From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Open Letter to the KKE (1927)

PRESENT AT THE CREATION
I have read several books on subjects related to the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge and find that he is a well-informed insider on this subject although the novel rather than history writing is his stronger form of expressing his views. See his The Case of Comrade Tulayev. This book can be profitably read in conjunction with other better written left-wing interpretations of this period. Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution (for the February period), Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World come to mind.

The task Serge sets himself here is to look at the dramatic and eventually fateful events of first year of the Russian Revolution. Those included the Bolshevik seizure of power, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the struggle by the Bolsheviks against other left-wing tendencies in defining Soviet state policy, the fight to end Russian participation in World War I culminating in the humiliating Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany and, most importantly, the beginnings of Civil War against the Whites. In short, he investigates all the issues that will ultimately undermine and cause the degeneration of what was the first successful socialist seizure of state power in history.

Serge's history is partisan history in the best sense of the word. It is rather silly at this late date to argue that historians must be detached from the subject of their investigations. All one asks is that a historian gets the facts for his or her analysis straight. And then stay out of the way. Serge passes this test. Serge worked under the assumption that the strategic theory of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was valid. That premise stated that Russia as the weakest link in the international capitalist system could act as the catalyst for revolution in the West and therefore shorten its own road to socialism. The failure of that Western revolution, the subsequent hostile encirclement by the Western powers and the inevitable degeneration implicit in a revolution in an economically undeveloped country left to its own resources underlies the structure of his argument.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the defining event for the international labor movement during most of the 20th century. Serious militants and left -wing organizations took their stand based on their position on the so-called Russian Question. At that time the level of political class-consciousness in the international labor movement was quite high. Such consciousness does not exist today where the socialist program is seen as, at best, utopian. However, notwithstanding the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92 and the essential elimination of the Russian Question as a factor in world politics on a day to day basis anyone who wants learn some lessons from the heroic period of the Russian Revolution will find this book an informative place to start.

 

Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
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Open Letter to the KKE

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) was founded on 4 November 1918, with the original name of the Greek Socialist Workers Party. An outline of its early years can be found in Loukas Karliaftis, The History of Bolshevism/Trotskyism in Greece and La naissance du bolshevisme en Grece, part ii, as well as in A. Stinas, Memoires, pp.37-108. The following document was circulated after the end of the party’s third congress in March 1927 along with the appeal of Trotsky and Vuyovic against expulsion from the Comintern.
Pantelis Pouliopoulos (1900-43) joined the KKE in 1922, and first became prominent in the thousands-strong movement of the war veterans in 1923-25, for which he was arrested and tried in Athens on charges of promoting the autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace, and exiled to Folegandos island. He translated Capital into Greek, and was the KKE’s first Secretary, and had been delegated to the fifth congress of the Comintern in 1924. After being made the scapegoat for the party’s failure, and being abused and slandered, he resigned in September 1926, but was reinstated by the Comintern delegation and took part in the party’s congress in March 1927, where he and Giatsopoulos were removed from the Central Committee. After publishing and circulating the pamphlet known as New Beginning they were formally expelled from the party later that year, and formed an oppositional group which solidarised itself with the struggle of the International Left Opposition They began to publish a journal called Spartocus from December 1928 onwards, containing the main documents of the Left Opposition. They refused to join the split of the Archeiomarxists that had already taken place from the Communist Party, as they regarded it as having a sectarian attitude to the KKE. When the Archeiomarxists were accepted as the representatives of the International Left Opposition in Greece, Trotsky condemned the Spartacus group (L.D. Trotsky, Who Shall Attend the International Conference?, 22 May 1932, in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1932, New York 1973, p.102), describing them as “fruitless and hopeless” (On the State of the Left Opposition, 16 December 1932, in Writings of Leon Trotsky 1932-33, New York 1972, p.291), and they were excluded from the Trotskyist movement along with the ‘Fractionalists’ who had just split from the Archeiomarxists led by Michel Pablo (The International Left Opposition. Its Tasks and Methods, in Documents of the Fourth International: The Formative Years, New York 1973, p.40). The two groups joined together to set up the OKDE in 1934, and for a while Pouliopoulos maintained links with other oppositional groups around Landau and Molinier, opposing the movement to create a new International from 1933 onwards, but took the initiative in the move to unite the Greek Trotskyists in 1938. Later that year he was arrested, and his ultimate fate is described below.

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Every thinking Communist inside the Communist Party of Greece feels quite sure that the party is in an unhealthy state, and in all its activities sees the spasms of an incurable illness. Most members of the party do not see any of this. They continue to view the situation as natural, and are completely unable to think things through. This is the most frightening symptom of the party’s illness. After its congress the party’s crisis has not only worsened, but has today reached such a tragic state, whereby every logical man who is to be found inside this organisation with the honest intention of working for Communism, feels the irresistible urge finally to react in some way to this situation. It is a general phenomenon inside the party. However, many honest comrades who are not crushed by the recurrent disillusionments, are today experiencing an unprecedented unease and even guilt, having left things to themselves to take the downhill road to degeneration.
We happen to be among the oldest militants inside the party and have otherwise served the party in the most responsible positions. The experience which we have gathered from the struggle, and a deep awareness of our responsibilities to the movement, have led us to a few concrete conclusions on how we should confront the situation. Our first Communist task is indubitably to make known our thoughts to as many comrades as have shown in practice until now the sincerity of their commitment and their common sense.
We recognise the elementary logical idea that inside a sick organism, which has proved itself incapable of standing on its own, comradeship and cooperation among those members who feel the same urge to react to the malaise, is both unavoidable and urgent.
The views expressed below are for us a precondition for the revolutionary movement of our country, based on study and experience, ideas which we will carry through to their logical conclusion with confidence and resoluteness, indifferent to whatever obstacles or sycophancy we meet or the number of comrades who will accept them today. As Lenin said: “Every serious revolutionary is obliged to defend his views, which he believes are important for the cause of the proletarian revolution, even in the case of being in a minority. And he is obliged to go against the stream which may dominate for a certain period. If he does not do this he is not a revolutionary, but a pitiless careerist”.

1. The Crisis in the Party

The development of the party since the Third Emergency Congress has confirmed the conclusions which a small group had formed during the turbulent pre-congress discussion in Rizospastis (Radical) and during the discussions inside the congress. The KKE has experienced a permanent internal crisis from birth. The symptoms are:

1. The lack of a leading nucleus of comrades with a sound Marxist political education and the ability to adapt their Communist principles to the concrete situation of the country, with a minimal homogenous ideology and inspire trust within the members of the party as well as among the mass of its followers;
2. The party has had a bad class composition from the start, which as time progresses becomes even worse. A large part of the members of the party have originated from the worst elements of the proletariat, from the lumpen-proletariat, and from the petty bourgeoisie with an anti-proletarian psychology. In many places, Communism appearing with such elements repels away many of the best elements from the working class as well as quite a few intellectuals who could become good militants. Such a social composition of the party allows even opportunist elements, which exist inside the party to become demagogues with pseudo-revolutionary phraseology, and many honest comrades are disillusioned, forcing them to leave the party. That is the reason why the party does not attract serious intellectuals but frequently strange and suspect individuals;
3. There is a disproportion between the spontaneous movement of the masses who turn towards the left due to the objective situation, and the defectiveness and insufficiencies of the party. This creates a complex arena for action where the pressing needs of the workers are confronted by the party in a fashion which is spasmodic, unorganised and anarchic, thus ending only in hopeless confusion, without any positive results and no steady organisational conquests for Communism inside the country.
    

2. Reasons for the Crisis

The most immediate reasons for these critical phenomena are to be found in the particular conditions of the historical development of our movement, in correlation with the upturn and downturn of the international revolutionary movement. Basically the reasons for the crisis, in the final analysis, are to be found in the special conditions of the development of capitalism in our country: its socio-economic position and the psychology of the Greek proletariat and of the petty bourgeoisie, and in particular, the comprador character of our country and its capitalist backwardness, the lack of a Socialist tradition and of a Marxist culture, the influx of opportunist elements inside the movement, etc.
The task of the Greek Communists is to come to grips with confronting those conditions of the movement which they can influence with their conscious actions.

3. The Question of ‘Tendencies’ Inside the KKE

Only he who ignores the situation in the party can assert today that the crisis of the KKE is to be attributed to a conflict of ‘tendencies’ concerning tactics. The above mentioned reasons for the crisis show that the overall tendency inside the KKE concerning tactics is generally confused. Periodically sharp antagonisms between ideologically formed tendencies, antagonisms which are common in all the Communist parties and provoke periodical inter-party crises, inside the KKE consist of either personal conflicts or at the most automatic conflicts between groups which spasmodically seek a concrete ideological form. Such crises inside the KKE form only a small part of its permanent crisis. The confusion of these two phenomena prevents a correct diagnosis of the situation inside the party.
Convincing proof of utter confusion is the so-called ‘left’ and ‘Leninist’ group (Khaitas, and the leadership of the OKNE – CP Youth). Yesterday it was for Pangalos, as well as for ‘left wing democracy’ – craven opportunism – and then stupid extremism of a Byzantine type, and while at first it deceived the party with its “clear reformism”, considering as mistakes the slogans on the national question, in their opportunist activity they simply spoke about a “defence of the minorities” in the last elections, whilst in line with revolutionary policy they should have spread the slogans of the Emergency Congress as did their opponents who believed them to be truly revolutionary. The assumption that a clear ‘right’ and ‘left’ exist today inside the KKE is clearly, demagogy. Our inherent basic deficiencies and, first of all, the lack of a clear revolutionary theory based on a Marxist-Leninist analysis of conditions in the country, cannot avoid exposing the party to extreme right wing views and to a permanent vacillation between extremism and clear cut opportunism. No logical comrade can accept as ‘left wing’ the fabricators of the so-called ‘Leninism’ and ‘left wing democracy’, which they did not repudiate until a condemnation arrived from the International, when they started shouting comically on the eve of the elections about the ‘party’s mistake’, thus making a joke of one of the basic principles of Leninism in Greece, that of self-criticism. And it is clearly demagogy to use the handy sycophantic label of “right wingers” against the undersigned, who were the only ones, and the first ones, to characterise that slogan at the ‘Congress of Factors’ (September 1926 as “stupid opportunism” and a ludicrous mechanical transferring of Russian slogans of 1905, and this at a time when all of today’s defenders of ‘leftism’ were overawed by the ‘Leninist’ slogan of ‘left wing democracy’ brought here directly by those merely trained in Mosco’s Educational School.
Another issue is the object of our inner-party struggle, and not the acquisition of ‘leftist’ credentials. The division, which the representatives of the Communist International made into a ‘Marxist group’, a ‘Leninist group’ and a ‘workers’ group’, is obviously arbitrary and it is very dangerous for our movement to characterise as ‘Left’ the Khaitas group as occurred in a previous Balkan Congress. These things show once more how much damage is done to our movement by the lack of knowledge of Greek individuals and situations shown all the time by the representatives of the Communist International.

4. The Third Emergency Congress

The congress never provided, nor could it have provided, any ‘solution’ to the crises of the party. The pre-congress discussion not only was not enlightening for the party and those workers who follow it, but it immensely ridiculed and lowered the prestige of the party. During the congress, while nearly all were in possession of the facts about the social composition and about the ‘opportunists’ inside the party, no one apart from a few comrades drew the necessary conclusions to remedy the situation, in the face of the spectre of ‘liquidation’ which had been craftily raised inside the party by the opportunist majority of the old leadership. The decisions of the congress were an official ratification for the continuation of disorder. Not only were there no thoughts about the selection and recruitment of members, but on the contrary, entry was provided into the party to all kinds of useless elements. While the splitting opportunist view concerning professionalism was condemned, the congress chose precisely to enforce the opposite tactic by those who didn't believe in it, as it was proved later in practice that they were only capable of provoking pseudo-revolutionary disorders inside the trade unions, so aiding reformism and provocateurs, and not carrying out productive and positive revolutionary work in uniting and educating the workers in a revolutionary fashion.

5. After the Congress

As was expected, instability characterised all the appearances and movements of the party after that famous congress. Internally it was the same but worse – spasmodic methods, empiricism, a bit of everything, no distribution of work, anarchy and journalistic production due to the inability of the party to produce a theoretical organ at a time when Marxist works in our country were enriching a few publishers. On May Day and at the meeting of the Press Union in Athens, the party tail-ended various loud-mouthed irresponsible elements and various members of the ‘Communist League’, and thus these meetings, instead of being the first steps in exposing reformism and provocateurs, a true exposure and not fake promises, became weapons and arguments in the hands of the sputters. Later, in the face of the danger of a split in the trade unions, instead of all our forces being intensified in recruiting the unorganised, which is a better means against the sputters (as in any case the broad masses of workers outside the trade unions do not take much notice of the ‘uncovering’ of known provocateurs) we reached the pathetic point of not knowing what is happening inside the trade union movement, awaiting the automatic development of events, the leadership of which had been left to the reactionary leaders of the General Confederation (Greek TUC). If it is correct what is being heard inside the party, that the leaders of the ‘workers’ group’ are thinking seriously of founding a new General Confederation, then we have before us the culmination of a crazy tendency on the trade union question, as it is clear that our role is precisely to expose those reactionary people who declare openly for a split, and to unify the workers, educating them, and moving them on the day-to-day issues with which they can identify, and thus show them in practice, and not with indefinite phrases about the necessity of unified trade unionism. The craziness which makes us waver today in an ungovernable fashion is a consequence of the logic dominating among us of utter adventurism.
A complete catastrophe has been brought to the movement by the adventurism which in general governs the majority of the party during the last tobacco workers’ struggle. The comrades of the Tobacco Workers Union had done nothing to discover the general relationship of forces inside the country, in order to be able to judge if they needed to enter into a struggle right now. Preparation work around the Insurance Funds of the Tobacco Workers Union was terra incognita for the party. There was absolutely no concept of what precisely the Insurance Funds of the Tobacco Workers Union were and what general importance they had for the working class as a whole and for Communism in Greece. It has been proved that the Insurance Funds of the Tobacco Workers Union were a weapon with which the reactionary government wanted to be able to attack the union, in other words, the only basis of Communism inside Greece, the proletariat of the heroic tobacco workers. The splitting tendency of the General Confederation and the general downturn of the labour movement were clear, and thus its lack of support for the struggle of the Tobacco Workers Union. And the leaders of the party should have known that a general strike of the tobacco workers in a period of open attacks of the Coalition Government against the KKE would mobilise against them all the forces of state terror. And finally when it appeared as if the almost completely spontaneous outbreak by the tobacco workers would end in disaster, the party continued fatalistically to tail-end the unavoidable, producing in the last days in Rizospastis declarations such as the “traitors of the General Confederation”, without even proving such allegations in the many tangible events which had taken place. And people began leaving. The hitherto bare provocateur reformism started to create an even more stable basis inside the tobacco-working masses. The endeavours which the comrades up there now must undertake in rebuilding the old Tobacco Workers Union are gigantic. Now in the face of the debris which adventurism has accumulated under the flag of fake ‘Leninism’, they are attempting to put the blame on the KKE fraction, as if it was a narrow trade union struggle over which the KKE leaders have no control! Finally the meeting of the “only Bolshevik” organisation in Greece in Athens on 5 June 1927 constituted a complete disgrace for the party. What Communist has not lost his sense of shame, and there was much to be ashamed of as a Communist to see such a downgrading of the tobacco workers’ struggle and of Communism in Greece? The ridiculous appearance of the party in the capital of the country with a feeble excuse, which allowed troublesome elements to dominate the meeting with their resulting interjections to the obscene expressions of the official speaker of the party, and likewise the stupidity of trying to organise an ‘illegal’ meeting, along with the absence from it of the ‘Leninists’ (!) of the Athens organisation who convened it – all of these made the party appear in the capital as a gathering of people who are simply joking and being irresponsible about the revolution, at the time when the Greek proletariat is everywhere carrying out in practice its fierce revolutionary struggle!

6. The International and the Party

We believe completely in the correctness of the principles and tactics of the Communist International as founded and guided by Lenin. But we declare quite clearly that we do not agree at all with the methods and views of the representatives of the Communist International at the Third Congress of the KKE. The representatives of the Communist International with their stance at the congress, and their declarations in the Balkan Communist Federation, proved that they don't know anything apart from the speeches of a group inside the party, and who happen to carry with them a so-called ‘Leninist’ baggage of knowledge, but are completely unable to discern with Leninist dialectics the particular conditions under which we work here in Greece, and up until now they have only shown political adventurism, having paralysed the movement. We disagree with the non-Leninist way international centralism has been applied by the representatives of the Communist International at our congress, both in the discussion of our views, as well as in the elections of a new Central Committee. We disagree fundamentally with the views which have been stated by the representatives concerning the nature of the Communist Party (it “reflects the level of the working class”), and we consider it to be the opposite of the basic organisational principle of Leninism and the experience of the Bolsheviks, which show us that the Communist Party is the elite of the proletariat and gathers around it the most advanced and “honest” (as Lenin put it) elements of the working class. Lenin, when asked on many occasions about the question of the first organisation of Russian Social Democrats, had with bitterness and sarcasm frowned upon those who had suggested that we must take as our starting point not the ‘best’ of the workers but the ‘middle workers’ from the class (Lenin, What Is To Be Done). We fundamentally disagree with the mechanical way in which the comrades of the International have transferred the experience of the internal struggles of the German Communist Party to Greece, and their ideas concerning the position of revolutionary intellectuals inside the party of the proletariat. We have the conviction that the narrow workerist spirit which the representatives have brought to the congress is damaging for our party as a party which organises the revolutionary forces in an underdeveloped petty bourgeois country with a bitter experience of narrow workerism. Those who today cultivate inside the party a workerist spirit and defame the revolutionary intelligentsia are not workers, but only the few ruling adventurist, pseudo-revolutionary ‘intellectuals’ who want to monopolise the revolutionary intelligentsia. We believe that in Greece a serious Communist movement cannot exist if serious thinkers from bourgeois, even, and petty bourgeois layers are not won over, and who will come to give the uneducated Greek proletariat the knowledge of scientific Socialism, and to accept from it proletarian psychology. `Social Democratic (Communist) theory appeared independently from the spontaneous rise of the working class movements, being a natural and inevitable result of the thought of intellectual followers of scientific Socialism. “The history of all countries proves that left to its own forces the working class can only reach a trade unionist outlook” (Lenin, What Is To Be Done).
In any case, the experience of the Bulgarian party teaches us that the attraction of intellectuals to the proletarian camp in underdeveloped countries like ours has a special significance. Obviously our party in its composition must be basically proletarian, and its proletarian composition is obviously a guarantee for its correct revolutionary line. But the other equally important guarantee for the development and greater raising of the party's level and the proletarian masses towards Communism, is the existence inside the fighting vanguard of a group of intellectuals who have a high practical idealism and are cultivated daily in proletarian life, who will give to the party its scientific weapon of Marxist theory. We finally disagree with the utter offhand way with which the delegation of the Communist International spoke about the national question in Greece, and tried to characterise our views as “Luxemburgist”. It has been proved finally in practice that the party had abandoned the slogans of the Emergency Congress, even as ‘propaganda’ slogans. Finally, we emphasise that as revolutionaries not only disciplined but of independent thought who want and are obliged to develop our own ideas, we have the right to ask for more information about the views of the Opposition inside the CPSU and inside the International, and we do not agree at all with the view that for our party the great historical problems concerning this discussion that today divide the leaders of the Russian Revolution and old co-workers of Lenin (Socialist industrialisation in one country, international tactics, the Chinese question, etc) are secondary. If the party is to be a true component of the international revolutionary front, we must consider of primary importance the issues concerning the development of the international revolution.

A Bolshevik is one who is not only disciplined, he is a man who deeply studies and every time forms his own views and defends them courageously and independently not only against the enemy, but also courageously and independently inside his own organisation. Today he might be in a minority but that does not mean that he is always wrong. (Trotsky)
 

7. The Danger of Degeneration Inside the Party

However, many comrades who hoped that the Third Congress would open up a new period of creative enthusiasm and revitalisation inside the party saw their hopes being disproved by events. The deeper causes of the crisis of the party remained untouched and without any examination at the congress, and made fruitless any attempt of the healthy elements inside the party to make amends. A small number of honest, able and thinking comrades, who truly want to work every day, see that their work for the party remains without result, and others lose interest while others fatalistically conclude that the situation is unchangeable as this is “the material which the position of the Greek proletariat gives us”. They work inside the party without interest or enthusiasm, and they also become part of the general downturn, and are plagued by serious doubts. Any uncomfortable search for a resolution of the crisis has now become alien. The great mass of politically uneducated members passively accepts the speeches made by those who happen to be the present leadership, and thus it is easy for an active demagogue who will use great words and pseudo-revolutionary phrases, whose content is meaningless, to influence party members. Nearly all the public appearances of the party take on the exclusive character of automatic displays and undue uproar, thus losing all seriousness. That is why many comrades whom we attract to the party are simply noisy, empty or adventurist elements who simply ask for adventures of the moment, and do not enter the movement to contribute to the revolutionary education, organisation and mobilisation of the proletariat. While the party appears to be represented by such elements, we will not be able to stabilise a force inside the country to raise the consciousness of the masses and to make them feel the authority and imposition of a political organisation which directs them in their daily struggles and prepares their future liberation from capitalism. Public appearances and meetings are not occasions for screeching, but for organised displays and mobilisations of the masses, which manifest their revolutionary enthusiasm and are also educated politically by their party, which explains its slogans and its political ideas. This is how Communism is implanted among the exploited masses. Today’s events show that the party is not an organisation which can discipline the masses, but is a gathering of people dragged along by the spontaneous movement.
In such a situation it is not at all strange that an atmosphere of corruption is created inside the party, inside of which chatter, careerism and pseudo-revolutionary phrases are endlessly cultivated, and hence we see the hatching of new ‘leaders’ every once in a while, who then fall so that others can take over. This situation, which we call adventurist pseudo-revolutionism, will dominate the party for a long time in the future. The groundwork for its domination was unfortunately cultivated unconsciously by all of us, at a time when there was a lack of any experience, and pure revolutionary enthusiasm was the only guide of every healthy element inside the party. It was aided by the mistaken appreciation of the representatives of the International. It is aided by a network of ‘trustworthy’ people who are forever around the organs of the International and the Balkan Communist Organisation, and who create a suitable sycophantic atmosphere concerning the various ‘unwanted’ comrades. Finally, it is based upon a layer of comrades in the party who are politically uneducated and completely uncontrollable.
This ‘tendency’ is the first and constant element against which every attempt to raise the party from its current level stumbles. Its representatives' way of thinking, mechanical and in general closed to all surrounding reality, and incorrigibly narrow-minded, renders them totally incapable of observing what is going on around them or of finding a new solution to the fresh problems which develop, by applying a Marxist dialectical method. Marxism and Leninism for them are always a given sophistry, a sealed bible, which gives ready-made solutions and labels for every problem. It is not a living method of theory distilled from the experience of past struggles, which here in Greece we are called upon to enrich, producing by the same method new lessons and new experiences and thus creating the revolutionary theory of the Greek proletarian movement as part of its international experience.
Practice has proved here in Greece, as elsewhere, that inability to use the Marxist method when dealing with concrete reality leads to political adventurism and destroys the movement. (For example: the ‘Leninist’ left wing democracy, because Lenin in 1905 had said: “the democratic dictatorship of the proletarian and peasantry”; “the organised left wing faction” because they heard that the same occurred in England; the “Bonapartism” of Pangalos, because some Marxist book happened to refer to Bonapartism; the “rationalisation” of power and our “negative” stance, because a few days ago we read Pravda, and Bukharin spoke about something like that in German industry; and all of these endless and great absurdities in the name of poor ‘eninism’).
But from another point of view this ‘tendency’ is adventurist. Its representatives do not by any means intend to undertake responsibly and publicly the task of explaining their political line every time to the masses. Their ideal is to remain closed inside the party circle of members, who are awed by their ‘Leninism’, to give orders, to direct (as did ... Lenin from Finland or Switzerland!) and then implacably ... to criticise in ‘Bolshevik’ style. Full of conceit and petty craftiness, old fashioned in their political methods, they want to have puppet MPs and public speakers generally under control, so as to be able tomorrow to condemn them as careerists and right wingers, nor at all revolutionaries, incapable of understanding the sterile line of Leninism of which only they know the secret and can safeguard it(!), while they can also appear as specialists on ‘illegal’ activity. They are afraid of legality precisely in the same fashion that others are afraid of illegality. And the illegal activities of the party are directed without them taking part (for example, the absence of the ‘Leninist’ secretary of the Athens organisation at the ‘illegal’ meeting which he himself had ordered for 5 June). In other words for them illegality means “hide so no one knows you”. What fake ‘Archeiomarxist’ Leninism!
If this situation continues it is without doubt that every healthy element will feel asphyxiated inside the party and will distance himself, while the party will transform itself even more into a gathering of certain types, who bear no relation to Communism, under the leadership of this original ‘eninist’ adventurism. And naturally in the new period of illegality which now opens up, these people will disperse themselves and once more destroy the party, as occurred precisely with the first period of illegality, when the representative of the International, amazed at the many provocateur elements, proposed the dissolution of the party and the retainment of only the 100 ‘true’ Communists. Thus a serious Communist party, which will impose itself with authority in the working class against its enemies and will educate the masses in a revolutionary fashion, will not be acquired before the proletarian revolution!

8. The Task of the Healthy Elements

While there is still time and whilst the party has not yet been completely poisoned by this dreadful situation, all the healthy elements must start reacting sympathetically to this evil. Avoiding any fatalism and the simplistic idea that “through activity alone” the situation will remedy itself, they are obliged to undertake a decisive struggle against the root causes of the crisis. There are two basic and indispensable preconditions for such an attempt; a determined, strict commonoutlook not only as to the concrete aims which need to be pursued to overcome the crisis, but a whole series of bases to be created for the rebirth of the movement, and decisiveness in achieving these aims without hesitation and fear in the face of any slander, which will surely be used by those who have identified their position inside the movement with the vulgar role of those who ridicule Communism in Greece. All who understand these developments but hesitate in fighting the unhealthy aspects of our movement, and passively accept the current situation with its tragic perspective, aid it and thus become jointly responsible for it. We strongly believe that every thinking comrade inside Greece will be convinced sooner or later that apart from the course we are outlining here, serious and fruitful work for Communism will not exist in the future. Let us consider the aims which, in our opinion, need to be pursued.

9. What Needs to be Done

(1) A general cleansing of the party and a new selection, using as a basis individual capability for development, activity and proletarian morality. The creation of a seriously based Communist party in Greece must be approached correctly, in other words, on Communist organisational principles applied not blindly, but dialectically, according to the concrete circumstances and historical experience of the Greek labour movement. We must start correctly. We will never build a serious Communist Party in Greece if we do not at first concentrate a certain layer of chosen proletarian and intellectual elements. Such was the starting point of all of today’s Communist Parties and the Bolshevik Party first of all. For many more particular reasons this must be the starting point for us in Greece. These elements must clear out from our party as quickly as possible every adventurist, passive, politically uncontrollable and easily gullible element that is to be found in our ranks. Greek Communists must first of all take care to concentrate in their ranks those whose intellectual, moral and practical qualities can inspire the Greek proletariat to gather around them, and not to allow Communism in our country to appear from elements which are bankrupt, ludicrous, weird or simply of a low intellectual capability when relating to their working class surroundings, elements which defame in practice the ideas of Communism. Before such a serious sorting out of the true ‘vanguard’ is made, capable of assimilating the best elements and getting rid of the worst, the doors of the party cannot simply be opened up to the proletariat.
(2) Communism has nothing to lose in political influence by such an organisational recomposition of its forces, as has been proved by events in the past. We have to win as our goals stability, strengthening and a broadening of our perspective. Today's chaos will be replaced by a class discipline, and stale chatter by comradely cooperation and enthusiasm alongside creative work. Everyone will start to understand what work he must do inside the party, and everyone will look at the positive developments of their attempts, and that will inspire trust in the strength of their organisation. The accusation levelled against such a cleansing approach towards the party, of ‘aristocratic Communism’ is baseless. We cannot consider ourselves today as a ‘vanguard’. We must become a true vanguard. With today’s wretched composition not only will we never become a vanguard but we will continuously turn into a vulgar caricature of Communism, a parody of a Communist movement. We will progressively deteriorate if we do not pull ourselves together. Such a view has nothing in common with the automatisation (Spontaneity theory) as declared by Pannekoek and Rosa Luxemburg. On the contrary, it is based on a correct estimation of the great role (for a backward country with such a generally low political level of the masses and such general corruption) to be played by the consciously organised direction of the struggle by a good general staff.
(3) A decisive condition for the raising of the party from its current level is the political development of its members with a suitable combination of the propagandistic-educating work inside the party, and the method of division and control of practical activity, which have both been lacking in the party, the normalisation of the internal life of the party, the fearless attack upon spontaneity and adventurism on the organisational level, and more generally the eradication from our ranks of vulgar parasitism and adventurist pseudo-revolutionism and of a narrow workerist spirit wherever it reveals itself.

(4) It is a task of all leaders to educate themselves continuously in all theoretical questions ... Socialism from when it became a science must be treated as a science, in other words we must study it. (Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, p175)

The party is obliged constantly and with a studied system to aid in the minimum theoretical specialisation of its best elements. The necessity for theoretical work for the KKE is much greater than of any other party inside the Communist International which has a similar influence on the masses. Thus and only thus can the question of theoretical and practical work for our Communist movement be posed. Blind ‘activity’ in darkness and useless uproar – that is what our ‘activity’ has hitherto consisted of. Whoever talks of theoretical work inside the party is characterised as an ‘Archeiomarxist’. The question is how to bring these two fields of activity into a correct relationship, in other words in a relationship which is in agreement with the current conditions and needs of the movement. The party must pursue the scientific cultivation of Marxism-Leninism, to distribute it among the proletariat and to give the possibility for the best comrades to study in a Marxist-Leninist fashion the concrete social-economic condition of the country, something which until now hasn’t even been started. For so long as such work does not produce results, the KKE cannot constitute a serious party inside the International. Only the development of a correct revolutionary theory by the KKE can prevent vacillations in our tactical work, which many times until now have distorted the independent class character of the party. It is deceitful and a vulgar sycophancy to characterise such an appreciation of the living needs of the party as ‘Archeiomarxist’. No work can be done separate from the practice of the workers’ movement. Marxist-Leninist theory cannot appear in Greece if it is not concentrated and generalised in the practical experience of the struggle of the Greek proletariat, in combination with international experience, and if it is not tested through these.
(5) The squandering of the meagre resources of the party in adventurist confrontations in diverse fields of action must stop. The party is obliged above all to concentrate its attention and to use most of its forces in trade union work, and in the proletarian centres of the country, concentrating upon workers in the unions, in their revolutionary education, and to apply revolutionary tactics not with abstract phraseology but in confronting the concrete problems of the daily struggle of the workers, in accordance with the desired aim along with the systematic work for the raising of the level of proletarian education of the workers, which in our country is very low. The trade union fractions must become living organs, which will observe closely the problems of their field of work, and become centres of union meetings and of the political education and mobilisation of the workers in their daily struggles. The task of systematically aiding certain comrades, who can cultivate their abilities and acquire a serious theoretical education so as to become serious revolutionary cadres, is one of the first tasks in front of us.
(6) We must democratise centralism inside the party, stop the appointment of functionaries or the use of untested comrades in responsible positions or the mechanical creation of ‘professional revolutionaries’, and cleanse the technical organisational functioning of the party by pursuing the economic independence of the local branches, and call a halt to measures that limit the aims of purging it.
(7) The party must confront the Archeiomarxists as a particular Greek organisation which exploits the organisational disorder of the party and the nascent cultural level of its members, seeking the dissolution of the party in the name of Communism, dividing in anti-Marxist fashion theory from practice, distorting the teachings of Marxism with countless slanders against the party, distorting the psychology and spirit of the workers who, disillusioned by the party, are pushed towards the Archeiomarxists. It must educate the workers and intellectuals with care, and explain that the Areheiomarxists’ corrosive propaganda is an obstacle to the creation of a strong Communist Party in Greece.
The so-called ‘third position’ is made up of elements who are proletarian and intellectual with a good propagandistic Communist education in the past, who declare that they are asking to enter the party. The tactics of the leadership of the party in confronting them are basically mistaken. It asks them to repudiate certain opinions concerning the cleansing of the party, but to declare that they recognise completely the correctness of the decisions of the Third Congress, whereas the only thing which the leadership could ask from revolutionary proletarians who are followers of the International is to accept the discipline of the party, but have the right of independent thought and opinion concerning the deepest sickness which the party is experiencing, To insist on the former is equal to the complete transformation of the members of a political party into an amorphous mass of passive people, and can only lead to a continuation of today’s disgraceful situation.
(8) The party, without ceasing to support the self-determination of the Macedonian people up until their secession and to fight the concrete forms of national oppression over them by the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian bourgeoisie, must abandon the tactical slogans of “a united and independent Macedonia” and “a united and independent Thrace”, as they have proved mistaken, and have created confusion among the workers, refugees and peasants, thwarting their internationalist education, which is one of the tasks of the party. The Communists from the Balkans must be able to demonstrate before the Macedonian masses their autonomist slogans independent of the Bulgarian bourgeoisie and its Fascist organs inside the Macedonian organisations, and to defend the national liberation movement of the Macedonians wherever and whenever it manifests itself among the masses themselves, declaring at the same time that the only way for the Macedonian peoples to acquire their national freedoms and the basis of an independent state, if they want it themselves, is a joint struggle with the workers and peasants of the, Balkans against the common enemy, the Balkan bourgeoisie and the dynastic cliques, for a Balkan federation of workers’ and peasants’ democracies. The argument that such a position when dealing with the Macedonians is wrong, saying it starts from an anti-Leninist theoretical basis and it agrees more with the views of Rosa Luxemburg on the national question which cannot be seriously supported today, that the national independence of the Macedonians cannot occur within the framework of bourgeois regimes such as in the Norwegian example, which was discussed by such Russian Marxists as Lenin during the discussion with Rosa Luxemburg, is untenable. Such a position on the national question, despite the fact that it was condemned by the congress, in practice is the position of the party today, as the slogans of the Emergency Congress of 1924 were not even propagandistically used after the Third Emergency Congress. The collapse of Communism can be seen when the party is criticised by the bourgeois papers of Macedonia for its national policy, and the leadership of the party remains silent without clearly giving its opinion! Political cowardice shelters under the cloak of Leninism – that is the present political line of the KKE on the national question.
(9) A brief collection of facts, the formulation of a programme for the KKE, using as a basis the programme of the Communist International which was accepted at its Fifth Congress and the programme of the Communist Party of Bulgaria, arid the publication of a theoretical organ of the party where all the views can be expressed freely concerning the problems facing the movement, are essential.
(10) Finally, we must discuss methods of work inside the party. It is utopian to believe that every attempt to cleanse the party can be achieved in cooperation with every honest element inside the party when they haven’t acquired a clear conception of the situation, as described above, and have not the decisiveness to work accordingly in attacking the bad traditions which have immobilised us until today. Even more utopian is it to wait for a solution of the crisis by an ‘enlightenment’ of the adventurers or the uncontrolled elements, who have been proved totally incapable of realising into what state the movement is being driven. The problem lies in the hands of the best comrades inside the party who correctly understand the situation.
Our immediate aim must be to disseminate broadly and continually the above ideas among the best comrades, and to dispel this atmosphere of conservatism which is stifling the internal life of the party.
When all the best and healthy elements inside the party have been convinced about the necessity for such a cleansing and recomposition of the party, then the problem is near its solution.
The position of all comrades who accept the above views inside the present organisation of the party are clearly defined: (1) No one has the right to doubt our true position inside the party for which we have given and are giving whatever services and sacrifices we can. (2) The party is threatened by a real danger of degeneration – a consequence of the current situation and the adventurism which predominates. Here is to be found the true ‘liquidationism’ of the party. It is this danger which we are fighting. We are fighting for the cleansing and rebirth of the party, which is the only way to avoid the degeneration towards which we are heading. (3) Whoever talks about our ‘liquidationism’ is characterising himself and his position.
We have the conviction that enough able elements who can systematise their endeavours on clearly predetermined common aims, will one day achieve the rebirth of the movement, and breathe new life into the party organisation, which is continuously dying.
It is upon the activity of the comrades who today have become convinced about the reasons for the crises of the movement and the means by which it can be overcome that the fate of Communism in Greece depends. One day it will start emerging from its pre-history, so that it will one day enter its true history, seriously preparing all the revolutionary forces in the country for the overthrow of capitalism.
Athens, 15 July 1927
P. Pouliopoulos
P. Giatsopoulos

***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-
In The Be-Bop ‘50s Song Night-Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel"

Markin comment:


This space is noted for politics mainly, and mainly the desperate political fight against various social, economic and moral injustices and wrongs in this wicked old world, although the place where politics and cultural expression, especially post-World War II be-bop cultural expression, has drawn some of my interest over the past several years. The most telling example of that interest is in the field of popular music, centrally the blues, city and country, good woman on your mind, hard working, hard drinking blues and folk music, mainly urban, mainly protest to high heaven against the world’s injustices smite the dragon down, folk music. Of late though the old time 1950s kid, primordial, big bang, jail-break rock and roll music that set us off from earlier generations has drawn my attention. Mostly by reviewing oldies CDs but here, and occasionally hereafter under this headline, specifically songs that some future archaeologists might dig up as prime examples of how we primitives lived ,and what we listened to back in the day.
************

MARK DINNING
"Teen Angel"

(Jean Surrey & Red Surrey)

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, ooh, ooh
That fateful night the car was stalled
upon the railroad track
I pulled you out and we were safe
but you went running back
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love
What was it you were looking for
that took your life that night
They said they found my high school ring
clutched in your fingers tight
Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me
Are you somewhere up above
And I am still your own true love

***A 50^th Anniversary Of Sorts -Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Thanksgiving Football Rally, 1963- For A Brother Who Did Not Make It, Jimmy J., North Adamsville Class Of 1966

 

 

Peter Paul Markin North Adamsville High School- Class of 1964 comment:

 

Make no mistake, despite the lightly- dusted change of names and places to protect the innocent, and the guilty too now that I think about the matter, this honor sketch is about our old town, no question.    

 

Go to this link for the sketch since this site only allows 5000 character messages.  

 

http://talesfromoldnorthquincy.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-50-th-anniversary-of-sorts-out-in.html

 

 

***A 50^th Anniversary Of Sorts -Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Thanksgiving Football Rally, 1963- For A Brother Who Did Not Make It, Jimmy J., North Adamsville Class Of 1966

Peter Paul Markin North Adamsville High School- Class of 1964 comment:

Make no mistake, despite the lightly- dusted change of names and places to protect the innocent, and the guilty too now that I think about the matter, this honor sketch is about our old town, no question.

Scene: Around and inside the old North Adamsville High School gym entrance on the Hunt Street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross- town arch-rival Adamsville High in 1963. For those who are not familiar with North Adamsville or who through the ravages of time, too much booze, too many drugs, or too many, well just too many Hunt Street is the street that had the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner. A place where we filled up, we who owned such treasures, that dream 1957 Chevy that had everybody turning their heads, every girl, or more likely our father’s Plymouth on pretty please loan, just be careful with the damn thing and, yes, fill ‘em up before you bring it home, home by midnight, no later and no arguments.

The street itself is fairly non-descript, filled, like most streets in the Atlantic section with double and triple-decker houses, mostly two unlike kindred, Irish kindred, Dorchester (Dot, okay) and South Boston (Jesus, Southie, okay) and small lot single family houses, cottages really all packed closely together against the unimproved land behind the street. Houses representing, those small lot cottages too closely packed together representing, that nagging hunger of our parents to have a small piece of the American pie after the turmoils of the want-filled Great Depression 1930s. And after slogging through World War II during the heart of the 1940s, short-cutting their youth, carrying a rifle on the shoulder, or home fires waiting, waiting for Johnny and Jimmy to come back, come back in one piece, please. And their broods, their spawn (nice word, huh), like their brethren on Billings Road , Faxon Road, Hancock Street, East Squantum Street, Young Street, Newbury Street, the seven tree-named streets, the five ocean- signified streets, fill, over-fill, the four grades of the high school that the baby-boomer explosion, their explosions, has created. That motley will be well-represented this pre-game rally night. No question.

[By the way thinking about that Atlantic section of the old townevery grandmother, every second or third generation resident grandmother, calling, no, cursing, under their breathe cursing the place, cursing “one-horse Atlantic” from the days when one needed to “go up the Downs” to get family provisions and services, or go without.]

Of course the time of which I speak is a time before they built what is apparently, that apparently due to many years away from the old school and not up on changes until recently, a significant addition to the school on that side of the building modeled on the office buildings across the street behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination. Then though only a recently constructed new gym, an American Standard gym, also reflecting concrete construction and lowest bidder imagination, anchored that part of the building.

This night the spawn (still nice, huh) I spoke of, a generous proportion of them seniors taking one last memory home before the deluge of a candid world hits them come June. Others too are present some at some ghostly sufferance from lowly and despised frosh, barely passable sophomores, and presentable juniors, some of their parents taking a minute out from festive next day preparations. More, a gentle sprinkling of teachers, mostly teachers who had half a heart and maybe tossed a kind word once. the hard-assed don’t mix with the rabble that sit before them day after day, a motley of alumni recent and ancient, ancient seemingly from founder Adams’ time. More still a selection of the town waywards looking for warmth before a warm furnace-fueled gym for a couple of hours usually closed against the night, and some boosters, alumni or not, who have for their own reasons decided to cast their fates and bleed red and black like true Red Raiders whatever high school they might have graduated from before landing in old North Adamsville. All are milling in the front door of the gym waiting to purchase booster tickets, pompoms, red and black naturally to be waved, endlessly waved that evening at the slightest prompting, three for a dollar raffle tickets to support some senior class project, most likely that trip to Mexico that Miss Pratt was trying to put together, in the foyer inside making stealthy preliminary observations about who and who was not present, and with whom if present, or the forlorn, the luckless or just plain woe-begotten are already in the bleachers trying to put on a brave front against the hard fact, the hard school social fact that they do not fit in.

And that is our scene in those long last moments before the annual rally is to begin. But, frankly, it could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. A time when the social cohesion of the whole North Adamsville village glued the community around a common ritual, a rite of passage if you like. A time when the denizens of the Dublin Grille over on Sagamore Street (or the Irish Pub on Billings Road, Guido’s on Atlantic Avenue, Patty’s Pub on Wollaston Boulevard, I know, I know Adamsville Shore Drive, Bruno’s on East Squantum it was all the same except the locations), mostly working-class Irishmen and a scattering of Italians abandoned their cherished bar stools and cozy booths, including my father and other kindred, and hiked the five blocks to the high school to root the latest edition of the gridiron's goliaths on. A time too when such endeavors as football (and fast cars, “watching the submarine races” with your honey down at Adamsville Beach, HoJo’s ice cream, Fourth of July celebrations, your first drink of alcohol) were cultural ornaments of that second or third generation of immigrants, European immigrants. And I am willing to bet six-two-and-even with cold hard cash gathered from my local ATM against all takers that this story “speaks”, except for the names, to those who dwell in the town today as well. Listen up:

Sure the air was cold, you could see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night felt cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. I could too as I joined the mob trying to run the gauntlet in the foyer and see what is what, see what they evening may bring, stealthy observation bring. A mass of humanity was moving, bundled up against the weathers, toward that gym entrance front door quickly from automobiles parked helter-skelter on the several streets adjacent to the high school. Others have short- haul walked from the tree-named streets, maybe the ocean-named streets too probably quicker that night than driving except for those who will meander down toward frosty Adamsville Beach after the rally to join the other fogged-windowed cars to do, well to do in case there are grandkids around, okay. Still others took that old fume -filled Eastern Mass bus that never seemed to show on time, never when you were in a hurry or it was cold, cold like that night and waiting in some half-baked lean-too for shelter froze the toes.

It was also starless, as the weather report was projecting rain, maybe freezing rain if the temperature dipped for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I was worried about, or cared about a little rain. I’ve seen and done many things in a late November New England winter rain, and December and January rains too, for that matter. Faced gales coming out of hell Bay of Fundy around Maine shorelines, watched, watched in horror, and candidly fear, as double-seawalls could not hold Mother Nature back when a big blow came through Marblehead Neck one time, got drowned, soaked to the bone, in pelting rain Newport, really Block Island so a little sleet would not have bothered me then. No, this damn, was for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field would slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as that attack was guided by Tim Riley and rambling wreck Bullwinkle (no further name need be given for that moniker says it all about the rambling wreck who thrilled us with his dogged forward, ever forward slashes and thrusts against mere mortals and who is rightly immortalized in the old school’s hall of fame), a little rain, and a little mud, can be the great equalizer.

This after all is class struggle. No, not the kind that you might have heard old Karl Marx and his boys talk about, you know the workers who produce whatever needs to be produced and the bosses grabbing a big share, a big wad of dough, from that production, although now that I think of it there might be something to that theory here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but just then I was worried, worried to perdition, about the battle of the titans on the gridiron, rain-soaked granite grey day or not. See, this particular class struggle was Class A (more boys) Adamsville against Class B (fewer boys) North and we needed every advantage against this bigger school. (Yes, I know for those younger readers that today’s Massachusetts high schools are gathered in a bewildering number of divisions and sub-divisions for some purpose that escapes me but when football was played for keeps and honor simpler designations like A and B worked just fine.)

Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing is any high school gym, any public high school gym, anywhere. Foldaway bleachers, foldaway divider (to separate boys for girls in gym class, if you can believe that), waxed and polished floors made of sturdy wood, don’t ask me what kind (oak, maybe) with various sets of lines for its other uses as a basketball or volleyball court. If you have not been in a high school gym in a while or you want to invoke memory lane check out the school dance scene in the baby-boomer coming -of –age- in- the-early- 1960s classic film, American Graffiti, where you will see what I mean. (Yeah, I know car-crazed, souped-up hot-rod valley boys and girls Modesto was not our pristine ocean-swell shoreline borrow your father’s car, some Nash Rambler or something, with the usual caveats about fueling the thing up, not crashing the thing into some wall and bring it home early but the gyms were the same, the dreams were the same, and the awkward boy-girl-dance thing, jesus, you know that was the same, and maybe still is.)

That should do it on the architecture of the gym. I will not, I swear I will not, go on and on like some latter day Marcel Proust about the decorations that festooned the walls and rafters, except they were strewn hither and yon throughout the gym. A few hand-make posters seemingly drawn by somebody’s younger brother or sister before nap time urging Go Raiders, Beat Adamsville, or some team member designated by shirt number to do those things. But mainly the place was filled with black and red little cheap crepe throw-away banners. Not just black and red though Red Raider black and red, black signifying who knows what but red, blood red signifying that we bled Raider red, or we had better that night.

The most important thing though was that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies were milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who had bled, have bled, bleed or wanted to bleed Raider red, and even those oddballs that didn’t. This upcoming battle, as always, stirred the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town. That night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition to performing his patriotic duty, was looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she had come for the festivities, and every unattached red-blooded girl student, ditto on the duty, for that certain he. Don’t tell you didn’t take a peek, or at least give a stealthy glance.

Among this throng are a couple of fervent quasi-jock male students, one of them who is writing this sketch, the other, great track man, Bill Brady, was busy getting in his glances, both members of the Class of 1964, with a vested interest in seeing their football-playing fellow classmates pummel the cross- town rival. And also, in the interest of full disclosure, were both in the hunt for those elusive shes. I did not see the certain she that I was looking for, that classmate Dora, a girl as crazy for politics, history, modern literature, and poetry, yes, poetry what of it, who had told me earlier in the day before the close of school for the first long weekend of the year that she would come, if she could, and who I often dreamed of then. But, as was my perfidious nature then, I had also taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects.

This, the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, had us bringing extra energy to our night’s performance, including purchase of those tacky crepe pompom shakers. Jesus, all because some girl Bill was interested in was on the Boosters Club table as we came in. We were on the prowl and ready to do everything in our power to bring home victory. ....Well, almost everything except donning a football uniform to face the opposing monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancied ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like running around the streets of the old town in shorts in all weathers almost getting run over by irate drivers and sidewalk walkers as trackmen, those just mentioned stealthy glances, and that sort of thing.

Finally, after much hubbub (and, as I observed the scene, more coy and meaningful looks all around the place than one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally began. At first somewhat subdued due to the very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, Jack, down in cowboy wild west heathen Texas, especially for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd. I had been particularly hard-hit since I had walked the streets of the old town putting campaign literature in every doorway and had bought, bought heavily into the fresh green dream of a “newer world” that his election had heralded. We all remember where we were that previous week, and although we have forgotten much some fifty years later not that.  Most of us were in class when the announcement that the President had been mortally wounded was made over the P.A. system. We had lost some of our innocent, and, worse, that promise for the young heralded by his election, that making and doing good in the world, whether you bought into the New Frontier or not seemed an unlikely promise. But everyone, including me, seemingly, had tacitly agreed that for that little window of time the outside world and its horrors would not intrude.

A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Mr. Jim Walsh, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty uniformly stressed good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you played the game droned away. Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider had anything but thoughts of mayhem, maybe murder too if it could have been gotten away with, and of casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying was so much wasted wind. This “bummer” prelude, obligatory or not, was followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, taking the floor and twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types for all I knew. Certainly they were not in the same league as the majorettes, who I would not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I was saving one of my sly, coy glances for one of them just then, sweet Rita Givens.

What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, was looking forward to by then was the cheer-leading to get things moving led by the senior girls like the vivacious Ruth Goward, the spunky Jenny Weinfeld, and the plucky Laura Pratt. They did not fail us with their flips, dips, double something stuff, gymnastic stuff that I don’t remember the names of except I couldn’t do in gym class, not even close, and hearty rah-rahs. Strangely, the band, a motley of brass-players, drummers and clangers led by that bevy of majorettes when it was their turn, with one exception and you know the exception, did not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls could twirl.

But all this spectacle was so much, too much, introduction. For what was wanted, what was demanded of the situation, up close and personal, was a view of the Goliaths that will run over the cross- town arch-rival the next day. A chance to yell ourselves silly. The season had been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team was highly regarded by lukewarm fans and sports nuts alike.

Naturally, in the spirit, if not the letter of high school athletic ethos, the back-ups and non-seniors were introduced first by Coach Lion. Then came the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom had been playing for an eternity it seemed. Names like guiding hand Tim Riley, speedy Will Simmons, husky Len Munson, beefy Peter Duchamp, steady Jack Zona, reliable Dick McNally, redoubtable ( don’t ask him what that means, please) Jeff Fallon, wily Carl McDonald, dingbat Stewart Chase, mad dog "Woj" (Jesus, don’t forget him. I don't need that kind of madness coming down on my face, even now.), and on and on.

Oh, yes and “Bullwinkle,” a behemoth of a run-over fullback, a night train wreaking havoc over many a solid defensive line even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something was missing. A sullen collective pout filled the room. After the intros were over the suddenly restless crowd needed verbal reassurances from their warriors that the enemy was done for. And as he ambled up to the microphone and said just a couple of words we got just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. He grunted the words “Victory over Adamsville.” That was all we needed. Boys and girls, this one was in the bag. And as we shortly thereafter headed for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band, a little less subdued then, played the school fight song, On North Adamsville to the well-known tune of On Wisconsin.

Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, the young and old, the wise or ignorance bled Raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances at certain hes and shes? I hope so.

 

***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- When Billie Fought To Be Church Hall Dance Champ

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Recently I read a short CD review by my old high school times friend, Peter Paul Markin (actually just after high school graduation friend where we met at a dance club pursuing the same young woman who in the end went off with somebody else) who, seemingly, has endlessly gone back to his early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. His central premise was that while time and ear had eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seemed obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for his/our generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music. I have no quarrel with that premise and we have discussed it subsequently over many a cold winter drink. 

Those conversations got me thinking though about my own separate road to rock at a time when we, we small-time punk (in the old-fashioned sense of that word), we hardly wet behind the ears elementary school kids, and that is all we were for those who are now claiming otherwise, listened our ears off. Those were strange times indeed in that be-bop 1950s night when stuff happened, kid’s stuff, but still stuff like a friend of mine, not Peter Paul who I did not know then but another who I will talk about some other time later, who claimed, with a straight face to the girls, that he was Elvis’ long lost son. Did the girls do the math on that one? Or, maybe, they like us more brazen boys were hoping, hoping and praying, that it was true despite the numbers, so they too could be washed by that flamed-out night.

Well, this I know, boy and girl alike tuned in on our transistor radios (small battery-operated radios that we could put in our pockets, and hide from snooping parental ears, at will) to listen to music that from about day one, at least in my household (Markin's too when we later laughed about the similarities of our early teenage household existences) not considered “refined” enough for young, young pious you’ll never get to heaven listening to that devil music and you had better say about eight zillion Hail Marys to get right Catholic, ears. Yah right, Ma, like Patti Page or Bob (not Bing, not the Bing of Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? anyway) Crosby and The Bobcats were supposed to satisfy our jail break cravings.

And that pious, quietist, chase the devil and his (or her) devil’s music away, say a million Acts of Contrition, church-bent, Roman Catholic church-bent, part formed a great deal of the backdrop for how we related to that break-out rock music. And why we had to practically form a secret cult to enjoy it. Now you all know, since you all went to elementary school just like I did, although maybe you didn’t attend in the Cold War, red scare, we-could-all-be-bombed-dead tomorrow 1950s like I did, that those mandatory elementary school dances where we rough-hewn boys learned, maybe we learned, our first social graces were nothing but cream puff affairs. Lots of red-faced guys and giggling girls. Big deal, right?

What you maybe don’t’ know, especially if you were not from a working-class neighborhood (or a pubic housing project) made up of mainly Irish and Italian Roman Catholic families like I was is that “cream puff” school stuff was seen by the Church (need I add any more identifying words?) as the devil’s playground. Later, I found out from some Protestant friends that their church leaders felt the same way. No, not those Universalist-Unitarian types who think everything humankind does that is not hurtful is okay but real hard-nosed Protestants, like Episcopalians, Baptists, and Presbyterians. So to counter that secular godlessness, at least in our area, the Church sponsored Friday night dances. Chaste, very chaste, or that was the intention, Friday night dances.

Now these dances from the outward look would look just like those devil-sponsored secular school dances. They were, for example, held in the basement of the church (St. whoever, Our Lady of the wherever, The Sacred whatever, or fill in the blank), a basement, given the norms of public architecture, was an almost exact rectangular, windowless, linoleum-floored, folding chairs and tables, raised stage replica of the elementary school auditorium. That church locale, moreover, when dressed up like on those Friday nights with the usual crepe, handmade signs of welcome, and refreshment offerings also looked the same.

And just so that you don’t think I am going overboard they played the same damn (oops) music as at school, except the sound system (donated, naturally, by some pious parishioner, looking for good conduct points from the fiery-eyed "fire and brimstone" pastor) was usually barely audible. The real difference then, and maybe now, for all I know, was that rather than a few embarrassed public school teacher-chaperones drafted against their wills, I hope, or like to hope, every stick-in-the-mud person (or so it seemed) over the age of eighteen was drafted into the lord’s army for the evening. Purpose: to make sure there was no untoward, unnatural, unexpected, or unwanted touching of anything, by anyone, for any reason. So, now that I think about it, this was really the Friday night prison dance. But not always.

Of course all of this remembrance is just so much lead up to a Billie story. You know Billie, Billie from “the projects” hills. William James Bradley to be exact. The Billie who wanted fame and fortune (or at least girls) so bad that he could almost taste it. The Billie who entered a teenage talent show dressed up like Bill Haley and whose mother-made suit jacket arms fell off during the performance and he wound up with all the girls in schools as a consolation prize. Yes, that Billie, who also happened to be my best friend, or, maybe, almost best friend we never did get it straight, in elementary school. Billie was crazy for the music, crazy to impress the tender young girls that he was very aware of, much more aware of than I was and earlier, with his knowledge, his love, and his respect for the music, rock music that is.

During the summer, and here I am speaking of the summer of 1958, these church-held dances started a little earlier and finished a little later. That was fine by us. But part of the reason was that during July (starting after the Fourth Of July, if I recall) and August there was a weekly dance-off elimination contest. Now these things were meant to be to show off partner-type dancing skills so I never even dreamed of participating, although I was now hip to the girl thing (or at least twelve-year old hip to it), and gladly. Not so Billie. You know, or if you don’t then I will tell you so you know now, that Billie was a pretty good singer, and a pretty good shaker as a dancer. Needless to say these skills were not on the official papal list of ways to prove you had some Fred Astaire-like talent. What you needed to demonstrate, with a partner, a girl partner, was waltz-like, fox-trot stuff. Stuff you were glad to know when last, slow dance time came around but not before, please, not before.

But see, if you didn’t know before, I will remind you, Billie was a fiend to win a talent contest, a contest that, the way he figured it, was his ticket out of "the projects" and into all the cars he wanted, all the girls, and half of everything else in the world. Yah, I know, but poor boys have dreams too. And I don’t suppose it is too early to remind you, like I did with the lost sleeve teenage talent show, that Billie later spent those pent-up energies less productively, much less productively once he knew the score, his score about life. Today though, this night, this Friday night, at the start of the contest Billie is going for the brass ring. See, Billie, secretly, at least secretly from me, was taking dance lessons, slow dance lessons with Rosalie, Christ Rosalie, the prettiest girl in our class, the girl that if I had known the word then I would have called fetching, very fetching. That was, and is, high praise from me. And, see also, teaching the pair the ropes was none other than Rosalie’s mother who before she became a mother was some kind of dance queen (I don’t know, or don’t remember, if I knew the details of that woman’s prior life before then). It was almost like the fix was in.

Now you know just as well as I do that I have no story, or at least no story worth telling, if Billie and Rosalie don’t make it out of the box, if they just get eliminated quickly. Sure they made it, and now they are standing there getting ready to do battle against the final pair for the sainted dance championship of the christian world, projects branch. Now my take on the dancing all summer was there wasn’t much difference, at least noticeable difference, between the pairs. I think the judges thought so too, the junior priest, a priest that the pastor threw into this dance thing because he was closer to our ages than the old-timer "fire and brimstone" pastor was, and four ladies from the Ladies' Sodality usually took quite a bit of time before deciding who was eliminated. Rosalie’s mother (and my mother, as well) thought the same thing when we compared notes. See, now with Billie under contract (oh, yah, naturally I was his manager, or something like that) I had developed into an ace dance critic. Mainly though, I was downplaying the opposition to boost my pair's chances, and, incidentally, falling, falling big, for Rosalie. And not just for her dancing.

So here we were at the finals. It was a wickedly hot night in that dungeon basement so the jackets and ties, if wore (and that needed to be worn by the contestant males), were off. Also, by the rules, each finalist couple got to choose its own music and form of dancing. The first couple did this dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers all hands flailing and quick-movement thing that even impressed me. After than performance, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billie talking to Rosalie, talking fast and talking furiously. Something was up, definitely, something was up.

Well, something was up. Billie, old sweet boy Billie, old get out of the projects at any cost Billie, old take no prisoners Billie decided that he was going to stretch the rules and play to his strength by doing a Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock jitterbug thing to show the judges his “moves” and what we would now call going "outside the box." And he had gotten Rosalie, sweet, fetching, deserves better Rosalie, to go along with him on it. See, Rosalie, during all those dance lesson things had fallen for old Billie and his words were like gold. Damn.

I will say that Billie and Rosalie tore the place up, at least I guess Billie did because I was, exclusively, looking at Rosalie who really danced her head off. Who won? Let me put it this way, this time the judges, that priest and his coterie of do-gooders didn’t take much time deciding that the other couple won. Rosalie was crushed. Billie, like always Billie, chalked it up to the "fix" being in for the other couple. Life was against the free spirits, he said, something it took me a lot longer to figure out. Rosalie's family moved away not long after that contest, like a lot of people just keeping time at the projects until their ships to better days came in, and I heard that she was later still furious at Billie for crossing her up with that fast-dancing. Yah, but, boy, she could twirl that thing. 

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories

Thirteen-The Sons Of Franz Fanon

…he took the lashes, took the bitter lashes, the sable slave lashes in Pharaoh times, he took the ocean swells to the bottom unnoticed, Mister unnoticed, in Middle Passage time, he took the ebony lashes again in Mister Mississippi goddam plantation black code time, a time to make him studied ignorant, or else, ignorant of his history, of his past, of his kin except for hot sun cotton fields, and more hot sun cotton fields, he took the rope, he took the no hope, he took the Mister walk here, not there, sit here, not there, stand here, not there in Jim Crow time, he took his down-turned head in “talented tenth” time when he was not of the better sort, hell, he even kept that head down in “new negro” times when they were separating out the small pie portions. He, hell, he had had enough, enough of broken down internal rages, enough of unchallenged Mister hurts, enough of okie/arkie nobodies jim, get backs, enough of every kind of glad hand indignity. Enough.

And then he found his way out, or a way out, then he remembered, if he remembered rightly, that all over the world in in the old days Russia places, red guard arms in hand, when he was just a kid in China places, people’s army arms in hand, right now, right this minute now, in Vietnam places where they were raising holy hell with Mister, with arms in hand, some of Mister’s own too, and above all in great Mother Africa, arms in hand, they were shoving Mister into the sea, if they let him get that far. Above all he remembered Algeria struggle, Algeria which he knew about from some brother telling him that this West Indian guy, this doctor, this head doctor, said that in the end if you didn’t pick up the gun, if you did not make a sacrificial act, if you just waited around for Mister to give you bread and butter that you would never right Pharaoh wrongs, Middle Passage wrongs, Mister plantation wrongs, Mister James Crow wrongs, hell even talented tenth and new negro wrongs (who were they to decide anyway). That anything that he was given without a righteous cleansing struggle would turn to ashes in his black-skinned mouth.

And so he picked up the gun, picked it up easily, laughingly (Mister laugh) held it barrel to the blue sky in public, learned to shoot the damn thing, and felt himself purified, slave purified for once in his down presser man life, and walked with certain swagger, an angel swagger, and when some Johnny Reb okie transplant tried to take his measure he just showed “the colors.” Beautiful to see that white ass turned, turned way around. And funny too others too picked up the gun to avenge ancient hurts and they formed a brotherhood, solid, and declared, declared among themselves at first, until Mister heard it through the grapevine, that stinking new negro grapevine, war on that foreign country that he lived in, that Algeria in America country, like that head doctor talked about. And then things, thing started to get interesting, and bloody…

Ten Point Program[edit]

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[43][44]
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

 

***In Honor Of Phillip Sydney Hoffman

Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die- British Style- “Pirate Radio”- A Film Review

DVD Review

Pirate Radio, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Richard Curtis, Focus Film, 2009
First Question: Who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll? Well, of course, Bo Diddley (okay, okay others too). Second Question: Who brought rock ‘n’ roll to your double-locked bedroom, dank cellar, storage-filled garage, or other secret ear place back in old time battery-operated transistor radio (pre-iPod-MP3 times, fossil age alright) days? Well, of course, your local dee-jay who helped you while away your night, your dream-plagued rock ‘n’ roll night, with his (mainly) mile-a-minute-banter, selection of platters (records, pre-CD, DVD, iTune, YouTube, you’ve heard about them, right?-shiny black vinyl discs with grooves), and, yes, selected advertising targeted to the newly enriched (maybe) teenager with disposable dollars.

Rich enough to buy records, eat non-mother made burgers, fries, and pizza washed down with Coke or Pepsi at the Adventure Car-Hop, maybe moving up the scale your own radio, television set stuff like that. For the older set-older guys set all kinds of accessories for that souped-up Chevy that had all the girls going, well just call it going. Such names as Allan Freed, Wolfman Jack, Murry the K, and Arnie Ginsberg come quickly to mind. And although the music, praise be, outlasted the careers and remembrance of that lot this classic rock period is associated in my mind (and yours too, I bet) with that very dee-jay night. And that, my friends, is the premise behind this very nicely done trip down rock memory land- British version.

In many ways the British 1960s rock explosion paralleled the American classic rock scene, although later than that genre’s American 1950s heyday. The greatest difference, however, is the way that British audiences heard their rock- literally through the pirate radio of the title. Off-shore, out in the ocean depths, white waves splashing against some barnacled old tub of a ship, rock radio. Without getting into the ins and outs of British broadcasting traditions the battle, the age-old battle really, here is between those who wanted to listen to rock and not just in that double-locked bedroom mentioned above, and those nasty governmental officials and their hangers-on who wanted to outlaw it by shutting down this uncontrolled pirate method. That battle drives the tension and plot line to almost bizarre (by today’s cyberspace standards) ends. But what this film is about is a bunch of guys (mainly, again) who loved to play rock, who loved to present it in their own fashion, and who wanted the fame, fortune (and, incidental sex) that came with heroic dee-jay-dom.

This motley crew is ready to go down with the ship, literally, in order to keep rock freedom alive. Of course there are more than a few gag (British gag, ala Monty Python) scenes that are better left unmentioned but this is a feel good movie with plenty of drugs, sex, and rock and roll on the high seas. Jesus. You might ask what was wrong with that? Ah, come to think of it what was wrong with that? The cast includes the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman (a very versatile actor when you realize that he also played American novelist Truman Capote in the In Cold Blood execution-driven drama Tru) as the Count, the only American in the lot. But this whole mix of radio personalities is a good out in the seas rock night, late night, early morning and so on. So, here is the drill. Bo (and, yes, others) put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll but the Count and the boys put the bop in the be-bop pirate radio night. See this one.