***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II- From Deep In The Songbook-The Inkspots –If I Didn’t Care …

…it was as simple as this. He had asked her, asked her quite politely although she could tell that he had liquor on his breathe, for a dance, a slow one, at the weekly USO dance. A dance held by those who were keeping the home fires burning in order to keep up the morale of the boys getting ready to go overseas, to go east to preparation places in order to take back Europe from the night-takers, to go west and island by island to take back the Pacific from the night-takers on that side of the world. But that night like every USO dance night such talk, such thoughts were set aside for those few hours before the ships and planes took off to their appointed destinations. She, well, she was as patriotic as any other red-blooded American girl, young woman, and had volunteered to be one of the hostesses. And he, nothing but a country boy he from down in Appalachia up north for the first time, had spied her, spied her all black hair and sweets smiles and, after fortifying himself with some store-bought liquor, had asked for a dance and she had accepted. Something about him, about the way he held her, about their talk afterward got her going, although she knew that what was ahead for him, for them, would not be the pretty dreams of her younger days, not the pretty dreams at all…

**********

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it meant to our parents or not, knew what sacred place it held in their youthful hearts, Benny Goodman with and without Miss (Ms.) Peggy Lee, Harry James with or without the orchestra, Duke Ellington with or without Mr. Johnny Hodges, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey with or without fanfare, Glenn Miller with or without glasses, Miss (Ms.) Billie Holiday with or without the blues, personal blues, Miss Lena Horne with or without stormy weather, Miss (Ms.) Margaret Whiting, Mr. Vaughn Monroe with or without goalposts, Mr. Billy Eckstine, Mr. Frank Sinatra with or without bobbysoxers, The Inkspots with, always with, that spoken refrain, the Andrews Sisters with or without rum in their Coca-Cola, The Dewdrops with or without whatever they were with or without, Mr. Cole Porter with or without the boys, Mr. Irving Berlin with or without the flag, and Mr. George Gershwin with or without his brother, is the music that went wafting through the house of many of those of us who constitute the generation of ‘68.

Yes, the generation of ’68, baby-boomers, decidedly not what Tom Brokaw dubbed rightly or wrongly “ the greatest generation,” decidedly not your parents’ or grandparents’ (please, please do not say great-grandparents’ even if it is true) generation. Those of us who came of age, biological, political and social age kicking, screaming and full of the post-war new age teenage angst and alienation in the age of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot. Who were, some of us any way and I like to think the best of us, driven by some makeshift dream, who, in the words of brother Bobby quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson, were “seeking a new world.” Those who took up the call to action and slogged through that decade whether it was in civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture swirl before the hammer came down. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note that we searched for, desperately searched, drifted out into the ebbing tide. Gone. But enough about us this series is about our immediate forbears (but please, please not great grandparents) their uphill struggles to make their vision of the newer world, to satisfy their hunger a little, to stop that gnawing want, and the music that in their youth dreamed by on cold winter nights or hot summer days.

This is emphatically the music of the generation that survived the dust bowl all farms blown away, all land worthless, the bankers taking whatever was left and the dusted crowd heading west with whatever was movable, survived empty bowls wondering where the next meal would come from, survived no sugar bowl street urchin hard times of the 1930s Great Depression, the time of the madness, the time of the night-takers, the time of the long knives. Building up those wants, name them, named those hungers on cold nights against riverside fires, down in dusty arroyos, under forsaken bridges. Survived god knows how by taking the nearest freight, some smoke and dreams freight, Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, B&O, Illinois Central, Penn Central, Empire State, Boston and Maine, or one of a million trunk lines to go out and search for, well, search for…

Searching for something that was not triple- decker bodies, three to a room sharing some scraggly blanket, an old worn out pillow for rest, the faint smell of oatmeal, twenty days in a row oatmeal, oatmeal with.., being cooked in the next room meaning no Pa work, meaning one jump, maybe not even that ahead of the rent collector (the landlords do not dare come in person so they hire the task out), meaning the sheriff and the streets are closing in. Bodies, brothers and sisters, enough to lose count, piled high cold-water flat high, that damn cold water splash signifying how low things have gotten, with a common commode for the whole floor and brown-stained sink. Later moving down the scale a rooming house room for the same number of bodies, window looking out onto the air shaft, dark, dark with despair, the very, very faint odor of oatmeal, who knows how many days in a row, from Ma’s make-shift hot plate on its last legs. Hell, call it what it was flop house stinking of perspiration and low-shelf whiskeys and wines. Others had it worse, tumbled down shack, window pane-less, tarpaper siding, roof tiles falling, a lean-to ready to fall to the first wind, the first red wind coming out of the mountains and swooping down the hills and hollows, ready to fall to the first downpour rain, washed away. Yes, get out on the open road and search for the great promised American night that had been tattered by world events, and greed.

Survived the Hoovervilles, the great cardboard, tin can roof, slap-dash jerry-built camp explosions along rivers, down in ravines and under railroad trestles. Tossed, hither and yon, about six million different ways but it all came down to when the banks, yeah, the banks, the usual suspects, robbed people of their shacks, their cottages, their farm houses. Robbed them as an old-time balladeer, a free-wheeling, song-writing red, a commie, in the days when in some quarters sailing under that banner was a badge of honor, said at the time not with a gun but with a fountain pen, but still robbed them.

Survived the soup kitchens hungers, the gnawing can’t wait in the endless waiting line for scrapes, dreaming of some by-gone steak or dish of ice cream, and always that hunger, not the stomach hunger although that was ever present, but the hunger that hurts a man, hurts his pride when he has to stick his hand out, stick it out and not know why. Planning the fruitless day, fruitless since he was born to work, took pride in work, planning around Sally breakfasts don’t be late, six to nine, but with sermon and song attached, mission stuff in heat-soaked rooms, men smelling of unwashed men, and drink. Planning around city hall lunches, peanut butter sandwiches, slapped slap-dash together with an apple, maybe. Worse, worse by far the Saint Vincent DePaul suppers, soup, bread, some canned vegetable, something they called meat but was in dispute, lukewarm coffee, had only, only if you could prove you were truly destitute with a letter from some churchman and, in addition, under some terrible penalty, that you had searched for work that day. A hard dollar, hard dollar indeed.

Jesus, out of work for another day, and with three hungry growing kids to feed, and a wife sickly, sick unto death of the not having he thought, little work waiting for anybody that day, that day when all hell broke loose and the economy tanked, at least that is what it said in the Globe (ditto New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner if anybody was asking), said that there was too much around, too much and he with nothing for those kids, nothing and he was too proud to ask for some damn letter to give to those Vincent DePaul hard-hearts. And that day not him, not him yet, others, others who read more that the Globe (and the dittos) were dreaming of that full head of steam day to come in places like big auto Flint, waterfront Frisco town, rubber Akron, hog butcher to the world prairie Chicago, hell, even in boondock trucker Minneapolis, a day when the score would get evened, evened a little, and a man could hold his head up a little, could at least bring bread to those three hungry growing kids who didn’t understand the finer point of world economics just hunger. Until then though he is left shifting the scroungings of the trash piles of the urban glut, the discard of the haves, the have nots throw nothing away, and on other horizons the brethren curse the rural fallow fields, curse the banks, and curse the weather, but curse most of all having to pack up and head, head anyway, anywhere but the here, and search, search like that brother on that urban glut pile for a way to curb that gnawing hungry that cried out in the night-want, want that is all.

Survived too the look, the look of those, the what did FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the young, or forgetful) call them, oh yeah, the economic royalists, today’s 1%, who in their fortified towers tittered that not everybody was built to survive to be the fittest. That crowd fought tooth and nail against the little guy trying to break bread, trying to get out from under that cardboard, tar paper, windowless soup kitchen world along with a hell of a lot of comrades, yes, comrades, kindred in the struggle to put survival of the fittest on the back-burner of human history, to take collective action to put things right, hell, made the bosses cry bloody murder when they shut down their factories, shut them down cold until some puny penny justice was eked out.

Survived but took time out too, time out if young perhaps, to stretch those legs, to sway those hips to a new sound coming out of the mist, coming out of New York, always New York then, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City, the Missouri K.C. okay. The sound of swing replacing the dour Brother, Can You Spare a Dime, no banishing it, casting it out with soup lines, second-hand clothes (passed down from out the door brothers and sisters), and from hunger looks, because after all it did not mean a thing, could not possibly place you anywhere else but squareville (my term, not their), if you did not have that swing. To be as one with jitter-buggery if there was (is) such a word. And swing a fade echo of the cool age be-bop that was a-borning, making everybody reach for that high white note floating out of Minton’s, Big Bill’s Jimmie’s, hell, even Olde Saco’s Starlight Ballroom before it breezed out in the ocean air night, crashed into the tepid sea. Yeah.

Survived, as if there was no time to breathe in new fresh airs, to slog through the time of the gun in World War II, a time when the night-takers, those who craved the revenge night of the long knives took giant steps in Europe and Asia trying to make that same little guy, Brit, Frenchie, Chinaman, Filipino, God’s American, and half the races and nationalities on this good green earth cry uncle and buckle under, take it, take their stuff without a squawk. And so after Pearl, after that other shoe dropped on a candid world Johnnie, Jimmie, Paulie, Benny too, all the guys from the old neighborhood, the guys who hung around Doc’s hands in their pockets, guys from the wheat fields fresh from some Saturday night dance, all shy and with calloused and, guys from the coal slags, down in hill country, full of home liquor, blackened fingernails and Saturday night front porch fiddlings wound up carrying an M-I on the shoulder in Europe or the Pacific. Susie, Laura, Betty, and dark-haired Rebecca too waiting at home hoping to high heaven that some wayward gun had not carried off sweetheart Johnnie, Jimmy, Paulie, or young Benny. Jesus not young Benny.

Survived the endless lines of boys heading off East and West, some who could hardly wait to get to the recruiting office others, well, other hanging back, hanging back just a little to think things over, and still others head over heels they were exempt, 4-F, bad feet, you see. All, all except that last crew who got to sit a home with Susie, Laura, Betty and even odd-ball Rebecca waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the ships to sail or planes to fly, hanging in some corner drugstore, Doc’s, Rexall, name your drugstore name, sitting two by two at the soda fountain playing that newly installed jukebox until the nickels ran out. Listened to funny banana songs, rum and coca cola songs, siting under the apple tree songs to get a minute’s reprieve from thoughts of the journey ahead.

Listened too to dreamy, sentimental songs, songs about faraway places, about keeping lamp- lights burning, about making a better world out of the fire and brimstone sacrifice before them, about Johnnie, Jimmie and the gang actually returning, returning whole, and putting a big dent in their dreams, hell, about maybe the damn wars would be over sooner rather than later. Listened and as old Doc, or some woe-begotten soda jerk, some high school kid, told them to leave he was closing up, they made for the beach, if near a beach, the pond, the back forty, the hills, or whatever passed for a lovers’ lane in their locale and with the echo of those songs as background, well, what do you think they did, why do you think they call us baby-boomers.

The music, this survival music, wafted through the air coming from a large console radio, the prized possession amid the squalor of second-hand sofas and woe-begotten stuffed pillows smelling of mothballs, centered in the small square living room of my growing up house. My broken down, needs a new roof, random shingles on the ground as proof, cracked windows stuffed with paper and held with masking tape, no proof needed, overgrown lawn of a shack of a house too small, much too small, for four growing boys and two parents house.

That shack of a house surrounded by other houses, shack houses, too small to fit Irish Catholic- sized families with stony-eyed dreams but which represented in some frankly weird form (but what knew I of such weirdness then I just cried out in some fit of angst) the great good desire of those warriors and their war brides to latch onto a piece of golden age America. And take their struggle survival music with them as if to validate their sweet memory dreams. That radio, as if a lifesaver, literally, tuned to local station WDJA in North Adamsville, the memory station for those World War II warriors and their war brides, those who made it back. Some wizard station manager knowing his, probably his in those days, demographics, spinned those 1940s platters exclusively, as well as aimed the ubiquitous advertisement at that crowd. Cars, sofas, beds, shaving gear, soap, department store sales, all the basics of the growing families spawned (nice, huh) by those warriors and brides.

My harried mother, harried by the prospects of the day with four growing boys, maybe bewildered is a better expression, turning the radio on to start her day, hoping that Paper Dolls, I’ll Get By, or dreamy Tangerine,their songs, their spring youth meeting at some USO dance songs and so embedded, or so it seemed as she hummed away the day, used the music as background on her appointed household rounds. The stuff, that piano/drum-driven stuff with some torch-singer bleeding all over the floor with her loves, her hurts, and her wanderings, her waitings, they should have called it the waiting generation, drove me crazy then, mush stuff at a time when I was craving the big break-out rock and roll sounds I kept hearing every time I went and played the jukebox at Doc’s Drugstore over on Walker Street down near the beach. As far as I know Doc, knowing his demographics as well, did not, I repeat, did not, stock that stuff that, uh, mush for his rock-crazed after school soda fountain crowd, probably stocked nothing, mercifully before about 1955. Funny thing though while I am still a child of rock and roll (blues too) this so-called mushy stuff sounds pretty good to these ears now long after my parents and those who performed this music have passed on. Go figure.

• Songwriters: Jack Lawrence

If I didn't care more than words can say
If I didn't care would I feel this way?
If this isn't love then why do I thrill?
And what makes my head go 'round and 'round
While my heart stands still?

If I didn't care would it be the same?
Would my ev'ry prayer begin and end with just your name?
And would I be sure that this is love beyond compare?
Would all this be true if I didn't care for you?

If I didn't care honey child, mo' than words can say. If I didn't
Care baby, would I feel this way? Darlin' if this isn't love, then why do I thrill so
Much? What is it that makes my head go 'round and 'round while my heart just stands
Still so much?

If I didn't care would it be the same?
Would my ev'ry prayer begin and end with just your name?
And would I be sure that this is love beyond compare?
Would all this be true if I didn't care for you?

Read more at http://www.songlyrics.com/the-ink-spots/if-i-didn-t-care-the-ink-spots-lyrics/#PLsc9XwiEzUTDA36.99

Hands Off Edward Snowden!! 

White House, lawmakers: no clemency for Snowden

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and the leaders of the intelligence committee in Congress are rejecting National Security Agency-contractor Edward Snowden's plea for clemency.

"Mr. Snowden violated U.S. law," White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday about the former systems-analyst-turned-fugitive who has temporary asylum in Russia.

"He should return to the U.S. and face justice," Pfeiffer said, adding when pressed that no offers for clemency were being discussed.

Snowden made the plea in a letter given to a German politician and released Friday. In his one-page typed letter, he asks for clemency for charges over allegedly leaking classified information about the NSA to the news media. "''Speaking the truth is not a crime," Snowden wrote.

Snowden's revelations, including allegations that the U.S. has eavesdropped on allies including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have led to calls by allies to cease such spying, and moves by Congress to overhaul U.S. surveillance laws and curb the agency's powers.

But head of the Senate Intelligence Committee said if Snowden had been a true whistle-blower, he could have reported it to her committee privately.

"That didn't happen, and now he's done this enormous disservice to our country," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "I think the answer is no clemency."

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, called clemency for Snowden a "terrible idea."

"He needs to come back and own up," said Rogers, R-Mich. "If he believes there's vulnerabilities in the systems he'd like to disclose, you don't do it by committing a crime that actually puts soldiers' lives at risk in places like Afghanistan."

Rogers contended that Snowden's revelations had caused three terrorist organizations to change how they communicate.

Both lawmakers addressed word that President Barack Obama did not realize Merkel's personal phone was being tapped.

Rogers implied that he didn't believe the president, or European leaders who claimed they were shocked by Snowden's allegations.

"I think there's going to be some best actor awards coming out of the White House this year and best supporting actor awards coming out of the European Union," he said "Some notion that ... some people just didn't have an understanding about how we collect information to protect the United States to me is wrong."

Feinstein said she didn't know what the president knew, but said she intended to conduct a review of all intelligence programs to see if they were going too far.

"Where allies are close, tapping private phones of theirs ... has much more political liability than probably intelligence viability," she said.

Feinstein and Rogers have taken grief for defending the NSA. Feinstein's committee produced a bill last week that she says increases congressional oversight and limits some NSA powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Privacy advocates say the measure codifies the agency's rights to scoop up millions of American's telephone records.

Former NSA and CIA director Mike Hayden said it was possible Obama did not know about the alleged Merkel phone tapping.

But he said it was "impossible" that Obama's top staffers were unaware. "The fact that they didn't rush in to tell the president this was going on points out what I think is a fundamental fact: This wasn't exceptional. This is what we were expected to do."

Hayden's defense of the president comes days after he reportedly criticized the White House's handling of NSA revelations, when a former Democratic political operative tweeted snatches of Hayden's phone conversation, overheard on an Amtrak train.

Pfeiffer appeared on ABC's "This Week," while Rogers, Feinstein and Hayden were interviewed on CBS' "Face the Nation."

From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of The 96^th Anniversary Of The Russian October Revolution- Marxism and the Emancipation of Women


Leon Trotsky On The Lessons Of The Russian Revolution

Workers Vanguard No. 968
5 November 2010

In Honor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

For New October Revolutions!

(From the Archives of Marxism)
November 7 (October 25 by the calendar used in Russia at the time) marks the 93rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the workers’ seizure of power in Russia gave flesh and blood reality to the Marxist understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Despite the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet workers state, culminating in its counterrevolutionary destruction in 1991-92, the October Revolution was and is the international proletariat’s greatest victory; its final undoing, a world-historic defeat. The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) fought to the bitter end in defense of the Soviet Union and the bureaucratically deformed workers states of East Europe, while calling for workers political revolutions to oust the parasitic nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies that ruled these states. This is the same program we uphold today for the remaining workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

Having been expelled from the USSR in 1929 by Stalin, Trotsky spent the remainder of his life in exile. In November 1932, he gave a speech to a Danish social-democratic student group in Copenhagen. He outlined the political conditions and the social forces that drove the Russian Revolution, stressing the decisive role of the Bolshevik Party. Illuminating the worldwide impact of the Russian Revolution and its place in history, Trotsky underlined the necessity of sweeping away the decaying capitalist order and replacing it with a scientifically planned international socialist economy that will lay the material basis for human freedom.

The ICL fights to forge workers parties modeled on Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks to lead the struggle for new October Revolutions around the globe.

* * *

Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is on the rise....

Without the armed insurrection of November 7, 1917, the Soviet state would not be in existence. But the insurrection itself did not drop from Heaven. A series of historical prerequisites was necessary for the October revolution.

1. The rotting away of the old ruling classes—the nobility, the monarchy, the bureaucracy.

2. The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the people.

3. The revolutionary character of the peasant question.

4. The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nations.

5. The significant social weight of the proletariat.

To these organic pre-conditions we must add certain conjunctural conditions of the highest importance:

6. The Revolution of 1905 was the great school, or in Lenin’s words, the “dress rehearsal” of the Revolution of 1917. The Soviets, as the irreplaceable organizational form of the proletarian united front in the revolution, were created for the first time in the year 1905.

7. The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of their immobility and thereby prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

But all these conditions, which fully sufficed for the outbreak of the Revolution, were insufficient to assure the victory of the proletariat in the Revolution. For this victory one condition more was needed:

8. The Bolshevik Party....

In the year 1883 there arose among the emigres the first Marxist group. In the year 1898, at a secret meeting, the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party was proclaimed (we all called ourselves Social-Democrats in those days). In the year 1903 occurred the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In the year 1912 the Bolshevist fraction finally became an independent Party.

It learned to recognize the class mechanics of society in struggle, in the grandiose events of twelve years (1905-1917). It educated cadres equally capable of initiative and of subordination. The discipline of its revolutionary action was based on the unity of its doctrine, on the tradition of common struggles and on confidence in its tested leadership.

Thus stood the Party in the year 1917. Despised by the official “public opinion” and the paper thunder of the intelligentsia press, it adapted itself to the movement of the masses. Firmly it kept in hand the control of factories and regiments. More and more the peasant masses turned toward it. If we understand by “nation,” not the privileged heads, but the majority of the people, that is, the workers and peasants, then Bolshevism became in the course of the year 1917 a truly national Russian Party.

In September 1917, Lenin, who was compelled to keep in hiding, gave the signal, “The crisis is ripe, the hour of the insurrection has approached.” He was right. The ruling classes had landed in a blind alley before the problems of the war, the land and national liberation. The bourgeoisie finally lost its head. The democratic parties, the Mensheviks and social-revolutionaries, wasted the remains of the confidence of the masses in them by their support of the imperialist war, by their policy of ineffectual compromise and concession to the bourgeois and feudal property-owners. The awakened army no longer wanted to fight for the alien aims of imperialism. Disregarding democratic advice, the peasantry smoked the landowners out of their estates. The oppressed nationalities at the periphery rose up against the bureaucracy of Petrograd. In the most important workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets the Bolsheviki were dominant. The workers and soldiers demanded action. The ulcer was ripe. It needed a cut of the lancet.

Only under these social and political conditions was the insurrection possible. And thus it also became inevitable. But there is no playing around with the insurrection. Woe to the surgeon who is careless in the use of the lancet! Insurrection is an art. It has its laws and its rules.

The Party carried through the October insurrection with cold calculation and with flaming determination. Thanks to this, it conquered almost without victims. Through the victorious Soviets the Bolsheviki placed themselves at the head of a country which occupies one sixth of the surface of the globe....

Let us now in closing attempt to ascertain the place of the October Revolution, not only in the history of Russia but in the history of the world. During the year 1917, in a period of eight months, two historical curves intersect. The February upheaval—that belated echo of the great struggles which had been carried out in past centuries on the territories of Holland, England, France, almost all of Continental Europe—takes its place in the series of bourgeois revolutions. The October Revolution proclaims and opens the domination of the proletariat. It was world capitalism that suffered its first great defeat on the territory of Russia. The chain broke at its weakest link. But it was the chain that broke, and not only the link.

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfill its essential mission, the increase of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot stand still at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive force and a sound, planned, that is, Socialist organization of production and distribution can assure humanity—all humanity—of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses—first of all, man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical labor. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the blind and dark forces which have grown up behind his back. He will build up his economy freely, that is, according to a plan, with compass in hand. This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason and the will of collective humanity. In this sense, Socialism must become a new step in the historical advance of mankind. Before our ancestor, who first armed himself with a stone axe, the whole of nature represented a conspiracy of secret and hostile forces. Since then, the natural sciences, hand in hand with practical technology, have illuminated nature down to its most secret depths. By means of electrical energy, the physicist passes judgment on the nucleus of the atom. The hour is not far when science will easily solve the task of the alchemists, and turn manure into gold and gold into manure. Where the demons and furies of nature once raged, now rules ever more courageously the industrial will of man.

But while he wrestled victoriously with nature, man built up his relations to other men blindly, almost like the bee or the ant. Belatedly and most undecidedly he approached the problems of human society. He began with religion, and passed on to politics. The Reformation represented the first victory of bourgeois individualism and rationalism in a domain which had been ruled by dead tradition. From the church, critical thought went on to the state. Born in the struggle with absolutism and the medieval estates, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and of the rights of man and the citizen grew stronger. Thus arose the system of parliamentarism. Critical thought penetrated into the domain of government administration. The political rationalism of democracy was the highest achievement of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.

But between nature and the state stands economic life. Technology liberated man from the tyranny of the old elements—earth, water, fire and air—only to subject him to its own tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature, to become a slave to the machine, and, still worse, a slave to supply and demand. The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rises up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves with the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and—every man and every woman, not only a selected few—become a full citizen in the realm of thought.

—“Leon Trotsky Defends the October Revolution” (Militant, 21 January 1933)

***********

Workers Vanguard No. 997	2 March 2012

TROTSKY

LENIN

Marxism and the Emancipation of Women

(Quote of the Week)

In honor of International Women’s Day, March 8, we print below excerpts of an article by Clara Zetkin, who played a historic role in the international working women’s movement. Zetkin was a leading figure in the German Social Democratic Party and later the Communist Party as well as a personal friend of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin. Marking the 20th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, her article underlines how Marx’s materialist understanding of society laid the basis for a program of women’s liberation through proletarian revolution. Through developing the productive forces in a planned economy, the institution of the family, the central source of women’s oppression, will be replaced with collective childcare and housework as part of an egalitarian socialist society.

To be sure, Marx never dealt with the women’s question “per se” or “as such.” Yet he created the most irreplaceable and important weapons for the women’s fight to obtain all of their rights. His materialist concept of history has not supplied us with any ready-made formulas concerning the women’s question, yet it has done something much more important: It has given us the correct, unerring method to explore and comprehend that question. It was only the materialist concept of history which enabled us to understand the women’s question within the flux of universal historical development and the light of universally applicable social relationships and their historical necessity and justification. Only thus did we perceive its driving forces and the aims pursued by them as well as the conditions which are essential to a solution of these problems.

The old superstition that the position of women in the family and in society was forever unchangeable because it was created on moral precepts or by divine revelation was smashed. Marx revealed that the family, like all other institutions and forms of existence, is subjected to a constant process of ebb and flow which changes with the economic conditions and the property relationships which result from them....

Das Kapital shows most convincingly that there are incessant and irresistible historical forces at work in today’s society which are revolutionizing this situation from the bottom up and will bring about the equality of women. By masterfully examining the development and nature of capitalist production down to the most refined details, and by discovering its law of motion, i.e., the Theory of Surplus Value, he has conclusively proven in his discussions of women and child labor that capitalism has destroyed the basis for the ancient domestic activity of women, thereby dissolving the anachronistic form of the family. This has made women economically independent outside of the family and created a firm ground for their equality as wives, mothers and citizens. But something else is clearly illustrated by Marx’s works: The proletariat is the only revolutionary class which by establishing Socialism, is able to and must create the indispensable prerequisites for the complete solution of the women’s question. Besides the fact that the bourgeois suffragettes neither want nor are able to achieve the social liberation of women proletarians, they are incapable of solving the serious new conflicts which will be fought over the social and legal equality of the sexes within the capitalist order. These conflicts will not vanish until the exploitation of man by man and the contradictions arising therefrom are abolished.

—Clara Zetkin, “What the Women Owe to Karl Marx” (March 1903), reprinted in Clara Zetkin: Selected Writings (1984)

 

NEVER FORGET GREENSBORO 1979

 

 

 

COMMENTARY

 

REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER

COMMENTARY

REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER

For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident here is a capsule summary of what occurred on that day bloody day:

On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result.  The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.

This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see September archives under NO FREE SPEECH FOR NAZIS/KLANSMEN). Rather, the writer argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature and political motivation of these murders in Greensboro in some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftist should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. Below is an updated and revised edition of the above-mentioned blog which I stand by.   

 

***From The Archives-25 Years After- Greensboro Massacre: We Will Not Forget! - A Guest Commentary

Click on the title to link to YouTube's film clip of footage from the Greensboro massacre.

25 Years After

Greensboro Massacre: We Will Not Forget!

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 835, 29 October 2004.

On 3 November 1979, in broad daylight, nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project in Greensboro, North Carolina, where an anti-Klan rally was gathering. With cool deliberation, the killers took out their weapons, aimed, fired and drove off. Five union officials and organizers and civil rights activists—supporters of the Communist Workers Party—lay dying in pools of blood. Ten others were wounded or maimed for life. The Greensboro Massacre was the bloodiest fascist attack in the U.S. in decades.

Greensboro was a conspiracy of the fascists and their capitalist state patrons. From the outset, the fascists were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassinations, to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. When the two-minute fusillade ended, the cops moved in to arrest the survivors for "rioting."

Signe Waller, widow of Greensboro martyr Jim Waller, recounted, "The FBI had men going around the textile mills and showing people pictures, asking for their identification. Many of the pictures were of people who were later killed in the Greensboro Massacre, and one of them was Jim's" (The Carolinian Online, 18 October). Two successive all-white juries acquitted the killers of all charges, affirming once again the meaning of "justice" in this racist capitalist country.

Carried out during the Democratic Carter administration, the Greensboro Massacre was the opening shot of what would be the Reagan years' war on labor and blacks. When the Klan announced it would "celebrate" this massacre on November 10 in Detroit, the Spartacist League initiated a labor/black mobilization that drew over 500, many of them black auto workers, who made sure that the Klan did not ride in the Motor City. In organizing the protest we had to overcome opposition from the union and black misleaders and face down a ban on anti-Klan marches ordered by black Democratic mayor Coleman Young. In city after city over the following years, when KKK and fascist provocations have been threatened, we have repeatedly brought out core battalions of black and labor militants who understand we can't ignore the fascists and Klan—we must stop them.

In recent years, efforts to commemorate the Greensboro Massacre have been directed toward establishing a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission," which was empanelled in June, and on November 13 a march "for Justice, Democracy and Reconciliation" will be held in Greensboro. The commission is modeled on the South African commission, which has served to whitewash the crimes of apartheid-era butchers and to assure a peaceful transition to neo-apartheid rule under the ANC (African National Congress), which continues the superexploitation and oppression of the black and other non-white masses.

The Greensboro Massacre was racist murder. The truth is that no justice can come from the same capitalist state whose forces helped to orchestrate the killings in the first place. "Reconciliation" with the forces of racist reaction and with the capitalist rulers who keep the fascist bands in reserve to unleash against the working class in times of social crisis can only serve to politically disarm and demobilize workers and the oppressed in the face of fascist terror.

We honor the Greensboro martyrs—Cesar Cauce, Michael Nathan, Bill Sampson, Sandi Smith and James Waller—as well as the many others who were wounded that November day. They take their place among a proud roster of fighters for the working people and oppressed before them, whose memory must be seared into the consciousness of the working class.

Citing the executions of the Haymarket martyrs in 1887 and of Joe Hill in 1915 and the brutal 1919 attack and subsequent frame-ups of Industrial Workers of the World members in Centralia, Washington on the one hand and the greatest victory for the international working class, the Russian Revolution of 7 November 1917, on the other, James Cannon, then secretary of the International Labor Defense and later founder of American Trotskyism, wrote in "The Red Month of November" (Labor Defender, November 1927):

"A red stream runs through the month of November, marking in its course many struggles of the working class of this country, here with defeat there with victory, always with inspiring record of working class courage, exemplary in its noble devotion to the cause of the oppressed, magnificent incidents of solidarity and self-sacrifice, instructive milestones along the difficult road to liberation. It is a record to sharpen the hatred of labor to jailors and assassins, to increase the respect and pride we have for our fighters."

We remember and honor the Greensboro martyrs by fighting for the freedom of imprisoned victims of capitalist state repression, like death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. We honor them by fighting to build a revolutionary workers party that will fight to put the working class in power through a socialist revolution that will make sure there will be no more Greensboros

***On The Anniversary Of Greensboro 1979-Never Forget- Learn The Lessons Of History-Should Fascists Be Allowed the Right of Free Speech?

Markin comment:

The events of Greenboro, North Carolina 1979, today more than ever as we gear up our struggles in the aftermath of the spark of the Occupy movement, should be permanently etched in our minds. We had best know how to deal with the fascists and other para-military types that rear their heads when people begin to struggle against the bosses. The article below points the way historically.
*******
Markin comment on this article :

Every year, and rightfully so, we leftist militants, especially those of us who count ourselves among the communist militants, remember the 1979 Greensboro, North Carolina massacre of fellow communists by murderous and police-protected Nazis, fascists and Klansmen. That remembrance, as the article below details, also includes trying to draw the lessons of the experience and an explanation of political differences. For what purpose? Greensboro 1979-never again, never forget-or forgive.

Although right this minute, this 2011 minute, the Nazis/fascists are not publicly raising their hellish ideas, apparently “hiding” just now on the fringes of the tea party movement, this is an eternal question for leftists. The question, in short, of when and how to deal with this crowd of locust. Trotsky, and others, had it right back in the late 1920s and early 1930s-smash this menace in the shell. 1933, when they come to power, as Hitler did in Germany (or earlier, if you like, with Mussolini in Italy) is way too late, as immediately the German working class, including its Social-Democratic and Communist sympathizers found out, and later many parts of the rest of the world. That is the when.

For the how, the substance of this article points the way forward, and the way not forward, as represented by the American Communist Party’s (and at later times other so-called “progressives” as well, including here the Communist Workers Party) attempts to de-rail the street protests and rely, as always, on the good offices of the bourgeois state, and usually, on this issue the Democrats. Sure, grab all the allies you can, from whatever source, to confront the fascists when they raise their heads. But rely on the mobilization of the labor movement on the streets to say what’s what, not rely on the hoary halls of bourgeois government and its hangers-on, ideologues, and lackeys.
******
Should Fascists Be Allowed the Right of Free Speech?
A Working Class Point of View on the Question That Was
Brought to the Fore Again by the Professional Democrats
When the Nazis Mobilized at the Garden_
-Reprinted from the Socialist Appeal, 3 March 1939
It seems that the only point of importance that the Professional Liberals and Democrats could see in the big mobilization of the Nazis at Madison Square Garden last week, was their "right of free speech and assembly."
Mayor LaGuardia kept reiterating emphatically that his attachment to Democracy compelled him to grant the Fascists the right to hold their meeting and provide them with extraordinary police protection.
The American Civil Liberties Union rushed into print to insist that the right of free speech be extended to the Hitlerites.

One of the numerous committees of the Jewish bourgeoisie, anxious to demonstrate that it loves fairness above all else, did likewise.
Even the wretched little Jewish anarchist weekly published in New York indignantly reproached the Trotskyists for the lack of sense in "demanding the right of free speech and assembly for oneself and at the same time trying to prevent the freedom of speech of our opponents..."

Freedom for Nazis But Not for Pickets
Before going further into the consideration of the question
of "free speech for Fascists," it is interesting and important
to record the fact that all the above-mentioned who showed
such touching concern for the "democratic rights" of the Nazis,
are entirely unconcerned with the brutal police suppression
of the picketing rights of the workers who assembled outside
the Garden.

The Mayor simply refused to see a delegation which came to protest against the violence of the police who rode down and slugged the picketers.
The American Civil Liberties Union, apparently exhausted by its noble efforts in behalf of the Nazis, didn't utter a peep about the democratic rights of free speech, assembly and picketing being denied the 50,000 anti-Fascists who came to protest the Nazi rally. Ditto for the Jewish committee.
As for the anarchist Freie Arbeiter Stimme, it says not a word about the police assaults, but villainously insinuates that the Terrible Trotskyists were really at fault because, Mr. Police Commissioner, they planned a violent attack on the Nazis who were innocently celebrating Washington's Birthday. Unbelievable, but here are its exact words: "But there are times when people who endeavor to do social work, must reflect ten times, a hundred times, before they come out with an appeal for acts of violence."

What the Problem Really Involves

The question of "democratic rights for the Nazis" cannot be resolved on the basis of Liberal phrasemongers. All such a discussion can produce is a bewildering tangle of words and abstractions. At a more decisive stage, as all recent experience has proved, it produces a first class disaster not only for the working class but also for the Professional Liberals and Democrats themselves.

How many of them, indeed, are there in concentration camps, in prison and in exile who are continuing the thoroughly futile and abstract discussion over whether or not the Fascist gangsters should be granted the "democratic rights of free speech and assembly"!

And what is most decisive—this is the point which leads us directly to a solution of the problem that seems to agitate so many people—is the fact that in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, in Spain, the Democrats were so concerned with preserving the "rights" of the Fascists that they concentrated all their attacks and repressive measures upon those workers and those labor organization which sought to conduct a militant struggle against the Fascists and for the preservation and extension of their truly democratic rights and institutions.

It is when the bourgeois "democrats" like Giolitti in Italy and Bruening in Germany, had done all in their power to smash' the most progressive and active sections of the working class—as LaGuardia and his police tried to do on a smaller scale in New York last week—that the Fascists concluded successfully their march to totalitarian power. Whoever forgets this important lesson from abroad, is a fool. Whoever tries to keep others ignorant of this lesson, is a rogue.

A Simple Example
Let us take a simple example which every worker has ex¬perienced dozens of times.

A strike is called. The authorities promptly jump into the situation in order to protect the "democratic rights" of the scabs and the company gunmen who guard them. The "right to work" of the scab, which is guaranteed by the capitalist govern¬ment, amounts in reality to his "right" to starve out the striking workers and reduce them to helpless pawns of the employers.
Millons of workers have learned the futility and deceptiveness of the academic discussion of the scab's "democratic rights," as well as of appealing to the government and its police to "arbitrate" the dispute involved. They try to solve the question, as they must, in the course of struggle. The workers throw their picket-lines around the struck plant. The conflict between the scab's "right" to break a strike and the workers' right to live, is also settled on the course of struggle—in favor of those who plan better, organize better, and fight better.

Same Rule Applies on Broader Scene
The same rule applies in the struggle against the much bigger scab movement that Fascism represents.The workers who spend all their time and energy in the abstract discussion of the Nazis' "democratic rights"—to say nothing of working themselves into a lather in defense of these "rights"—will end their discussion under a Fascist club in a concentration camp.

The workers who delude themselves and waste their time begging the capitalist Democrats in office to "act" against the Fascists, will end up in the same place, just as the workers of Italy, Germany and Austria did.
The workers have more vital concerns. They are and should be interested in defending and expanding their democratic rights. But not in any abstract sense. These rights are the concrete rights of free speech, assembly, press, the right to organize, strike and picket, without which an independent working class simply cannot exist.

A decaying capitalism—of which Fascism is only a natural product—seeks constantly to restrict and destroy these rights, which are not truly genuine even in "normal" times. These rights can only be defended from the assaults of capitalism and its ugly offspring, Fascism, in the same way in which they were first acquired: by the tireless, aggressive, unbending, inde¬pendent struggle of the working class.

The wailing and weeping about the Nazis' "rights" can safely be left to the prissy Liberals and the phoney Democrats.

The self-preservation of the working class demands that it cut through all abstract chatter and smash the Fascist gangs by decisive and relentless action.

***On The Anniversary Of The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget

A YouTube film clip of some of the events of that day in 1979 when various right-wing paramilitary thugs murdered five communist workers.

Commentary

This is the 34th Anniversary of the heinous crimes of 1979 against communist workers in Greensboro, North Carolina

This is a repost of last year's commemorative commentary. The struggle remains the same. As does the message- Never Forget!

REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON, SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER

For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident commemorated here this is a capsule summary of what occurred on that bloody day:

On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.

This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see below) and argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature of and political motivation for these murders in Greensboro by some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftists should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate with this kind. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. The Greensboro massacre is prime evidence that any other way is suicidal for militants. No more Germany, 1933's. No more Greensboro, 1979's. Never Forget Greensboro.

REPOST FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg is hallowed ground fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood. At that time the writer posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, this writer was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan's free speech rights. Something is desperately wrong here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.

First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, cannot trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists to fill the air with gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant knows that such a position is right is his or her 'gut'.

In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except maybe in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point.

One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of the fascist Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In the final analysis that destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and Communists parties. Neither party, willfully, saw the danger in time and compounded that error when refused to call for or establish a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary. Moreover, Hitler's organization at one time (in the mid-1920's) was small and unimportant like today's Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.

***Writer's Corner-The Rough And Tumble of American Post-Revolutionary Politics-Gore Vidal's "Aaron Burr"

BOOK REVIEW

Aaron Burr, Gore Vidal, Random House, New York, 1978

This first paragraph below has been used previously to introduce author Gore Vidal’s’ output of other interesting historical novels (that, however, when necessary hew pretty close to the historical record- hence their value).

Listen up! As a general proposition I like my history straight up- facts, footnotes and all. There is enough work just keeping up with that work so that historical novels don’t generally get a lot of my attention. In this space I have reviewed some works of the old American Stalinist Howard Fast around the American Revolution and the ex-Communist International official and Trotsky biographer Victor Serge about Stalinist times in Russia of the 1930’s, but not much else. However, one of the purposes of this space is to acquaint the new generation with a sense of history and an ability to draw some lessons from that history, if possible. That is particularly true for American history- the main arena that we have to glean some progressive ideas from. Thus, an occasional foray, using the historical novel in order to get a sense of the times, is warranted. Frankly, there are few better at this craft that the old bourgeois historical novelist, Norman Mailer nemesis and social commentator Gore Vidal. Although his politics are somewhere back in the Camelot/FDR period (I don’t think he ever got over being related to Jacqueline Kennedy) he has a very good ear for the foibles of the American experience- read him with that caveat in mind.

Vidal, as is his style, combines fictional characters with the makings and doings of real characters. In Burr we once again meet Charles Schuyler the narrator/protagonist of his novel 1876. There he was a world weary old journalist seeking politically to get back to his pleasant long time voluntary exile in France after the dust of the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune and the establishment of the Third Republic had settled down. This return was projected by way of a sinecure in the American Embassy courtesy of a victorious Samuel Tilden in that controversial 1876 presidential race against Rutherford B. Hayes. In the present novel Charles is just beginning his career as a writer in the mid-1830’s while also in the throes of becoming a lawyer in ante bellum New York. But he apprenticed, as was the norm in those days, not with just any lawyer but the controversial American historical figure- an aged Aaron Burr- successful lawyer, Revolutionary war soldier, ladies’ man, leading Republican politician, political foe and physical killer of Federalist political leader Alexander Hamilton, putative emperor of the Western American frontier (via Mexico) and almost President of the United States in the hot-disputed presidential election of 1800 (the famous tie with Jefferson).

Vidal lashes the action together here by having Charles commit, as a partisan political act, to writing Burr’s memoirs in order to get Burr’s side of the story about the various controversies that swirled around his life. As a subplot, and something of a ruse, the need for this information is alleged to be necessary to help (or hinder) the efforts of President Andrew Jackson’s then Vice President, the Red Fox of Kinderhook, Martin Van Buren by clearing up the relationship (possible fatherhood) between Burr and Van Buren. Whether Van Buren, the wily leader of the Albany Regency and premier political operative in his own right, needed such help from the outside is a separate question but it allows Schuyler (through access to Burr’ papers, mementos and personal remembrances) to present us with a broad and interesting look at the first fifty years or so of the American Republic.

Vidal has mentioned in connection with this series of historical novels that he has produced over the years (some six in all, I believe) that part of the interest for him was to provide, while hewing as close the historical record as possible, through his characters some motive for the actions that they did (or didn’t take) under the pressure of particular events. That approach is generally frowned upon in the academy. Thus, while this particular novelistic approach to Burr’s life is not an apologia it nevertheless gives Vidal’s’ interpretation of what he thinks Burr’s motives were from the historical record. Since Burr is something of a murky, shadowy character in the annuls of early American republican history (especially as most people know of him mainly through his deadly duel with Alexander Hamilton) even this novelistic opening up of his side of the story accrues to his benefit.

And what is Burr’s side of the story? Aside from the self-proclaimed bravado of his claim, in the end, to be as pure as the driven snow in his ultimate motivation in defense of the American republican interest and to have been the “last true patriot” his story belies some of that image. Along the way Burr (Vidal) takes the traditional potshots that, until recently, most historians of the period had to take at George Washington’s leadership of the military forces against the British in the Revolution and his essentially regal reign as first President of the United States. He also highlights the long term rivalry between himself and the previously mentioned Hamilton as the competing class interests (mercantile/agrarian/urban plebeian) of the early Republic got encapsulated into political factions- the Federalist/ Republican controversy that in various guises continue until this day.

Needless to say Burr rips into the Adams presidency, especially the Adams policy toward the French under the Directory and Napoleon that put the country on the cusp of war. A bit surprisingly he also tears apart that “paragon” of democratic virtue Thomas Jefferson- the man who defeated him during the odd-ball presidential election of 1800 that was held under the bizarre and severely undemocratic) old constitutional rules (They were amended, although no more democratically. Some things do not change). Along the way he takes other potshots as Washington and Jefferson’s fellow Virginia presidents Madison and Monroe (not all of them so far off the mark). Finally we get Burr’s take on his duel with Hamilton, his role in the infamous Western expedition that lead to his trial (and acquittal)on treason charges and his rather puzzling positive take on the presidency of Andrew Jackson.

Okay, so here is your prescription for dealing with this period of history and of the Honorable Mr. Burr. Read Vidal’s little book (well, maybe not so little at over five hundred pages). Then go and get some books on the period to read about these other figures. I have addressed the question of Martin Van Buren elsewhere in this space in his political biography by Richard Remini and that of Andrew Jackson (Arthur Schlesinger Jr, of course) as well as John Adams (David McCullough). Read on.

***Defense of A Nation- The Struggle Against British Imperialism-Part II-The War of 1812

DVD REVIEW

The History Channel Presents: The War of 1812, two volumes, 2004

If you do not, like most people, know anything about the War of 1812-the so-called- ‘forgotten war’- or even if you are familiar with its details then this History Channel presentation will give you more than you will ever want to know about that event. I know, despite my intense love of the study of history, that I had had enough once I got through this two-volume four hours plus work. Mercifully it is broken up into sections so, for the faint-hearted, you can pick and choice. In any case, the section entitled "First Invasion" is must viewing to get an overall sense of the conflict.

So what is all the bother about? Well the short answer, very short, is that this war against old Mother England was the definitive moment when the seemingly improbable American victory announced to the world that fragile as the Republic was, and as isolated and uncomplicated its people that it was now a factor, if at that time a small factor, in the international scheme of things. Not bad for a ‘forgotten war’. Remember if the bloody British had been victorious America would have a name like, say, the United States of Canada.The History Channel’s presentation shows that this victory was a near thing. Suffering defeats, the torching of the capital, internal dissension and an apparently inevitable defeat at New Orleans after a peace treaty was signed this motley group of American yeomen and women broke through to preserve a slender democracy.

No look at the War of 1812 is complete without acknowledging the role of two men of opposing temperaments, James Madison, under whose presidency the issues became clarified and the causes of war outlined and Andrew Jackson whose victory at New Orleans sealed the fate of the country. By this last point I do not mean merely Jackson’s military victory but the rush toward a plebeian democracy that the forces who fought and supported the war unleashed. Later in the century the children and grandchildren of those fighters would be lost in the scramble to make America a capitalist fortress but back then the American world was young and fresh. Take a look.

President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning

Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.

We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.

We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.

Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.

“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”

Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:

•Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.

•Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.

•Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.

•Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.

Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.

Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.

Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.

She has been:

•Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.

•Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.

•Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.

•Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.

Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.

We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.

FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________

STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________

CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________

EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________

Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org

Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610

President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

The Struggle Continues …

Six Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Private Manning

*Call (202) 685-2900- Major General Jeffery S. Buchanan is the Convening Authority for Private Manning’s court- martial, which means that he has the authority to decrease the sentence imposed no matter what the judge handed down. Ask General Buchanan to use his authority to reduce the draconian 35 year sentence handed down by Judge Lind.

Please help us reach all these important contacts: Adrienne Combs, Deputy Officer Public Affairs (202) 685-2900 adrienne.m.combs.civ@mail.mil

Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, Public Affairs Officer (202) 685-4899 michelle.l.martinhing.mil@mail.mil The Public Affairs Office fax #: 202-685-0706

Try e-mailing Maj. Gen. Buchanan at jeffrey.s.buchanan@us.army.mil

The Public Affairs Office is required to report up the chain of command the number of calls they receive on a particular issue, so please help us flood the office with support for our heroic whistleblower today!

*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online or print and share PDF petition Please sign the petition on the reverse side of this letter, “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!

You can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.

*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns. Contact the Private Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Contribute to the Private Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Bradley E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304. You must use Bradley on the address envelope.

Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.

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Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9, Veterans For Peace-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in her own words:

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

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

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

Private Manning has paid the price for her acts with over three years of pre-trial confinement, including findings of torture during this period, and is now facing 35 years (essentially for her effective life) for simple acts of humanity. For letting the American people know what they perhaps did not want to know but must know- when soldiers, American soldiers, go to war some awful things can and do happen.

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

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

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

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

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.