that has not failed in the past!). Not in vain has Weitzmann said that “the Jewish state will stem Communist influence.” As a compensation, the Jewish worker is bestowed with the privilege of dying a hero’s death on the altar of the Hebrew state. And what promises does the Jewish state hold out? Does it really mean a step toward the solution of the Jewish problem? The partition was not meant to solve Jewish misery nor is it likely ever to do so. This dwarf of a state which is too small to absorb the Jewish masses cannot even solve the problems of its citizens. The Hebrew state can only infest the Arab East with anti-Semitism and may well turn out—as Trotsky said—a bloody trap for hundreds of thousands of Jews. The leaders of the Arab League reacted to the decision on partition with speeches full of threats and enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, a Zionist state is to them a godsend from Allah. Calling up the worker and fellah [peasant] for the “holy war to save Palestine” is supposed to stifle their cries for bread, land and freedom. Another time-honored method of diverting an embittered people against the Jewish and communist danger. In Palestine the feudal rule has of late begun to lose ground. During the war the Arab working class has grown in numbers and political consciousness. Jewish and Arab workers stood up against the foreign oppressor, against whom they together went on strikes. A strong leftist trade union had come into existence; and the “Workers’ Association of the Arabs of Palestine” had been well on the way of freeing itself from the influence of the Husseinis. The murder of its leader, Sami Taha, committed by hirelings of the Arab High Committee could not restrain this development. But where the Husseinis failed, the decision of the imperialist agency, the UNO succeeded. The partition decision stifled the class struggle of the Palestine workers. The prospect of being at the hands of the Zionist “conquerors of soil and labor” is arousing fear and anxiety among the Arab workers and fellahs. Nationalist war slogans fall on fertile soil. And feudal murderers see their chance. Thus the policy of partition enables the feudalists to turn back the wheels of history…. The two camps today mobilize the masses under the mask of “self-defense.” “We have been attacked, let us defend ourselves!”—say the Zionists. “Let us ward off the danger of a Jewish conquest!”—declares the Arab Higher Committee. Where does the truth lie? War is the continuation of politics by other means. The war led by the Arab feudalists is but the continuation of their reactionary war on the worker and the fellah who are striving to shake off oppression and exploitation. For the feudal effendis [lords] “Salvation of Palestine” means safeguarding their revenues at the expense of the fellahin, maintaining their autocratic rule in town and country, smashing the proletarian organizations and international class solidarity. The war waged by the Zionists is the continuation of their expansionist policy based on discrimination between the two peoples: they defend kibbush avoda (ousting of Arab labor), kibbush adama (ousting of the fellah), boycott of Arab goods, “Hebrew rule.” The military conflict is a direct result of the policy of the Zionist conquerors. This war can on neither side be said to bear a progressive character. The war does not release progressive forces or do away with social and economic obstacles in the path of development of the two nations. Quite the opposite is true. It is apt to obscure the class antagonism and to open the gate for nationalist excesses. It weakens the proletariat and strengthens imperialism in both camps. Each side is “anti-imperialist” to the bone, busy detecting the reactionary—in the opposite camp. And imperialism is always seen—helping the other side. But this kind of exposure is oil on the imperialist fire. For the inveigling policy of imperialism is based upon agents and agencies within both camps. Therefore, we say to the Palestine people in reply to the patriotic warmongers: Make this war between Jews and Arabs, which serves the end of imperialism, the common war of both nations against imperialism! This is the only solution guaranteeing a real peace. This must be our goal which must be achieved without concessions to the chauvinist mood prevailing at present among the masses. How can that be done? “The main enemy is in our own country!”—this was what Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had to say to the workers when imperialists and social democrats were inciting them to the slaughter of their fellow workers in other countries. In this spirit we say to the Jewish and Arab workers: The enemy is in your own camp! Jewish workers! Get rid of the Zionist provocateurs who tell you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of the Hebrew state. Arab worker and fellah! Get rid of the chauvinist provocateurs who are getting you into a mess of blood for their own sake and pocket. Workers of the two peoples, unite in a common front against imperialism and its agents!

WV 981 27 May 2011 · Israel “Celebrates” Founding by Slaughtering Palestinians Again For a Socialist Federation of the Near East! For Arab/Hebrew Workers Revolution! · Down With Fortress Europe’s War on Immigrants and Refugees! Refugees Drown as Imperialists Step Up War on Libya · From the Archives of Marxism Palestinian Trotskyists on the Partition of Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israel War · Shocking! There’s Gambling in Rick’s Café · Hong Kong: Fake Trotskyists Hail Imperialist Running Dog Liu Xiaobo · A Revolutionary Marxist History of May Day · Capitalist Profit Means Workers’ Lives · NYC Labor: Organize Wal-Mart!

 

***Our Ladies Of The Mountain- The Music Of Hazel Dickens And Alice Gerrard

A YouTube's Film Clip Of Hazel Dickens And Alice Gerrard.

CD Review

Hazel And Alice, Hazel Dickens And Alice Gerrard, Rounder , 1991

Recently I have been "running the table" on the mountain music genre. From the pioneer work of the venerable Carter Family through to Ralph Stanley and on to the `revival' brought forth in the early part of this decade by such movies as "Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "The Songcatcher" I have paid more than passing tribute to this quintessential American musical form, complete with fiddle, mandolin and lonely Saturday nights out in the hills and hollows of Appalachia and other rural environs. I have, thus, pretty much exhausted the milieu, right? Wrong. No homage to the modern mountain music scene can be complete with out paying tribute to the work of singer/songwriter Hazel Dickens (and at times musical companion Alice Gerrard, among others).

There was time when, if one was given a choice, the name Hazel Dickens would be the first to come up when naming the most well known voice of the modern mountain music tradition. Her voice spoke of the hardships of the rural life, the trials and tribulations of trying to eke out an existence on some hard scrabble rocky farmland or, more likely, in the coals mines or textiles factories that dominated that landscape for much of the second half of the 20th century. That was the pure, almost primordial voice that spoke of the sorrows of hill life, but also the joys of coming to terms with a very personal (and, apparently) angry god by way of singing away those working women blues, and you can add in a few tunes for those hard-bitten farmers and coals miners as well.

So, needless to say, this little CD is filled with original work and covers on just those subjects mentioned above. From a cover of Utah Phillip's "Rolling Hills Of West Virginia" to the Carter Family's "Hello Stranger' and Sweetest Gift" this is what mountain music is like at the top. Listen and see if you agree.

***"A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose"- Gertrude Stein In Exile

BOOK REVIEW

The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, Vintage Books, New York, 1990

Okay, Gertrude so there was no there, there in Oakland. (I agree, having lived there for a period at a much later time-San Francisco, however, is a different matter). So, by hook or crook, Miss Gertrude Stein gets herself (along with her older brother) by a circuitous route to turn- of -the -century Paris (turn of the 20th century that is) and becomes not only an international literary and cultural figure in her own right but a veritable magnet for every "advanced' bourgeois cultural tendency in the then known Western civilized world. Starting with the nova Paris anti-academy art world as the likes of Picasso, Braque and Matisse and their schools take it by a storm on through to the sparse World War I years when the flower of European culture was almost destroyed to a re-emergence in the aftermath of that war with "lost generation" types like Hemingway and Fitzgerald we get a bird's eye view of important trends in modern cultural history during the first third of the 20th century. And of Stein's own struggle to get the kind of literary recognition she craved and desired.

What we do not get is anything that, even with the looser standard for such endeavors in the beginning of the 21st century, we can recognize as autobiography either of the ostensible subject of the book, Stein's long time companion (to use a quaint term of the time for two women living together) Alice B. Toklas or Ms. Stein herself. Nor as we supposed to. What we are treated to is a `modern' writing sensibility trying to free up the language (and grammatical constrains) from their 19th century moorings. More conventionally we are given a travelogue, gossip column, some helpful hints and some very witty writing that gives tidbits of what Ms. Stein thought of literature, her place in it and the place of others in her literary pantheon.

In some sense this book, while quite readable even today, is not for the faint-hearted, or those who are not modern Western literature majors or readers of something like "The New York Review Of Books". Fortunately I am a devoted reader of that magazine and therefore the seemingly hundreds of literary figures that Stein `name drops' along the way I had at least passing familiarity with. Some of the many art figures that passed through I was less sure of. What is clear is that Ms. Stein's `mobile salon' (for lack of better words to trace this pair's movements) and her literary achievement here is an echo from a bygone era. Nobody today, as least in the circles I run in or want to run in, could stand up to the `precious' visits by English and other celebrities that dropped in Stein's residences. Or the standard variations on the European grand tour by American college students or young marrieds that made a stop obligatory. Or the stifling aimlessness and routinism of many the various denizens of the Paris of the day, famous or not. But in a world that currently suffers from serious disconnects with its cultural past it is interesting to read about those who had time to "do" the literary scene. But, mainly, get this book for some very clever writing by Ms. Stein.

***On The Life and Times Of Leon Trotsky-From The Pen Of Long-Time Co-Thinker Alfred Rosmer- Trotsky In Paris-"The Paris Militant"

 

 

Markin comment:
Every once in a while it is beneficial to go back to the archives to see what our political forebears were up to. And since we are very much in a period where the study of Marxist classics, and socialist concepts in general, is on the order of the day Trotsky, a central leader of world socialism in the first half of the 20th century, has something to tell us about how to organize those inquiries.
********
Alfred Rosmer

THE PARIS MILITANT
Published: Fourth International, Autumn 1959
Trotsky stayed in France at various periods, but it was only during the two years he spent in Paris during the First World War that he could operate as a militant free to move about as well as to speak and write. That freedom was only relative, because it was that of the state of siege and censorship, but in that he was in the same boat as the French themselves, and what may here seem paradoxical is easily explained by reference to what the situation then was. In Vienna, where he had been living at that period, Russia’s entry into war had made him an enemy alien, whereas in France the “alliance” protected him, while at the same time Paris would be for him the best combat post in the hard struggle for the defense of socialism. Experience showed that this reasoning was correct: for nearly two years he was able to battle just as much among the French workers as in the emigré circles. If it all ended badly – by expulsion – there also Trotsky shared the fate of his French comrades at a time when the growth of opposition to war worried the government and led it to take open measures of repression. In his case, Petrograd was giving orders to Paris, for the expulsion, several times requested already, was finally demanded – in which Stalin was later to repeat Czarist policy, and on two occasions.

On his way toward France, Trotsky’s first stop-over was Zurich. He lingered there, staying three months, so warm and encouraging was the welcome he received from the section of the Socialist Party. In those first days of August, the Swiss socialists were, like those of all countries, overwhelmed by the collapse of the International; but, not being involved in mobilization, they were all there, especially the youth, discussing, trying to understand the meaning of the war amid the confusion created and maintained by rival propaganda. Trotsky brought them the stimulant they needed to keep clear heads. Like them he had gone through the German school of socialism: its Social-Democracy was not a party of the International but the party par excellence – one more reason for fighting mercilessly against the betrayal of its chiefs. Their collapse was a tragedy and, at first glance, the outlook was very sombre; that might lead to erroneous conclusions. But what was this war? A clash of imperialisms, of two great formations of antagonists. Of course, but there was a deeper and general meaning: the war marked the revolt of the forces of production against the outdated political form of the nation and the state; and, as the Socialist Parties were in fact national parties, they collapsed with it. Conclusion: all efforts to save the Second International would be useless; it was not socialism, however, that had collapsed, but its temporary external historic form.

An eyewitness, a member of the section and a participant in these discussions, Fritz Brupbacher, wrote later that, with Trotsky’s arrival at Zurich, life was renewed in the workers’ movement, and that his influence had such a power of attraction that they wanted to give him the mandate to represent the section at the next congress of the party. Though Switzerland. would have afforded him a less exposed place of refuge, it was in the heart of a France at war that Trotsky wanted to settle: he wrote in haste a pamphlet in which, under the title Der Krieg und die Internationale, he assembled and developed the ideas that he had just been setting forth to the Zurich socialists, a pamphlet that was so substantial and still so timely that in 1918 an enterprising American publisher made a whole book out of its translation into English.

In Paris there was another paradox: it was through the Vie Ouvière, a revolutionary syndicalist organ, that Trotsky’s liaison, neither ephemeral nor accidental, with the workers’ movement, functioned. Yet there was a Socialist Party there that persisted in calling itself the “French Section of the Workers’ International” but when Trotsky, for a specific purpose, went to the offices of the party’s daily newspaper, he there found its leaders, Cachin among others, going along with the current as usual, therefore ultra-chauvinist; after a few useless attempts at discussion, they made it clear to him that he was an undesirable: they expelled him from l’Humanité before rejoicing to see him later expelled from France by Briand.

As soon as he had found a possible boarding-house – in the Pare Montsouris neighborhood, one of the emigré quarters of Paris – he sent for his family, Natalia and the two sons Leon and Sergei, to join him; from then on he could organize his activity in such a way as to be able to carry out successfully what was going to be his triple task. The articles that he was sending to the Kievskaia Mysl obliged him to follow closely both French politics and military operations: he was a skilled newspaper-reader, and quickly understood what each represented and what must be expected of it. As for parliamentary life, it was then so limited, so non-existent, that the government had to be sought out rather at Chantilly (General Headquarters) than at Paris. But his articles also gave him the opportunity of making research field trips throughout France, of meeting socialist and trade-union militants, of sounding out the state of mind of the average Frenchman: conversations with a Liège anarchist had enabled him to learn about and give an exact description of the resistance movement that had set a notable part of the population – and even the anarchists – against the German troops.

The main work of the day was, naturally, Nashé Slovo, the newspaper, and the group that gravitated round it. The editors met every morning at the printshop in the rue des Feuillantines to discuss that day’s issue and prepare tomorrow’s, on the basis of information that came in, and of discussions about the conceptions defended by the various tendencies of Russian socialism, of polemics with the “defensists” and also with Lenin, who, from Geneva, was defending his own position with vigor and even brutality. Martov, right from the beginning, had been, before Trotsky’s arrival, a sort of editor-in-chief; his anti-war attitude had helped to bring him close to the other sectors of the opposition. It did not correspond however, to that of the majority of the Mensheviks whose representative to the International Socialist Bureau he was; he was embarrassed thereby, to the extent of being unable to accept having certain questions even raised and discussed such as that of a new International. The clashes with Trotsky grew gradually more frequent and sharp, and as it was evident that Trotsky better expressed the conceptions of the paper’s editorship, Martov resigned and left for Switzerland.

It was through him that the first contact had been made between the Russian socialists in Paris and the centre of opposition, then numerically tiny, represented by the Vie Ouvière; a letter he had written to Gustave Hervé, which the latter had published, had been the occasion for their meeting. And it was he also who announced to us the forthcoming arrival of Trotsky and who brought him around as soon as he did arrive. We used to meet in the evening, once a week, and when our little group was reinforced by these new allies, our horizon, until then sombre, lightened up. With Trotsky and Martov there came Dridzo-Losovsky, long settled in Paris, and a Polish socialist, Lapinsky. When, one evening, the Swiss socialist, Grimm, accompanied them, there could be conceived a rebirth of proletarian internationalism, and we already began arrangements which ensured us serious international liaisons, since, through the Swiss, it would he possible for us to remain in contact with the German opposition.

Of these meetings Raymond Lefebvre painted a faithful picture in the preface to L’Eponge de vinaigre. They were kept up all winter, but were abruptly ended when the government profited by a revision of draft exemptions to call up all known oppositionals who had escaped conscription and send them to the armies. At that moment the idea of an international conference had already taken sufficiently specific form so that practical preparations for holding it were being thought out. It was known that inside the French Socialist Party discontent was growing against the nationalist and pro-government policy which the leadership was integrally imposing on the party; a manifestation of this discontent and its importance was the position taken by one of the best provincial federations, that of the Haute-Vienne, and rendered public by a report signed by all the federations’ elected office-holders. The socialists of Nashé Slovo hastened to make contact with some of them who happened to be in Paris. Meetings were held at Dridzo’s place: they were not very encouraging, for the Limousins, though very firm in their criticism of the betrayal of socialism, shied away when we talked about the action that must be taken, obsessed by fear of a split, which they absolutely refused to face. The arrival in Paris of the Italian socialist Morgari, in search of participants in the future international conference, brought about the last meeting. Trotsky has amusingly described in My Life how, when Morgari suddenly spoke of underground activity, the worthy Limousins hastened to disappear. It was impossible to think of adding to the French delegation: Merrheim and Bourderon remained alone to represent the opposition, though, for that period, they represented it very well, even if they refused, despite Trotsky’s friendly insistence, to go further than their resolution at the confederal conference, which had, however, become insufficient, for it no longer corresponded to a situation that events were changing every day.

At Zimmerwald, the already known tendencies became specific. Lenin wanted acts: refusal of war credits by the Socialist parliamentarians; preparation of the new International; appeals to the workers for anti-war demonstrations. As against this clearly defined programme, the Italians set up a waiting policy: they refused to consider that the Second International was dead already; they wished for a rapprochement with the German centre (Kautsky-Bernstein) ; that was also the position of the Mensheviks. Trotsky was in agreement with Lenin (except on the question of defeatism), but he was in a position to understand better than Lenin what it was possible to ask of the conference at that stage: his Paris activity had permitted him to measure the strength of the opposition; in the same way, through his contacts with Grimm and Morgari, he knew exactly the current conceptions of the Swiss and Italian leaderships, of whom it could not be said that they did not represent the feelings of the rank and file. His speeches seemed so convincing that, at the end of the discussions, he was entrusted with the task of drafting the manifesto, which all the delegates approved. Lenin was not entirely satisfied, but that did not prevent him from considering that it was “a step forward,” and that one could be satisfied with that much for the moment.

This fortunate outcome of the conference was going to permit Trotsky to find in France a base for his activity. The manifesto restored confidence, and the opposition, till then skeletonic and dispersed, penetrated into the workers’ movement. A committee had been created for the revival of international relations; its plenary meetings brought together a growing number of militants; one of its most active members was Trotsky, who soon dominated it. Its secretary was Merrheim; with the Metal-Workers’ Federation behind him, he had, right from the beginning, courageously carried on the fight against the confederation’s leadership; now he became too prudent, already disturbed at seeing the committee drive further than he had decided to go. And so he opposed all proposals made by Trotsky to carry the activity of the committee out into public, taking up again at every session his suggestion for creating a Bulletin, indispensable for the committee’s own life, for circulating information verbally communicated during the meetings which it was important to take down and make known to all those who, in the trade unions and in the Socialist sections, were beginning to break away from the lies and illusions by which they had been lulled in order to drag them into the war. Merrheim resisted, grew impatient when he saw the ascendancy that Trotsky was winning over the assembly, but he could do nothing against his clear comments on events, fed by an exceptional experience, against a well-reasoned revolutionary optimism that carried conviction. At the end of the meetings, militants of all tendencies, socialists, anarchists, syndicalists, approached Trotsky, questioning him about points which were not yet clear to them; dates were arranged to permit continuing such fruitful conversations. One of them, F. Loriot, a member of the Socialist Party, definitively won over to the opposition, whose leadership he was to take within the party, wrote a pamphlet whose contents he had studied out with Trotsky, Les socialistes de Zimmerwald et la guerre, which took its place among the clandestine publications of the committee.

The Czarist government could not understand how an ally could allow a newspaper like Nashé Slovo to he published on its territory. On several occasions it had asked that the paper be suppressed and its editors imprisoned. The operation was difficult, being contrary to the policy of the French government at that period, when the Socialist ministers were explaining that persecution of the opposition could only aid it by making it better known – much better to stifle it by censorship. A grave incident that took place among the Russian detachments brought to France at the request of the French government was to he the occasion of an intervention that was this time decisive. The soldiers of this detachment were subjected, in France, to a regime that the surroundings rendered unbearable; the officers treated them like brute beasts. A soldier, slapped in the face by a colonel, retorted with such ardour that death ensued. Nashé Slovo, declared responsible, was immediately prohibited, and an order of expulsion announced to Trotsky. Different interventions enabled him to gain a little time and to try to choose the place to which he was to be deported. All was in vain. The family was then living in the Gobelins quarter, quite close to the hall of the Reine-Blanche, where there had taken place the deeply moving August 1914 meeting at which the various Russian parties tore one another apart, the “defensists” signing enlistment papers in the French army. It was here that two policemen came to take him and conduct him to the Spanish border. But even from Cadiz, where he was stopping temporarily, Trotsky found the means of participating once more in the committee for the revival of international relations, and precisely on the occasion of the pamphlet that he had prepared with Loriot. The growing influence of Zimmerwald had led the minorityites in the Socialist Party to organize themselves on an extremely moderate basis, their position not being essentially differenciable from that of the chauvinists of the leadership, of which they denounced only the “excesses.” This semiopposition represented a danger; there was a risk that it would get some Zimmerwaldists to make a bloc with it against the leadership – which the pamphlet had foreseen. And so complaints arose from the minorityite members, accusing the Zimmerwaldists of “dividing” the opposition. One of these criticisms was communicated to Trotsky, who replied immediately: “Political forces are not ‘divided’ by clarity any more than they are added together by confusion. Three viewpoints, three motions: clarity is political honesty.” And so ended, in an exceptional prolongation, his career as a Paris militant.