As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Approaches ... Some Remembrances - Rosa Luxemburg, The Rose Of The Revolution -The Political Mass Strike-(1913)

 

 

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 claims 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. The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine.

The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas. The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness. A few voices were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.            

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, had been 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.

No question, thought Teddy Martin, his majesty’s government had gotten itself into a hard situation ever since that mangy Archduke somebody had got himself shot by a guy, a damn anarchist working with who knows who, maybe freemasons, over in Sarajevo, over in someplace he was not quite sure he knew where it was if somebody had asked him to point it out in a map. That seemingly silly little act (except of course to the Archduke and his wife also killed) apparently has exposed Britain, damn the whole British Empire that they claim the sun never sets on, to some pretty serious entanglements because if France were to go to war with Austria or someplace like that then the king is duty bound to come to France’s rescue. And Teddy Martin as thinking man, as a working man, as a member in good standing of the Labor Party ever since its inception was still not sure what he would do. Not sure that he would follow the war cries being shouted out by the likes of Arthur Henderson from his own party. All he knew was that the usual talk of football or the prizefights that filled the air at his pub, The Cock and Bull, was being supplanted by war talk, by talk of taking a nip out of the Germans and those who spoke in that way were gaining a hearing. All Teddy knew was that it was getting harder and harder for him to openly express thoughts that he needed to think about the issues more. That was not a good sign, not a good omen.                    

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The German Social-Democratic Party had given Fritz Klein everything. Had taken him from a small furniture-making factory(less than one hundred employees constituting in those days small) where he led the fight for unionization (against all odds for that woefully unorganized industry and against the then still standing laws against unionization pressed by the state as well as well as the outlaw status of the S-D Party in those pre-legal days) and brought him along into the burgeoning party bureaucracy (boasting of this number of party publications, that number of members, and the pinnacle the votes attained for the growing number of party parliamentarians in the Reichstag). Made him a local then regional shop steward agent. Later found him a spot in the party publications department and from there to alternate member of the party’s national committee. As he grew older, got married, had two lovely children the party had severely sapped the youthful idealism out of him. Still he was stirred whenever Karl Liebknecht, old Wilhelm’s son, the father whom he knew from the old days, delivered one of his intellectual and rational attacks against the war aims of the Kaiser and his cabal. Still too though he worried, worried to perdition, that the British and, especially the French were deliberately stepping on German toes. Although tired, endlessly tired, he hoped that he would be able to stick to the Second International’s pledge made at Basle in 1912 to do everything to stop war in case it came, as was now likely. He just didn’t know how he would react, didn’t know at all. 

Fritz was furious, furious at two things. First that those damn whatever they were anarchists, nationalists, or whatever had assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand. Had threatened the peace of Europe, his peace, with their screwy theory of picking off various state officials thinking that would, unlike victory in the mass class struggles, change the world. Christ, they could have at least read Marx or somebody. Make no mistake Fritz had no truck with monarchy, certainly not the moribund Austro-Hungarian monarchy, despised the Kaiser himself right here in the German homeland (although on the quiet since the Kaiser was not above using his courts for the simple pleasure of skewering a man for lese majeste and had done so to political opponents and the idle wild-talkers alike). Still his blood boiled that some desperados would pick at a fellow Germanic target. Fritz was not at all sure that maybe the French, or the English, the bloody English were behind the activities. Hugo Heine thought so, his immediate regional director, so there could be some truth to the assertion.

Secondly, that same Hugo Heine had begun, at the behest of the national committee of the party, to clamp down on those who were trying to make the party live up to its promises and try to make a stand against any German, any Kaiser moves toward war over the incident at Sarajevo. The way Heine put it was that if war was to come and he hoped that it would not the Social-Democracy must not be thrown into the underground again like in the old days under Bismarck. Hugo had spent two years in the Kaiser’s jail back then for simply trying to organize his shop and get them to vote for the party then outlawed. The radical stuffing had come out of Hugo though and all he wanted was not to go back to jail now for any reason. Fritz cursed those damn anarchists again, cursed them more bitterly since they were surely going to disturb his peace.    

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Jacques Rous (and yes he traced his family roots back to the revolution, back to the “red” priest who he was named after who had led some of the plebeian struggles back then that were defeated by those damn moderate cutthroats Robespierre and Saint Just) had long been a leader the anarchist delegation in his Parisian district, had been in a few fights in his time with the damn city bourgeoisie, and had a long, very long memory of what the Germans had, and had not done, in Paris in ’71,in the time of the bloodedly suppressed Commune. Also Jacques had long memories of his long past forbears who had come from Alsace-Lorraine now in German hands. And it galled him, galled him that there were war clouds gathering daily over his head, over his district and over his beloved Paris.  

 But that was not what was troubling Jacques Rous in the spring of 1914. He knew, knew deep in his bones like a lot of his fellow anarchists, like a lot of the guys in the small pottery factory he had worked in for the past several years after being laid off from the big textile factory across the river that if war came they would know what to do. Quatrain from the CGT (the large trade union organization to which he and others in the factory belonged to) had clued them in, had told them enough to know some surprises were headed the government’s way if they decided to use the youth of the neighborhoods as cannon fodder. What bothered Jacques was not his conduct but that of his son, Jacques too named in honor of that same ancient red priest who was the lifeblood of the family. Young Jacques something of a dandy like many youth in those days, something of a lady’s man (he had reportedly a married mistress and somebody else on the side), had told one and all (although not his father directly) who would listen one night that he planned to enlist in the Grenadiers just as soon as it looked like trouble was coming. Old Jacques wondered if other fathers were standing in fear of such rash actions by their sons just then.  

Old Jacques could see the writing on the wall, remembered what it  was like when the German threatened to come back in ’70 and then came the last time. Came and left the Parisian poor to eat rats or worse when they besieged the city, old Thiers fled to Versailles, and Paris starved half-aided by those Germans and he expected the same if not worse this time because that country was now unified, was now filled with strange powerful Krupp cannon and in a mood to use it now that one of the members of their alliance had had one of its own killed in Sarajevo and all Europe was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He believed that the anarchists of Paris to a man would resist the call to arms issued by the government. Quatrain, the great leader ever since Commune days, almost guaranteed a general strike if they tried to mobilize the Parisian youth for the slaughter. Yeah Quatrain would stand tall. Jacques though had personal worries somebody had seen his son, also Jacques, heading with some of his “gilded” friends toward the 12^th Grenadier recruiting office in the Hotel de Ville ready to fight for bloody bourgeois France, for the memory of Napoleon, for the glory of battle. And he old Jacques knowing from some skimpily- held barricades back in ’71 just how “glorious” war was fretted in the night against his blood. 

 

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George Jenkins dreamed the dream of many young men out in the heartland, out in the wheat fields of Kansas a dream that America, his America would keep the hell out of what looked like war clouds coming from Europe in the spring of 1914 (although dreams and dreamers were located not just on the farms since George was not a Kansas farm boy but a rising young clerk in Doc Dell’s Drugstore located in the college town of Lawrence). George was keenly interested in such matters and would, while on break or when things were slow, glance through the day later copy of the New York Times or Washington Post that Doc provided for his more worldly customers via the passing trains. What really kept George informed though was William White’s home-grown Emporia Gazette which kept a close eye on the situation in Europe for the folks.      

And with all of that information here is what George Jenkins, American citizen, concluded: America had its own problems best tended to by keeping out of foreign entanglements except when America’s direct interests were threatened. So George naturally cast skeptical eyes on Washington, on President Wilson, despite his protestations that European affairs were not our business. George had small town ideas about people minding their own business. See too also George had voted for Eugene V. Debs himself, the Socialist party candidate for President, and while he was somewhat skeptical about some of the Socialist Party leaders back East he truly believed that Brother Debs would help keep us out of war. 

Jesus, those damn Europeans have begun to make a mess for themselves now that some archduke, Jesus, an archduke in this day and age (and George Jenkins thanked some forgotten forebear for getting his clan out of Europe whenever he did so and avoided that nonsense about going to the aid of somebody over a damn archduke). Make no mistake George Jenkins had no sympathy for anarchists and was half-glad a couple of years ago when the Socialist Party booted the IWW, the damn Wobbies, out if that is what they did and the beggars didn’t just walk out. Although he had an admiration for Big Bill Hayward and his trade union fights that is all it was-admiration and policy could not be made on that basis. So no he had no truck with anarchists but to go to war over an archduke-damn. Still George was no Pollyanna and kept abreast of what was going on and it bothered him more than somewhat that guy slike Senator Lodge from Massachusetts and others from the Northeast were beating the war drums to get the United States mired in a damn European war. No way, no way good solid Midwesterners would fall for that line. And so George watched and waited. Watched too to see what old Debs had to say about matters. George figured that if the war drums got loud enough then Brother Debs would organize and speak up to keep things right. That was his way.   

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Ivan Smirnov was no kid, had been around the block a few times in this war business. Had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass kicked by the Japanese in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval war game). More importantly he had been in the Baltic fleet when the revolution of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. He had gone with rebels and while he did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over.

Just as well Ivan had thought many times since he was then able to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think. And what he was thinking in the spring of 1914 with some ominous war clouds in the air that that unfinished task from 1905 was going to come to a head. Ivan knew enough about the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought out land adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a kid.    

As the war clouds thickened after the killing of the archduke in bloody damn Sarajevo in early summer 1914 Ivan Smirnov knew in his bones that the peasant soldier cannon fodder as always would come flocking to the Czar like lemmings to the sea the minute war was declared. Any way the deal was cut the likely line-up of the Czar with the “democracies” of the West, Britain and France and less likely the United States would immediately give the Czar cover against the villainies of the Huns, of the Germans who just the other day were propping up the Czar’s treasury. It could not end well. All Ivan hoped for was that his party, the real Social-Democrats, locally known as the Mensheviks from the great split in 1903 with the Bolsheviks and who had definitely separated from that organization for good in 1912, would not get war fever just because the damn Czar was lined up with the very democracies that the party wished to emulate in Russia.

He knew too that the talk among the leadership of the Bolsheviks (almost all of them in exile and thus far from knowing what was happening down in the base of society at home) about opposing the Czar to the bitter end, about fighting in the streets again some said to keep the young workers and the peasants drifting into the urban areas from the dead-ass farms from becoming cannon-fodder for a lost cause was crazy, was irresponsible. Fortunately some of the local Bolshevik committee men in Russia and among their Duma delegation had cooler heads. Yea this was not time to be a kid, with kid’s tunnel vision, with great events working in the world.             

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Rosa Luxemburg-The Political Mass Strike-(1913)

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First Spoken: July 22, 1913 to the Fourth Berlin constituency.
First Published: Vorwärts, July 24, 1913.
Source: Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Political Writings, edited and introduced by Robert Looker.
Translated: (from the German) W.D. Graf.
Transcription/Markup: Ted Crawford/Brian Baggins with special thanks to Robert Looker for help with permissions.
Copyright: Random House, 1972, ISBN/ISSN: 0224005960. Printed with the permission of Random House. Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2004.

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In Germany, the problem of the political mass strike was earlier discussed under the mighty pressure of the great Russian Revolution of 1905, a revolution in which the application of the mass strike brought both defeat and victory to the Russian proletariat. The resolution of the Jena Party Congress [September 1905] was the outcome of this discussion. This resolution declared the political mass strike to be a weapon of the proletariat also applicable in Germany. There followed a period when debate on this problem subsided. Then in 1910 there was a further spirited discussion of the political mass strike in connection with our action to secure the right to vote in Prussia. The mass actions were deliberately suspended and our attention was directed towards the Reichstag elections of 1912. The mass strike again vanished from discussion. Now we see that the issue is again being discussed in meetings and at regional and district conferences. Even the party congress will not be able to avoid adopting a serious position on the question. When it is seen that the mass strike arouses the active interest of party comrades, no one will be able to assume that the entire discussion has been raised by only a few supporters of the mass strike. It is rooted in the economic situation. Such discussions always originate when the party feels the need to impel the movement to take a significant step forward, and when the party comrades become aware that we cannot make any headway with the critics who would write off the whole discussion as a sham perpetrated by a few cranks.

How and when did this discussion start? In the Wilmersdorf meeting? That is an error, but one which can be forgiven those who read only Vorwärts. For it has admittedly made out that Comrade Frank instigated the discussion on the political mass strike in the Wilmersdorf meeting. Long before the mass strike was discussed in Berlin, party comrades in many other places were concerned with it. If it is certain that the elemental power of the masses has now, for the third time, placed the question of the political mass strike on the agenda, then we must welcome it and see in this a symptom of the fact that we cannot avoid any longer applying this most valuable method to the class struggle. This is why it is necessary to examine the mass-strike issue in all its aspects. The question is far from being settled. It must still be discussed at length so that the masses are familiarized with the way in which this new form of struggle is to be applied.
If we consider the present discussion, we see on the one hand ardent advocates of the mass strike who are in favour of the party conference, in consultation with the General Commission of the trade unions, empowering the Party Executive to prepare the way for the mass strike. Indeed, they also demand that we should begin to educate the workers for the mass strike. They further advise the preparation of the mass strike according to the Belgian model. These are the demands made by one group. Another group immediately expressed the strongest reservations against any ‘flirting with the idea of the mass strike’. They said that this is extremely dangerous to our party life, for we in Germany are far from ready to participate in a mass strike. The party would suffer a defeat, their argument continued, from which it would not recover for decades.
The advocates of an application of the mass strike as soon as possible belong to various political currents. Comrade Frank, who has come out for the mass strike, represents the school of political opportunism. In Baden, he advocates the formation of a grand coalition with the National Liberals. His policy is very simple. One pursues grandiose politics in parliament with all the methods of statesmanlike tactics, one comes to terms with the bourgeois parties, one fashions a great block of the entire Left. However, when this policy fails, as it is bound to do, to advance the cause of the proletariat one step further, ah! then workers come into the streets and start a mass strike. Frank’s proclamation is a perfect example of how not to arrange a mass strike.
The mass strike is not something that one can make whenever the parliamentary tricksters’ policy breaks down. A mass strike brought about under such circumstances is a lost cause from the outset. The political tricksters who believe that they can conjure up a mass strike and then terminate it with a wave of the hand are in error. This cannot be done. Mass strikes can only take place when the historical preconditions for them are at hand. They cannot be made on command. Mass strikes are not an artificial method that can be applied whenever the party has bungled its politics, in order to extricate us overnight from the morass. When the class conflicts have become so pronounced and the political situation so tense that parliamentary means are no longer sufficient to advance the cause of the proletariat, then the mass strike is urgently necessary, and then, although it may not bring unconditional victory, it is immensely useful to the cause of the proletariat. Only when the situation has become so extreme that there is no more hope for co-operation with the bourgeois parties, especially with the liberals, does the proletariat obtain the impetus necessary for the success of the mass strike. Accordingly, the mass strike is not reconcilable with a policy centred around parliamentarism.
The Belgian movement is a storehouse of information on the problem of the mass strike. After they had abolished the plural vote by means of the mass strike, our Belgian comrades centred their efforts on parliament. This meant that the mass strike was put on ice. All proletarian actions were suspended as part of an overall plan to combine with the bourgeois Left in order to achieve universal suffrage. But the election of 1912 brought about the complete collapse of liberalism, and what remained of it went over to the camp of reaction. Then a storm of indignation broke out. Immediately following the elections the question of the mass strike reappeared. But the leaders of Belgian Social Democracy, who had based their policy on co-operation with the liberals, endeavoured to placate the masses by promising to arrange for the mass strike later. Then began the systematic postponement of the mass strike. Instead of an elemental eruption, a new tactic was begun; preparations were made for a new mass strike to be held in one month. After preparations lasting nine months, the masses could no longer be restrained. The strike finally broke out and for ten days was carried on with admirable discipline. The result was this: the strike was discontinued upon the first illusory concession made, a concession which represented a gain of virtually nothing. The Belgian comrades did not feel that they had achieved a victory. We see then, that the mass strike, employed in conjunction with the policy of a grand coalition resulted in nothing but set-backs. In view of this, we will reject any possible recommendation that we form a grand coalition in the south while at the same time starting a mass strike in Prussia.
On the other hand, it is said that we would be acting prematurely were we to propagate the mass strike in Germany, for we are less ripe for it than the proletariat of other countries. We in Germany have the strongest organizations, the fullest coffers, the largest parliamentary party, and yet we, alone among the whole international proletariat, are not supposed to be ripe? It is said that, despite its strength, our organization is only a minority of the proletariat. According to this notion, we would be ripe only when the last man and the last woman had paid their dues to their constituency associations. This is one wondrous moment for which we need not wait. Whenever we instigate an important action, not only do we count upon those who are organized, but we also assume that they will sweep the unorganized masses along with them. What would be the state of the proletarian straggle if we counted only on the organized!
During the ten-day general strike in Belgium, at least two-thirds of the strikers were not organized. Of course one must not conclude from this that the organization was of no significance. The organization’s power lies in its understanding of how to draw the unorganized into the action at the right time. The exploitation of such situations is a method of bringing about a huge growth in the organizations of the party and trade unions. Recruitment to the strong organizations must be based on a large-scale and forward-looking policy; otherwise the organizations will quietly decay. The history of the party and the trade unions demonstrates that our organizations thrive only on the attack. For then the unorganized flock to our banner. The type of organization that calculates in advance and to the nearest penny the costs necessary for action is worthless; it cannot weather the storm. All this must be made clear, and the dividing line must not be drawn so nicely between the organized and the unorganized.
If it is demanded that the party executive, in conjunction with the General Commission, should prepare for the mass strike, then it must be said that mass strikes cannot be made. But it is necessary to recognize that in Germany we are approaching a situation in which mass strikes are inevitable. We have just witnessed another victory of imperialism in the passing of the enormous military bill. After many in our ranks had so hoped to co-operate with the liberals, we see that these same liberals are hand-maidens of imperialism. If regrettably our parliamentary party supported property taxes in the fiscal covering bill, then this was nothing more than an intent to combine with the progressives and National Liberals to eliminate the Blue-Black Block. But the liberals, in league with the Blue-Black Block, eliminated us and, behind the backs of the Social Democrats, bungled miserably the property tax. Our parliamentary party’s final covering bill evoked powerful reactions in the Social-Democratic press abroad and in our own meetings. We shall have lively debates on this subject at the party congress.
The triumph of imperialism in the military bill brought home once more the painful lesson that we can no longer rely on the liberals. For this reason it is necessary to open the masses’ eyes. It is a fact that our parliamentarians lived in the illusion that they could form a coalition with the liberals against the Blue-Black Block, and that this illusion resulted in a miserable fiasco. This victory for imperialism was a new step towards the heightening of the class conflicts. We live at a time in which no more advantages can be gained in parliament for the proletariat. This is why the masses themselves must enter the theatre of action. Developments have taken such a turn that the mass strike will not disappear from the agenda in Germany. It is not a matter of preparing the mass strike; instead, we must ensure that our policy expresses the utmost strength necessary in the present situation.
The latest phase of our party’s policy dates from our electoral victory of 1912. We had set our greatest hopes upon it. An article by Kautsky, printed in Vorwärts, mentioned that a new liberalism was emerging. That was a disastrous illusion, but explicable on the basis of the slogan of moderation issued for the run-off ballots.
Moderation is an unacceptable policy. As a result of moderation we had vague hopes of a new liberalism and then the exuberant anticipation attached to the possibility of a Social Democrat being chosen President of the Reichstag. All these hopes have been dashed, and they show that our policy and tactics are outmoded. We have now witnessed the tumult of the Jubilee celebrations and the visit of the Bloody Tsar to the Berlin Court. This opportunity should have been used to instigate some kind of republican action. Do we have four million Social Democrats only so that we can crawl into a mousehole when the Bloody Tsar comes for a visit? How many supporters we could have won if we had organized a demonstration!
If we want to prove ourselves worthy of the great coming events then we must not begin at the wrong end by attempting to make technical preparations for the mass strike. When the situation is ripe, the tactic of the mass strike will present itself. Let us not rack our brains about supporting it at the right time. What is necessary is that you watch the party press to ensure that it is your instrument and expresses your opinion and your mood. You must also see to it that our parliamentarians feel a mass pressing them from behind, so that they do not chart such a disastrous course as in the case of the military bill. Shape the organization so that you need not wait until the command is given from above, but so that you have the reins of command in your own hands. You must not lose yourselves in technical details such as the reorganization of the dues-paying social evenings and of the delegate system. This is all very important, but your attention must be directed above all to the general guiding principles of our policy in parliament and throughout the country. Policy must not be formulated in such a way that the masses are always confronted with faits accomplis. Above all you must see to it that the press is a sharply honed weapon that cuts away the darkness from the people’s minds. The masses must make themselves heard in order to propel the party ship forward. Then we will be able to face the future confidently. History will do its work. See that you too do your work.

An Evening for Chelsea Manning: One Year Since the Trial

June 13, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
On Thursday, June 19 in New York, join OR Books and Chelsea Manning’s supporters to mark one year since she went on trial for leaking the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs to WikiLeaks. 
At TheaterLab (357 W 36th St, 3rd Floor, NYC) journalists, activists and artists who attended the trial will read from a new graphic book by Clark Stoeckley, “The United States vs Private Chelsea Manning: A Graphic Account From Inside the Courtroom”: http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/manning-trial
Stoeckley’s book features drawings and writings in real time from inside the courtroom, and captures first-hand the trial of Chelsea Manning, one of the most important and secretive trials in American history.
Readings by:
Chase Madar
Clark Stoeckley
Melissa Gira Grant
Max Thorn
Adam Klasfeld
+ more
Wine will be served, and we will be collecting donations for Chelsea Manning’s appeal fund.
Doors open at 7pm
Readings begin promptly at 7.30pm
An OR Books event
Co-sponsored by
The Chelsea Manning Support Network http://<www.chelseamanning.org/
The World Can’t Wait http://www.worldcantwait.net/
RSVP to events@orbooks.com
For more information, visit the event facebook page.

U.S. No Troops -No Drones -No Bombs No Planes -No Mercenaries- No Materials To Iraq

CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST IN IRAQ

 

Tell President Obama "Don't Try to Put Out the Fire in Iraq With Gasoline!"

Have they learned nothing?  Please take action: Tell President Obama not to try putting out the fire with gasoline – no U.S. military intervention in Iraq, invest in diplomacy and international cooperation instead.

In the 1980’s the US supported Saddam Hussein when he was using poison gas against Iran and his own Kurdish population; in the 1990’s we starved Iraq with a punishing embargo, while at the same time looking the other way when the regime repressed uprisings by Kurds in the north and the mostly poor Shi’a majority in the south; after the 2003 invasion US troops stood by while Iraq’s cultural patrimony was looted and destroyed; we first installed a subservient regime under a US pro-consul, then cultivated a Shi’a-dominated government after elections boycotted by much of the Iraqi population; we looked the other way when “our” Iraqi government and its supporters emptied Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods under the noses of  US occupying troops; then we allied with Sunni tribal leaders to fight “al-Qaeda” but continued to look the other way when the new Iraqi government oppressed and disenfranchised non-Shi’a Arabs; now we seem to be trying to maneuver regime change in Baghdad to remove the same government we once empowered..

There was no “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” (or Syria) before our invasion. And, it must be noted, funding for the religious fanatics comes from “our” allies Turkey and the Gulf petro-monarchies – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and others -- along with US-allied Pakistan in the background.  Just like the “Freedom Fighters” in Afghanistan during the 1980’s, where Osama bin-Laden came to prominence.

Amazingly, there are now rising voices from our DC elites for US airstrikes against the Iraqi insurgents, to send US military trainers for the Iraqi army or even to deploy US troops on the ground. Very few seem to have learned the lesson that US intervention is the cause of the present nightmare in Iraq, not the solution.

The catastrophic outcomes of neo-colonial “divide and rule” have a lineage extending back throughout the 20^th century in the Middle East and beyond.  Once it was the British and French empire builders sowing chaos; now it is US neo-conservative and neo-liberal “democracy promoters.”  Same chickens, different roost.

 

Black Flags Over Mosul

An army of Sunni fighters affiliated to al Qaida crossed the Syrian border into Iraq on Tuesday, scattering defensive units from the Iraqi security forces, capturing Iraq’s second biggest city of Mosul, and sending 500,000 civilians fleeing for safety. The unexpected jihadi blitz has left President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in tatters and created a crisis of incalculable magnitude. The administration will now be forced to focus its attention and resources on this new flashpoint hoping that it can prevent the makeshift militia from marching on Baghdad and toppling the regime of Nouri al Maliki.  Events on the ground are moving at breakneck speed as the extremists have expanded their grip to Saddam’s birthplace in Tikrit and north to Baiji, home to Iraq’s biggest refinery. The political thread that held Iraq together has snapped pushing Iraq closer to a full-blown civil war.   More

 

OBAMA: ALL OPTIONS OPEN ON IRAQ

US President Barack Obama says his government is looking at "all options", including military action, to help Iraq fight Islamist militants. But the White House also insisted it had no intention of sending ground troops. The remarks came after the cities of Mosul and Tikrit fell to Sunni Islamist insurgents during a lightning advance.The US has begun moving defence contractors working with the Iraqi military to safer areas. More

 

Congress divided over US military action in Iraq

Several Republicans urged military intervention following reports that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called for US strikes by drones and manned aircraft. "There is no scenario where we can stop the bleeding in Iraq without American air power," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters after a closed Armed Services Committee briefing with Defense Department officials. House Foreign Affairs Committee member and Iraq war veteran Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., has been one of the most vocal proponents in the lower chamber. "We've got to get involved with airstrikes, stiffening the spines of the Iraqis," Kinzinger told Al-Monitor. "If Baghdad falls, it's really hard to imagine a Middle East that looks like that." …House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters at her weekly press conference that there is "no appetite in our country to be engaged in any military activity in Iraq." "I don’t think this is our responsibility," Pelosi said.  More

 

MALIKI'S MOST SOLEMN HOUR

Some analysts said during the Second Gulf War that al Qaeda would be trading up from Afghanistan if it secured a base in Iraq. It was a prescient thought, but perhaps premature: between 2007 and 2010, Iraqis by and large rejected that fate for their country and dealt a body blow to the foreign Sunni jihadists who entered the country. But then the Syrian Civil War began... The most significant of these "new" groups has been the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which over the past year has spent as much time fighting other Syrian rebels groups as the Syrian Arab Republic's forces. ISIS was once aligned with al Qaeda's central command, but has since gone its own way… Sunni grievances against the government are real and legion: job discrimination, undue prosecution of activists, human rights violations by the police, welfare cuts that "punish" the Sunnis for their collaborationist role in past dictatorships. Well before this uprising, "the Sunnis [had] lost faith in the political process and the jihadists were once again able to make inroads among them."  More

 

The Fall of Mosul and the False Promises of Modern History

The fall of Mosul to the radical, extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a set of historical indictments…  Integrating Mosul into British Iraq, over which London placed Faisal bin Hussein as imported king after the French unceremoniously ushered him from Damascus, allowed the British to depend on the old Ottoman Sunni elite, including former Ottoman officers trained in what is now Turkey. This strategy marginalized the Shiite south, full of poor peasants and small towns, which, if they gave the British trouble, were simply bombed by the RAF. (Iraq under British rule was intensively aerially bombed for a decade and RAF officers were so embarrassed by these proceedings that they worried about the British public finding out.)  To rule fractious Syria, the French (1920-1943) appealed to religious minorities such as the Alawites and Christians.  More

 

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As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Approaches ... Some Remembrances-Rosa Luxemburg, The Rose Of The Revolution-Down With Reformist Illusions—Hail the Revolutionary Class Struggle!(1913)

 

 

 

 

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 claims 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. The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine.

The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last war. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas. The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness. A few voices were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.            

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.     

********

Teddy Martin had come from a long line of workers, some of his forbears had been among the first domestic weavers in Spitalfield, had been 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.

No question, thought Teddy Martin, his majesty’s government had gotten itself into a hard situation ever since that mangy Archduke somebody had got himself shot by a guy, a damn anarchist working with who knows who, maybe freemasons, over in Sarajevo, over in someplace he was not quite sure he knew where it was if somebody had asked him to point it out in a map. That seemingly silly little act (except of course to the Archduke and his wife also killed) apparently has exposed Britain, damn the whole British Empire that they claim the sun never sets on, to some pretty serious entanglements because if France were to go to war with Austria or someplace like that then the king is duty bound to come to France’s rescue. And Teddy Martin as thinking man, as a working man, as a member in good standing of the Labor Party ever since its inception was still not sure what he would do. Not sure that he would follow the war cries being shouted out by the likes of Arthur Henderson from his own party. All he knew was that the usual talk of football or the prizefights that filled the air at his pub, The Cock and Bull, was being supplanted by war talk, by talk of taking a nip out of the Germans and those who spoke in that way were gaining a hearing. All Teddy knew was that it was getting harder and harder for him to openly express thoughts that he needed to think about the issues more. That was not a good sign, not a good omen.                    

********

The German Social-Democratic Party had given Fritz Klein everything. Had taken him from a small furniture-making factory(less than one hundred employees constituting in those days small) where he led the fight for unionization (against all odds for that woefully unorganized industry and against the then still standing laws against unionization pressed by the state as well as well as the outlaw status of the S-D Party in those pre-legal days) and brought him along into the burgeoning party bureaucracy (boasting of this number of party publications, that number of members, and the pinnacle the votes attained for the growing number of party parliamentarians in the Reichstag). Made him a local then regional shop steward agent. Later found him a spot in the party publications department and from there to alternate member of the party’s national committee. As he grew older, got married, had two lovely children the party had severely sapped the youthful idealism out of him. Still he was stirred whenever Karl Liebknecht, old Wilhelm’s son, the father whom he knew from the old days, delivered one of his intellectual and rational attacks against the war aims of the Kaiser and his cabal. Still too though he worried, worried to perdition, that the British and, especially the French were deliberately stepping on German toes. Although tired, endlessly tired, he hoped that he would be able to stick to the Second International’s pledge made at Basle in 1912 to do everything to stop war in case it came, as was now likely. He just didn’t know how he would react, didn’t know at all. 

Fritz was furious, furious at two things. First that those damn whatever they were anarchists, nationalists, or whatever had assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand. Had threatened the peace of Europe, his peace, with their screwy theory of picking off various state officials thinking that would, unlike victory in the mass class struggles, change the world. Christ, they could have at least read Marx or somebody. Make no mistake Fritz had no truck with monarchy, certainly not the moribund Austro-Hungarian monarchy, despised the Kaiser himself right here in the German homeland (although on the quiet since the Kaiser was not above using his courts for the simple pleasure of skewering a man for lese majeste and had done so to political opponents and the idle wild-talkers alike). Still his blood boiled that some desperados would pick at a fellow Germanic target. Fritz was not at all sure that maybe the French, or the English, the bloody English were behind the activities. Hugo Heine thought so, his immediate regional director, so there could be some truth to the assertion.

Secondly, that same Hugo Heine had begun, at the behest of the national committee of the party, to clamp down on those who were trying to make the party live up to its promises and try to make a stand against any German, any Kaiser moves toward war over the incident at Sarajevo. The way Heine put it was that if war was to come and he hoped that it would not the Social-Democracy must not be thrown into the underground again like in the old days under Bismarck. Hugo had spent two years in the Kaiser’s jail back then for simply trying to organize his shop and get them to vote for the party then outlawed. The radical stuffing had come out of Hugo though and all he wanted was not to go back to jail now for any reason. Fritz cursed those damn anarchists again, cursed them more bitterly since they were surely going to disturb his peace.    

********

Jacques Rous (and yes he traced his family roots back to the revolution, back to the “red” priest who he was named after who had led some of the plebeian struggles back then that were defeated by those damn moderate cutthroats Robespierre and Saint Just) had long been a leader the anarchist delegation in his Parisian district, had been in a few fights in his time with the damn city bourgeoisie, and had a long, very long memory of what the Germans had, and had not done, in Paris in ’71,in the time of the bloodedly suppressed Commune. Also Jacques had long memories of his long past forbears who had come from Alsace-Lorraine now in German hands. And it galled him, galled him that there were war clouds gathering daily over his head, over his district and over his beloved Paris.  

 But that was not what was troubling Jacques Rous in the spring of 1914. He knew, knew deep in his bones like a lot of his fellow anarchists, like a lot of the guys in the small pottery factory he had worked in for the past several years after being laid off from the big textile factory across the river that if war came they would know what to do. Quatrain from the CGT (the large trade union organization to which he and others in the factory belonged to) had clued them in, had told them enough to know some surprises were headed the government’s way if they decided to use the youth of the neighborhoods as cannon fodder. What bothered Jacques was not his conduct but that of his son, Jacques too named in honor of that same ancient red priest who was the lifeblood of the family. Young Jacques something of a dandy like many youth in those days, something of a lady’s man (he had reportedly a married mistress and somebody else on the side), had told one and all (although not his father directly) who would listen one night that he planned to enlist in the Grenadiers just as soon as it looked like trouble was coming. Old Jacques wondered if other fathers were standing in fear of such rash actions by their sons just then.  

Old Jacques could see the writing on the wall, remembered what it  was like when the German threatened to come back in ’70 and then came the last time. Came and left the Parisian poor to eat rats or worse when they besieged the city, old Thiers fled to Versailles, and Paris starved half-aided by those Germans and he expected the same if not worse this time because that country was now unified, was now filled with strange powerful Krupp cannon and in a mood to use it now that one of the members of their alliance had had one of its own killed in Sarajevo and all Europe was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He believed that the anarchists of Paris to a man would resist the call to arms issued by the government. Quatrain, the great leader ever since Commune days, almost guaranteed a general strike if they tried to mobilize the Parisian youth for the slaughter. Yeah Quatrain would stand tall. Jacques though had personal worries somebody had seen his son, also Jacques, heading with some of his “gilded” friends toward the 12^th Grenadier recruiting office in the Hotel de Ville ready to fight for bloody bourgeois France, for the memory of Napoleon, for the glory of battle. And he old Jacques knowing from some skimpily- held barricades back in ’71 just how “glorious” war was fretted in the night against his blood. 

 

*******

George Jenkins dreamed the dream of many young men out in the heartland, out in the wheat fields of Kansas a dream that America, his America would keep the hell out of what looked like war clouds coming from Europe in the spring of 1914 (although dreams and dreamers were located not just on the farms since George was not a Kansas farm boy but a rising young clerk in Doc Dell’s Drugstore located in the college town of Lawrence). George was keenly interested in such matters and would, while on break or when things were slow, glance through the day later copy of the New York Times or Washington Post that Doc provided for his more worldly customers via the passing trains. What really kept George informed though was William White’s home-grown Emporia Gazette which kept a close eye on the situation in Europe for the folks.      

And with all of that information here is what George Jenkins, American citizen, concluded: America had its own problems best tended to by keeping out of foreign entanglements except when America’s direct interests were threatened. So George naturally cast skeptical eyes on Washington, on President Wilson, despite his protestations that European affairs were not our business. George had small town ideas about people minding their own business. See too also George had voted for Eugene V. Debs himself, the Socialist party candidate for President, and while he was somewhat skeptical about some of the Socialist Party leaders back East he truly believed that Brother Debs would help keep us out of war. 

Jesus, those damn Europeans have begun to make a mess for themselves now that some archduke, Jesus, an archduke in this day and age (and George Jenkins thanked some forgotten forebear for getting his clan out of Europe whenever he did so and avoided that nonsense about going to the aid of somebody over a damn archduke). Make no mistake George Jenkins had no sympathy for anarchists and was half-glad a couple of years ago when the Socialist Party booted the IWW, the damn Wobbies, out if that is what they did and the beggars didn’t just walk out. Although he had an admiration for Big Bill Hayward and his trade union fights that is all it was-admiration and policy could not be made on that basis. So no he had no truck with anarchists but to go to war over an archduke-damn. Still George was no Pollyanna and kept abreast of what was going on and it bothered him more than somewhat that guy slike Senator Lodge from Massachusetts and others from the Northeast were beating the war drums to get the United States mired in a damn European war. No way, no way good solid Midwesterners would fall for that line. And so George watched and waited. Watched too to see what old Debs had to say about matters. George figured that if the war drums got loud enough then Brother Debs would organize and speak up to keep things right. That was his way.   

********

Ivan Smirnov was no kid, had been around the block a few times in this war business. Had been in the Russian fleet that got its ass kicked by the Japanese in 1904 (he never called them “Nips” like lots of his crewmates did not after that beating they took that did not have to happen if the damn Czar’s naval officers had been anything but lackeys and anything but overconfident that they could beat the Johnny-come-lately Japanese in the naval war game). More importantly he had been in the Baltic fleet when the revolution of 1905 came thundering over their heads and each man, each sailor, each officer had to choice sides. He had gone with rebels and while he did not face the fate of his comrades on the Potemkin his naval career was over.

Just as well Ivan had thought many times since he was then able to come ashore and get work on the docks through some connections, and think. And what he was thinking in the spring of 1914 with some ominous war clouds in the air that that unfinished task from 1905 was going to come to a head. Ivan knew enough about the state of the navy, and more importantly, the army to know that without some quick decisive military action the monarchy was finished and good riddance. The hard part, the extremely hard part, was to get those future peasant conscripts who would provide cannon fodder for the Czar’s ill-thought out land adventures to listen up for a minute rather than go unknowingly head-long into the Czar’s arm (the father’s arms for many of them). So there was plenty of work to do. Ivan just that moment was glad that he was not a kid.    

********

Rosa Luxemburg-Down With Reformist Illusions—Hail the Revolutionary Class Struggle!-(1913)

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Originally Written: April 30, 1913
Source: The Communist, Vol. VII, No. 5, May 1928, pp. 262-264.
Publisher: Workers (Communist) Party of America
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2009). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

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[The May Day article printed below was written by Rosa Luxemburg for May Day, 1913, a year before the outbreak of the World War. It shows the combination of sensitiveness to coming events and concern with the methods of meeting them which is characteristic of the highest kind of revolutionary leadership. Its scornful analysis of class collaboration illusions and portrayal of the nature of the imperialist epoch and the war danger lend its words a timely ring today.—Editor.]

WHEN May Day demonstrations were held for the first time, the vanguard of the International, the German working class, was just at the point of breaking the chains of a disgraceful Exception Law and of entering upon the path of a free, legal development. The period of prolonged depression in the world market, since the crash of the seventies, had been overcome and capitalist economy had entered directly upon an era of resplendent development that was to last almost a decade. Likewise the world had recovered, after twenty years of uninterrupted peace, from recollections of that war period in which the modern European state system had received its bloody christening. The path appeared free for a quiet cultural development. Illusions, hopes for a peaceful settlement between capital and labor sprouted forth luxuriantly among the ranks of the Socialists. Proposals to hold out “the open hand to good will” marked the beginning of the nineties; promises of an inperceptible, “gradual evolution” into Socialism marked their end. Crises, wars, and revolutions were considered outworn theories, mere swaddling clothes of modern society; parliamentarism and trade unionism, democracy in the State and democracy in the industry were to open the gates to a new and better order.

The actual course of events played frightful havoc with all these illusions. In place of the promised mild social-reformist development of culture there has set in since the end of the nineties a period of the most violent, extreme sharpening of capitalist conflicts, a period of storm and stress, of crashes and turmoil, of tottering and trembling in the very foundations of society. The ten-year period of the economic upward curve of development was compensated for in the following decade by two world-convulsing crises. After two decades of world peace there followed in the last decade of last century six bloody wars and in the first decade of the new century four bloody revolutions. Instead of social reforms—sedition bills, imprisonment bills and jailings; instead of industrial democracy—the powerful concentration of capital in cartels and employers’ associations and the international practice of giant lockouts. And instead of the new upward development of democracy in the State a miserable collapse of the last remnants of bourgeois liberalism and bourgeois democracy. In Germany alone the destinies of the bourgeois parties since the nineties have brought: the rise and immediate hopeless dissolution of the National Social Party, the break-up of the liberal opposition and the re-uniting of its fragments in the morass of reaction, and finally the transformation of the Center from a radical people’s party to a conservative government party. And the shifting in party development in other capitalist countries has been similar. Everywhere the revolutionary working class today sees itself alone confronted by the compact, hostile reaction of the ruling classes and by their energetic attacks, which are aimed at them alone.
The “sign” under which this whole development on the economic and political field has been carried out, the formula according to which its results may be traced back is: IMPERIALISM. This is not a new element, not an unexpected veering in the general historical course of capitalist society. Military preparations and wars, international conflicts and colonial policies have accompanied the history of capital from its cradle. It is the extreme augmentation of these elements, the concentration and gigantic outburst of these conflicts, which have resulted in a new epoch in the development of present-day society. In dialectic reciprocal action—at the same time result and cause of the powerful accumulation of capital and of the consequent sharpening and intensifying of the contradiction between capital and labor within and between the capitalist States without—has Imperialism entered upon its final phase, the violent division of the world by the assault of capital. A chain of continual, unprecedented competitive military preparations on land and sea in all capitalist countries, a chain of bloody wars, which have spread from Africa to Europe and which any moment may fan the glowing sparks to a world conflagration; in addition, for years the phantom of the high cost of living, of mass hunger throughout the whole capitalist world, which can no longer be banished—these are the “signs” under which labor’s world holiday will soon celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its existence. And each of these “signs” is a flaming testimonial to the living truth and power of the ideas of the May Day celebration.
The brilliant main idea of the May Day celebration is the independent action of the proletarian masses, is the political mass action of the millions of workers, who otherwise can give expression to their own will only through petty parliamentary action, separated by State boundaries and consisting for the most part only in voting for representatives. The excellent proposal of the Frenchman Lavigne at the international congress in Paris combined this indirect parliamentary manifestation of the will of the proletariat with a direct international mass manifestation, the laying down of tools as a demonstration and fighting tactic for the eight-hour day, world peace, and Socialism.
No wonder the whole development, the aggregate tendency of imperialism in the last decade has been to bring ever plainer and more tangibly before the eyes of the international working class that only the independent action of the broadest masses, their own political action, mass demonstrations, mass strikes, which must sooner or later break forth into a period of revolutionary struggles for State power, can give the correct answer of the proletariat to the unprecedented pressure of imperialist politics. At this moment of frenzied military preparations and of war orgies it is only the resolute fighting stand of the working masses, their ability and readiness for powerful mass action, which still maintains world peace, which can still postpone the threatening world conflagration. And the more the May Day idea, the idea of resolute mass action as demonstrations of international solidarity and as a fighting tactic for peace and for Socialism even in the strongest section of the International, the German working class, strikes root, the greater guaranty we shall have that from the world war, which will inevitably take place sooner or later, there will result an ultimately victorious settlement between the world of labor and that of capital.

 

Leipzig, April 30, 1913.

       

***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of….. Things Past  

 

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 days 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 private e-mails sent to me by fellow classmates via the class website. Also classmates have placed messages on the Message Forum page when they have something they want to share generally like health issues, new family arrivals or trips down memory lane on any number of subjects from old time athletic prowess to reflections on growing up in the old home town. Thus I have been forced to take 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. These responses are 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 other 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 with a private e-mail sent to me by my old friend and running around mate in high school (and running on the track teams as well) Peter Markin who like me was as alienated and angst-filled as Holden Caulfield, and as any North Adamsville classmate. Markin had mentioned in his e-mail that he was adamant that he would not go to the 50^th reunion (as he has steadfastly not gone to any previous ones) not out of some individualistic hubris, not out of some long smoldering resentments (although he had those in abundance at one time going so far as to drive around the old hometown rather than through it even if it meant a longer trip so, yeah, he had them in abundance), not out of his old “beat” persona established back in junior high school which thrilled a few girls but got him a few punches from the boyfriends of those girls who did not like some beatnik beating their time with whoever they were involved with, and not because he was afraid some well-hidden ghosts from the past might beguile him. No, none of that, he left it as you can’t go home again. Meaning, at least I hope this is what he meant, that on some things there is no turning back and to do so only reflects poorly on your subsequent ability to move on.           

Strangely I can agree with a lot of what he said in our e-mail exchanges although my personal take on the reunion is to see if some ghosts that I have buried can stay buried long enough to get through the event. I mentioned above that I hoped that I understood what Peter meant by his term “you can’t go home again” being hinged on that no turning back proposition since he has asked me his old running around buddy to take some of the ideas that he had conveyed to me and write up a little something for the Message Forum page explaining why he would not be attending the reunion. That request by Peter was not accidental since in the old corner boy days up at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor I had been Frankie Riley’s “scribe,” flak-catcher, public relations man or whatever you want to call a guy who in order to hang on Frankie’s corner did duty writing whatever needed to be written to enhance his aura. So almost naturally Peter who was more of an “enforcer,” a grafter and midnight sifter in Frankie’s various operations asked me to write this piece for him based on his notes (by the way if you need to know what a grifter or midnight sifter is then move on since you really do not need to know except that the statute of limitations has run out). So here is my take on what Markin had to say and if it is not quite right then don’t blame me I am only the messenger on this one:    

“You Can’t Go Home Again, Can You”

No he, Peter Paul Markin would not be going after all, not be going to the scheduled 50^th Anniversary North Adamsville Class of 1964 reunion to be held at the swanky Adams Hotel Deluxe over Thanksgiving weekend.  (Apparently that holiday weekend is a very usual occasion for such events across the country, a time when old-time rooted families might still gather together in the old hometowns or just to take advantage of the generally taken long weekend.) He announced the news to me, to the candid world as he called it in his usual odd-ball historical literary snarl, something that I have grown used to, grown to deeply discount, to block out okay, so maybe I did not get the full import of his screed, one night when after we had finished cutting up old torches at our favorite watering hole and the next day he sent me an e-mail giving his perspective and asking me to write the manifesto announcing this earth-shattering event.

That spot these days, the days since Markin and I we have both returned to the Boston area and have re-ignited our old time friendship, is Jimmy’s Bar & Grille over in Centerville a few miles south of the town where we grew up, and about thirty miles from downtown Boston if anybody is asking. We had been talking about the old days, the old high school days when we had met, met down at a rock and roll dance at the Surf Ballroom in Hullsville (although we had seen each other in school before we became corner boys this was before Peter joined the track teams in eleventh grade). Met after pursuing the same girl, ah, young woman who eventually gave both of us the air. But our friendship, close or faraway as times changed, lingered on. Now in the great scheme of things, the great mandala of life out in the real world such a decision as Markin made about not going to some reunion naturally would take a back seat to serious matters like the fight against war and pestilence, the struggle to keep body and soul together that preoccupies most minds most of the time, and being mindfully thoughtful about the three great tragedies of human existence-hunger, sex, and death. (By the way everybody always called him Markin and not that Peter Paul Markin thing that only his mother and, I think, one prissy ex-wife called him, like he was some Mayflower swell rather than to the “projects” born and so Markin.)

Notwithstanding those heavy precedent-takers, no, emphatically no, Markin would not be going back to his old hometown that Thanksgiving weekend to see the old gang. See the old gang collectively for probably the last effective time that clan would be able to gather on a significant occasion what with death, disability, forgetfulness and just plain fright at the idea of a next time taking their toll. That next significant milestone, the 75^th, assuming that the mania for oddball celebration years like 30^th, 45^th, and 60^th, or worst 38^th, 48^th or 68^th has no taken root they would all be at or approaching ninety-three. A very scary thought, the thought of holding a reunion at some assisted living site or nursing home. No thank you then either Markin can safely be quoted as saying that night as well.

Strangely, and I quizzed him on the subject that night, a few years  before I can remember Markin telling me that  under the influence of some old town family members passing on he had returned to North Adamsville after many years absence. As a result of roaming around the old neighborhoods, around the old memory sites, or places that triggered memories he had exhibited a spurt of old town patriotism, some old bleeding of school colors red and black, some old time nostalgia for sacred youth places and quirky roots memories. More, a fervent desire to put together some occasion, not necessarily a tradition-filled full-blown official reunion like has been done since Horace Mann’s time, maybe before, but a collective gathering of those in the area to mark the passing of time, mark some memory mist youthful occasions and, frankly to gather some information, insights, observations on what they had been through back in the day, back in those hectic angst and alienation-filled school days.

Markin had told me at that time, and we had had several good laughs about his answers, that he had actually answered (patiently answered, believe me, unusual for him when it is not his own project), extensively answered a series of questions posed through an Internet classmates site by the chairwoman of the Class of 1964 45^th Reunion Committee (see what I mean by odd-ball year celebrations) to her fellow classmates about a whole range of questions. [And no, he would not be going, did not go to, had had no intention of going to that odd-ball year reunion unlike the 50^th that he was really aiming at with his answers.]You know the usual suspect questions about work history, family history, any distinctions creditable to old North, and the role played by the old school in keeping you off the streets, off welfare and out of prison. He waved those questions off out of hand in maybe a sentence, no more. After all three divorces, a checkered work history, half a dysfunctional family not speaking to you, and maybe wishing you were in jail can be summarily written off with few words.

What he did respond to were more thoughtful questions about dreams and ambitions (Jesus, right in Markin’s wheelhouse), disappointments, thoughts on mortality, and most importantly, questions directly related to the old days like what did you think of certain school clubs, sport teams, school dances (particularly the annual Fall Frolics and the Spring Follies), and several other school- specific events that I had forgotten about and I did not think important before I decided to write this piece for him.

Markin went wild, went crazy, stop the presses, he said. He wrote sketch after sketch, some long some short, about the school dances, his wall-flower status before he got his courage up, his girl-shy courage, at some last dance trigger moment. About his lackluster running career, and the stellar performances of our running mate, Bill Brady, and of our mutual jock-inspired devotion to the football team neither of us could ever come close to making. About his befuddlement over the segregated, boy-girl segregated, bowling teams, the vagaries of the mythical Tri-Hi-Yi, the inanity of white socks and white shorts for gym garb, the sex question, circa 1960 and the role that Adamsville Beach played in resolving that question. Endlessly as well about corner boy life in about twelve varieties, the place of rock and roll in the teenage universe then and so on. Fluff but answered.

Here is the beauty of his answers though, the beauty of Markin really. He answered, or he told me he answered everything put before him by that relentless chairwoman, even making stuff up if he did not remember, or could have cared less about something back then, like Glee Club or the Chess Club. Here was the best one, and I can attest to this one because I was actually present with him that night down at the Surf Ballroom at one of those frequent rock and roll dances we both attended. He felt compelled to write about the senior year Thanksgiving football rally in 1963 held the night before the game against the hated cross-town rival blue and white Adamsville High since he really did bleed Red Raider black and red around the football team. He wrote this long screed that several people thought was an excellent description of the event, that it had brought back some nice memories especially from someone who remembered so many details. Of course as you now will know this sketch was made out of whole cloth since he was not within twenty miles of the event that year since he was dancing the night away at the Surf that year. That’s Markin.                                 

Some answers though were actually thoughtful, another aspect of Markin as well, his beauty if you will. He movingly, if briefly, wrote about the John F.  Kennedy assassination that cast a dark shadow over that senior year, over the fresh breeze brought down that Camelot represented and that I had also felt bereaved by at that time as well. About missing out on the Great Books Club because they were, uh, nerds, about the odd-ball class photographs, before and after, about some teachers, English teachers I think, that he sent delayed kudos too, about his love of the sea (me too). About like I said before, dreams and ambitions. The best one, at least the one I remember him showing me at the time was simply entitled, A Walk Down Dream Street, which dealt with Billy Brady and their habit, penniless, no car, no girl, of sitting on the granite steps of the high school on warm, sultry nights talking about their dreams for the future, their jail-break from the unhappy homes they came from, about how they were going to do this and that to make their marks in the world. Small dream stuff as he recalled, but dreams, nicely written, with the virtue (if it can be called that) that he, they, actually did do that talking as Billy confirmed when I met him for the first time in many years a couple of years ago.         

So you can see that Markin was clearly at peace with himself and ready to go to that reunion based on that box full of memories. Moreover, Markin had put together his own survey at that time looking for more in-depth information although that project kind of died on the vine due to apathy, poor response from classmates, and his own need to push on to a more pressing project at the time. Last year in another spurt of old town devotion he pulled that survey together with much better results since he really worked hard to contact, through the beauty of the Internet, as many classmates as possible working off of the 1964 Magnet yearbook. Then one night in April, as we sat down at Jimmy’s, that local watering hole we have frequented of late, he laid out to me the reasons why he was not going, could not possibly go, what did he say, oh yeah, he empathically could not go. Later I got to thinking about his long trail of reasons and came to agree with his conclusions, if not his decision. My recollections of that night’s conversation, maybe not quite the way he put the matter but close, followed under our once common sign that, unfortunately, after all this time you really cannot go home again.       

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Mohamman Geuka Koti,

 

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Kevin Kjonaas

 

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Maumin Khabir,( aka Melvin Mayes)

 

http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html

 

A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!

400 Labor Unionist March Through Boston Demanding Higher Minimum Wages
by Shauna O'Dorothy	13 Jun 2014 Modified: 06:30:15 AM
A rally started in Copely Square and then marched to various fast food restaurants.
Labor Unions and friends organized a demonstration in Boston on Thursday, June 12, 2014. The evening rally began at 4 o'clock. In across the street from the Boston Public Library main building over four hundred people gathered to demand higher minimum wages. Signs advocated "$15 an Hour." Various workers addressed the crowd explaining how hard it is to live on low wages, and that some are even having wages reduced. Health worker, cab drivers, construction workers and some politicians addressed the workers gathered and called for action. The crowd took to the streets after the talks and moved down through the streets to stop at various restaurants to demand that workers be paid more.