“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938
The International Conference, having read the documents and statements of the former LCI (Galicia group) [Liga Comunista Internacionalista], and the decision of the Pan American Preconference at New York, and having heard the report of the U. S. delegation to Mexico, declares:
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-German Poets
German War Poetry
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| Self-portrait as a Soldier of 1914 by Otto Dix |
| Here's some German war poetry in German. These are not the verse of polished poets, that is to say "poets turned soldiers", these poems are the work of front line soldiers, "soldiers turned poets". There's quite a difference between the two art forms. These poems were the soldier's way of coping by expressing their feelings about such topics as fallen comrades and the homeland, which in once sense was so close, but in another, was a million miles away. They may be considered rough by some and lacking in form or content by others, but they do manage to capture the everyday thoughts of the soldier and the mood of the trenches. If anyone out there is more comfortable in their mastery of the German language than I am and would like to translate any of these works, I would be more than happy to create an English language version of this page. |
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From The Labor History Archives -In
The 80th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis
And Toledo General Strikes- Lessons In The History Of Class Struggle
From The Archives Of The Socialist
Workers Party (America)- Some Lessons of the Toledo Strike
Frank Jackman comment:
Marxism, no less than other
political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on
roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations.
Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in
the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League. A
recent example of that linkage in this space was when I argued in this space
that, for those who stand in the Trotskyist tradition, one must examine closely
the fate of Marx’s First International, the generic socialist Second
International, Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Revolution-inspired Communist
International, and Trotsky’s revolutionary successor, the Fourth International
before one looks elsewhere for a centralized international working class
organization that codifies the principle –“workers of the world unite.”
On the national terrain in the
Trotskyist movement, and here I am speaking of America where the Marxist roots
are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist
Labor League, Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism
for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the
early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that made
up the organization under review, the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Workers
Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive.
Beyond that there are several directions to go in but these are the bedrock of
revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s. If I am asked,
and I have been, this is the material that I suggest young militants should
start of studying to learn about our common political forbears. And that
premise underlines the point of the entries that will posted under this
headline in further exploration of the early days, “the dog days” of the
Socialist Workers Party.
Note: I can just now almost hear some very nice and proper
socialists (descendants of those socialism for dentist-types) just now,
screaming in the night, yelling what about Max Shachtman (and, I presume, his
henchman, Albert Glotzer, as well) and his various organizational formations
starting with the Workers party when he split from the Socialist Workers Party
in 1940? Well, what about old Max and his “third camp” tradition? I said the
Trotskyist tradition not the State Department socialist tradition. If you want
to trace Marxist continuity that way, go to it. That, in any case, is not my
sense of continuity, although old Max knew how to “speak” Marxism early in his
career under Jim Cannon’s prodding. Moreover at the name Max Shachtman I can
hear some moaning, some serious moaning about blackguards and turncoats, from
the revolutionary pantheon by Messrs. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. I rest
my case.
********************
Trotskyist Work in the Trade Unions
by Chris Knox
Part 1 of 4
The Trotskyist movement has a proud tradition of struggle for the principles of Leninism, under difficult conditions and against heavy odds. In the United States, the core of the leadership which built the original Trotskyist organization (Communist League of America 1928-34) kept up the struggle for over three decades, before the vicissitudes of the Cold War anti-communist witchhunt finally caught up with them and caused their political degeneration and departure from Bolshevism in the early 1960's, The Spartacist League was born in the fight against the degeneration of the Trotskyist movement—-in the Socialist Workers Party—-and claims the tradition as its own.
This tradition includes the struggle of the Left Opposition against the bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR, the campaign for a workers united front against fascism in Germany, and the battle to build a new, Fourth International to provide an alternative proletarian leadership to the bankrupt Social Democrats and Stalinists.
As in the course of every preceding phase of the struggle for revolutionary socialism, however, it was inevitable that the Trotskyists would make mistakes. Correction of earlier mistakes, while in no way repudiating the earlier struggles and tradition, has been integral to the growth and political and theoretical armament of the movement. If one holds the early Lenin, for instance, up to the mirror of the whole body of Leninism--which incorporates the experience of the Russian Revolution and struggle to build the Communist International--one finds many errors and shortcomings. As James P. Cannon, communist leader and pioneer American Trotskyist, put it, discussing the development of the democratic-centralist vanguard party conception in 1944:
"If our party stands today on far higher ground that that occupied by the amorphous rebel workers' movement prior to the First World War--and that is indubitably the case--it is not due solely to the superiority of our program, but also to the consistent application in practice of the principles and methods of Bolshevik organization. The experience of a quarter of a century has convinced us over and over again that this is the right way, the only way, to build a revolutionary party....
"In politics nothing is more stupid, more infantile, than to retrace ground that had already been covered, to go back and start all over again as if nothing had happened and nothing has been learned."Just as Lenin had early shortcomings which reflected the social-democratic movement he was struggling to transcend, so the American Trotskyists made mistakes which reflected, in part, the arena of the degenerating Communist Party from which they emerged, and in part the national political environment in which they functioned. The history of Trotskyist work in the trade unions in the U.S. was in the main exemplary and includes such high points as the Minneapolis Teamster strike of 1934, which was a model of mass mobilization as well as the first instance of organizing of trucking on the lines of industrial unionism; and the SWP's struggles against the no-strike pledge and the War Labor Board in World War II. However, it also reveals consistent errors which must be studied and corrected by revolutionists today if the movement is to be armed against new dangers. While this history has yet to be fully researched and recorded, its main outlines can be critically examined.--Letters from Prison
CP Degeneration in the Twenties
Cannon, Shachtman, Abern and the other founders of American Trotskyism were recruited to Trotsky's Opposition suddenly, in 1928, after the issue of "Trotskyism" was considered closed in the American CP, and without having undergone the experience of a conscious struggle against the Stalinist degeneration of the party in the twenties. This degeneration had hopelessly corrupted the bulk of the leadership and cadre of the CP and demoralized, tamed or driven away most of the members.The leadership of the party was firmly in the hands of Jay Lovestone, a hated, distrusted and cynical factionalist, who controlled the party through organizational manipulation and unprincipled political adaptationism. Identified with the Bukharinite right wing internationally, the Lovestone clique was steering the party in the direction of unbridled opportunism based on pessimism. In the trade unions, Lovestone's policy was to rely heavily on maneuvers at the top in the trade-union bureaucracy, coupled with political overtures to liberals in the form of pacifism, etc. Given the sharp decline of the AFL, this policy meant concentration on the privileged skilled trades, the small minority of the workers who were organized, and virtually no orientation to the masses of unskilled workers.
In the Stalinized Communist International (CI) of the late twenties, leadership of the national sections depended on being able to sense the winds of political change in Moscow and change one's line in time. The rampant factionalism, soon to be replaced by monolithism, had become completely unprincipled. Thus while Lovestone's right-wing opportunism fit his natural predilections and organizational methods, his faction was no more or less identified with any particular political program than was that of his chief opponent, William Z, Foster. Both sought power through adapting to the Comintern breezes, which had been blowing distinctly to the right since 1926, when Stalin blocked with Bukharin against Trotsky, Zinoviev and the ultra-lefts.
Cannon, although he too was influenced by the degeneration of the Communist International, as early as 1925 formed a third faction, the purpose of which was to fight for the liquidation of the programless factions and the building of a collective leadership. It was a somewhat demoralized Cannon who reluctantly attended the Sixth Congress of the CI in 1928, at which he accidently discovered a copy of Trotsky's critique of the draft program, and became convinced of Trotsky's analysis of the degeneration of the International as based on the interests of the national-bureaucratic elite in the USSR.
"The Right Danger in the American Party"
At the time of the Sixth CI Congress Cannon had formed a bloc (atemporary alliance, not a fusion of groups) with Foster's group on the basis of the document, "The Right Danger in the American Party." This document, like the bloc that produced it, was contradictory: it was both a principled condemnation of the gross opportunist errors of Lovestone, and a platform for an unprincipled attempt by the Fosterites to get control of the CP on the basis of what they sensed was a new left turn in the making in the Comintern.Stalin was indeed preparing a new left turn, though he was not ready to break openly with Bukharin at the time of the Sixth Congress. As usual, the turn was forced on Stalin by circumstances which grew out of the previous line. In addition, the turn of 1928 was a plot to outflank the Left Opposition: first to expel Trotsky, then to appear to adopt his slogans. Many members of the opposition fell into the trap and capitulated to Stalin.
"The Right Danger" later reprinted in the Trotskyists' paper, the Militant, on which the Trotskyists continued to stand after their expulsion, reflected the signals being sent out from Moscow before the Sixth Congress, indicating the approach of the new "Third Period" turn. It attempted to use against Lovestone letters from the CI complaining about this and that, and pressure from the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU-CI trade-union arm) for more work to organize the unorganized into new unions. While correctly attacking the grossly opportunist and capitulatory blocs of Lovestone with various elements of the trade-union bureaucracy, the document tended to slip into the fallacious third period "united front from below" conception:
"The C.I. line against the United Front from the top with reactionary trade union, liberal and S.P. leaders, and for united front with the workers against them, applies with special emphasis in America."While the "Right Danger" thus contained some errors reflecting the developing new Stalinist zigzag (and was furthermore limited solely to the consideration of American questions), it was in the main correct. It was principled, from Cannon's point of view, on the need to form new unions in places where the AFL was decrepit or non-existent. While Foster was the extreme AFL-fetishist, the partisan of "boring from within," Cannon had broken with Foster in 1926 over the Passaic strike, which he felt was an example in which a new union should have been formed under Communist leadership.--Militant, 15 December 1928
| Cops attacking strikers in 1936 Passaic textile strike. The Communist Party led the bitter battle, but CP's Ruthenberg leadership capitulated to the AFL rather than form new union. Below, 1933 coal strike in southern Illinois, led by Progressive Miners of America. While opposing dual unionism, Trotskyists supported PMA and called for formation of new unions where craft restrictions or bureaucratic domination strangled old unions. The key is support from overwhelming majority of workers. |
This position for new unions in areas abandoned and betrayed by the AFL bureaucrats was soon to be distorted by the Stalinists into a position of dual unions on principle, and opposition to work in the old unions. As consistently presented by the Trotskyist Opposition (both before and after it became "Trotskyist"), however, the "new unions" line conformed to both the objective situation and the CP's ability to intervene in the situation. The AFL unions had been on a rampage of class collaborationism, destruction of militancy and expulsion of "reds" throughout most of the twenties. The thrust of this reactionary drive by the bureaucracy was explicitly against the organization of the masses of unskilled workers into industrial unions, which alone could overcome craft myopia and accomplish the organization of the bulk of the working class. The result was that the AFL unions not only refused to organize new workers, but they shrank drastically, driving away new workers and anyone who wanted to organize them in the process. By the end of the twenties, the crisis of proletarian leadership took the form of the lack of leadership to organize the unorganized.
The duty of revolutionary leadership was, in fact, to fill this gap, and smash the AFL bureaucracy in the process. This condition continued into the thirties, until finally a section of the AFL bureaucracy moved to organize the mass production industries precisely out of fear that if the AFL leadership didn't do it, the reds would. This resulted in the setting up of the CIO which, while it entailed a bitter rivalry with the old AFL leadership, was primarily a matter of the formation of new unions for the unorganized industries rather than a case of rivals directly competing for the same workers with the old unions.
The Trotskyists proceeded from the concrete situation in each case, and advocated new unions only where the struggle to take over the old unions had clearly exhausted itself against the stone wall of bureaucratism. Mining was such a case. The rank and file in areas such as southern Illinois were so disgusted with the betrayals and utter disregard for democracy of the Lewis machine that the basis for a new union really displacing the old shell existed. Opposition leaders in the CP before 1928 had to fight Lovestone policies which were a capitulation not only to the slow moving "progressives" (Brophy, Hapgood, etc.) but to the Lewis machine itself! The formation of the National Miners Union (NMU) by the CP, in conjunction with anti-Lewis leaders, came too late and was further sabotaged by other CP errors of an adventurist character. Rank-and-file pressure caused the progressives to try again in 1932, however, and the CP went along reluctantly with setting up the Progressive Miners of America.
Despite the objective conditions favoring new unions, the CP's third period red unions were a disastrous betrayal. They were disasters because of the manner in which the CP attempted to form them: too late at first, in the case of mining and needle trades, but then increasingly too precipitously, without preparation. Strikes were called in the same manner, as an adventure on the part of a small handful, rather than on the basis of conscious preparation of the mass of the workers. Furthermore, the CP's policy was a betrayal, because it made a principle for the whole movement out of what should have been merely a tactic for particular circumstances. While the CP claimed throughout to be for continued opposition inside the old unions, the core of third period sectarianism made this impossible. The AFL leadership, as well as the Socialist Party, Trotskyists, Musteites, and all other tendencies, were denounced as "social-fascists" and otherwise not part of the workers movement in any sense. This made the united front, in which communists bloc with non-communist working-class leaders in order to expose them and advance the struggle at the same time--an essential part of communist work in the trade unions--impossible. While destroying its handful of new unions through sectarianism and adventurism, the Stalinists thus abandoned and sabotaged work in the old unions, which left the reactionary bureaucrats in control. This not only delayed the final introduction of industrial unions on a mass scale, but ensured that when such unions were formed, reactionaries would lead them.
From the moment at which the "new unions" position of the CP began to mushroom into the full-scale sectarianism of the third period, the Trotskyists fought to expose these errors and warn of the dangers. With tremendous prescience, they warned:
"The new 'theories' are attempting to rationalize the AFL out of existence as a federation of unions and abstractly preclude the possibility of its future expansion and growth in an organizational sense....
"The abandonment of... struggle [in the AFL] now taking place under the cover of high-sounding 'radicalism' will only prevent, the crystallization of an insurgent movement within the old unions and free the hands of the bureaucrats far more effective sabotage of the unew unions, for these two processes are bound together. The result will be to strengthen the effectiveness of the AFL bureaucracy as a part of the capitalist war machine."Trotskyist opposition to the sectarianism and adventurism of the third period, like the opposition to Lovestone's opportunism, was consciously linked to Cannon's earlier positions in the CP. As such, it carried forth certain errors which contributed to the mistakes of the later work of the Trotskyists in the trade unions.--"Platform of the Communist Opposition," Militant, 15 February 1929
In addition to condemning Lovestone's opportunism in the late twenties, the opposition groups (Foster and Cannon) condemned as sectarian his tendency to work exclusively through party fractions in the trade unions rather than building sections of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), the party's trade-union organization. This tendency on the part of the Lovestone group dated back to the 1924-25 left turn in the CI. In the U.S., the Ruthenberg/Lovestone faction (Ruthenberg died in 1927) used this turn for factional advantage against Foster, by substituting direct party work in the unions for building the TUEL, which was Foster's main organizational base. While Cannon had always been for a flexible policy on work in the unions, including building new unions when called for, he was also against the "narrow" conception of the TUEL, which was developed at this time, in which the latter was closely identified with the party. Instead, he was for broad united-front blocs, while maintaining the independence and freedom to criticize of the party:
"In 1925 the present Opposition conducted a struggle against the narrowing of the TUEL into a purely Communist body with a Communist program and for broadening it into a united front organization. This was one of the most progressive struggles in the history of the party."The "Platform" of 1929 then goes on to condemn both the abandonment of united-front tactics with the onset of the third period and earlier failures of both a left and right character: failure to build broad united-front movements where possible and failure to struggle for a leading role of the party within such blocs and movements (including warning that "progressive" bloc partners will betray, etc.).--"Platform of the Opposition"
The error which was buried in this polemic was that the TUEL was designed precisely to be the vehicle to bring the main outlines of the Communist program directly into the unions. It was a membership organization based on a program, not a bloc or united front. It carried out united fronts with other forces. Since these other forces, and much of the TUEL membership itself, had melted away or been driven out of the unions by 1924, the increased identification between the TUEL and the Communist Party engineered by Ruthenberg/Lovestone seemed to Cannon to be a sectarian error; rather, the party should be using the TUEL to seek new allies. Yet Cannon advocated the same watering down of the TUEL's political nature as did the degenerating Comintern in the late twenties. This watering down gave rise to a policy of blocs as a permanent strategy (the "left-center coalition") from 1927 on (see WV No. 22, 8 June 1973).
Cannon's position on trade-union work, then, called for principled united fronts and blocs around the immediate burning issues, together with vigorous party-building and maintenance of the party as an independent force, free to criticize its bloc partners, and always striving to play a leading role. Rather than being confused on the nature of the united front, which he was not, Cannon simply dismissed the TUEL, or the need for anything like the TUEL, as anything other than a vehicle for such blocs or united fronts. This left him with no conception of an organized pole for the recruitment of militants to the full party program for the trade unions, i.e., what the TUEL had been during its period of greatest success (and before the Stalinist degeneration of the CI set in). It is not surprising, then, that the Trotskyists never attempted to create anything like the TUEL, such as caucuses based on the Trotskyist Transitional Program, in the course of their trade-union work. What caucuses they did create had the character of temporary blocs, usually based on immediate, trade-union issues. This meant that the party itself, able to function openly only outside the unions, was the only organized pole for recruitment to the full program.
That the problems with this approach didn't become manifest until much later, after the rise of the CIO, was due primarily to the nature of the period, which called above all for a united front for the organization of the unorganized into industrial unions. This called for capable revolutionary trade-union organizing, which the Trotskyists, particularly the experienced militants of Minneapolis and Cannon himself, were prepared to conduct. This perspective led the Trotskyists into some of the Stalinist dual unions, the progressives' PMA, and leadership of the historic Minneapolis truck drivers' strikes of 1934.
The Minneapolis strikes stand to this day as a model of revolutionary trade-union organizing. Together with the San Francisco and Toledo general strikes of the same year, the Minneapolis strikes were an important precursor to the organization of all mass production workers along industrial lines.
Veterans Group in Response to President Obama’s Plan to Confront ISIL Says They are Disappointed But Not Surprised.
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Veterans For Peace has released a response to President Obama’s strategy to confront ISIL calling on the president to use diplomacy and to follow his own advice that there is not a military solution to the problems in Iraq. The organization of veterans, spanning from WWII to the current string of U.S. wars,warns that the president’s plan continues to make the U.S. the “greatest purveyor of violence” on earth and places service members in harm’s way when there are other solutions. They call on the president to take six non-military actions to avoid the slippery slope of sending troops to Iraq as well as to stop sending weapons that fuel all sides of the conflict. The group calls for diplomacy to be the number one priority and to include Iran as a partner to help pressure the Iraqi government to be more inclusive of Sunni leaders. Veterans For Peace points out that there cannot be success in confronting ISIL in Iraq without Sunni help and that bombing these communities, who up to now are supporting ISIL because of bad relations with the central government in Baghdad, will not help mend fences.
Veterans For Peace President Patrick McCann commented, “We are disappointed because President Obama’s so called plan is more of the same. Nothing really different than waging war like the U.S. has done for thirteen years. Never mind that according to a State Department report, global terrorism has increased by 43% in 2014.” He went on to say, “Who really benefits from these failed policies? Clearly not the American people who pay for it in money and blood.”
“We are not surprised by the president’s military solution because for the past thirteen years our political leaders have not put forward any other kind of solution. It seems all they know is war and have no concept of how to work for peace,” states Michael McPhearson, Interim Executive Director. “Just as meeting violence with violence in our communities here at home does not solve economic and social problems, more violence in Syria and Iraq will not solve the conflicts or diminish the political challenges there.”
Veterans For Peace response to the president’s plan states, in part: President Obama outlined a strategy no different from what the U.S. has done for the past thirteen years. It is not a plan for success, it is a gamble that war will work this time when it has spectacularly failed thus far. We at Veterans For Peace challenge the American people to ask whose interests does endless war serve? Who is paying for these wars, whose children are dying in these wars and who is getting paid to finance and provide weapons for these wars? We the people are being driven by manipulated fear to support polices that are not in our interest. Peace is harder than war, but it is cheaper in blood and treasure. After thirteen years it is time to take another path, the path of peace. | Download VFP Handout: Six Ways to Confront ISIL Short of War Handout by clicking image below  |
Monday, September 15, 2014
|
***Tales
From The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-The
Paycheck
From
The Pen Of Frank Jackman
“John
Dillon where have you been at all hours of the night? I have been waiting for you since six o’clock
so that I could fill the envelopes for the bill collectors tomorrow,” shrieked
Mary Dillon, Mrs. John Dillon (nee Riley). Mary Dillon may have shrieked at
John Dillon (it would not have been the first, or even close to the first time
in their eighteen year marriage that she had done so but the occasion always
brought out the shriek in her and thus shriek) that night (really early morning
about 1:30 AM) but she already knew, knew in her troubled heart what John’s
answer would be. And then John Dillon in his cups (drunk, for those not from
Irish neighborhoods or who may not know that old-fashioned polite term for
inebriation, especially among the womenfolk, the “shawlies” as they placed
their washings out on the triple –decker back porch clothes lines to dry and
“network”) gave his inevitable answer-“none of your business,” and that would
start the usual barrage of talk. That banter would last for a while, a while
until John declared that he had had enough of talk and that he needed to get
some sleep if he was to get to work in the morning over at the South Boston
docks on time.
(John
Dillon was a third generation longshoreman, a dock job on the East Coast unlike
on the West Coast which had a hiring hall to select workers by seniority, etc.,
that although unionized tended to be family affairs in those days, handed down
from father to son. Handed down by mainly Italian and Irish father if you
needed to ask. John, Senior had been a beefy no-holds-barred man who bulled
ahead, drunk or sober, but our John, Junior had a wiry build and could pull his
weight with the tougher guys, except after a night of being “in his cups” and
then his friend, Eddie Sullivan also from the neighborhood knew he would be
hauling ass that day to cover for John. John with guys was a guys’ guy and that
counted for a lot on the docks, and in the barrooms.)
That
conversation went something like this, at least this is the way my old friend
Timmy Dillon would explain the gist of it to me when I arrived at his house after
one of those “none of your business, Mary” mornings in order to walk over to
North Adamsville Junior High where we were classmates in seventh grade at that
time. You see Timmy (and brothers Matthew, Joseph, and Edward as well) would
have been privy to those conversations between Mother and Father Dillon heard
though the paper-thin walls that separated the two shared bedrooms the boys
occupied next to the kitchen where the conversation took place (better to say
shouting match and be done with it) in the third floor of the triple-decker
that the family rented on Sagamore Street. I lived two streets over then on
Prospect so I had to pass the Dillon house on my way to school anyway which is
how Timmy and I started walking to school together.
The
other Dillon boys were already in various grades at North Adamsville High and
so were gone by the time I arrived as was Mr. Dillon having grabbed the early
Eastern Mass bus to get over to Southie and away from Mary’s ire and scorn.
When I knocked on the door of the Dillon apartment I knew from Timmy’s sleepy
look when he opened the door that it had been one of those shouting match
nights and that Timmy had been aroused by the noise and had not gotten his
sleep after that. I knew as well what had happened since I had had my own “none
of your business, Delores,” nights at my house as well with my father, Jim
Jackman, although not on the night in question.
This
is something that Timmy never told me as close as were at that time and I only
found about it later from his brother Matthew after some other stuff hit the
fan. Sometimes that late night banter that wrecked Timmy’s sleep would end up
with John taking a whack at Mary if she was getting on his nerves or he thought
what she had to say hit too close to home for him to take sitting down. I asked
Mrs. Dillon one time about her eye when it was all swollen up and she said she
hit a door the wrong way. I, naïve as to such abuses then and what would I do
about it anyway, let that answer stand. When other times, maybe two or three
times, I asked Timmy about various injuries that I could see his mother had sustained
when I went over to his house he would
either plead ignorance or make up some thin excuse but never bring it up on his
own if he did not have to. Of course those were the days before restraining
orders and other legal remedies but then the courts were either hostile or
indifferent to this abuse and women did not make their situations public then
like now. It came with the marriage bed and that was that.
Matthew
told me that time he told me about his father’s brutality that he had asked his
mother one time when he was about sixteen and big enough to take a stand
against the old man if she gave him the word she did not leave his father. He
said she never did give him the word.
Matthew, an adult at the time we talked, could barely get what she responded
out. She said with a tear in her eye “how can I leave him, we were married in
the church, married forever. Where would
I go, what could I do, he didn’t mean it, he was drunk, he will change once
things settle down, I just have to see this out my way.’’ Then she sighed, “my
lord, how we loved each other so when we were young.” Jesus I was ready to cry
myself when I heard that. My father probably drank up the same lake that Mr.
Dillon did but he never beat my mother, not that I know of and we lived in
those same kind of paper-thin walled apartments as the Dillons so I would have
heard about that. Damn
Well
I might as well get to Timmy’s story, or try to, but just remember that Timmy’s
story is not so different from my own, except easier to tell, or for that
matter not so different from about twenty other stories in our old North
Adamsville neighborhood which I did not find out about until years later when I
would run into this guy or that gal and once they got out of the house, or out
of the neighborhood, felt that could break the solemn oath, break the code of
silence, about what went on in their households then when we all thought
(except Timmy and me since we knew the ropes although not that father mother abuse
stuff) we were the only ones with what they now call dysfunctional families but
what the parish priest my mother would consult when things went whiggy with my
father, maybe he had been drinking too much or had lost his job for some off-hand remark, called “troubled.”
Of
course the priest’s resolution, old pre-Vatican II Father Lilly up at Sacred
Heart, to that “troubled” which he could have saved himself some lung power on by
just having cards printed up since this was his universal message to his
desperate parishioners was to “go home and be a better wife, go home and not
make waves, go home and bow like some ancient slave before thy lord and master
husband and don’t even dare think of separation or divorce. Oh yes, and
remember the children.” Even my mother (nee Kelly) who was as pious as they
came, and as forever possessive of her husband as any other “shawlie”
questioned that wisdom after the tenth time my father drank his paycheck away
or did not get a paycheck because of some problem with some boss at work and
got fired. Damn, double damn.
That
Father Lilly “troubled” included the above mentioned wife-beating like mothers
(or children) were private punching bags for guys who didn’t get all their
wanting habits sated and so carried the “chip” on their shoulders like a badge
of honor. There certainly were enough reasons for chips back then when it
seemed like the old neighborhood was floating down the abyss while we saw
everybody from Castle Hill with new cars and livable single family houses as we
took public transportation and lived as I already mentioned in those cramped,
damp, no room to move triple deckers. I first came face to face with the “chip”
when I would go to Harry’s Variety on Coe Street where I would grab a Robb’s
Root Beer (a local brand) and had to pass the corner boys who held up the brick
wall in front of the store. If they were feeling like displaying the “chip”
would not let me pass by to make my purchase. Harry would have to come to the
door and tell the guys to “cut it out.” Harry was the local “bookie” and so
“connected” and had for some time been using the store as a front and so when
he said something they listened. Of course once they “cut it out” that was not
the end of it since I had to give some corner boy a “swig” and he would drink
about half my bottle of root beer. Yeah, that is how it is down at the base,
down in the mean streets of society.
See
we down at the mouth denizens were mainly living on Sagamore, Prospect, Young and
a few other streets in the area working-class Irish families, some like mine
having been there for three or four generations and among the Irish, at least
in those days, and maybe now too, the word was you did not “air your dirty
linen in public.” So all this stuff was happening, stuff to screw us up, to
give us a very sour outlook on life but nobody was doing anything (except
between Timmy and me) to let others know their family situations were fucked up
too. So chips is what you saw and if
something was inexplicable then that was the cause.
Sorry
for the language but it still burns me up so let me get to the story. And you
might as well know if you haven’t figured it out a little that it involves
liquor, plenty of it when the funds were available (and sometimes even when
they were not since most fathers in the neighborhood were working so they would
usually have some credit line at the local barrooms but I am getting ahead of
myself a little). The way you probably figured and you might have been right in
the old days if not now is that Irish guys, Irish working-class fathers after a
hard day’s work, liked to stop in and toss down a few before heading home to
the “ball and chain” and edging the night away. Now there probably is no truth
to the old notion that all the Irish were drunk and disorderly as a profession
of their faith or something like that but in the old Atlantic section, the
Irish section of old North Adamsville, it would be hard to argue with that
proposition, hard to argue with Timmy Dillon and Frank Jackman about it anyway.
And part of the proof of that notion was that in that little square footage
there were four, count them, four bars. Four bars, pubs really, for men, for
guys to have their drinks in peace, although a couple of them had Ladies Invited signs hanging in neon on
their front windows. That Ladies Invited sign
meant that women, our mothers or older sisters, could not go in there by
themselves but only escorted by a man. Needless to say no fathers were
escorting mothers or older sisters to the joints and the only women who showed
up there were what we called in the old days “loose women” although we did not
find out about what that meant until later that meant they were sluts and
whores, according to mother lore. At least I didn’t find out about it until
later when that is what my mother called my uncle, her brother, who was married
but would bring his girlfriend there, a girlfriend that he met there when some
friend of his brought her there and they hit it off. Thinking about it now I
don’t know whether she really was a slut or a whore she could have just been good
company for a lonely guy like my uncle but that’s what my mother called
her. And my cousin Maude, his daughter,
too when she stood in front of the Dublin Grille one night to confront them and
that is what she called her.
And
that name Dublin Grille can now be formally introduced since of the four bars
in the area that got the most business from Irish fathers. Part of the reason
was that establishment unlike the others which closed each night at midnight
stayed open until one o’clock in the morning (and if you were “in the know” you
could like the off-duty cops which frequented the place then drink until about
three in the morning as long as you purchased your drinks before one). But a
very big reason that the Dublin got so much play was that Paddy, a real old
time Irishman who had been born in Ireland and who had some vague connection to
the Irish Easter Uprising in 1916, an event which was held as the holy of the
holies by one and all, gave his regulars credit if their thirst was great and
their coin light. Coin light especially say on Monday when payday was Thursday
and there was no money around after the weekend and after the Friday envelopes
had been passed out by the neighborhood mothers. Now that credit was not endless,
no way, but you can be sure that one of the envelopes each week contained a
“little something for Paddy.”
But
here is how one John Dillon got called on the carpet by one Mary Dillon on the
night in question. John Dillon worked pretty steady over at the South Boston
docks, got plenty of work as a longshoreman when the ships were coming into
Boston more regularly than they do now what with other East Coast ports having
better facilities and with less help needed with everything being held in
containers and all. But as with the nature of that industry then and now he did
not necessarily work every day although he would show for shape-up when called
by the union business agent, a friend of his whom he had worked with before he
became a union official. So John would while away some extra hours at the
Dublin, and thus build up a bigger bill than some other fathers like mine who
worked every day for less pay but didn’t have time off to have a few with the
boyos in the afternoon.
Whatever
number of hours John worked, and like most workers in those days his payday was
Thursday (you could tell who got paid on Thursday by how crowded the local
supermarket was on Friday morning and who was to be found among that crowd).
One of the other things that Paddy did for his customers would be to cash their
checks ( a smart move since almost every check-cashee probably also had a debt
outstanding to Paddy) and he did so for John on a regular basic deducting
whatever was owed him (and strangely, or maybe just dealing with reality Mary
Dillon and Delores Jackman factored in Paddy’s bill as part of the weekly
envelop distribution without a squawk or at least neither Timmy not I when we
discussed the matter ever heard any squawk and we knew them all, the squawks,
by heart before we were teenagers).
Now
most of the time John Dillon on payday would stop at the Dublin, cash his
check, Paddy deducting his share (or part if the bill was big or a customer like
John pleaded some unforeseen expense and Paddy would accommodate that to a
point. Let’s put it this way Paddy had no problem cutting you off if you turned
into a deadbeat but I never recall any father being cut off for non-payment so
Paddy got his besides no father could take the gaff if exiled from the Dublin
so the social pressure was in play as well), having a few and then go home and
give Mary the rest of the money for the envelopes. But the night in question,
an early May night was a night that the Dublin Grille softball team played
Pete’s Pub as part of the city men’s softball league that played every Thursday
from later April to late September (and later if you made the championship
competition that year) and which played their home games at Young Field. And
Young Field was directly across from the Dublin Grille. A lot of wives in the
neighborhood from what I heard accused Paddy of sponsoring a team just so the
guys, their husbands and on occasion their sons, for the guys still living at
home with mother, did so for the sole purpose of having the team adjourn to his
place after the games. Whether there was any truth to that I do not know.
Now
a lot of fathers in the neighborhood had played some sport, mostly football,
basketball, or baseball for one of the teams at North Adamsville High when they
were in high school so despite the average age of about thirty or so for the
Dublin team (and others as well) they all thought they were still hotshots. And
hotshot of hotshots as the first baseman was John Dillon. And hotshot of
hotshots when they adjourned, win or lose, to the Dublin figured that he had to
buy the boys a few rounds. And that night he did so. But that night was also a
night that John Dillon had bet a guy on Pete’s Pub team some dough that the
Dublin’s would win, some serious dough for a working guy. See John had it all
figured out that the Dublin’s couldn’t lose, couldn’t lose but they did, 11-3
in a blowout, and so unlike Paddy’s liberal credit system John had to pay out
the bet straight-up (no one welshed, no way not in that neighborhood, just like
no one stiffed Paddy on the bill no one could stand the gaff, could stand in
that tightknit circle to be ostracized). And thus John knew, knew deep in his
bones that Mary was going to give him hell about shorting the envelopes up even
more. So John Dillon did the natural thing and drank until closing thus causing
Mary shrieks and Timmy sleepy eyes.
Now
this envelope thing, this what to do with the always too short paycheck in the
Dillon family, and not just the Dillon family, had some history in the
neighborhood (and for all I know maybe still does in some neighborhoods but
with the modern credit and banking systems they must be pretty isolated
examples). I remember seeing my grandmother, who lived over on Young Street a
couple of streets over from Sagamore, do the chore when I was a small boy and
my grandfather, a very sage firefighter for the town, was still alive. She
would have this stack of hand-labelled envelopes, rent, food, Paddy (unless my
grandfather cashed the check at the Dublin), electric, telephone, gas, coal,
and for the car when they had a car.
That
car category, hard as it is to believe today, although the plight of those poor
trying to get the hell out of desolate New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina only
a few years back should give us all pause, was always iffy in the neighborhood
since that was a luxury item even in the golden age of the American automobile
1950s. You would see many a father walking up to the bus stop lunch bucket in
hand to get to work either at the shipyards or going the other way over to
Boston to places like Mr. Dillon’s dock work in Southie. So there they were all
laid out and my grandmother (and Timmy’s mother too from what he said when we
discussed that matter) would start with rent putting five dollars in that
well-worn envelop and work her way in descending order four, three, two, one
dollar. Grandma, according to what she told me when I asked, never went below
one dollar in any envelope. She said rather than suffer the indignity being
dunned needlessly by some bill-collector over that small sum would rather
brazen it out by asking for another week to make some payment. A smart and
dignified woman from the old school. Some weeks only rent and food made the
cut, others she would go back around again in that same cycle until the paper
money gave out.
Of
course on weeks like the one related above when John Dillon made his silly bet,
spend most of the rest on drink for friends, and had nothing left that pile of
envelopes usually did not get pulled out and the bill-collectors would get
nothing but air for their troubles. And so my grandmother, and Mary Dillon (my
mother had a different system without envelopes but it probably can to the same
from hunger basket), counted away their years, kept the bloodhounds from the
door as best they could with husbands who had a taste for the drink (and that
counting away was not confined to the drinkers or those who used the envelop
system for my mother counted just as well and my father did not drink, didn’t
like the taste of liquor).
Of
course that day when Timmy told me the story he left an important part out, a
part involving airing the family’s business in public. Not only did John Dillon
make and pay off that foolish bet, not only did he drink the night away, but he
also started what would be a long term affair with Ester Leahy, Jim Leahy’s
wife. Apparently Jim, who was on active duty over in Germany during one of
those always occurring “hotspot” Cold War minutes in the 1950s, had been
somewhat negligent toward Ester and her needs before he left (her sexual needs
but what did we know then even if the dirty linen had been aired in public as
nobody would use the s-x word to describe Ester’s wanderings).
Rather
than staying at home brooding about it (the Leahy’s lived over on Coe Street) Ester
would go out to the ball field when the Dublin Grille Hawks were playing
sitting in the dank old wooden bleachers that really should have been replaced
and rooting for the team. Rooting especially hard when John Dillon came to bat.
See John and Ester had had something going in high school, something that for
unknown reasons (unknown to me or Timmy) cooled off, and they went their
separate ways and that was that. That was that until John noticed that Ester
was cheering him on, was making eye contact, was showing just a little too much
leg in her short shorts (that what guys said anyway). The night in question
John asked Ester to have some drinks with the boys. And she said yes although
when they got to the Dublin they sat in a booth sort of by themselves. Nothing
happened that night except John got home very late and Mary shrieked. After
that night Mary did not have any trouble making the envelopes work out okay for
maybe a couple of years, as she counted her life away.
Then
one night Matthew, Timmy’s slightly older brother stood outside the Dublin
(Paddy was very strict about not letting minors in his place, not even news
hawkers. Minors, if they wanted to drink on the quiet or get “baptized” into male-bonding
society went to Lucky’s up the Downs). When his father and Ester came out he
started yelling “whoremaster, pig, whore, slut,” and whatever else he could
think of at them right there for all to hear. I didn’t hear anything about it
for a while since Timmy was very sullen and would not talk for a while. The way
I found out, well, really pieced it together was when my own mother started
referring to “John Dillon and his whore” whenever that family’s name came up in
conversation. All I know is that Mary kept putting those envelopes out each
week and sometimes Timmy would go up to the Square in Adamsville proper where
John and Ester finally wound up living and get his father’s paycheck for that
eternal ritual.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938
Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):
Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**************
Founding Conference of the
Fourth International
1938
Resolution On The Situation In Poland
1. The dissolution of the Polish Communist Party will dissipate the last illusions kept by the workers toward the party which in their eyes personified the heroic past of Bolshevism. The traditions of internationalism, born with the party of Louis Varynski; the resultant traditions of class struggle, linked to the names of Rosa Luxemburg and Tyschko these inheritances now pass to the Bolshevik-Leninists.
Although we must take into account a temporary deepening of depression and discouragement in Polish working class quarters, and although we must also take into account the Stalinist efforts to rebuild an apparatus under the control of the Kremlin bureaucracy, there is no doubt of the renewal of the revolutionary movement. The new revolutionary generation will flock together under the banner and on the foundation of the Bolshevik-Leninist program.
2. The entry of our Bolshevik-Leninist comrades in the Bund could produce positive results only in the event of the success of our work within the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The special character of the Bund, which is a Jewish workers’ organization, and hence limited to small scale industries; the atmosphere of ideological petrification and nationalist limitation; the purely indirect contact of the Bund with the political problems of the country, upon the solution of which the Bund has only a minimum of influence all this renders impossible an ideological differentiation within the Bund and assured the failure of the Bolshevik-Leninists.
The conference considers the principal tasks of the Polish section to be:
a) to give up fruitless membership in the Bund;
b) to form an independent organization;
c) to develop a political platform containing the slogans and the tasks which the Polish Bolshevik-Leninists propose for their work in Poland.
3. Considering that the collaboration of the International Secretariat with the Polish section has been inadequate, the conference calls for the tightening up of the organizational links with it.
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