***Sitting On The Rim Of The World- With The Son Of The Neon Wilderness Nelson Algren In Mind-Take Three

He wrote of small-voiced people, the desperately lonely, alienatedpeople who inhabit the Nighthawk Diner (artist Edward Hopper’s or Tom Waits’ take your pick), the restless, the sleepless, the shiftless, those who worked the late shift, those who drew the late shift of life, those who worked better under the cover of night in the dark alleyways and sullen doorways.

He wrote big time, big words, about the small-voiced people, big words for people who spoke in small words, spoke small words about small dreams, or no dreams, spoke only of the moment, the eternal moment. Waiting eternally waiting to get well, to get some kicks. Waiting for the fixer man, waiting for the fixer man to fix what ailed them. Not for him the small voice pleasant Midwestern farmers proving breadbaskets to the world, the prosperous small town drugstore owners, or of Miss Millie’s beauty salon (although one suspects that he could have) for in the pull and push of the writing profession they had (have) their muses. Nor was he inclined to push the air out of the small town banker seeking a bigger voice, the newspaper publisher seeking to control the voices or the alderman or his or her equivalent who had their own apparatuses for getting their small voices heard (although again one suspects he could have, if so inclined, shilled for that set). No, he, Nelson Algren, he, to give him a name took dead aim at the refuge of society, the lumpen as he put it in the title of one short story, those sitting on the rim of the world.

And he did good, did good by his art, did good by his honest snarly look at the underside of society, and, damn, by making us think about that quarter turn of fate that separated the prosperous farmer (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not short-weighting the world), the drugstore owner (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not dispensing his wares, his potent drugs, out the back door to a craving market) , Miss Millie (assuming as we must that she, secretly, was not running a call girl service on the side), the banker (assuming as we must that he, maybe secretly maybe not, was not gouging rack rents and usurious interest), the newspaper editor (assuming as we must that he, very publicly, in fact was printing all the news fit to print), and the politician (assuming as we must that he, secretly, was not bought and paid for by all of the above, or others) from the denizens of his mean streets. The mean city streets, mainly of Chicago, but that is just detail, just names of streets and sections of town to balance his work where his characters eked out an existence, well, anyway they could, some to turn up face down in some muddy ravine, under some railroad trestle, in some dime flop house, other to sort of amble along in the urban wilderness purgatory.

Brother Algren gave us characters to chew on, plenty of characters, mostly men, mostly desperate (in the very broadest sense of that word), mostly with some jones to work off, mostly with some fixer man in the background to wreak havoc too. He gave us two classics of the seamy side genre, one, the misbegotten Frankie Machine, the man with the golden arm, the man with the chip on his shoulder, the mid-century(20^th century, okay) man ill at ease in his world, ill at ease with the world and looking, looking for some relief, some kicks in that mid-century parlance, and, two, that hungry boy, that denizen of the great white trash night, Dove Linkhorn, who, perhaps more than Frankie spoke to that mid-century angst, spoke to that world gone wrong, for those who had just come up, come up for some place where time stood still to gain succor in the urban swirl, to feast at the table,come up from the back forty lots, the prairie golden harvest wheat fields, the Ozarks, all swamps and ooze,mountain wind hills and hollows, the infested bayous and were ready to howl, howl at the moon to get attention.

I remember reading somewhere, and I have forgotten where now, that someone had noted that Nelson Algren’s writing on Dove Linkhorn roots was the most evocative piece on the meaning of the okie–arkie out migration segment of that mid-century America ever written, the tale of the wandering boys, the railroad riders, the jungle camp jumpers, the skid row derelicts. Hell, call it by its right name, the white trash, that lumpen mush. And he or she was right, of course, after I went back and re-read that first section of Walk On The Wild Side where the Linkhorn genealogy back unto the transport ships that brought the first crop of that ilk from thrown out Europe are explored. All the pig thieves, cattle-rustlers, poacher, highwaymen, the “what did some sociologist call them, oh yeah, “the master-less men, those who could not or would not be tamed by the on-rushing wheels of free-form capitalism picked up steam, the whole damn lot transported. And good riddance.

The population of California after World War II was filled to the brim with such types, the feckless hot rod boys, boys mostly too young to have been though the bloodbaths of Europe and Asia building some powerful road machines out of baling wire and not much else, speeding up and down those ocean-flecked highways looking for the heart of Saturday night, looking for kicks just like those Chicago free-flow junkies, those twisted New Orleans whoremasters. Wandering hells angels riding two by two (four by four if they felt like it and who was to stop them) creating havoc for the good citizens of those small towns they descended on, descended on unannounced (and unwelcomed by those same good citizens). In and out of jail, Q, Folsom, not for stealing pigs now, but armed robberies or some egregious felony, but kindred to those lost boys kicked out of Europe long ago. Corner boys, tee-shirted, jacket against cold nights, hanging out with time on their hands and permanent smirks, permanent hurts, permanent hatreds, paid to that Algren observation. All the kindred of the cutthroat world, or better cut your throat world, that Dove drifted into was just a microcosm of that small-voiced world.

He spoke of cities, even when his characters came fresh off the farm, abandoned for the bright lights of the city and useless to that short-weighting farmer who now is a prosperous sort, making serious dough as the breadbasket to the world. They, the off-hand hot rod king, the easy hell rider, the shiftless corner boy, had no existence in small towns and hamlets for their vices, or their virtues, too small, too small for the kicks they were looking for. They needed the anonymous city rooming house, the cold-water flat, the skid- row flop house, the ten- cent beer hall, hell, the railroad jungle, any place where they could just let go with their addictions, their anxieties, and their hunger without having to explain, endlessly explain themselves, always, always a tough task for the small-voiced of this wicked old world. They identified with cities, with city 24/7/365 lights, with Algren’s blessed neon lights, city traffic (of all kinds), squalor, cops on the take, cops not on the take, plebeian entertainments, sweat, a little dried blood, marked veins, reefer madness, swilled drinks, white towers, all night diners (see it always comes back to that lonely, alienated Nighthawk Diner just ask Waits), the early editions (for race results, the number, who got dead that day, the stuff of that world), a true vision of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk for a candid world.

He spoke of jazz and the blues, as if all the hell in this wicked old world could be held off for a minute while that sound sifted thought the night fog air reaching the rooming house, the flop, the ravine, the beer hall as it drifted out to the river and drowned. Music not upfront but as a backdrop to while the steamy summer nights away, and maybe winter too. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, he spoke of a small-voiced white world, residents of white slums and pursuers of white- etched dreams and only stick character blacks but his beat, his writing rhythm made no sense without the heat of Trouble In Mind or that cool blast of Charlie Parker, Miles, Dizzie be-bopping, made absolutely no sense, and so it went.

He spoke of love too. Not big flamed love, big heroes taking big falls for some hopeless romance like in olden times but squeezed love, love squeezed out of a spoon, maybe, but love in all its raw places. A guy turning his woman into a whore to feed his endless habit love, and her into a junkie love. A woman taking her man through cold turkey love. A man letting his woman go love, ditto woman her man when the deal went wrong. When the next best thing came by. Not pretty love all wrapped in a bow, but love nevertheless. And sometimes in this perverse old world the love a man has for a woman when, failing cold turkey, he goes to get the fixer man and that fixer man get his woman well, almost saintly and sacramental. Brothers and sisters just read The Last Carousel if you want to know about love. Hard, hard love. Yah, Nelson Algren knew how to give voice, no holds barred, to the small-voiced people.

June Is Class-War Prisoners Month-From The Archives-Free The  Class-War Prisoners!-28th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal-Partisan Defense Committee Workers Vanguard No. 1034

Free the Class-War Prisoners!-28th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal

This year marks the 28th anniversary of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending stipends to class-war prisoners, those behind bars for the “crime” of standing up to the varied expressions of racist capitalist oppression. The PDC’s Holiday Appeal raises funds to send monthly stipends to 21 class-war prisoners and also provides holiday gifts for the prisoners and their families. We do this not just because it’s the right thing to do. The monthly stipends, just increased from $25 to $50, and holiday gifts are not charity. They are vital acts of class solidarity to remind the prisoners that they are not forgotten.

The Holiday Appeals are a stark contrast to the hypocritical appeals of bourgeois charities. Whether it comes from the megachurches of Southern televangelists or the urbane editors of the New York Times, the invocation of “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” at this time of year is nothing more than a public relations scam to obscure the grinding exploitation of workers and the beggar-the-poor policies that are the hallmark of both major parties of American capitalism. The lump of coal in the Christmas stocking for millions of impoverished families this year is a drastic cut in their already starvation food stamp rations. Christmas turkey for many is likely to be sculpted from cans of Spam.

The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities, from supplementing the inadequate prison diet to buying stamps and writing materials, or to pursue literary, artistic and musical endeavors that help ameliorate the living hell of prison life. As Tom Manning of the Ohio 7 wrote to the PDC four years ago: “Just so you know, it [the stipend] goes for bags of mackerel and jars of peanut butter, to supplement my protein needs.” In a separate letter, his comrade Jaan Laaman observed: “This solidarity and support is important and necessary for us political prisoners, especially as the years and decades of our captivity grind on.... Being in captivity is certainly harsh, and this includes the sufferings of our children and families and friends. But prison walls and sentences do not and can not stop struggle.”

We look to the work of the International Labor Defense (ILD) under its first secretary, James P. Cannon (1925-28), who went on to become the founder of American Trotskyism. As the ILD did, we stand unconditionally on the side of the working people and their allies in struggle against their exploiters and oppressors. We defend, in Cannon’s words, “any member of the workers movement, regardless of his views, who suffered persecution by the capitalist courts because of his activities or his opinion” (First Ten Years of American Communism, 1962).

Initiated in 1986, the PDC stipend program revived an early tradition of the ILD. The mid 1980s were a time of waning class and social struggle but also a time when the convulsive struggles for black rights more than a decade earlier still haunted America’s capitalist rulers, who thirsted for vengeance. Among the early recipients of PDC stipends were members and supporters of the Black Panther Party (BPP), the best of a generation of black radicals who sought a revolutionary solution to black oppression—a bedrock of American capitalism.

Foremost among these was Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), former leader of the BPP in Los Angeles. Geronimo won his release in 1997 after spending 27 years behind bars for a murder the cops and FBI knew he did not commit. FBI wiretap logs, disappeared by the Feds, showed that Geronimo was 400 miles away in San Francisco at the time of the Santa Monica killing. Other victims of the government’s deadly Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) remain entombed decades later. Absent an upsurge of class and social struggle that transforms the political landscape, they will likely breathe their last breaths behind bars.

Among the dozens of past stipend recipients are Eddie McClelland, a supporter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party who was framed on charges related to the killing of three members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland, and Mordechai Vanunu, who helped expose the Israeli nuclear arsenal. At its outset, our program included five British miners imprisoned during the bitter 1984-85 coal strike. State repression of labor struggle in the U.S. added to our program, for a time, other militants railroaded to prison for defending their union against scabs in the course of strike battles: Jerry Dale Lowe of the United Mine Workers in West Virginia, Amador Betancourt of Teamsters Local 912 in California and Bob Buck of Steelworkers Local 5668 in West Virginia. (For more background on the PDC and the stipend program, see “18th Annual Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners,” WV No. 814, 21 November 2003.)

The most recent additions to the stipend program include Lynne Stewart and the Tinley Park 5. Stewart is an attorney who spent four decades fighting to keep black and radical activists out of the clutches of the state, only to find herself joining them behind bars on ludicrous “support to terrorism” charges. The youthful anti-fascist fighters known as the Tinley Park 5 were thrown in prison for heroically dispersing a meeting of fascists in May 2012.

At the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we warned that the enhanced police powers being amassed to go after immigrants from Muslim countries would also be used against the oppressed black population and the working class as a whole. That the “war on terror” takes aim at leftist opponents of this or that government policy is affirmed by the massive “anti-terror” police mobilizations and arrests that have accompanied protest outside every Democratic and Republican national convention, among other gatherings, in recent years. Other recent examples include the FBI-coordinated nationwide crackdown on “Occupy” movement encampments and the state of siege in Chicago during the 2012 NATO summit.

The witchhunt against the Tinley Park 5 coincided with and fed into the hysteria whipped up against the anti-NATO protesters, particularly anarchists and participants in Black Bloc actions. Sitting in jail awaiting trial for 18 months are three protesters set up by a police provocateur. They were arrested and charged under Illinois anti-terrorism statutes, the first time these laws were ever used. Free the anti-NATO protesters! Drop the charges!

Continuing the Legacy of Class-Struggle Defense

The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization that champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people. This purpose is in accordance with the Marxist political views of the Spartacist League, which initiated the PDC in 1974. The PDC’s first major defense effort was the case of Mario Muñoz, the Chilean miners’ leader threatened with death in 1976 by the Argentine military junta. An international campaign of protests by unions and civil libertarians, cosponsored by the Committee to Defend Worker and Sailor Prisoners in Chile, won asylum in France for Muñoz and his family. The PDC has also initiated labor/black mobilizations against provocations by the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis from San Francisco to Atlanta to New York to Springfield, Illinois, and mobilized sections of the integrated labor movement to join these efforts.

Cannon’s ILD, which was affiliated to the early Communist Party, was our model for class-struggle defense. It fused the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) tradition of militant class-struggle, non-sectarian defense and their slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all,” with the internationalism of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a revolution made not merely for the workers of Russia but for the workers and oppressed of the world. These principles were embodied in the International Organization for Aid to Fighters of the Revolution (MOPR), a defense organization formed in the Soviet Union in 1922 that was more popularly known as the International Red Aid.

The ILD was born out of discussions in 1925 between Cannon and Big Bill Haywood, who had been a leader of the Western Federation of Miners and then the IWW. The venue was Moscow, where Haywood had fled in 1921 after jumping bond while awaiting appeal of his conviction for having called a strike during wartime, an activity deemed a violation of the federal Espionage and Sedition Act. Haywood died in Moscow in 1928. Half his ashes were buried in the Kremlin, the other half in Chicago near the monument to the Haymarket martyrs, leaders of the fight for the eight-hour day who were executed in 1887.

The ILD was founded especially to take up the plight of class-war prisoners in the United States. Initially, the ILD adopted 106 prisoners for its stipend program, including California labor leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, framed up for a bombing at the Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco in 1916, and Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, immigrant anarchist workers executed in 1927 for a robbery/murder they did not commit. The number grew rapidly: Zeigler miners in Illinois whose fights over wages and working conditions pitted them head-on against the KKK; striking textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey. The ILD monthly, Labor Defender, educated tens of thousands of workers about the struggles of their class brothers and carried letters from prisoners describing their cases and the importance of ILD support.

Many of the imprisoned militants were IWW members. After a brief membership in the Socialist Party (SP), Cannon himself had been an IWW organizer and a writer for its press. Witnessing the anarcho-syndicalist IWW crushed by the bourgeois state while a disciplined Marxist party led a successful proletarian revolution in Russia, Cannon rejoined the SP in order to hook up with its developing pro-Bolshevik left wing. In 1919, that left wing exited the SP, with Cannon becoming a founding leader of the American Communist movement. He brought a wealth of experience in labor defense. As Cannon later recalled, “I came from the background of the old movement when the one thing that was absolutely sacred was unity on behalf of the victims of capitalist justice.”

In the year preceding the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, the ILD and sections of the International Red Aid led mass actions in their defense, including protests and strikes of tens of thousands on the eve of the executions. The SP and pro-capitalist union tops undermined the growing workers mobilization by looking to the political agencies of the class enemy, a policy accompanied by a vicious anti-Communist campaign of slander and exclusion. Cannon addressed the two conflicting policies:

“One policy is the policy of the class struggle. It puts the center of gravity in the protest movement of the workers of America and the world. It puts all faith in the power of the masses and no faith whatever in the justice of the courts. While favoring all possible legal proceedings, it calls for agitation, publicity, demonstrations—organized protest on a national and international scale.... The other policy is the policy of ‘respectability,’ of the ‘soft pedal’ and of ridiculous illusions about ‘justice’ from the courts of the enemy. It relies mainly on legal proceedings. It seeks to blur the issue of the class struggle.”

— “Who Can Save Sacco and Vanzetti?” (Labor Defender, January 1927)

The principle of non-sectarian, class-struggle defense has guided our work, in particular our more than two-decade struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. As a small organization, we don’t pretend that we are able to mobilize the type of hard class struggle that not only built the unions in this country but also harnessed the social power of the working class to the defense of labor’s imprisoned soldiers in the class war. Such struggles are today a very faint memory. Nor do we want to distribute rose-colored glasses through which even the most minimal stirrings against particular atrocities by the racist capitalist rulers appear as sea changes in the political climate—a practice that is common fare for sundry proclaimed socialists.

Instead, we are dedicated to educating a new generation of fighters in the best traditions of the early Communist defense work before it was poisoned by Stalinist degeneration. As Cannon wrote for the ILD’s second annual conference: “The procession that goes in and out of the prison doors is not a new one. It is the result of an old struggle under new forms and under new conditions. All through history those who have fought against oppression have constantly been faced with the dungeons of a ruling class.” He added, “The class-conscious worker accords to the class-war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem.” Keeping the memory of their struggles alive helps politically arm a new generation of fighters against the prison that is capitalist society. We urge WV readers to honor the prisoners by supporting the Holiday Appeal.

The 21 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below.

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Federal and state courts have repeatedly refused to consider evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the policeman. In 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office dropped its longstanding effort to legally lynch America’s foremost class-war prisoner. Mumia remains condemned to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 69-year-old Peltier is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another eleven years! Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family.

Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 36th year of prison. After the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, they were sentenced to 30-100 years having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

Lynne Stewart is a lawyer imprisoned in 2009 for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric convicted for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. Stewart is a well-known advocate who defended Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state. She was originally sentenced to 28 months; a resentencing pursued by the Obama administration more than quadrupled her prison time to ten years. As she is 74 years old and suffers from Stage IV breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and back, this may well be a death sentence. Stewart qualifies for immediate compassionate release, but Obama’s Justice Department refuses to make such a motion before the resentencing judge, who has all but stated that he would grant her release!

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals, but, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.

Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They are victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation, under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.

Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his late 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber Pelican Bay SHU in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesque inhuman conditions.

Jason Sutherlin, Cody Lee Sutherlin, Dylan Sutherlin, John Tucker and Alex Stuck were among some 18 anti-racist militants who, in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park in May 2012, broke up a gathering of fascists called to organize a “White Nationalist Economic Summit.” Among the vermin sent scurrying were some with links to the Stormfront Web site run by a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon. Such fascist meetings are not merely right-wing discussion clubs but organizing centers for race-terror against black people, Jews, immigrants, gays and anyone else the white-supremacists consider subhuman. For their basic act of social sanitation, these five were sentenced by a Cook County court to prison terms of three and a half to six years on charges of “armed violence.”

Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeals will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredations. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.

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Reposted from the American Left Historyblog, dated December 1, 2010.

Markin comment:

I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. And an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers, articulate death row prisoners, anti-fascist street fighters to black liberation fighters who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters who took Che’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart* (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthersin their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven, as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone.

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From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days

Click below to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives.

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

Markin comment:

The foundation article by Marx or Engels listed in the headline goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space. Just below is a thumbnail sketch of the first tentative proceedings to form a communist organization that would become a way-station on the road to building a Bolshevik-type organization in order fight for the socialist revolution we so desperately need and have since Marx and Engels first put pen to ink.

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Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress.Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.

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Markin comment on this series:

No question that today at least the figures of 19th century communist revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are honored more for their “academic” work than their efforts to build political organizations to fight for democratic and socialist revolutions, respectively, as part of their new worldview. Titles like Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Peasants Wars In Germany, and the like are more likely to be linked to their names than Cologne Communist League or Workingmen’s International (First International).

While the theoretical and historical materialist works have their honored place in the pantheon of revolutionary literature it would be wrong to neglect that hard fact that both Marx and Engels for most of their lives were not “arm chair" revolutionaries or, in Engels case, merely smitten by late Victorian fox hunts with the upper crust. These men were revolutionary politicians who worked at revolution in high times and low. Those of us who follow their traditions can, or should, understand that sometimes, a frustratingly long sometimes, the objective circumstances do not allow for fruitful revolutionary work. We push on as we can. Part of that pushing on is to become immersed in the work of our predecessors and in this series specifically the work of Marx and Engels to create a new form of revolutionary organization to fight the fights of their time, the time from about the Revolutions of 1848 to the founding of various socialist parties in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of….. The Perfect Profile Photo

 

 A YouTube film clip of Iris Dement performing After You're Gone.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent by fellow classmates via the class website. So I have taken on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. That is no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.

Other stuff defies simple classification as is the case here in dealing not with photos of the beloved grandchildren which we all agree are endearing, adorable, cute and whatever other adjectives you want to describe them but photos of classmates, whether taken by someone else or with the so easy an eight-year old can do it new camera technology those now ubiquitous “selfies.” The problem for me was not so much the “who” or “how” of the photos but the quality or rather maybe not the quantity but the definite “photo-shop” action surrounding those selected photos. Rather than go on let me state my case:             

 “’Cause I’ve memorized each line in your face, and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me”-a line from the folksinger/songwriter Iris DeMent’s hauntingly beautiful song After You’re Gone.

Those words immediately came to mind after viewing more than a smattering of photos from the personal profile pages of classmates who directed their fellows to their sites by updating their photo sections. I would not had thought anything of it except I knew that I needed to view more than  a smattering or else there would be hell to pay from some bright bulb accusing me of selectivity and worse. Of course those lyrics only apply to our male classmates. After all Iris is singing about her gone man. I do not, the age of sexual equality before us or not, want to extend their application to our sister classmates because I do not need to have every cyber-stone in the universe thrown at me. But those same lyrics do bring me to the purpose for today’s comment. As part of getting a 'feel' for writing about old North I perused the class profiles and a number of classmates had placed their  current photos there, although a number of people, including myself, are apparently camera-shy. Some, however, like the Chase brothers are not. (By the way, Jim and John, and others as well, what is up with the hats? We are Kennedy-era boys and hats, any hats were not part of our uniform.) Or like born again "muscle man" Brad Badger, the star cross country runner and track man our class, who has previously been mentioned by me as slender and gracefully-gaited. That photo-readiness forms the basis for my comment

I have to admit that I have been startled by some of the photos. Many of them seem to have been taken by grandchildren just before their naps. Isn’t the digital age supposed to have made the camera instantly user-friendly? Why all the soft-focus, looking through a fish tank kind of shots. And why does everyone seem to be have been photographed down the far end of some dark corridor or by someone about six miles away? Nobody expects Bachrach-quality photos [the photography studio that did our yearbook class pictures] but something is amiss here.

In contrast, a new arrival on this class site, Rich Florian, has found just the right approach. Initially, Rich placed a recent shot of himself on his profile page. Frankly, the old codger looked like he was wanted in about six states for “kiting” checks, and maybe had done a little “time.” More recently his page has been graced with a stock photo provided by the site, a tastefully-shot, resplendent wide old tree, apparently from his backyard. Automatically I now associate Rich with the tree of life, with oneness with the universe, with solidity, with the root of matter in him, and with bending but not breaking. Wise choice. Now I do not have to suppress a need to dial 911, but rather can think of Rich as one who walks with kings, as a sage for the ages. And nothing can ever erase the story that tells to me.

Artist: Dement Iris
Song: After You're Gone
Album: Infamous Angel Iris Dement Sheet Music

There'll be laughter even after you're gone.

I'll find reasons to face that empty dawn.

'Cause I've memorised each line in your face,

And not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me.

I'll miss you.

Oh, how I'll miss you.

I'll dream of you,

And I'll cry a million tears.

But the sorrow will pass.

And the one thing that will last,

Is the love that you've given to me.

There'll be laughter even after you're gone.

I'll find reasons and I'll face that empty dawn.

'Cause I've memorised each line in your face,

And not even death could ever erase the story they tell to me.

 

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Approaches ... Some Remembrances -From Karl Liebknecht- Anti-militarism of the Old and the New International (1907)

The events leading up to World War I from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claim to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources to the supposedly eternal pledges by the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those parties in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. Over the next period as we lead up to the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

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Teddy Martin had come from a long line of workers, some of his forbears had been among the first domestic weavers in Spitalfield, the first machine-tenders in Manchester and had been workers like him and his father in the London shipbuilding trade. He knew deep in his blood there was an “us” and “them” in the world without his party, the Labor Party, having to tell him word one on the subject. He had even read Karl Marx in his early teens when he was trying to figure out why his family was stuck in the faraway outer tenements with their squalor and their human closeness (he never could get over being in close quarters ever since then). So yes he was ready to listen to what some left members of the party had to say if the war clouds on the horizon turned any darker. But, and hear him true, his was like his forbears and his father before him as loyal a man as to be found in the country. Loyal to his king (queen too if it came to that) and his country. So he would have to think, think carefully, about what to do if those nasty Huns and their craven allies making loud noises of late threatened his way of life. Most of his mates to the extent that they had any opinion were beginning to be swept up in the idea that a little war might not be such a bad thing to settle some long smoldering disputes. Still he, Teddy Martin, was not a man to be rushed and so he would think, think hard, about what to do if there was a mass mobilization.             

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Karl Liebknecht- Militarism & Anti-Militarism
II. Anti-Militarism

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1. Anti-militarism of the Old and the New International

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The Communist Manifesto, the most prophetic work in world literature, does not deal specifically with militarism or adequately with its accessory significance. It does, it is true, speak of the uprising “brought about sporadically by the proletarian struggle”, and thus effectively indicates the role played by capitalist militarism vis-à-vis the struggle of the proletariat for freedom. It discusses at greater length the question of international – or rather inter-state – conflicts, and the capitalist policy of expansion (including colonial policy). The latter is regarded as a necessary consequence of capitalist development. It is predicted that national isolation and national contradictions would tend more and more to disappear even under the domination of the bourgeoisie, and that the domination of the proletariat would reduce them still further. One might almost say tat the programme of measures to be taken under the dictatorship of the proletariat contains nothing specifically about militarism. The conquest of political power which is supposed to have already been brought about embraces the “conquest”, that is to say, the overthrow of militarism.

Special declarations about militarism began to appear with the congresses of the International. These declarations however refer exclusively to “militarism against the enemy abroad”, to the position to be taken up with regard to war. The Lausanne Congress of 1867 contained this point on the agenda: “The Peace Congress in Geneva in 1868”. It was decided to work together with the Peace Congress on the either naïve or ironical supposition that this congress would adopt the programme of the International. War was characterized as a consequence of the class struggle.
At the third congress of the International held in Brussels in 1868 a resolution moved by Longuet in the name of a commission was unanimously adopted. It designated the lack of economic balance as the chief and lasting cause of war, stressing that a change can only be brought about by social reform. The labour movement is said to be able to reduce the number of wars by means of agitation and education of the people, and tireless work to this end is laid down as a duty. In case of war a general strike is advised, and the congress expresses its belief that the international solidarity of workers of all lands is strong enough to secure their aid in the war of the peoples against war.
Now the “new” International!
The resolution of the Paris Congress of 1899 is of the greatest interest in this connection. It deals with the standing armies, which it brands as the “negation of every democratic and republican régime”, as the “military expression of the monarchical or oligarchic-capitalist régime”, as a “tool for reactionary coups d’état and social oppression”. It characterizes these armies, together with the aggressive political positions whose tool they are, as the cause and consequence of the system of offensive wars and of the present danger of international conflicts. It repudiates these, both from a military-technical point of view and because of their direct disorganizing and demoralizing properties, hostile to all cultural progress, and also because of the unbearable military burdens which the armies impose on the peoples. It demands the abolition of the standing armies and the introduction of a universal citizen army, while regarding war as an inevitable consequence of capitalism.
This resolution is more thorough than any previous one in its characterization of militarism.
The proceedings of the Brussels Congress in 1891 were also important. Here the question of war, of international militarism, was dealt with exclusively. The Nieuwenhuis [1*] resolution, which described war as the result of the international will of capitalism and as a means of smashing the power of the revolutionary movement, and which demanded that socialists of every land should answer every war with a general strike, was voted down. The Vaillant-Liebknecht resolution, which regards militarism as a necessary consequence of capitalism and peace between peoples as attainable only through the establishment of an international socialist system, was adopted. It calls on the workers to protest, by tireless agitation, against the barbarity of war and against alliances which promote it, and to speed the triumph of socialism by the development of the international organizations of the proletariat. This method of fighting was declared to be the only one capable of preventing the catastrophe of a world war.
The Zurich Congress of 1893 confirmed the Brussels resolution and indicated these ways of fighting against militarism: refusal to vote military credits, incessant protests against the standing armies, tireless agitation in favour of disarmament, support of all organizations which strive after world peace.
The London Congress of 1896 again discussed the two sides of militarism. It indicated as the chief causes of war the economic contradictions into which the ruling classes of the different countries have been forced by the capitalist mode of production. [1] Wars were considered to be acts of the ruling classes in their own interest at the cost of the workers. The struggle against military oppression was seen as a part of the struggle against exploitation, and as a duty of the working class. The conquest of political power, the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, the seizure from the governments of the means of power of the capitalist class, the tools for maintaining the established order [2] – this was fixed as the objective. The standing armies were considered to increase the danger of war and to facilitate the brutal oppression of labour. The immediate demands were: abolition of the standing armies and introduction of a citizen force, together with international courts of arbitration, with the people to decide on questions of peace and war. The resolution concluded that the people could achieve its goal in this connection only after it had secured a decisive influence on legislation, and joined in a system of international socialism.
The Paris Congress of 1900 passed a comprehensive resolution on colonial expansionist politics, and the possibilities of international conflict inherent in the capitalist system. It also condemned the policy of national oppression, bringing together a few especially barbaric examples, and gave special attention to the struggle against militarism. It referred to the decisions of 1889, 1891, 1896, pointed out the international and national danger of imperialist world politics, called upon the proletariat to redouble its efforts in the international struggle against militarism and its world politics, and proposed these practical means: international protest movements, refusal of all military, naval and colonial expenditure, and “the education and organization of the youth with the aim of fighting militarism”.
A survey of these decisions shows a steady growth of practical political insight into militarism abroad, and an ever deeper and more specialized recognition of the causes and dangers of war, as well as the significance of “militarism at home”. As far as the means of fighting militarism are concerned, however, the idea of a general strike against war brought forward in 1868 was far in advance of its time. In the same way, strikes of soldiers as a regular method of fighting against war were rejected by all later congresses – justifiably, in the circumstances. The recognized means of struggle, however, are progressing slowly. The refusal of military expenditure recommended to the proletariat is the only direct political manifestation of power against militarism, but it remains without significant immediate effect. All other proposals remain within the domain of propaganda in favour of changes in the legal position and in favour of future actions. This, of course, as is shown elsewhere, is the only domain more or less open to the proletariat for the moment. Even the refusal of military credits, as a rule, will have to be considered as a means of propaganda of this kind.
The chief difficulty for the moment, especially in Germany, lies in determining the form and method of anti-militarist propaganda. The fact that these have not been more carefully fixed in the congress decisions is due to the different external and internal position of the various countries, and from this point of view it may appear useful and even necessary. We should not, however, forget that the tendency of the decisions is to lay greater and greater weight on anti-militarist propaganda and to make this propaganda more specialized. The Paris decision shows this perfectly clearly. It reflects both the growing self-consciousness of the international proletariat and the growing conviction that it is necessary to set about gaining partial advances against militarism abroad and at home by the use of the class-conscious power of the proletariat.
In conclusion we should mention the circular sent out by the International Socialist Bureau in November 1905 at the suggestion of the French section of the International in connection with the Morocco conflict. It makes no positive proposals for action against the war, but simply states what is self-evident and elementary – that the parties which are affiliated to the Bureau should, in the event of a threatened war, immediately make contact in order to work out and vote upon the means of avoiding or hindering the war.

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Table of Contents | Next Section

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Footnotes

1. And not class contradictions! This question is specially dealt with here for the first time.

2. This is not really the object of the conquest of political power, but the essence of the conquest itself – to safeguard by means of organization what has been taken by the proletariat is of course one of the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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Additional note

1*. NIEUWENHUIS, FERDINAND DOMELA (1846-1919). Dutch socialist. Became leader of the Dutch Social-Democrats in 1879, later took up more extreme positions, becoming an avowed anarchist. Played an important part in the 1891 and 1893 congresses of the International, opposing compulsory military service; his positions were rejected by large majorities.

***Will The Real Philip Marlowe Stand Up

 

I will tell you true I like my detectives tough, tough as nails but also ready to chase a windmill or two like some latter day Don Quixote if need be. Need be being determined by some frill (woman, okay I am trying to roughen up my language here to fit the theme) and her wanting habits, her outrageous wanting habits usually. I am talking about private detectives, guys who get paid by the hour or day (plus expenses) and don’t mind taking a few hits on the chin, getting sapped by an errant blackjack, or a non-life threatening slug in the shoulder for the good of the cause (or in pursuit of some frail’s fancy, that damn wanting habit thing). And I am not talking, let’s get this straight right about some clown, some gumshoe peeping through hotel/motel keyholes looking for evidence of love in all the wrong places or trying to find some errant husband who fed up blows town for a while and the wife is looking for her meal ticket, or low-life on the food chain repossessing some skipjack’s car. That is the stuff of everyday life, boring stuff that is not worth the time it takes to write about it. And of course I am not talking about those overblown salaried public detectives who spent more time cadging coffee and crullers, making bookie bets, or shaking down some poor Mom and Pop variety store owner for protection than doing the public good, keeping the bad guys at bay. If they could tell the difference and in my old neighborhood wasn’t easy when in many families one brother was a copper and the other was a corner boy, a wise guy, a guy you better watch out for, and the copper would Dixie any problems for said brother. Nobody said life was on the level, not down in the quicksand base of society.

Yeah, I like my private detectives tough, tough like that guy Philip Marlowe you keep reading about every time you turn around, a guy who had his own rough-hewn code of honor and there was no mistaking that if you got on the wrong side of him, copper or crook, you better watch your back because trouble, trouble with a big T was coming your way. Sure, sure I know before you start thinking that I forgot to take my medication, or I have gone off the deep-end, or something like that a guy, a British guy, a guy who spent most of his life writing insurance policies brought Marlowe to life, brought him to life in seven novels and a few short stories too but Marlowe’s my guy, my kind of private eye.          

Yeah, like the time Marlowe took down the big-time Bay City mobster king of the casinos, liquor and whores (sex workers, remember I am just trying to toughen up my language), Eddie Mars, took him and his baggy brown suit hit man, Mr. C, down hard, no mercy, just because he liked an old guy ,a rich old guy, a general who must have been a general in the Civil War to hear Marlowe tell how he went up the big house in Santa Rosa out in the slumming streets of California to meet the old cuss and he looked that ancient. But liked him (and his liquor and cigars), didn’t like the idea of Eddie Mars turning the general’s wild-eyed, dope-filled younger daughter into a whore turning tricks for the casino clientele to pay off her gambling losses, or that is the story the equally wild-eyed (in his day) general told Marlowe. Didn’t like either the older daughter, a femme if there ever was one, long and leggy too, long and leggy and had Marlowe smacking his lips, paying sweet boy Eddie hush money so the general would not find out his youngest was whoring around town. (To no avail since the general had no illusions about his daughters including the older one who had a dope problem to go along with the hush money and long legs. Furthermore had his own intelligence about what was going on in the world, his world anyway. How do you think he got that hilltop ocean view place in Santa Rosa in the first place). 

Yeah, Marlowe didn’t like Mars and his rough brown suit boy with the snarl who for kicks smacked a little guy, a straight up little guy, trying to earn a living, trying to take care of his girl, dead when he clammed up and Eddie didn’t like guys who clammed up when he wanted answers. Marlowe put that one front and center when he had his set up working. Mr. C. bought his out in the valley with a couple right between the eyes, just like a .38 ought to. They found Eddie nailed to a door after a hail of bullets found their way to him when Marlowe played “chicken” with him. Justice, rough-hewn justice, but justice in this wicked old world. Damn though I never did find out whether Marlowe made that older leggy daughter or he was just left to hang and dry after that family used him up, used him up like dishcloth.                 

Or what about that time he went to bat for a guy, a writer, a writer who had writer’s block but worse, the DTs, had to dry out or get pickled. The writer, a big burly guy who reminded me of Sterling Hayden the old good-looking tough guy weight-thrower from the 1950s B-films, had women problems. Or rather a woman problem, his wife, his young wife so he should have expected trouble, running around with a gambler, a gambler who owed everybody in town, meaning every bookie, and who had him tied up in knots. Marlowe like that writer too, wanted to see him get out from under, see him get out from under even though that gambler was an old drinking buddy of his when he worked Hollywood almost exclusively. But as happens more than you think that buddy got waylaid by that wayward writer’s wife and turned mean on Marlowe, tried to do an end-around, tried to get out from under that pile of debts on Marlowe’s dime. No a good idea brother, not a good bet (no wonder he was desperately in hock) and you might have read, read a while back now where one well-known Los Angeles sportsman was found face down in Sonora in Mexico with two .38s in him. Marlowe always carried a .38.   

So no question Marlowe was a rough and ready guy, no holds barred, but also no holes in his code of honor, at least in his younger days. But like a lot of guys, a lot of guys who take on other people’s troubles for cheap dough (and expenses) our boy, although still tough, got tired, no, maybe got weary and wary is better and so some corners got cut by him over time. 

[Reality check-one: Although there is a fairly straight line that joins the seven Philip Marlowe crime novels written by Raymond Chandler over a span of about twenty years from his grisly windmill-chaser youth to his tired out world weary and wary private detective in the 1950s that is not true of the various Marlowes in the film adaptations of Chandler’s works. Of course when one thinks of the classic Philip Marlowe then the name of the tough as nails, no nonsense, grabbing rough justice wherever he can no matter the price Humphrey Bogart in the film The Big Sleep automatically comes to mind. Like I said old Eddie Mars paid the price for not knowing that bit of wisdom. Other have been suave like Robert Young in the 1940s The Lady in the Lake, gritty like James Garner in 1960s Little Sister and Eliot Gould as ultra-cool and cynical in the 1970s The Long Goodbye. So there are many Marlowes to choose from.]

The one that takes the cake though, the case, the one when Marlowe was still kind of young but wasn’t chasing as many windmills so much as trying like hell to find some dame with some dough to help him get out from under, keep the damn bill-collectors away and stop chasing other people’s dreams. Let him walk on easy street like that lucky stiff Nick Charles, another private dick whose bacon he saved many times up in Frisco town when Nick would jammed up on a case, maybe a missing person’s case that had him scratching his head but which was a walk in the park for Marlowe, who latched on to some lumber king’s daughter from Portland (Oregon, okay) because he helped her out of a jam one time, some stolen jewelry she wanted recovered without dear old dad knowing, and she though he was cute. Jesus. 

[Reality check-two: Sometimes Hollywood, and Marlowe did plenty of work there keeping tramp starlets, wayward mistresses, errant sons and daughters, hysterical wives, blackmailers, drifters, grifters and midnight shifters under wraps, under wraps tight and out of the glare of headlines which is all the studio bosses cared about especially when some high-budget picture was ready to go public, got Raymond Chandler, hell, got one Philip Marlowe all balled up with a too complex story line or changing stuff so it would be cute to the teenage girls who populated the theaters during the war (World War II, for those asking). Take the film, Murder, My Sweet, that beauty was based a little loosely, maybe too loosely on the dialogue and plot, on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely with old song and dance man Dick Powell playing the role of Marlowe somewhere between the pretty boy next door and the stand- up guy ready to take the fall for the client, if only the client, or clients, would level with him just once.] 

Yeah so a little washed out Marlowe was looking for easy street and thought he had, thought that Velma was his ticket home. Thought that Mrs. Marlowe had not raised any fool. Well some things go awry in this wicked old world even for tough guy private dicks. See this Velma was private property to some old Mayfair swell by the time he got to her. The swell (no names, okay because a studio boss told Marlowe to keep a lid on the thing after everything exploded) liked pretty young women and Velma was that and, well, having been a dime a dance girl, or worse, it wasn’t always clear when she told her story or who she told it to was nothing but a gold-digger. Still the swell didn’t get flustered as long as she stayed his trophy wife. Problem was that Velma was spoiled goods, had a big lug, a big mountain of a man Moose, Moose Malone, looking for her after she hadn’t written in six years. Yeah, Moose had bad, had that prison white pallor that Marlowe recognized every time a guy came around who had done a serious stretch in stir. So Moose hired Marlowe to find his Velma.       

There was not enough money in hell for what Marlowe went through for his client once he latched onto the idea he was a right gee. Somebody was trying hard to keep the lid on Velma, her past, and her whereabouts and so before it was over Marlowe got kicked around, got beaten a few times with a blackjack, got drugged, got dragged, got trampled, maybe even got stapled before he got to Velma. So he was in just the right mood to listen to her proposition, to listen to the easy streets singing in his head. Scratch one Moose Malone, scratch one Mayfair swell, maybe scratch a few other guys who knew too much about her, about her past and she was all his. Yeah, Velma was a piece of work.  She, as usual for what Marlowe figures out later, sealed that deal with a little tussle under the silk sheets and Marlowe bought in, bought in like some puppy dog. But see Velma wasn’t on the level. She was the finger who turned Moose in for that eight year stretch, she is the one who so enraged that Mayfair swell that he was ready to go up against the Moose one on one, she was the one who wanted all the swell’s dough for herself and left Marlowe to take the fall, take the big step off up at Q. And he would have too if Moose hadn’t done her in. Jesus all for coffee and cruller money (and expenses). Double Jesus.      

[Reality check-four: But see that is where all Marlowes are equal-they don’t give up the ghost until there is a little rough justice in this wicked old world. Even if as here the bullets fly fast and furious at the end with no obvious winners.]