When The World, Our World, Was Young- The Night of The Howl

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

Several years ago when the literary world, and not just the literary world, was commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road  there were a plethora of books and articles about the meaning of it all, about the place of the book, and of the author, in the American literary pantheon. Any number of writers, who knew, or maybe had been influenced by Kerouac chimed in about subjects related to the book from the origins of each individual episode in that “beat” travelogue to the various literary tropes that Jack used in his writing (you know “the holy fool,” the goof, the zen master wisdom king, Catholic notions of salvation, urban rootlessness, perennial wanderlust, and so on). Others took a different tact and spoke to the meaning of the book for their psychological well-being by having emulated the trappings of what Sal/Jack, Dean/Neal, Irwin/Allen, Bull/William did, or did not, do for them on their individual searches for the blue-pink great American West night. Took time to express what being on the open road the first time, smoking their first dope smoke, having their first bouts with loose sex meant. Maybe telling about the travails of the road too, the dusty back road bus stations, sleeping out along the side of some wayward Iowa cornfield waiting for dawn to start again on the hitchhike road, being left off in the middle of nowhere by some trucker who was heading south when you were heading west, the endlessly poor diet either from on the run quick meal foods to truckers’ diner fare. All taken in stride, all missed, all nostalgia missed, wouldn’t it be great to do again except now I have that house, that spouse, those kids, that looming college tuition crisis to content with and so the search for that American night dropped off the radar.               

Others rather than writing about what On The Road meant personally, socially, as literature wrote their own quirky little pieces that reflected the heat from Jack’s sun. One such writer, or rather a guy who liked to write since his main professions in life were elsewhere, was Peter Paul Markin who wrote his own version of the beat travelogue to the tune of his generation, the generation after Kerouac’s “beats,” the generation of ‘68,  the “hippies” to give them a known name if not entirely accurate to describe the whole scene just as “beat” does not reflect that whole of that previous scene, obviously influenced by Kerouac entitled Ancient dreams, dreamed which met with some small success in 2009. In order to commemorate the 5^th anniversary of the publication of that effort, that series of sketches as Markin himself put it I here will give forth to all and sundry on the real meaning or that short work:   

It is hard to not be overcome by the hard fact that Peter Paul Markin’s  (hereafter Markin) efforts to try to find some life lessons in Ancient dreams, dreamed  were driven by sex, or really what to do about the opposite sex in his life. We can all use a primer, any help at all, male or female, in that struggle but one should be first be struck by how early on that male-female thing as the core  of existence played a role in his sketches. For example in the very first sketch Markin goes on and on about a certain Miss Cora from the film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice who twisted a drifter named Frank around her finger so bad he couldn’t see straight, went to his big step-off with a smile after he amateurishly helped her get rid of her low-rent, no go husband and botched it as bad as a man could, no, went to that big step-off after she set him up for the fall all by his lonesome with a half-smile on his face (Jesus, Markin has got me going now with that smile/ half-smile bull he kept yakking about). He absorbed those lessons unto he fifth degree. But get this he, Markin claims, claims as he said this to me on a stack of bibles or something that he had “seen” the movie while in his mother’s womb and tried to warn Frank off Miss Cora. Claims that in 1946 he learned all there was to learn about woman and their wanting habits by just “seeing” that film. Hey, rather than me getting all cranky and upset about being put on by him let Frank tell it his way, or the way he had his narrator tell it since that guy knew Frank before the end and you can decide:

Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman. That frail, frill business a throwback to my spending too much time in childhood reading those serious crime novels by the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler all curled up in some bed at night wondering, wondering in silence whether I had the stuff, the stuff of dreams. Maybe watching too many Saturday matinee 1930s gangster and slick Sam Spade hard-boiled detective movies at the revival Strand Theater where I used to sneak into from the back door up into the balcony.  Wondering watching those films whether I was going to be another joe on that lost highway Hank always talked about, just a guy who kept his nose clean and didn’t make waves. Well I sure as hell did make some waves and have paid the price but that is my story. Today I’ve got Frank’s story to tell, my buddy Frank Dawson who I met in here and was as white a guy as you could ever meet, except when he got on the scent of a woman. At least that is how the newspapers told the story before he told it to me nice and personal, the real story, that perfume scent that drove him over the edge.

See Frank, when it came right down to it was no different from me, maybe that’s why we got along alright in tight quarters, because he wanted to make a big splash, make waves unlike his old man who drained his life away working some dustbowl farm. Well Frank sure as hell did. Except for me it was always about the business first, you know getting a haul from some sweet virgin bank where all the kale, you know dough, was stashed away just waiting for guys like me to pounce on it. Frank whatever larceny he had in his heart though always mixed up that with some woman thing, some scent of a woman thing that will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tied a guy up, a guy like Frank Dawson, a rolling stone from out in the sticks somewhere who headed, or maybe landed is better here in California and really thought he was going to make the garden of Eden out of his small life. Like I said he got twisted so bad, so bad that like some other guys I knew, not good guys like Frank but some mean bracero hombres who would cut you up with some hidden “shiv,” a blade, as easy as look at you, that he went to the chair without a murmur, the electric chair for those not in the know or those not wound up in the love game with a big old knot very tightly squeezing him. That is he would not murmur if there is such a merciful chair in his locale, otherwise whatever way they cut the life out of a guy who has been so twisted up he couldn’t think straight enough to tie his own shoes, or hers.

Here’s the funny part and you know as well as I do that I do not mean funny, laughing funny, Frank went to his great big reward smiling, okay half-smiling, just to have been around that frail, frill, twist, dame, oh hell, you know what I mean. Around her slightly shy, sly, come hither scents, around her, well, just around her. Or maybe just to be done with it, done with the speculation, the knots and all, six-two-and even he would go back for more, plenty more, and still have that smile, ah, half-smile as they led him away. Yah, guys just like Frank. Let me explain what I mean, okay.

 

Frank Dawson had it bad. [But you might as well fill in future signatures, the Peter Paul Markins, the Joshua Lawrence Breslins, guys who I hung around with and had dough dreams too, and every corner boy who ever kicked his heels against some drugstore store front wall, name your name, just kids, mere boys, when they started getting twisted up in knots, girl knots, and a million, more or less, other guys too, just as easily as Frank, real easy]. Yah, Frank had it as bad as a man could have from the minute Miss Cora walked through that café door. (He always called her Miss Cora although she was married, married as could be, I wonder if he called her Miss Cora when they were under the satin sheets naked as jaybirds and her showing him a trick or two to curl his toes, I never asked him though). That café door was the entrance from the back of the house, the door that separated the living quarters from the café, hell greasy spoon, a cup of joe in her hand. Frank said he vividly remembered just an off-hand plain plank door, cheaply made and amateurishly hinged, that spoke of no returns. That no returns is what I said after I heard the story and was writing stuff down like he asked me to when he wanted the world to know what really happened along the way to the big step-off. He never said such stuff, never put an evil, fateful, spin on things even toward the end. Even when he was ready to meet his maker. Damn.

She breezed in, breezed in like some trade winds, all sugary and sultry, Frank thought later when he tried to explain it to his lawyer, to the judge, to the jury, to some newspaper guy they let interview him who balled the whole thing up , yeah, even to the priest, a Catholic priest, Father Riley, although Frank said he was brought up a pre-destined Baptist and didn’t know half the stuff the priest had been talking about like penance and revelation, who visited him every day toward the end, and to me at night when the lights were out and we would talk and he wanted somebody, a guy like him, to know what drove him and why.

Yeah so he would try to explain everything that had happened and how to anyone who would listen about her breezing in, trade winds breezed he said having once in the service been down in Puerto Rico for bomb practice when he was on a Navy ship although this was the wrong coast for that kind of wind but I got what he meant, had had a couple of breezes like that myself but I like I said I didn’t mix business with pleasure. Made that a rule early on when I almost got clipped by a woman who had big wanting habits, I was daffy about, she tried to make me press my luck by trying to pull another robbery of the same place which was insane so she and I could go to Europe, or something like that. It was only by the skin of our necks that we pulled the job off but one of the guys on the job with got sent to the pearly gates when the security guard figured out quicker than the first time that the joint was going to be hit, hit hard and sang his rooty-toot-toot song. After that never again.

So there she was in her white summer frilly V-neck buttoned cotton blouse, white short shorts, tennis or beach ready, maybe just ready for whatever came along, with convenience pockets for a woman’s this-and-that, and showing plenty of well-turned, lightly-tanned bare leg, long legs at first glance, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white, the bandana that is. Yah, she came out of that crooked cheapjack door like some ill-favored Pacific wind now that Frank had the coast right, some Japan Current ready, ready for the next guy out. Jesus even I got weepy when he said that.  

I might as well tell you, just like he told it to me, incessantly told it to me toward the end like I was some father-confessor, and maybe I was, a real father confessor being a few years older, having been here longer, and not talking about penance and salvation but just trying to keep the story straight, before he moved on, it didn’t have to finish up like the way it did. Or start that way either, for that matter. The way it did play out. Not at all. No way. Frank could have just turned around anytime he said but I just took that as so much wind talking, or maybe some too late regret. I know and you now will know how I know that he would call out her name at night, maybe a two o’clock when it was real dark and the turnkey was off in the guard room sleeping some drunk off, call out her name and, giggly like a schoolboy, telling her to stop this and stop that, giggly like I said, and then called her sweetly, like she was some girl next door virgin all pure and all, his sweet baby whore. Yeah, now that I think about it he was blowing wind, maybe that trade wind stuff all sugary and sultry. Sure there are always choices, for some people. Unless you had some Catholic/Calvinist/Shiva whirl pre-destination Mandela wheel working your fates, working your fates into damn overdrive like our boy Frank.

Listen up a little and see if you think Frank was just blowing smoke, or something. He was just a half-hobo, maybe less, bumming around and stumbling up and down the West Coast, too itchy to settle down after four years of hard World War II Pacific battle fights on bloody atolls, on bloody coral reefs, and knee-deep bloody islands with names even he couldn’t remember, or want to remember after Cora came on the horizon.  (A lot of guys after the war had a hard time settling down just drifting around, coming out here from the East looking for something, finding land’s end and I don’t know surf boards, or hot rods, or drug smuggling I don’t know since I was born here and like I said my trade was robbing banks where the dough was, that was my kicks) He was just stumbling, like he said, from one half-ass mechanic’s job (a skill he had picked in the Marines working on everything from a bicycle to a battleship he would laugh) in some flop garage for a week here when the regular guy was on vacation or something, drifting, another city day laborer’s job shoveling something there, and picking fruits, hot sun fruits, maybe vegetables depending on the crop rotation, like some bracero whenever things got really tough, or the hobo jungle welcome ran out, ran out with the running out of wines and stubbed cigarette butts. He mentioned something about freight yard tramp knives, and cuts and wounds. Tough, no holds barred stuff, once tramp, bum, hobo solidarities broke down, and that easy and often. Frank just kind of flashed by me that part of the story because he was in a hurry for me to get it straight about him and Cora and the hobo jungle stuff was just stuff, and so much train smoke and maybe a bad dream.

Guys would show up later at trial trying to get in on the action and claim that they saw Frank cut a guy, maybe more than one guy, you never know with winos and jack-rollers, and leave him, or them, for dead but the deeds never involved women so I agreed with Frank they were just conning for something. The judge never let them get too far before tossing them off the stand. The prosecution was just pig-piling the evidence to see what would stick with the jury to show Frank was some hardened criminal from the get-go not a love-bit guy or just another hard luck story out of the Great Depression times.       

 

Hell, the way he was going, after some bracero fruit days with some bad hombre gringo ass bosses standing over his sweat, the “skids” in Los Angeles, down by the tar pits and just off the old Southern Pacific line, were looking good, a good rest up. Real good after fourteen days running in some Imperial Valley fruit fields so he started heading south, south by the sea somewhere near Paseo Robles to catch some ocean sniff, and have himself washed clean by loud ocean sounds so he didn’t have to listen to the sounds coming from his head about getting off the road.

Here is where luck is kind of funny though, and maybe this is a place where it is laughing funny, because, for once, he had a few bucks, a few bracero fruit bucks, stuck in his socks. He was hungry, maybe not really food hungry, but that would do at the time for a reason, and once he hit the coast highway this Bayview Diner was staring him right in the face after the last truck ride had let him off a few hundred yards up the road. Some fugitive barbecued beef smell, or maybe strong onions getting a workout over some griddled stove top, reached him and turned him away from the gas station fill-up counter where he had planned, carefully planning to husband his dough to make the city of angels, to just fill up with a Coke and a moon pie. Instead he just grabbed a pack of Luckies, unfiltered cigarettes but a step up from the rolling Bull Durham that he had survived on before he got paid off on that bracero labor job and headed toward the café. That smell just got the better of him.  So he walked into that Bayview Diner, walked in with his eyes wide open. And then she walked through the damn cheapjack door.                 

She may have been just another blonde, a very blonde frail, maybe with a slight pair of round heels and heading toward a robust thirty or so just serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint along with her husband as he found out a few minutes later, too late, but from second one when his eyes eyed her she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. Frank femme fatale, fatal. Of course between eyeing, pillow-talk dreaming, and scheming up some “come on” line once she had her hooks into him, which was about thirty seconds after he laid eyes on her, he forgot, foolishly forgot, rule number one of the road, or even of being a man in go-go post-war America.

What he should have asked, and had in the past when he wasn’t this dame-addled, was a dish like this doing serving them off the arm in some rundown roadside café out in pacific coast Podunk, really just south of Santa Barbara, when she could be sunning herself in some be-bop daddy paid-up hillside bungalow or scratching some other dame’s eyes out to get a plum role in a B Hollywood film courtesy of some lonely rich producer. Never for a minute, not even during those thirty seconds that he wasn’t hooked did he figure, like some cagey guy would figure, that she had a story hanging behind that bandana hair.      

And she did. Story number one was the “serve them off the platter” hubby, Manny, short-ordering behind the grill in that tramp cafe. The guy who, to save dough, bought some wood down at the lumber yard and put up that crooked door that she had come through on first sight and who spent half his waking hours trying to figure how to short-change somebody, including his Cora. Wouldn’t buy her the trinkets that every woman loved so she, since he could hardly add for all his cheapness and she handled the books, just took what she wanted when she wanted it and he was never the wiser. (Guys, including Manny were like that with Cora, will always be like that with the Coras of the world so Frank wasn’t alone he just got skirt-addled more than most guys who maybe had better radar to avoid that trouble coming through the door.)  Story number two, and go figure,  said hubby didn’t care one way or the other about what she did, or didn’t do, as long as he had her around as a trophy to show the boys on card-playing in the back of the diner living rooms and Kiwanis Club down the road drunk as a skunk nights. She loathed Manny at those times, times when to get a laugh for the boys, maybe inflame them too, he would paw her like some dumb pet. Story number three was that she had many round-heeled down-at- the-heels stories too long to tell Frank before hubby came along to pick her out of some Los Angles arroyo gutter. Doped up to stop the pain of her life, tricked up to pay for the dope, and none too choosey about who did what to her as long as they brought a needle and a spoon. And they did until she crossed some low-life in Westminster and he threw her out to beg for herself. Story number four, the one that would in the end sent our boy Frankie smiling, sorry half-smiling, to his fate was she hated hubby, hell-broth murder hated her husband, and would be “grateful” in the right way to some guy who had the chutzpah to take her out of this misery. But those stories all came later, later when she didn’t need to use those hooks she had in him, didn’t need to use them at all.

Markin Interlude One:  “I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled, yelled from some womblike place, at the screen in the old Orpheum Theater up in Adamsville Square when my mother was “carrying” me once I saw her coming through that door for him, for Frank,  to get the hell out of there at that moment. I saw that come hither look that is embedded in their womanly DNA she threw at him and I saw him buckle, buckle under foot, with his eyes all glued to her walk also embedded in his manly DNA (what did we know of such things, embedded or not, then Frank just called it a breeze, some kind of breeze like he could have stopped the thing in its tracks).This dame was poison, no question. Frank stop looking at those long paid for legs and languid rented eyes for a minute, forget about ocean breezes or desert-addled and get the hell out of there to some safe hobo jungle. Hell, just walk out the diner, café or whatever it is door, run if you have to, get your hitchhike great blue-pink American West thumb out and head for it. There’s a hobo jungle just down the road near Santa Monica, get going, and tonight grab some stolid, fetid stews, and peace.”

But here is where fate works against some guys, hell, most guys. She turned around to do some dish rack thing or other with her lipstick-smeared coffee cup and then, slowly, turned back to look at Frank with those languid  eyes, what color who knows, it was the look not the color that doomed Frank and asked in a soft, kittenish voice  “Got a cigarette for a fresh out girl?” And wouldn’t you know, wouldn’t you just know that Frank, “flush” with bracero dough had bought that  fresh deck of Luckies at the cigarette machine out at that filling station just adjacent to the diner and they were sitting right in his left shirt pocket for the entire world to see. For her to see. And wouldn’t you know too that Frank could see plain as day, plain as a man could see if he wanted to see, that bulging out of one of the convenient pockets of those long-legged white short shorts was the sharply-etched outline of a package of cigarettes. Yah, still he plucked a Lucky cigarette into her waiting lips, kind of gently, gently for rough-edged Frank, lit her up, and dated her up with his eyes. Gone, long-gone daddy gone, except for two in the morning murmur dreams, and that final half-smile.   

Peter Paul Markin Interlude Two: “I screamed again, some vapid man-child scream, some kicking at the womb thump too, but do you think Frank would listen, no not our boy. You don’t need to know all the details if you are over twenty-one, hell over twelve and can keep a secret. She used her sex every way she could, and a few ways that Frank, not unfamiliar with the world’s whorehouses in lonely ports-of-call, was kind of shocked at, but only shocked. He was hooked, hook, line and sinker. Frank knew, knew what she was, knew what she wanted, and knew what he wanted so there was no crying there.”

Here is what is strange, and while I am writing this even I think it is strange. She told Frank her whole life’s story, the too familiar father crawling up into her barely teenage bed, the run-aways, returns, girls’ JD homes, some more streets, a few whorehouse tricks, some street tricks, a little luck with a Hollywood producer until his wife, who controlled the dough, put a stop to it, some drugs, some L.A. gutters, and then a couple of years back some refuge from those mean streets via husband Manny’s Bayview Diner.

Even with all of that Frank still believed, believed somewhere from deep in his recessed mind, somewhere in his Oklahoma kid mud shack mind, that Cora was virginal. Some Madonna of the streets. Toward the end it was her scent, some slightly lilac scent, some lilac scent that combined with steamed vegetable sweat combined with sexual animal sweat combined with ancient Lydia MacAdams' bath soap fresh junior high school “crush” sweat drove him over the edge. Drove him to that smiling chair.            

He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end. Christ, just like his whole young stupid gummed up life he had to play with fire. And from that minute, the lit cigarette minute, although really from the minute that Frank saw those long legs protruding from those white shorts Manny was done for. And once Frank had sealed his fate (and hers too) on that midnight  roaring rock sandy beach night when the ocean depths smashing against the shore drowned out the sound of their passion everybody from Monterrey to Santa Monica knew he was done for, or said they knew the score after the fact. Everybody who came within a mile of the Bayview Diner anyway. Everybody except Manny and maybe somewhere in his cheap- jack little heart he too knew he was done for when Cora, in her own sensible Cora way, persuaded him that he needed an A-One grease monkey to run the filling station.  

The way Frank told it even I knew, knew that everybody had to have figured things out. Any itinerant trucker who went out of his way to take the Coast highway with his goods on board  in order to get a full glance at Cora and try his “line” on her knew it (Manny encouraged it, he said it was good for business and harmless, and maybe it was with them). Knew it the minute he sat at his favorite corner stool and saw a monkey wrench-toting Frank come in for something and watch the Frank-Cora- and cigar-chomping Manny in his whites behind the grille dance play out. He kept his eyes and his line to himself on that run.

Damn, any dated –up teen-age joy-riding kids up from Malibu looking for the perfect wave at Roaring Rock (and maybe some midnight passion drowned out by the ocean roar too) knew the minute they came in and smelled that lilac something coming like something out of the eden garden from Cora. The girls knowing instinctively that Cora lilac scent was meant for more than some half-drunk old short order cook. One girl, with a friendly look Frank’s way, and maybe with her own Frank Roaring Rock thoughts, asked Cora, while ordering a Coke and hamburger, whether she was married to him. And her date, blushing, not for what his date had just said but because he, fully under the lilac scent karma, wished that he was alone just then so he could take a shot at Cora himself.  

Hell even the California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop who cruised the coast near the diner (and had his own not so secret eyes and desires for Cora) knew once Frank was installed  in one of the rooms over the garage that things didn’t add up, add up to Manny’s benefit. And, more importantly, that if anything happened, anything at all, anything requiring more than a Band-Aid, to one Manny DeVito for the next fifty years the cops knew the first door to knock at.

Look I am strictly a money guy, going after loot wherever I could and so I never after that one time early on got messed up with some screwy dame on a caper. That was later, spending money time later. And maybe if I had gotten a whiff of that perfume things might have been different in my mind too but I told Frank right out why didn’t he and Cora take out a big old .44 in the middle of the diner and just shoot Manny straight out, and maybe while the cop was present too.  Then he /they could have at least put up an insanity or crime of passion defense. Not our boy though, no he had to play the angles, play Cora’s evil game.

I am almost too embarrassed, almost too embarrassed since Frank is not here to defend himself, maybe he could have given us an inkling of what he was thinking about at the time, if he was thinking of anything but those pillow dreams, to detail how badly these two amateurs gummed up the job every which way. (I already know what she, Miss Cora, was thinking, had her sized up the minute Frank mentioned who he was and who she was, mentioned those white shorts and that short order husband). Yeah, they gummed it up so that even a detective novel writer would turn blush red with shame. Yeah somebody like Dashiell Hammett, a guy who knew how to plot out the murders, how to raise holy hell in Red Harvest times would blush to think that they could do the “perfect” murder with their skinny sense of how to do criminal things. Hell, trying poison and the off the cliff with the car routine like a thousand guys have done before-and always got caught. The old brakes giving out and over the hill crashing and Frank an A-One mechanic even some silly skirt-addled highway motorcycle cop could figure given some time.      

I tried to tell Frank this but he was only half-listening, only wanted to tell his story mostly but I guess I am trying to make sense of the deal for anybody who might read this, maybe wise you up if you are thinking about doing away some Manny or other. Murder is, from guys that I know who specialize in such things, make a business out of taking guys out for dough, an art form and nothing for amateurs to mess around with. So they tried one thing, something with poison taken over a long time that couldn’t be traced but Manny was such a lush it didn’t take. Then another, they tried to get him drunk and drown him off of Roaring Rock but that night around two in the morning about sixty kids from down around Malibu decided to have a cook-out after their prom night. In the end they planned and wound up with the old gag that the cops have been wise to since about 1906, got him drunk, conked him, threw him in the car, drove to the Roaring Rock and pushed him and the car over the cliff after Frank messed with the brakes. Jesus, double jesus.  

Peter Paul Interlude Three: “Frank, one last time, get out, get on the road, this ain’t gonna work. That poison thing was crazy. That drunk at the ocean thing was worst. The cops wouldn’t even have had to bother to knock at your door. Frank on this latest caper she’s setting you up. Think-who drove the car, who got the whiskey at the liquor store down the road, who knew how to trip the brake lines, and who was big enough to carry Manny?  And she sitting at home waiting for her husband and his mechanic to come home after a toot. Why don’t you just paint a big target on your chest and be done with it. She just wants the diner for her own small dreams. You don’t count. Hell, I ain’t no squealer but she is probably talking to that skirt-crazy (her skirt) cop right now. Get out I say, get out.”  

If you want the details, want to see how she framed him but good and walked away with half the California legal system holding the door open for her, just look them up in the 1946 fall editions of the Los Angeles Gazette. They covered the story big time, and the trial too. See how on the stand she lied her ass off about the child she was carrying being Manny’s and what was she to do now with a child to bring up alone. Lied about how Frank made advances toward her which she rebuffed. Even had a couple of Manny’s drinking buddies get on the stand and tell how Manny encouraged them to go so far with Miss Cora, pinching her behind, maybe a kiss on the cheek but Manny made very clear no further. And Manny told them he told Frank that same thing. And the most beautiful part of the whole thing, the thing that made Miss Cora a real femme fatale in my book was that the whole affair at her urging was kept very secret no matter what customers, the good old boy truckers, the young college kids might think so there was not tangible evidence to proof they had been together all those weeks and months. That’s just the details though. I can give you the finish, the last moments now and save your eyes, maybe. Frank, yah, Frank was just kind of smiling that smile, what did I call it, half-smile, all the way to the end. Do you need to know more?      

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The Anti-War Movement From War And The International   

 

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, voices like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs, were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space. Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war.                   

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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CHAPTER XI

THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH

AT THE close of the last century a heated controversy arose in Germany over the question, What effect does the industrialization of a country produce upon its military power? The reactionary agrarian politicians and writers, like Sehring, Karl Ballod, Georg Hansen and others, argued that the rapid increase of the city populations at the expense of the rural districts positively undermined the foundation of the Empire’s military power, and they of course drew from it their patriotic inferences in the spirit of agrarian protectionism. On the other hand Lujo Brentano and his school championed an exactly opposite point of view. They pointed out that economic industrialism not only opened up new financial and technical resources, but also developed in the proletariat the vital force capable of making effective use of all the new means of defence and attack. He quotes authorititative opinions to show that even in the earlier experiences of 1870-71 “the regiments from the preponderatingly industrial district of Westphalia were among the very best.” And he explains this fact quite correctly by the far greater ability of the industrial worker to find his bearings in new conditions and to adjust himself to them.

Now which side is right? The present War proves that Germany, which had made the greatest progress along capitalist lines, was able to develop the highest military power. And likewise in regard to all the countries drawn into it the War proves what colossal and yet competent energy the working class develops in its warlike activities. It is not the passive horde-like heroism of the peasant masses, welded together by fatalistic submissiveness and religious superstition. It is the individualized spirit of sacrifice, born of inner impulse, ranging itself under the banner of the Idea.
But the Idea under whose banner the armed proletariat now stands, is the Idea of war-crafty nationalism, the deadly enemy of the true interests of the workers. The ruling class showed themselves strong enough to force their Idea upon the proletariat, and the proletariat, in the consciousness of what they were doing, put their intelligence, their enthusiasm and their courage at the service of their class foes. In this fact is sealed the terrible defeat of Socialism. But it also opens up all possibilities for a final victory of Socialism. There can be no doubt that a class which is capable of displaying such steadfastness and self-sacrifice in a war it considers a ‘just” one, will be still more capable of developing these qualities when the march of events will give it tasks really worthy of the historical mission of this class.
The epoch of the awakening, the enlightenment and the organization of the working-class revealed that it has tremendous resources of revolutionary energy which found no adequate employment in the daily struggle. The Social Democracy summoned the upper strata of the proletariat into the field, but it also checked their revolutionary energy by adopting the tactics it was obliged to adopt, the tactics of waiting, the strategy of letting your opponent exhaust himself. The character of this period was so dull and reactionary that it did not allow the Social Democracy the opportunity to give the proletariat tasks that would have engaged their whole spirit of sacrifice.
Imperialism is now giving them such tasks. And imperialism attained its object by pushing the proletariat into a position of “national defence”, which, to the workers, meant the defence of all their hands had created, not only the immense wealth of the nation, but also their own class organizations, their treasuries, their press, in short, everything they had unwearingly, painfully struggled for and attained in the course of several decades. Imperialism violently threw society off its balance, destroyed the sluice-gates built by the Social Democracy to regulate the current of proletarian revolutionary energy, and guided this current into its own bed.
But this terrific historical experiment, which at one blow broke the back of the Socialist International, carries a deadly danger for bourgeois society itself. The hammer is wrenched out of the worker’s hand and a gun put into his hand instead. And the worker, who has been tied down by the machinery of the capitalist system, is suddenly torn from his usual setting and taught to place the aims of society above happiness at home and even life itself.
With the weapon in his hand that he himself has forged, the worker is put in a position where the political destiny of the state is directly dependent upon him. Those who exploited and scorned him in normal times, now flatter him and toady to him. At the same time he comes into initmate contact with the cannon, which Lassalle calls one of the most important ingredients of all constitutions. [42] He crosses the border, takes part in forceful requisitions, and helps in the transfer of cities from one party to another. Changes are taking place such as the present generation has never before seen.
Even though the vanguard of the working class knew in theory that Might is the mother of Right, still their political thinking was completely permeated by the spirit of opportunism, of adaptation to bourgeois legalism. Now they are learning from the teachings of facts to despise this legalism and tear it down. Now dynamic forces are replacing the static forces in their psychology. The great guns are hammering into their heads the idea ihat if it is impossible to get around an obstacle, it is possible to destroy it. Almost the entire adult male population is going through this school of war, so terrible in its realism, a school which is forming a new human type. Iron necessity is now shaking its fist at all the rules of bourgeois society, at its laws, its morality, its religion. “Necessity knows no law”, said the German Chancellor on August 4th. Monarchs walk about in public places calling each other liars in the language of marketwomen; governments repudiate their solemnly acknowledged obligations; and the national church ties its God to the national cannon like a criminal condemned to hard labour. Is it not clear that all these circumstances must bring about a profound change in the mental attitude of the working class, curing them radically of the hypnosis of legality in which a period of political stagnation expresses itself?
The possessing classes, to their consternation, will soon have to recognize this change. A working class that has been through the school of war will feel the need of using the language of force as soon as the first serious obstacle faces them within their own country. “Necessity knows no law”, the workers will cry when the attempt is made to hold them back at the command of bourgeois law. And poverty, the terrible poverty that prevails during this War and will continue after its close, will be of a sort to force the masses to violate many a bourgeois law. The general economic exhaustion in Europe will affect the proletariat most immediately and most severely. The state’s material resources will be depleted by the War, and the possibility of satisfying the demands of the working masses will be very limited. This must lead to profound political conflicts, which, ever widening and deepening, may take on the character of a social revolution, the progress and outcome of which no one, of course, can now foresee.
On the other hand, the War with its armies of millions, and its hellish weapons of destruction can exhaust not only society’s resources but also the moral forces of the proletariat. If it does not meet inner resistance, this War may last for several years more, with changing fortunes on both sides, until the chief belligerents are completely exhausted. But then the whole fighting energy of the international proletariat, brought to the surface by the bloody conspiracy of imperialism, will be completely consumed in the horrible work of mutual annihilation. The outcome would be that our entire civilization would be set back by many decades. A peace resulting not from the will of the awakened peoples but from the mutual exhaustion of the belligerents, would be like the peace with which the Balkan War was concluded; it would be a Bucharest Peace extended to the whole of Europe.
Such a peace would seek to patch up anew the contradictions, antagonisms and deficiencies that have led to the present War. And with many other things, the Socialist work of two generations would vanish in a sea of blood without leaving a trace behind.
Which of the two prospects is the more probable? This cannot possibly be theoretically determined in advance. The issue depends entirely upon the activity of the vital forces of society – above all upon the revolutionary Social Democracy.
“Immediate cessation of the War” is the watchword under which the Social Democracy can reassemble its scattered ranks, both within the national parties, and in the whole International. The proletariat cannot make its will to peace dependent upon the strategic considerations of the general staffs. On the contrary, it must oppose its desire for peace to these military considerations. What the warring governments call a struggle for national self-preservation is in reality a mutual national annihilation. Real national self-defence now consists in the struggle for peace.
Such a struggle for peace means for us not only a fight to save humanity’s material and cultural possessions from further insane destruction. It is for us primarily a fight to preserve the revolutionary energy of the proletariat.
To assemble the ranks of the proletariat in a fight for peace means again to place the forces of revolutionary Socialism against raging tearing imperialism on the whole front.
The conditions upon which peace should be concluded – the peace of the people themselves, and not the reconciliation of the diplomats – must be the same for the whole International.

NO REPARATIONS

THE RIGHT TO EVERY NATION TO SELF-DETERMINATION.

THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE – WITHOUT MONARCHIES, WITHOUT STANDING ARMIES, WITHOUT RULING FEUDAL CASTES, WITHOUT SECRET DIPLOMACY.

The peace agitation, which must be conducted simultaneously with all the means now at the disposal of the Social Democracy as well as those which, with a good will, it could acquire, will not only tear the workers out of their nationalistic hypnosis; it will also do the aving work of inner pun ficati on in the present official parties of the proletariat. The national Revisionists and the Socialist patriots in the Second International, who have been exploiting the influence that Socialism has acquired over the working masses for national militaristic aims, must be thrust back into the camp of the enemies of the working class by uncompromising revolutionary agitation for peace.

The revolutionary Social Democracy need not fear that it will be isolated, now less than ever. The War is making the most terrible agitation against itself. Every day that the War lasts will bring new masses of people to our banner, if it is an honest banner of peace and democracy. The surest way by which the Social Democracy can isolate the militaristic reaction in Europe and force it to take the offensive is by the slogan of Peace.
We revolutionary Marxists have no cause for despair. The epoch into which we are now entering will be our epoch. Marxism is not defeated. On the contrary: the roar of the cannon in every quarter of Europe heralds the theoretical victory of Marxism. What is left now of the hopes for a “peaceful” development, for a mitigation of capitalist class contrasts, for a regular systematic growth into Socialism?
The Reformists on principle, who hoped to solve the social question by the way of tariff treaties, consumers’ leagues, and the parliamentary cooperation of the Social Democracy with the bourgeois parties, are now all resting their hopes on the victory of the “national” arms. They are expecting the possessing classes to show greater willingness to meet the needs of the proletariat because it has proved its patriotism.
This expectation would be positively foolish if there were not hidden behind it another, far less “idealistic” hope – that a military victory would create for the bourgeoisie a broader imperialistic field for enriching itself at the expense of the bourgeoisie of other countnes, and would enable it to share some of the booty with its own proletariat at the expense of the proletariat of other countries. Socialist reformism has actually turned into Sociaitst imperiaitsm.
We have witnessed with our own eyes the pathetic bankruptcy of the hopes of a peaceful growth of proletarian well-being. The Reformists, contrary to their own doctrine, were forced to resort to violence in order to find their way out of the political cul-de-sac – not the violence of the peoples against the ruling classes, but the military violence of the ruling classes against other nations. Since 1848 the German bourgeoisie has renounced revolutionary methods for solving its problems. They left it to the feudal class to solve their own bourgeois questions by the method of war. Social development confronted the proletariat with the problem of revolution. Evading revolution, the Reformists were forced to go through the same process of historical decline as the liberal bourgeoisie. The Reformists also left it to their ruling classes, that is the same feudal caste, to solve the proletarian problem by the method of war. But this ends the analogy.
The creation of national states did really solve the bourgeois problem for a long period, and the long series of colonial wars coming after 1871 finished off the period by broadening the arena of the development of the capitalist forces. The period of colonial wars carried on by the national states led to the present War of the national states – for colonies. After all the backward portions of the earth had been divided among the capitalist states, there was nothing left for these states except to grab the colonies from each other.

“People ought not to be talking,” says Georg Irmer, “as though it were a settled thing that the German nation has come too late for rivalry for world economy and world dominion that the world has already been divided. Has not the earth been divided over and over again in all epochs of history?”

But a redivision of colonies among the capitalist countries does no enlarge the foundation of capitalist development. One country’s gain means another country’s loss. Accordingly a temporary mitigation of class-conflicts in Germany could only be achieved by an extreme intensification of the class struggle in France and in England, and vice versa. An additional factor of decisive importance is the capitalist awakening in the colonies themselves, to which the presentWar must give a mighty impetus. Whatever the outcome of this War, the imperialistic basis for European capitalism will not be broadened, but narrowed. The War, therefore, does not solve the labour question on an imperialistic basis, but, on the contrary, it intensifies it, putting this alternative to the capitalist world: Permanent War or Permanent Revolution.

If the War got beyond the control of the Second International, its immediate consequences will get beyond the control of the bourgeoisie of the entire world. We revolutionary Socialists did not want the War. But we do not fear it. We do not give in to despair over the fact that the War broke up the International. History has already disposed of the International.
The revolutionary epoch will create new forms of organization out of the inexhaustible resources of proletarian Socialism, new forms that will be equal to the greatness of the new tasks. To this work we will apply ourselves at once, amid the mad roaring of the machine-guns, the crashing of cathedrals, and the patriotic howling of the capitalist jackals. We will keep our clear minds amid this hellish death music, our undimmed vision. We feel ourselves to be the only creative force of the future. Already there are many of us, more than it may seem. Tomorrow there will be more of us than today. And the day after tomorrow, millions will rise up under ourbanner, millions who even now, sixty seven years after the Communist Manifesto, have nothing to lose but their chains.

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-Italian Poets   

Vigil

by Giuseppe Ungaretti

A whole night long
crouched close
to one of our men
butchered
with his clenched
mouth
grinning at the full moon
with the congestion
of his hands
thrust right
into my silence
I've written
letters filled with love

I have never been
so
coupled to life

From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- Lessons In The History Of Class Struggle 

The Big Strike: A Journalist Describes the 1934 San Francisco Strike

by Mike Quin

On May 9, 1934, International Labor Association (ILA) leaders called a strike of all dockworkers on the West Coast who were joined a few days later by seamen and teamsters, effectively stopping all shipping from San Diego to Seattle. San Francisco would become the scene of the strike’s most dramatic and widely known incidents, aptly described in one headline as “War in San Francisco!” On Bloody Thursday, July 5, 1934, two strikers were killed by the San Francisco police. A mass funeral march of tens of thousands of strikers and sympathizers four days later and the general strike that followed effectively shut down both San Francisco and Oakland (across the bay). Mike Quin, a self-described “rank-and-file journalist,” offered a sympathetic picture of the striking workers actions in The Big Strike, a collection of his published articles. Here, Quin described the events leading up to Bloody Thursday, and what happened in its aftermath.

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CHAPTER I “General Strike, A Camera-eye View” In San Francisco, July 1934, the laboring population laid down its tools in a General Strike. An uncanny quiet settled over the acres of buildings. For all practical purposes not a wheel moved nor a lever budged. The din of commercial activity gave way to a murmur of voices in the streets. Along the Embarcadero and in front of the National Guard Armory self-conscious-looking schoolboys wearing steel helmets and ill-fitting khaki uniforms paced up and down fingering heavy automatic rifles. Highways leading out of the city bore a continuous stream of expensive cars carrying well-to-do refugees to distant sanctuaries. They were fleeing from bombs and rioting mobs. There were no bombs. There were no rioting mobs. These existed only in the pages of the daily press which characterized the event as a Bolshevik revolution, and conjured up visions of tempestuous throngs sweeping, torch in hand, through the city streets. Telephone and telegraph wires burned like an inflamed nervous system. Unconvinced pedestrians bought copies of newspapers whose headlines exceeded the signing of the Armistice. These papers declared that the city was in control of communists who were threatening bloodshed and ruin. In residential sections some uninformed citizens were frightened out of their wits; they barricaded their doors and trembled in expectation of chaos. But the people, in general, were unimpressed by headlines that screamed of communist violence. They knew better. They could look around and see for themselves that the General Strike was disciplined and orderly. Mobs and bombs had no part in it. True, the city during preceding days had been shaken by violent industrial warfare. Major battles had been fought in the streets and innocent spectators as well as unarmed strikers had gone down before police gunfire. A general maritime strike had paralyzed all shipping up and down the Pacific Coast for more than two months; the merchant marine was tied up in the harbors like so many dead whales. The town bristled with bayonets and hospitals were jammed with the wounded. Clouds of tear and nausea gas had swept through business districts, penetrating windows and driving panic-stricken throngs from the buildings. Pedestrians running for shelter had been winged by stray bullets and crumpled to the pavement. The sounds of shouting, running crowds, pistol shots, screams, breaking glass, and wailing sirens had filled the streets. All these things had happened before the General Strike; and still more violence was to come in the form of vigilante and police raids— buildings were to be wrecked and skulls fractured. It is not surprising that sections of the population expected almost anything to happen. As a matter of fact, the streets were orderly and unalarming. No streetcars were running. Gasoline stations were closed and few automobiles were abroad. Children and adults on roller skates swayed up and down Market Street. Workingmen were out in holiday clothes, with celluloid buttons glistening on every coat lapel. Here and there a truck was tipped over and its merchandise scattered on the streets when business houses sought to move their goods with scab drivers; but these incidents were too few to make much impression on the population as a whole. Saloons and liquor stores were closed “By order of the General Strike Committee. ” Hastily scribbled signs and placards in the windows of most small shops and restaurants read: “CLOSED TILL THE BOYS WIN”; or WE’RE WITH YOU FELLOWS.. STICK IT OUT; or CLOSED TILL THE LONG SHOREMEN GET THEIR HIRING HALL; or “CLOSED. ILA SYMPATHIZER. ” Larger establishments simply stripped their windows of merchandise and pulled down the shades. The big department stores remained open but unpatronized. Nineteen restaurants were allowed to remain open “By permission of the General Strike Committee. ”Each had its long line of waiting customers. Outside the Labor Temple the street swarmed with union men anxiously awaiting snatches of news from within, where the General Strike Committee was in session. All was not perfect harmony inside. Behind those doors two opposing points of view were battling it out within the committee. The newer and more determined union elements viewed the strike with confidence; they wanted to organize essential public services under control of the strikers in order that undue hardships be spared the public, so that the strike could hold out till the unions won their demands. The older, more conservative union elements viewed the strike with alarm and were making every effort to loosen its grip. Every few hours the newspapers issued blazing extras announcing: BIG STRIKE BROKEN! The strike was not over, and there was no reason to suppose it was. But these extras served to create restlessness among the strikers, confusion among the general public, and a weakening of the solidarity behind the strike. Demands of the striking unions were ignored in the vast chorus of prominent voices declaring that Moscow was trying to seize San Francisco as a colonial possession. Gangs of vigilantes roamed the city smashing halls and homes where communists were known or supposed to gather. Over 450 persons were packed into a city jail built to accommodate 150. This is a surprising spectacle for a civilized American city to present. There must be some logical explanation for it, even if the events themselves are a little mad. General strikes on a small or partial scale had occurred before. In Seattle, just before the World War, a general strike of considerable proportions took place. But none of these strikes was on a scale with what happened in San Francisco. We shall go back and follow the development of these happenings from the germinating seed to the full-grown tree heavily laden with the fruits of turmoil. . . . . Ever since the first day of the walkout the strikers had paraded their giant picket line of 1,000 men up and down the sidewalk in front of the docks. The orderly procession marching behind the American flag was a daily spectacle and went a long way toward impressing everyone who saw it with the discipline, unity, and strength of the union men. True, there was an ordinance in San Francisco prohibiting picketing. But it was generally regarded by authorities as impractical and had never been enforced stringently, especially in major strikes like this one. Throughout the whole period of the maritime strike to date no effort had been made to enforce it, nor had anyone given the slightest indication that such an effort would be made [ILA President Joseph]. Yet at precisely the same time that Ryan and other officials were putting through their settlement, the police, without any warning, decided to enforce the defunct and almost forgotten anti-picketing law. When the giant picket line reached Pier 18 and swung over to the sidewalk to continue their customary parade, they were met by a heavy detail of police on foot and horse who sought to drive them away from the pavement. John Schomacher,, who was leading the parade, was the first to meet the onslaught and he answered back with his fists. He was a big man, over six feet tall, and gave a good account of himself, pulling two policemen from their horses before he was beaten to the ground. The police applied their clubs freely and the pickets responded with their knuckles. In an instant the Embarcadero was converted into a battlefield. Huge reserves of police appeared suddenly and began flailing with their clubs. The strikers stood their ground, felled officers with their fists and pulled them from their horses. When the police drew back and released a barrage of tear gas, the strikers retreated across the street to a vacant lot and replied with a hail of bricks. The battle spread over a wide area, bricks flying, fists thwacking, clubs swinging, and tear-gas shells whistling through the air. As the men drew back to their union hall on Mission and Steuart streets, the police opened fire, shooting one man in the back and wounding many. A few minutes after the incident the Hearst Cell-Bulletin was out on the streets with a very generalized description of the clash and an account of how Harry Bridges, who was leading the parade, was clubbed down by police. Harry Bridges was nowhere near the scene. He is a slightly built man and no one could mistake the towering bulk of Schomacher for Bridges. Later on the Hearst San Francisco Examiner reported: Gas bombs exploded; a sawed-off shotgun roared; clubs smashed against heads, and cobblestones flew along San Francisco’s waterfront yesterday as police and strikers clashed in the fiercest battle yet produced by the coast-wide maritime strike. The Chronicle said: In a terrific surge of violence climaxing the twentieth day of the longshoremen’s strike, nearly 1,000 striking stevedores staged a bloody pitched battle with police yesterday afternoon on the San Francisco waterfront. Casualties were many as officers and strikers battled savagely at close quarters. With the strikers still in a threatening and ugly mood, Chief Quinn took personal command at the waterfront last night. His first move was to issue this significant order: “Henceforth all pickets must remain on the town side of the Embarcadero, across the width of the Embarcadero from the piers. ” Under command of Lieutenant Joseph Mignola,, a squad of police armed with sawed-off shotguns fired into the ranks of a group of strikers who were attempting to cover their advance on Pier 18 under a barrage of bricks and cobblestones.... Six asserted participants in the fracas were arrested on charges of “participating in a riot.” ....Splotches of blood appeared on scores of faces. Police suffered heavily from the barrage of bricks and stones. Their own clubs wreaked equal damage.... Lieutenant Mignola gave his men orders to fire. The officers drew pistols and fired over the heads of the strikers. When the barrage continued they leveled their sawed-off shotguns and fired directly into the line. Lieutenant Mignola afterward stated to the press: “If the strikers come back for more, you’ll find some of them in the morgue after the next time.” The police were on duty and instructed to stop all rioting. These strikers —more than 600 of them, I would say—began a rush on Pier 20. They began throwing bricks and cobblestones, and when I saw several policemen struck I shouted to them to fire their pistols into the air and use their clubs freely if they were in danger. Then I ordered some of the boys with shotguns to fire into the crowd.... We weren’t out to hurt anybody seriously, but those men were looking for trouble and they found it. If they come back, I’ll not take any chances of their injuring policemen. If bricks start floating at us again, somebody will wind up in the morgue, and I don’t think it will be any of us. Captain Arthur DeGuire,, commanding the Harbor District, also made a public report: There was an indication of trouble when the strikers formed their parade yesterday about as usual. They started with a large escort of police, in the same orderly manner that has marked the other parades. But when the parade was approximately opposite Pier 18 the marchers broke up into a mob. Besides the officers on foot, there were several police cars with inspectors on the scene. The strikers became a howling mob. They began to surround the police cars and tried to drag the inspectors out. From then on it was a case of everybody for himself. At this time I don’t know whether anyone issued orders to use tear bombs. If anybody did, it would have been Lieutenant Joseph Mignola, who was in the center of it. But these officers were all police-trained and no orders were necessary. In a situation like that, with the mob trying to pull the inspectors from their machines, the officers as a matter of training would use tear bombs to disperse the mob. Further, the mob seemed to be led by communists. A lot of the banners carried in the parade had signs about “down with this” and “down with that.” And when the fight started, the paraders ripped the banners from the poles and used the poles as clubs. When the mounted officers arrived it was a general melee. Any officer was justified in doing what was done in this riot. But as later events proved, these two officers found themselves unable to justify manifold indecencies and corruptions. At this moment they were the heroes of the day and were hailed by newspapers and leading citizens as brave defenders of the public good. Their contradictory and ridiculous stories were accepted as the official truth about the waterfront conflict. However, sometime later both Lieutenant Joseph Mignola and Captain Arthur DeGuire were discovered to be in league with the underworld. Their complicity with the prostitution shakedown and other criminal grafts resulted in their being removed from the force and dismissed in disgrace. The fact that they both are not in the penitentiary is accountable to—well, read the summary of the Atherton investigation back in Chapter II. I am not making any statements that are not already proved, so I shall refrain from drawing any conclusions of my own. The International Longshoremen’s Association delivered a protest to the Board of Supervisors in which they stated their version of the affair: For no reason whatsoever the mounted police this afternoon rode into the parade and attempted to disperse it. The attack was carried out by the police with tear gas, drawn guns and revolvers. Several men were shot, and many clubbed and beaten to the ground, and, even after they were lying unconscious on the sidewalks, were kicked and beaten by the police. Inasmuch as the strikers carried no weapons of any kind, unless the staffs of the American flag and the ILA banner carried at the head of the parade could be called weapons, and were violating no laws or ordinances, but peacefully parading, we insist that as one of the heads of the city administration, you take some immediate action to stop this unwarranted incitement to riot. The Board of Supervisors immediately authorized Mayor Angelo J. Rossi to appoint a committee of five to investigate. However, the Mayor refrained from making the appointments and the investigation was never made. CHAPTERVII “The Memorial Day Attack, The First Parade, San Francisco Newspapers” The open-air meeting this year was to be held on the Embarcadero, as it had been the year before. It was also intended that, in view of the strike, it would combine anti-war speeches with expressions of student and youth solidarity with the unions. Although given no publicity in the daily papers, it had been circularized widely by leaflets and invitations. It was strictly a young people’s occasion and no adults were in attendance other than strikers who were naturally in the locality and looked on with interest. As the hour approached for the meeting to begin, it was noted that hundreds of policemen had been concentrated in the vicinity. A request for a permit to parade had been denied, and the scene looked ominous. It was decided to call off the meeting. Later on a committee representing twenty-two organizations and church groups, under the chairmanship of Reverend Alfred C. Fiske, Ph.D., held a thorough investigation of the incident, taking testimony from all available witnesses. They described the scene: On one corner a crowd of 250 youths and girls stood irresolute and confused. It was May 30, the National Youth Day, a day of speeches against war and fascism, but something was wrong, there were no speeches. The crowd waited. Presently a young man mounted on the shoulders of a comrade. It was his duty to tell the assemblage why they could have no meeting like that of former years on the same day and place. The young man was supported in his precarious position by a young girl. The speaker began the message, “Comrades and fellow workers— ” Instantly the police were down on them with clubs and saps. They swarmed in a blue-coated mob over the handful of youths, some of whom were no more than children, laying open skulls right and left with their heavy riot sticks. So overwhelming in numbers were the police that escape was almost impossible. Sixty-five young boys and girls went down with broken heads. Kids in corduroys crouched on the sidewalk trying to shield themselves while police beat at them with blackjacks and nightsticks. Longshoremen who had been watching from the sidelines were so enraged at the spectacle they leaped into the melee and began felling policemen with their fists. Some of the young people broke through the lines and tried to run. They were pursued into alleys off the Embarcadero and clubbed to the pavement. Since the crowd presented every variety of dress, some being students from universities and high schools and others being young workers, the police were unable to discern between who had come to attend the demonstration and who were merely pedestrians. Consequently a large number of mere bystanders were clubbed down. A talented young local sculptor, Peter Macchiarini, was thrown into the police patrol bleeding from the ears with a fractured skull. Despite the entreaties of other prisoners that he was dying, he was thrown in a cell and not removed to a hospital until many hours later, when his cellmates gave evidence that if something were not done about him they would shake the bars off the cage and scream the roof off the jail. It was many months before Pete’s head mended, and when he was able to get around again he had to face trial on charges of rioting. One young student described his experience: I left Berkeley with my wife to go to San Francisco. We got off the ferry and started to walk up Market. When we got to Steuart, I saw some mounted police crossing the street. There was a crowd there, and suddenly a big man pointed at me and said, “Here’s a dirty kike son-of-a-bitch!” He grabbed at me and struck me on the back of the head with something. I started to run, but one of them grabbed my arm and started beating me. As he held my arm, he kept shouting for me to run. I naturally couldn’t because he was holding me. I twisted away and ran into another group. They slugged me and one of them hit me in the mouth with a blackjack. It cut my lips very badly and broke off two teeth. In the meantime, they struck at my wife and called her a “bitch.” She dodged them and managed to get away somehow. [Testimony from the report of Rev. Fiske’s committee.] Mr. J. D. Jordan testified: “I was at the corner of Embarcadero and Mission when I saw a crowd of people at the corner of Steuart and Mission. I started to walk toward them intending to see what it was all about. As I approached I noticed I was followed by a large number of men who were obviously plainclothesmen. As they overtook me, one of them started swearing at me in the vilest manner I have ever heard. There must have been at least ten of them who jumped upon me and started beating me. Not all of them could hit me at once and they seemed to go crazy with rage. I only had time to think that they were tearing me to pieces.... They knocked me down and I got to my feet, blood streaming down my lace and clothes.” The worst slugging took place in the street right outside the headquarters of the ILA.. Many longshoremen witnessed it from the windows in the second story, and one of them testified: "I was in the hall on Wednesday, and I want to tell you people right now that I have seen violence and brutality in many forms all over the world. I’ve been a seaman and you get to see plenty of things like that. But I want to say that I have never seen anything like that attack upon those kids last Wednesday. It was nothing but murder. We were locked in the hall, but we saw plenty from the window. Those cops just slugged and beat everybody they could reach. Nobody had a chance. They seemed to go crazy and we just about went crazy watching them." Other typical bits of testimony were: Q. What is your name? A. Leonard Pressel. Q. How old are you? A. I’m fifteen, going on sixteen. Q. Leonard, what are you doing here in San Francisco? I mean, what and why are you here, are you working, etc.? A. I’m not working. I’m just— Q. You are on the bum, so to speak? A. Yes. Q. Why did you leave home? A. Well, I couldn’t get work and no money for school. Q. Now, Leonard, tell us what happened to you on Wednesday when you were thrown in jail. A. I was walking up Howard near Second Street when a big car full of men drew up and some of them jumped out. One of them shouted at me and they started running towards me. I didn’t know what it was all about. They grabbed me and one hit me over the head with a club. It knocked me down, but two more grabbed me and held me up and I got hit again. I broke away from them and started running and I ran right into another bunch. One of them grabbed my arm and hit me in the back of the head while another one hit me in front. I don’t remember much then except them hitting me. I had blood all over my face and I could feel it running down the back of my neck. They left me for a moment and I finally got up again. This time, another bunch that had come up got me and hit me real hard. I was taken to the jail, but I don’t remember much. And again, from Miss Frances Rabin: "My sister Alice was run up on the sidewalk by a policeman who hit her over the head with his club and knocked her down. I ran behind a machine. Another policeman on foot ran to where my sister was lying on the sidewalk and was going to hit her again when I screamed—and he came over after me. I kept on screaming and he let her alone and wanted to hit me. I picked up my sister and took her to a store at 36 Steuart Street. Three boys in there gave us some water and towels." While all this was going on, Mayor Rossi was out in the National Cemetery at the Presidio orating: "We are thus drawn together in a contemplation of the great glories, the lofty deeds and the weighty sacrifices which have been the foundation of our national life.... The impressive scene we have just witnessed, the silent ranks of veterans who have assembled to honor those who died in the service of God and their country, should leave in our hearts a spirit of thankfulness that the memory of their valor is not forgotten. It seemed to me today as I looked into the resolute faces . . . that nothing ill can befall a country whose citizens accept their patriotic duty in so cheerful and steadfast a spirit. . . if we enshrine in our hearts the devotion we owe them, we will have little time to harbor thoughts of revolution, of the destruction of governmental fabric and running after false Gods. The Examiner rushed into print with a blaring extra: “17 MAIMED IN S. F. RED BATTLE.”The story read: “Fierce rioting marked San Francisco’s observance of Memorial Day yesterday as more than 250 Communists clashed with 100 policemen in a series of skirmishes that raged over the area bounded by the Embarcadero, Second Street, Market and Howard. ”The San Francisco News read: "Clubs flailing, police broke up a possible demonstration of striking longshoremen on lower Market Street today, injuring one unidentified 16- girl and sending 24 men to the hospital with head injuries. Trouble started, according to witnesses, when a party of longshoremen began a march, either toward the waterfront or up Market Street—the destination was indefinite. " The Chronicle said: “Two hundred and fifty communists and police staged a bloody battle yesterday afternoon near the Embarcadero—the second major riot to mark the longshoremen’s strike this week.”Nineteen persons were treated at hospitals as a result and two youths were reported to have been shot and subsequently spirited away in the ensuing confusion. Scores of others were injured. Lieutenant Mignola was credited in all papers as commander of police forces on the occasion. The strikers immediately dispatched a telegram to Acting Governor Frank Merriam and issued the same as a public statement: “Local 38–79 of the International Longshoremen’s Association vigorously protests the insane brutality of San Francisco police in clubbing children and aged women into insensibility and in clubbing peaceful picketers and innocent bystanders. We recognize this unprovoked attack as an attempt to intimidate the longshoremen and we demand the right to arm in self-defense. As acting governor of this state we hold you personally responsible for future violence on the San Francisco waterfront.”By this time the strike dominated the minds of the whole population. San Francisco was living and breathing strike. Everyone was discussing it. Everyone was trying to understand it. Everyone had something to say about it and something to ask about it. Homes, restaurants, and public places became virtual open forums, and people were rapidly taking sides. Bitter disagreements were splitting homes and friendships; at the same time new bonds of sympathy and common viewpoint were being forged—bringing people together, creating new ties. Despite garbled accounts in the press, the public was able to get an impression of what had taken place, if not a specific picture. And that impression was a bad one, so far as the employers and the civic administration were concerned. On the following evening the International Labor Defense held a mass protest meeting in California Hall. Every available seat and all standing room was packed, and overflow crowds jammed the sidewalk outside. More than a score of young people with bandaged heads occupied chairs on the platform. Eyewitnesses described the events of the day before, and the crowd was addressed by speakers representing the striking unions, various local organizations, and the Communist Party.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The Beginning of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Starts ... Some Remembrances-Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The Anti-War Movement From War And The International   

 

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, voices like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America Big Bill Haywood and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs, were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space. Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well as the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. So imagine in 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war.                   

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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CHAPTER IX

THE DECLINE OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT

Six or seven years ago a political ebbtide everywhere followed upon the revolutionary flood-tide. In Russia the counter-revolution triumphed and began a period of decay for the Russian proletariat both in politics and in the strength of their organizations. In Austria the thread of achievements started by the working class broke off, social insurance legislation rotted in the government offices, nationalist conflicts began again with renewed vigour in the arena of universal manhood suffrage, weakening and dividing the Social Democracy. In England, the Labour Party, after separating from the Liberal Party, entered into the closest association with it again. In France the Syndicalists passed over to reformist positions. Gustave Hervé changed to the opposite of himself in the shortest time. And in the German Social Democracy the Revisionists lifted their heads, encouraged by history’s having given them such a revenge. The South Germans perpetrated their demonstrative vote for the budget. The Marxists were compelled to change from offensive to defensive tactics. The efforts of the Left Wing to draw the party into a more active policy were unsuccessful. The dominating Centre swung more and more towards the Right, isolating the Radicals. Conservatism, recovering from the blows it received in 1905, triumphed all along the line.

In default of revolutionary activity as well as the possibility for reformist work, the party spent its entire ienergy on building up the organization, on gaining new members for the unions and for the party, on starting new papers and getting new subscribers. Condemned for decades to a policy of opportunist waiting, the party took up the cult of organization as an end in itself. Never was the spirit of inertia produced by mere routine work so strong in the German Social Democracy as in the years immediately preceding the great catastrophe. And there can be no doubt that the question of the preservation of the organizations, treasuries, People’s Houses and printing presses played a mighty important part in the position taken by the fraction in the Reichstag towards the War. “Had we done anything else we would have brought ruin upon our organization and our presses,” was the first argument I heard from a leading German comrade.
And how characteristic it is of the opportunistic psychology induced by mere organization work, that out of ninety-one Social Democratic papers not one found it possible to protest against the violation of Belgium. Not one! After the repeal of the anti-Socialist laws, the party hesitated long before starting its own printing presses, lest these might be confiscated by the Government in the event of great happenings. And now that it has its own presses, the party hierarchy fears every decisive step so as not to afford opportunity for confiscation.
Most eloquent of all is the incident of the Vorwärts which begged for permission to continue to exist on the basis of a new program indefinitely suspending the class conflict. Every friend of the German Social Democracy had a sense of profound pain when he received his issue of the central organ with its humiliating “By Order of Army Headquarters”. Had the Vorwärts remained under interdiction, that would have been an important political fact to which the party later could have referred with pride. At any rate that would have been far more honourable than to continue to exist with the imprint of the general’s boots on its forehead.
But hgher than all considerations of policy and the dignity of the party stood considerations of membership, printing presses, organization. And so the Vorwärts now lives as two-paged evidence of the unlimited brutality of Junkerdom in Berlin and in Louvain, and of the unlimited opportunism of the German Social Democracy.
The Right wing stood more by its principles, which resulted from political considerations. Wolfgang Heine crassly formulated these principles of German Reformism in an absurd discussion as to whether the Social Democrats should leave the hall of the Reichstag when the members rose to cheer the Emperor’s name, or whether they should merely keep their seats. “The creation of a republic in the German Empire is now and for some time to come out of the range of all possibility, so that it is not really a matter for our present policy.” The practical results still not yet achieved may be reached, but only through cooperation with the liberal bourgeoisie. “For that reason, not because I am a stickler for form, I have called attention to the fact that parliamentary cooperation will be rendered difficult by demonstrations that needlessly hurt the feelings of the majority of the House.”
But if a simple infringement of monarchical etiquette was enough to destroy the hope of reformist cooperation with the liberal middle class, then certainly the break with the bourgeois “nation” in the moment of national “danger” would have hindered, for years to come, not only all desired reforms, but also all reformist desires. That attitude that was dictated to the routinists of the party centre by sheer anxiety over the preservation of the organization was supplemented among the Revisionists by political considerations. Their standpoint proved in every respect to be more comprehensive and won the victory all over. The entire party press is now industriously acclaiming what it once heaped scorn upon, that the present patriotic attitude of the working class will win for them, after the War, the good will of the possessing classes for bringing about reforms.
Therefore, the German Social Democracy did not feel itself, under the stress of these great events, a revolutionary power with tasks far exceeding the question of widening the state’s boundaries, a power that does not lose itself for an instant in the nationalistic whirl but calmly awaits the favourable moment for joining with the other branches of the International in a purposeful interference in the course of events. No, instead of that the German Social Democracy felt itself to be a sort of cumbersome train threatened by hostile cavalry. For that reason it subordinated the entire future of the International to the quite extraneous question of the defence of the frontiers of the class state because it felt itself first and foremost to be a conservative state within the state.
“Look at Belgium!” cries the Vorwärts to encourage the workmen-soldiers. The People’s Houses there have been changed into army hospitals, the newspapers suppressed, all party life crushed out. [A sentimental correspondent of the Vorwärts writes that he was looking for Belgian comrades in the Maison da Peuple and found a German Army hospital here. And what did the Vorwärts correspondent want of his Belgian comrades? “To win them to the cause of the German people” – when Brussels itself had already been won “for the cause of the German people!”] And therefore hold out until the end, “until the decisive victory is ours.” In other words, keep on destroying, let the work of your own hands be a terrifying lesson to you. “Look at Belgium,” and out of this terror draw courage for renewed destruction.
What has just been said refers not to the German Social Democracy alone, but also to all the older branches of the International that have lived through the history of the last half century.

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CHAPTER X

WORKING CLASS IMPERIALISM

The is one factor in the collapse of the Second International the is still unclarified. It dwells at the heart of all the events that the Party has passed through.

The dependence of the proletarian class movement, particularly in its economic conflicts, upon the scope and the successes of the imperialistic policy of the state is a question which, as far as I know, has never been discussed in the Socialist press. Nor can I attempt to solve it in the short space of this work. So what I shall say on this point will necessarily be in the nature of a brief review.
The proletariat is deeply interested in the development of the forces of production. The national state created in Europe by the revolutions and wars of the years 1789 to 1870 was the basic type of the economic evolution of the past period. The proletariat contributed by its entire conscious policy to the development of the forces of production on a national foundation. It supported the bourgeoisie in its conflicts with alien enemies for national liberation; also in its conflicts with the monarchy, with feudalism and the church for political democracy. And in the measure in which the bourgeois turned to “law and order”, that is, became reactionary, the proletariat assumed the historical task the bourgeoisie had left uncompleted. In championing a policy of peace, culture and democracy, as against the bourgeoisie, it contributed to the enlargement of the national market, and so gave an impetus to the development of the forces of production.
The proletariat had an equal econmic interest in the democratizing and the cultural progress of all other countries in their relation of buyer or seller to its own country. In this resided the most important guarantee for the international solidarity of the proletanat both in so far as final aims and daily policies are concerned. The struggle against the remnants of feudal barbarism, against the boundless demands of militarism, against agrarian duties and indirect taxes was the main object of working-class politics and served, directly and indirectly, to help develop the forces of production. That s the very reason why the great majority of organized labour ]oined political forces with the Social democracy. Every hindrance to the develo ment of the forces of production touches the trade unions mot closely.
As capitalism passed from a national to an international-imperialistic ground, national production, and with it the economic struggle of the proletariat, came into direct dependence on those conditions of the world market which are secured by dreadnaughts and cannon. In other words, in contradiction of the fundarrental interests of the proletariat taken in their wide historic extent, the immediate trade interests of various strata of the proletariat proved to have a direct dependence upon the successes or the failures of the foreign policies of the governments.
England long before the other countries placed her capitalist development on the basis of predatory imperialism, and she interested the upper strata of the proletariat in her world dominion. In championing its own class interests, the English proletariat limited itself to exercising pressure on the bourgeois parties which granted it a share in the capitalist exploitation of other countries. It did not begin an independent policy until England began to lose her position in the world market, pushed aside, among others, by her main rival, Germany.
But with Germany’s growth to industrial world-importance, grew the dependence of broad strata of the German proletariat on German imperialism, not materially alone but also ideally. The Vorwärts wrote on August 11th that the German workingmen, “counted among the politically intelligent, to whom we have preached the dangers of imperialism for years (although with very little success, we must confess)” denounce Italian neutrality like the extremest chauvinists. But that did not prevent the Vorwärts from feeding the German workingmen on “national” and “democratic” arguments in justification of the bloody work of imperialism. (Some writers’ backbones are as flexible as their pens.)
However, all this does not alter facts. When the decisive moment came, there seemed to be no irreconcilable enmity to imperialistic policies in the consciousness of the German workingmen. On the contrary, they seemed to listen readily to imperialist whisperings veiled in national and democratic phraseology. This is not the first time that Socialstic imperialism reveals itself in the German Social Democracy. Suffice it to recall the fact that at the International Congress in Stuttgart it was the majority of German delegates, notably the trade unionists, who voted against the Marxist resolution on the colonial policy. [40] The occurrence made a sensation at the time, but its true significance comes out more clearly in the light of present events. Just now the trade union press is linking the cause of the German working class to the work of the army with more consciousness and matter-of-factness than do the political organs.
As long as capitalism remained on a national basis, the proletanat could not refrain from cooperation in democratizing the political relations and in developing the forces of production through its parliamentary, communal and other activities. The attempts of the anarchists to set up a formal revolutionary agitation in opposition to the political fights of the Social Democracy condemned them to isolation and gradual extinction. But when the capitalist states overstep their national form to become imperialistic world powers, the proletariat cannot oppose this new imperialism. And the reason is the so-called minimal program which fashioned its policy upon the framework of the national state. When its main concern is for tariff treaties and social legislation, the proletariat is incapable of expending the same energy in fighting imperialism that it did in fighting feudalism. By applying its old methods of the class struggle – the constant adaptation to the movements of the markets – to the changed conditions produced by imperialism, it itself falls into material and ideological dependence on imperialism.
The only way the proletariat can pit its revolutionary force against imperialism is under the banner of Socialism. The working class is powerless against imperialism as long as its great organizations stand by their old opportunist tactics. The working class will be all-powerful against imperialism when it takes to the battlefield of Social Revolution.
The methods of national-parliamentary opposition not only fail to produce practical results, but also cease to make an appeal to the labouring masses, because the workers find that, behind the backs of the parliamentarians, imperialism, by armed force, reduces the wages and the very lives of the workers to ever greater dependence on its successes in the world market.
It was clear to every thinking Socialist that the only way the proletariat could be made to pass from opportunism to Revolution was not by agitation, but by a historical upheaval. But no one foresaw that history would preface this inevitable change of tactics by such a catastrophal collapse of the International. History works with titanic relentlessness. What is the Rheims Cathedral [41] to History? And what a few hundred or thousand political reputations? And what the life or death of hundreds of thousands or of millions?
The proletariat has remained too long in the preparatory school, much longer than its great pioneer fighters thought it would. History took her broom in hand, swept the International of the epigones apart in all directions and led the slow-moving millions into the field where their last illusions are being washed away in blood. A terrible experiment! On its result perhaps hangs the fate of European civilization.

***In The Time Of The 1930s Cuban Revolution-Jennifer Jones and John Garfield’s We Were Strangers   

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

We Were Strangers, Jennifer Jones, John Garfield, Columbia Pictures, 1949

The history of Cuba had been replete with struggles against tyranny well before the boys of the Sierra Madres, you know the Castro Brothers, beloved Che the Argentine internationalist heart of the revolution, the lost Frank Paisa man of the cities, and all their brethren who took down Batista in the late 1950s. Took him down almost without a fight at the end when the masses waited in the cities and farms for the boys (and girls, don’t forget Haydee Santamaria) to work their way to Havana town. Of course everybody remembers, or should, the legendary 19^th century revolutionary Jose Marti, celebrated in story and song, still honored in Cuba today and his struggle to get rid of the bloody Spanish oppressors and the later struggle in the 1930s against the hyenas, the Machado, the hyenas who were replaced later by the that self-same Batista. So the island of Cuba has been no stranger to the struggle for freedom (and the Bay of Pigs-style operations to thwart such struggles) the film under review, We Were Strangers, demonstrates in its depiction of the fight against the hyenas in the 1930s mentioned above. Of course this film which was released in 1949 could not have dealt with the regime that followed, Batista’s, since this film is centered on the 1930s struggles. That later regime necessitated the Castro boys taking up arms in the hills after the initial defeat at Moncado.        

Here is the skinny. The hyenas took over in the 1920s and ran rampart over the country and for the foreign, mainly the United States, interests in the sugar production. (Cuba was a classic monoculture colonial and semi-colonial country around the sugar crop, and to a lesser extent still is). The younger generation of professionals and a smattering of workers and peasants decided that they had had enough and as was the norm in that day, and not just in Cuba, created underground revolutionary organizations in order to overthrow the strongman. A familiar enough story particularly in the 20th century.

And so the young upstarts and old freedom-lovers created an organization and devised some ideas about how they could overthrow the regime. But then they ran up against the problem every revolutionary organization faces in times of serious oppression, the passivity or resignation of the masses. The question for such organizations then becomes what to do-wait until the masses are so oppressed they will rise on their own or to nudge the masses into activity by an exemplary action aimed at the heart of the regime. Well our boys, most of them, opted for not waiting, for action now.

Of course that decision entailed making a plan to create the biggest splash possible and to a great extent the core of this film centers on the creation of that splash promoted by an angry young revolutionary who had been in exile for a while (his father had fled Cuba after some problems which caused Fenner (played by John Garfield) endless shame and a need to bring back to his family name. The gist of the plan, seemingly foolproof, was to kill some well-known top governmental official and then set a massive explosion at his funeral which was sure to be attended by the president and the major players in government. Wipe them out at one blow and set the masses in motion for their freedom. Maybe in a cakewalk. By hook or by crook the group that Fenner recruits to do the preparation and digging of a tunnel underneath the graveside complete their work under tremendous pressure. The target (a Senate President) is duly killed and… Well, and the guy in NOT to be buried where he was supposed to be. Scratch Plan A, plan B is to get Fenner out of the country but he is subject to a wide scale manhunt and is finally cornered and killed after a heroic individual struggle not to be taken alive. Shortly thereafter the freedom forces do overthrow the hyenas and set up the next level of struggle in Cuban history.              

Oh yeah, this is a Hollywood production after all, a 1940s production and there naturally has to be some romantic interest to keep the action from being too tedious. So enter China (played by Jennifer Jones), the sister of a fallen revolutionary who is intimately involved in the plan, and gets intimately involved with Fenner (1940s intimately film involved). That involvements shifts both their motivations slightly as they now want to struggle so that they can raise a family in freedom, not an unworthy motive, no question. But also one where a certain softness set in which the security forces were able to exploit in order to corner Fenner. China was let to speak his eulogy, to write his epitaph in the then new Cuba.  Fenner died heroically but if any cautionary tale is to be taken from this film then it is once again that isolated revolutionary action in lieu of mass struggle is ultimately futile. That wisdom would surely be at the top of the list.

 

 

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-Italian Poets   

 

Italian War Poetry

This is a contributed item. Please direct your feedback concerning the contents of this item to the author using the e-mail link below. By all means let them know if you find it interesting. They enjoy hearing from you!

Attacking Bersaglieri

Contributed by Michael E. Hanlon (medwardh@hotmail.com)

See also: The Sonnets of John Allan Wyeth German War Poetry

Contributed by Michael E. Hanlon. Mike is Website Editor for the ø The Great War Society. He has written extensively on the Great War and guided tours of the Western Front. Annotations and biographical sketches have been contributed by Michael E. Hanlon. The translations are from the PENGUIN BOOK OF WORLD WAR I POETRY edited by Jon Silkin.

EUGENIO MONTALE, 1896-1981

Nobel Prize [1975] winning critic and poet. Served in the Trentino as an infantry officer 1917-18. The poetry of the Genovese-born Montale tends to be complex, pessimistic and somewhat obscure. His works appear in many volumes of prose and poetry avaiable in English.

THRUST AND RIPOSTE [Abridged] ...The time has come, now, to suspend the suspension of every worldly deception - wished for by you for me... Living on memories - I can no longer. Better the bite of the ice than your sleepwalker's lethargy, O late awakener! Scarcely emerged from adolescence, for half my life I was thrown into the Augean stables. I did not find two thousand oxen, nor did i see any animals - ever - and yet in the pathways, thicker and thicker with dung, walking was difficult, breathing was difficult - The human bellowing grew from day to day. Then from year to year - who counted the seasons any more in that thick mist? - a hand feeling for the tiniest openings worked in its memorial...until from the crevices the fanning fire of a machine-gun pushed us back, tired shovellers caught in the act by the foreign police chiefs of the mud. And at last the fall - beyond belief! What did that new mire mean? and the breathing of other, but similar, stenches? and the whirlpool-whirling on rafts of dung? Was that the sun, that filthy grub from a sewer over the chimney pots? ...(I think that perhaps you've stopped reading me. But now you know all of me, of my prison and my life afterwards; now you know that the eagle can't be born of a mouse.)