Poets’ Corner- The Mad Hatter 15^th Century France’s Francois Villon Whether They Claim Him Or Not

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Once, a long time ago, an old communist I do not remember which version of the creed he adhered to, although he had had some impressive documented revolutionary credentials in Germany before Hitler pulled the hammer down in 1933 and he just barely got out into American exile by a very long and circuitous route, told me that as far as culture affairs, you know art, novels, music and what I want to talk about here, poetry, is basically subject to whatever personal whims a person may have on these matters. The caveat to all this is that both creators and admirers should be left to their own devises except if they are actively engaged with counter-revolutionary activity. Now that I think about it he probably got the idea from Leon Trotsky himself who wrote about such matters in the 1920s in books like  Literature and Revolution although I am sure that he did not consider himself a follower of that great revolutionary who was exiled in the late 1920s.

The point today is that if a left-wing political activist like myself, say, were very interested in the poetry of Emily Dickerson or Wallace Stevens or Thomas Mann or Edna Saint Vincent Millay then what of it. Except those kinds of poets do not “speak” to me. Poets like Allan Ginsberg burning the pages with his negro streets, his clamoring against the industrial complex, his angel hipsters, his chanting against the fate of the best minds of his generation, the gangster-poet Gregory Corso blazing the hot streets with his words and taking no prisoners, old Rimbaud with his mad ravings, Verlaine too, Genet with his black soul they “speak” to me. The troubadours, the “bad boys and girls,” the waifs, the gangsters, the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters and those who act as muses for the fallen are what makes me sit up and listen.                  

 And that brings us to Francois Villon, the “max daddy” of bad boy poets (and brigands) from the 15^th century. Strangely while I have picked up on most of my favorite poets from some academic setting I learned of Villon from two maybe unusual sources. First from the 1930s film The Petrified Forest where the Bette Davis character, Gabby, was crazy for the Villon book of poems sent from her returned to home mother in France. More importantly the poet and what he stood for was brought up in the film in conversation with Leslie Howard’s character Alan who was a Villon-like misplaced out of sorts wanderer out in the Arizona desert. The other source was a poem by Villon used as a front-piece of an article by Hunter S. Thompson who used the sentiment expressed by Villon where he considered himself a stranger in his own country (as did Thompson back in Nixon times in America).

But back to the muses, back to the gangsta muses (sorry hip-hop nation for stealing your thunder but your sing-song lyrics definitely make me think you have drawn from the same well, the same Villon well, especially guys like Biggie, Tupac, 50 cent, and Brother Cole, a brother from the same damn “sew those worn-out pants” projects neighborhood in spirit as me). Old Villon must have gotten tripped up on his DNA finding the back streets of Paris and later exile spots more attractive than the court life, the scholar’s. Trouble followed the guy wherever he moved (granted he had little room to maneuver in those days since he was a city man and not some outlaw Robin Hood working the old rural pastures and forests). His poetry speaks of drunken sots, of quick upstairs flights with besotten wenches, of tavern dark corners to plan, plan the next caper, or the next poem to explain away his life led.         

Who knows what makes a man or woman a stranger in their own land, an internal exile. Maybe like Villon it was his dismissal of the vanities of court life, the vacuity of the student life, or the lure of the outlaw life when bourgeois society (and France in the 15^th century was reaping the beggar’s banquet of bourgeois society) and it took no Karl Marx to notice that the old ways had to give way to the new city ways with their gold and death to free spirits, to those who lived outside allegiances. Maybe like Ginsberg shattered by the smoke of downtown Paterson, maybe shattered by the hysterical cries of his beloved if discarded mother, maybe shattered by the square-ness of his father-poet. Maybe like Jean bon Genet born of some ancient mix of the crime that dared not speak its name and crimes that had names. Trolling waterfronts looking for rough trade, looking for his lady of the flowers. Strangers, strangers all looking for some new Algiers, some new Casablanca, some new city a-borning.

Villon, lord of the sneak away night, besotted with six wines, drunk with the fragrance of women. Women who reek of the kingdom’s perfumes and if Hilary Mantel is to be believed over in bedeviled England all the women worked lilac and lemon tree leaves into their skin so that guys, guys like Villon ready to seek a lady’s favor could stand to be within ten feet of them. Reeking of words too, Villon reeking of words that is, quick words, words with hidden messages, words heard in taverns, on wormy mattresses, in stinking hayloft barns, unholy holy words that would make men quake if they had the sense that their God gave them as a gift (or was it the son, the damn crazed son, Jesus, called bandit), stealthily grabbing whatever was to be grabbed and the hell with the lord business. Then writing in dark dungeon nights looking for reprieves from a wretched life.

Beautiful, a beat down brother, no wonder Alan the wandering homeless out of fashion intellectual in The Petrified Forest claimed him as kindred, and why he could have walked on steamy late night New York streets and found kindred among the midnight sifters. Beat, beatified before his time probably clamoring on some woe begotten trumpet, blowing out big medieval blow notes to the hard Seine, the hard Norman shores, to all who would listen, Yeah, Saint Villon, sanctified, man of misrule, man of the hidden cloth, beat, beat about six ways to Sunday if you believe his resume, if you believe his 15^th century be-bop wail. What did Kerouac, hell, a kindred, a Breton, said-yes, moan, moan long and hard for man, and Saint Villon grant us some sign, some path that we might come to rescue you in sotted, sweated dungeons, so that you too can walk the fetid streets singing, holy, holy, holy.

What was it that his literary descendants, guys like Jack Kerouac who I swear had Villon blood in him, guys like Alan Ginsberg who sang holy, holy, holy to the new age except he cried out in vain to dreaded Molochs, called those who listened to their own drummers, listened to the winds beyond the towns, beyond the cities, listened to the forest men, the men who earlier in their lives lived in towns and cities?  Oh yeah, “holy goofs.” Not goofs like you would call some guy walking down the street looking down and he hits his head on a telephone pole because he wasn’t watching where he was going. No, our holy goof, I think Kerouac used that term to describe, or rather used that term as one of the ways to describe mad man fellow traveler Dean Moriarty, and hence the model Neal Cassady as well, to his Sal Paradise in On The Road. A guy who is for the moment, an existential be-bop guy, a guy who knows the score, knows right from wrong even, knows it better than you and me, and says “what the fuck,” says you know, I know, and so let the mystery be, let the cloistered intellectuals in their sullen monasteries poring over the number of angel that can fit on the head of a needle sulk while he worked on the angles, looked for dough, dames and dope. See, I swear Villon from his hidden grave sent down to posterity the model for the holy goof, and these other guys picked it out of the fog-bound air.          

Sweet word man Villon articulate in a hoary dark world when gangster warlord and unsavory princes vied with each for land, for wealth, for some fair maiden’s favors. And let’s not beat about the bush it wasn’t for some silly scarf just off the boats from faraway China or the Japan Seas but for a tussle in some off-hand hayloft, some milady’s boudoir, some back room tavern straw bed. Read what you want into that but some buck jack was taking his right of first night, well, before the first night. But heroic buck jacks sometimes could speak no lady’s words, could not utter the thoughts in an otherwise black heart and so old Villon had a space to breath, had words to tell of loves truths, or what milady would go to the downy billows for. And for his services for he was a man of the city, a man of the back alleys, a man who consorted with the rabble, a con man and a wordsmith in his own right and so every once in a while a bored milady would stop her quilling, stop her needlepoint and show the old curmudgeon her downy billows for just one word of the night, for the sound of those moans that no child should know before his or her time.     

Yes, wanderers, waifs, strangers in a strange land, sneak thieves in the milady’s heart heated night, those are the poets I want to read and listen to. And what of it.        

     
Le Testament: Ballade: Pour Robert d’Estouteville

 

A t dawn of day, when falcon shakes his wing,

M ainly from pleasure, and from noble usage,

B lackbirds too shake theirs then as they sing,

R eceiving their mates, mingling their plumage,

O, as the desires it lights in me now rage,

I ’d offer you, joyously, what befits the lover.

S ee how Love has written this very page:

E ven for this end are we come together.

 

D oubtless, as my heart’s lady you’ll have being,

E ntirely now, till death consumes my age.

L aurel, so sweet, for my cause now fighting,

O live, so noble, removing all bitter foliage,

R eason does not wish me unused to owing,

E ven as I’m to agree with this wish, forever,

Duty to you, but rather grow used to serving:

Even for this end are we come together.

 

And, what’s more, when sorrow’s beating

Down on me, through Fate’s incessant rage,

Your sweet glance its malice is assuaging,

Nor more or less than wind blows smoke away.

As, in your field, I plant I lose no grain,

For the harvest resembles me, and ever

God orders me to plough, and sow again:

Even for this end are we come together.

 

Princess, listen to this I now maintain:

That my heart and yours will not dissever:

So much I presume of you, and claim:

Even for this end are we come together.

 

Note: The ballade was written for Robert to present to his wife Ambroise de Loré, as though composed by him.

 

On The 155^th Anniversary Of The Heroic Captain John Brown-Led Fight For Black Liberation At Harper’s Ferry-Josh Breslin’s Dream    

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

I remember a few years ago my friend and I, Josh Breslin, from the old working- class neighborhoods of North Adamsville, a town south of Boston, were discussing the historical events that helped form our political understandings back in the early 1960 since we were, and are, both political men driven by historical examples as much as by the minutia of organizing principles. And while we have diverged on many of the influences since then as we have a fair degree of differences on the way to change the world and what agencies can do that (basically working within the current political system or moving over to the base of society and organizing from the ground up within or outside of the system depending on circumstance) we both agreed whole-heartedly that one of our early heroes was old Captain John Brown and his heroic efforts with his small integrated band of men at Harper’s Ferry down in what is now West Virginia but the just Virginia, a slave-holders stronghold. As we discussed the matter more fully we found we were hard pressed to explain what first captured our attention and agreed that then would have not had the political sense then to call Brown’s actions heroic although we both understood that what he did was necessary.

 

See, coming up in a mainly Irish working-class neighborhood we were always aware, made particularly aware by grandfathers who had kindred over there in those days, of that heroic struggle in Easter 1916 that was the precursor to the long sought national liberation of Ireland from the bloody British. So when we first studied, or heard about John Brown we instinctively saw that same kind of struggle. Both of us also agreed that we had had back then very strong feelings about the wrongness of slavery, a wretched system going back to Pharaoh’s time if not before, although Josh was more ambivalent about the fate of black people after Civil War freedom than I was since there was in his household a stronger current of anti-black feeling around the civil rights work down south in those days than in mine. (Strangely my father, who was nothing but a corn liquor, fast car, ex-coal miner good old boy from down in Kentucky was more sympathetic to that struggle that Josh’s Irish grandfather whom Josh could never get to call black people anything better than “nigras.” At least we got my father to say “Negro.” Jesus.)                

 

A couple of week after that conversation Josh called me up from California one night where he was attending a professional conference near San Jose and told me that he forgot to tell me about what he called a “dream” he had had as a kid concerning his admiration for John Brown. Of course that “dream” stuff was just Josh’s way of saying that he had sketched out a few thoughts that he wanted to share with me (and which will undoubtedly find their into a commentary  or review or something because very little of Josh’s “dream” stuff fails to go to ink or cyberspace). Some of it is now hazy in my mind since the hour was late here in the East, and some of it probably was really based on stuff we had learned later about the Brown expedition like how Boston Brahmins and high abolitionists like George Stearns secretly funded the operation or Brown’s attempts to get Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on board (neither name which we would have known very much about then), and some of the stuff was probably a little goofy since it involved Josh in some hero worship. Since he will inevitably write something on his own he can make any corrections to what I put down here himself. Know this though whenever I hear the name John Brown mentioned lately I think about Josh’s telephone call and about how the “old man” has held our esteem for so long. Here is what I jotted down, edited of course, after that conversation:   

 

From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harper’s Ferry. I would say that was in about the sixth grade when I went to the library and read about Abraham Lincoln before he became president and how he didn’t like what John Brown did because he knew that that action was going to drive the South crazy and upset the delicate balance that was holding the Union together. Frank though thinks it was the seventh grade when we were learning about the slavery issues as part of the 100^th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War and his name came up as a “wild man” out of some Jehovah Calvinist burning bush dream who was single-handedly trying to abolish slavery with that uprising. Was ready to “light the spark” to put out the terrible scourge of slavery in the land with some spilled blood. That slavery business, if you can believe this really bothered both of us, especially when we went to a museum that showed the treatment of slaves and the implements used to enforce that condition down South. And I remember one time going to the Museum of Fine Arts and saw how old Pharaoh used his slaves to build those damn pyramids to immortalize himself. Yeah, the hell with slavery, any kind.   

I think I am right thought about when I first heard about the “old man” because I know I loved Lincoln, loved to read about him, loved that back then we celebrated his birthday, February 12^th, and we got the day off from school. Loved that Lincoln was basically forced at the governmental level to implement Brown’s program to root out slavery once the deal went down and he was merciless about its extermination once he got “religion” on the matter. Of course neither I nor Frank would have articulated our thoughts that way then but we knew “Massa Lincoln” was on the right side of the angels in his work as much as he hated to burn down the South in the process. But there was no other way to get the damn issue resolved and I think that is what he learned from the Captain whether he gave credit to the man or not. By the way this I do know that while we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in the North as the great emancipator and Union-saver Frank once told me a story about one of his cousins down south and how when he mentioned that he had Lincoln’s birthday off that cousin said “we don’t celebrate that man’s birthday down here,’’ in such a way that Frank began to understand that maybe the Civil War was not over. That some people had not gotten the word)   

I knew other stuff back then too which added to my feel for the Brown legend. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as John Brown’s Body, a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they bravely headed south. Funny but back then I was totally unaware of the role of the Massachusetts 54^th Regiment, the first black regiment raised although with white officers when Father Abraham gave the word, whose survivors and replacements marched into Charleston, South Carolina, the heart and soul of the Confederacy, after the bloody Civil War to the tune of John Brown’s Body. That must have been a righteous day. Not so righteous though and reflecting a very narrow view of history that we were taught back then kind of fudging the very serious differences back in Civil War times even in high abolitionist Boston was not knowing thing number one about Augustus Saint-Gauden’s commemorative frieze honoring the men of the 54^th right across from the State House which I passed frequently when I went on to Boston Common.

I was then, however, other than aware of the general narrative of Brown’s exploits and a couple of songs and poems neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the ante bellum struggle against slavery of which he represented the extreme activist left-wing. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Some 150 years after his death I am proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown. [And I am too, brother!-Frank]

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As various biographies point out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harper’s Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for the institution about his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. Like them without warts and with a discernible thrust from early adulthood that leads to some heroic action. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning allegations of the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) have also clouded his image. However if one looks at Kansas as the start of the Civil War then all the horrible possibilities under the heat of battle mitigate some of that incident although not excusing it anymore that we would today with American soldiers in places like Afghanistan and Iraq busting down doors and shooting first. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows that they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the Maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs. The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harper’s Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist “avenging angel” in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. (Strange, or maybe not so strange now, both Frank and I who grew up upright Roman Catholics gravitated toward those photographs of Brown with his long unkempt beard as some latter day Jehovah and I remember Frank had a photo on the wall in his room with just such a photograph from I think a detail of the big mural in the State House in Kansas.) In short Brown   was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist sense of pre-determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported Brown and kept his memory alive in hard times. In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. This old time prophet animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand today the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown.  He prophetic words upon the scaffold about purging the evil of slavery in blood proved too true. But that demeanor in the face of defeat was very appealing to me back then.  I have learned since that these results, the imprisonments or executions are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order if one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871 when that experience was crushed in blood after heroic resistance. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar with now there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy that led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown, and of his friend Frederick Douglass.

I used to fervently believe that if Douglass had come on board as Brown had urged the chances for success would have been greater, at least more blacks (mostly free blacks and not plantation blacks for obvious reasons) and more radical whites who could have been mobilized as a result of all of the events of the 1850s especially the struggle against the Fugitive Slave Act and the struggle against the imposition of slavery in Kansas. Now I am not so sure that Douglass’ acceptance would have qualitatively changed the outcome. He went on to do yeoman’s work during the Civil War articulating the left black perspective and organizing those black regiments that shifted the outcome of the war at a decisive point. In any case honor the memory of old Captain John Brown and his heroic band at Harper’s Ferry.         

 

London Chelsea Manning Workshop Oct 18th

October 14, 2014

Free Chelsea Manning!
Support Refuseniks and Whistleblowers!
Workshop at the Anarchist Bookfair

Saturday 18 October 12-1 pm
Room 2.40, 2nd Floor Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
All welcome. Crèche and full disabled access, Mile End or Stepney Green
Join speakers from Payday and Queer Strike:
How Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange’s whistleblowing on war crimes and corruption has been vital to our movements for change. How can we defend them and other whistleblowers? How Chelsea Manning’s action sparked the lgbtq and anti-war movements blowing the whistle on San Francisco Pride?
Organised by Payday men’s network & Queer Strike
Email: payday@paydaynet.org queerstrike@queerstrike.net
Websites: Refusing to Kill / Queer Strike / Tel: 0207 482 2496

From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

Markin comment:

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  
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BOOK REVIEW

THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973

THE CRISIS OF REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP
AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO LEARN THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.
I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.

Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basic for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book.

Revised-June 19, 2006


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From The Archives Of  Women And Revolution

Markin comment:

The following is a set of archival issues of Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting articles from the back issues of  Women and Revolution during Women's History Month in March and periodically throughout the year.

Women and Revolution-1971-1980, Volumes 1-20  


http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/w&r/WR_001_1971.pdf

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From The Archives Of The American And International Left

Click on link below and follow links to access back Spartacist issues.  

http://www.bolshevik.org/

Markin comment:

This set of archival issues of the Spartacist journal may be of some historical interest for old "new leftists,” perhaps, as well as for younger militants interested in various political, cultural and social questions that intersect and directly affect the ebb and flow of the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Spartacist and other periodicals from other leftist organizations, past and present, periodically throughout the year.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

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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  

VIVE LA FRANCE!


Franceline rose in the dawning gray,
And her heart would dance though she knelt to pray,
For her man Michel had holiday,
        Fighting for France.

She offered her prayer by the cradle-side,
And with baby palms folded in hers she cried:
"If I have but one prayer, dear, crucified
        Christ--save France!

"But if I have two, then, by Mary's grace,
Carry me safe to the meeting-place,
Let me look once again on my dear love's face,
        Save him for France!"

She crooned to her boy: "Oh, how glad he'll be,
Little three-months old, to set eyes on thee!
For, 'Rather than gold, would I give,' wrote he,
        'A son to France.'

"Come, now, be good, little stray _sauterelle_,
For we're going by-by to thy papa Michel,
But I'll not say where for fear thou wilt tell,
        Little pigeon of France!

"Six days' leave and a year between!
But what would you have? In six days clean,
Heaven was made," said Franceline,
        "Heaven and France."

She came to the town of the nameless name,
To the marching troops in the street she came,
And she held high her boy like a taper flame
            Burning for France.

Fresh from the trenches and gray with grime,
Silent they march like a pantomime;
"But what need of music? My heart beats time--
            _Vive la France!_"

His regiment comes. Oh, then where is he?
"There is dust in my eyes, for I cannot see,--
Is that my Michel to the right of thee,
            Soldier of France?"

Then out of the ranks a comrade fell,--
"Yesterday--'t was a splinter of shell--
And he whispered thy name, did thy poor Michel,
            Dying for France."

The tread of the troops on the pavement throbbed
Like a woman's heart of its last joy robbed,
As she lifted her boy to the flag, and sobbed:
            "_Vive la France!_"

_Charlotte Holmes Crawford

On The 155^th Anniversary Of The Heroic Captain John Brown-Led Fight For Black Liberation At Harper’s Ferry-Josh Breslin’s Dream    

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

I remember a few years ago my friend and I, Josh Breslin, from the old working- class neighborhoods of North Adamsville, a town south of Boston, were discussing the historical events that helped form our political understandings back in the early 1960 since we were, and are, both political men driven by historical examples as much as by the minutia of organizing principles. And while we have diverged on many of the influences since then as we have a fair degree of differences on the way to change the world and what agencies can do that (basically working within the current political system or moving over to the base of society and organizing from the ground up within or outside of the system depending on circumstance) we both agreed whole-heartedly that one of our early heroes was old Captain John Brown and his heroic efforts with his small integrated band of men at Harper’s Ferry down in what is now West Virginia but the just Virginia, a slave-holders stronghold. As we discussed the matter more fully we found we were hard pressed to explain what first captured our attention and agreed that then would have not had the political sense then to call Brown’s actions heroic although we both understood that what he did was necessary.

 

See, coming up in a mainly Irish working-class neighborhood we were always aware, made particularly aware by grandfathers who had kindred over there in those days, of that heroic struggle in Easter 1916 that was the precursor to the long sought national liberation of Ireland from the bloody British. So when we first studied, or heard about John Brown we instinctively saw that same kind of struggle. Both of us also agreed that we had had back then very strong feelings about the wrongness of slavery, a wretched system going back to Pharaoh’s time if not before, although Josh was more ambivalent about the fate of black people after Civil War freedom than I was since there was in his household a stronger current of anti-black feeling around the civil rights work down south in those days than in mine. (Strangely my father, who was nothing but a corn liquor, fast car, ex-coal miner good old boy from down in Kentucky was more sympathetic to that struggle that Josh’s Irish grandfather whom Josh could never get to call black people anything better than “nigras.” At least we got my father to say “Negro.” Jesus.)                

 

A couple of week after that conversation Josh called me up from California one night where he was attending a professional conference near San Jose and told me that he forgot to tell me about what he called a “dream” he had had as a kid concerning his admiration for John Brown. Of course that “dream” stuff was just Josh’s way of saying that he had sketched out a few thoughts that he wanted to share with me (and which will undoubtedly find their into a commentary  or review or something because very little of Josh’s “dream” stuff fails to go to ink or cyberspace). Some of it is now hazy in my mind since the hour was late here in the East, and some of it probably was really based on stuff we had learned later about the Brown expedition like how Boston Brahmins and high abolitionists like George Stearns secretly funded the operation or Brown’s attempts to get Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on board (neither name which we would have known very much about then), and some of the stuff was probably a little goofy since it involved Josh in some hero worship. Since he will inevitably write something on his own he can make any corrections to what I put down here himself. Know this though whenever I hear the name John Brown mentioned lately I think about Josh’s telephone call and about how the “old man” has held our esteem for so long. Here is what I jotted down, edited of course, after that conversation:   

 

From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harper’s Ferry. I would say that was in about the sixth grade when I went to the library and read about Abraham Lincoln before he became president and how he didn’t like what John Brown did because he knew that that action was going to drive the South crazy and upset the delicate balance that was holding the Union together. Frank though thinks it was the seventh grade when we were learning about the slavery issues as part of the 100^th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War and his name came up as a “wild man” out of some Jehovah Calvinist burning bush dream who was single-handedly trying to abolish slavery with that uprising. Was ready to “light the spark” to put out the terrible scourge of slavery in the land with some spilled blood. That slavery business, if you can believe this really bothered both of us, especially when we went to a museum that showed the treatment of slaves and the implements used to enforce that condition down South. And I remember one time going to the Museum of Fine Arts and saw how old Pharaoh used his slaves to build those damn pyramids to immortalize himself. Yeah, the hell with slavery, any kind.   

I think I am right thought about when I first heard about the “old man” because I know I loved Lincoln, loved to read about him, loved that back then we celebrated his birthday, February 12^th, and we got the day off from school. Loved that Lincoln was basically forced at the governmental level to implement Brown’s program to root out slavery once the deal went down and he was merciless about its extermination once he got “religion” on the matter. Of course neither I nor Frank would have articulated our thoughts that way then but we knew “Massa Lincoln” was on the right side of the angels in his work as much as he hated to burn down the South in the process. But there was no other way to get the damn issue resolved and I think that is what he learned from the Captain whether he gave credit to the man or not. By the way this I do know that while we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in the North as the great emancipator and Union-saver Frank once told me a story about one of his cousins down south and how when he mentioned that he had Lincoln’s birthday off that cousin said “we don’t celebrate that man’s birthday down here,’’ in such a way that Frank began to understand that maybe the Civil War was not over. That some people had not gotten the word)   

I knew other stuff back then too which added to my feel for the Brown legend. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as John Brown’s Body, a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they bravely headed south. Funny but back then I was totally unaware of the role of the Massachusetts 54^th Regiment, the first black regiment raised although with white officers when Father Abraham gave the word, whose survivors and replacements marched into Charleston, South Carolina, the heart and soul of the Confederacy, after the bloody Civil War to the tune of John Brown’s Body. That must have been a righteous day. Not so righteous though and reflecting a very narrow view of history that we were taught back then kind of fudging the very serious differences back in Civil War times even in high abolitionist Boston was not knowing thing number one about Augustus Saint-Gauden’s commemorative frieze honoring the men of the 54^th right across from the State House which I passed frequently when I went on to Boston Common.

I was then, however, other than aware of the general narrative of Brown’s exploits and a couple of songs and poems neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the ante bellum struggle against slavery of which he represented the extreme activist left-wing. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Some 150 years after his death I am proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown. [And I am too, brother!-Frank]

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As various biographies point out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harper’s Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for the institution about his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. Like them without warts and with a discernible thrust from early adulthood that leads to some heroic action. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning allegations of the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) have also clouded his image. However if one looks at Kansas as the start of the Civil War then all the horrible possibilities under the heat of battle mitigate some of that incident although not excusing it anymore that we would today with American soldiers in places like Afghanistan and Iraq busting down doors and shooting first. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows that they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the Maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs. The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harper’s Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist “avenging angel” in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. (Strange, or maybe not so strange now, both Frank and I who grew up upright Roman Catholics gravitated toward those photographs of Brown with his long unkempt beard as some latter day Jehovah and I remember Frank had a photo on the wall in his room with just such a photograph from I think a detail of the big mural in the State House in Kansas.) In short Brown   was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist sense of pre-determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported Brown and kept his memory alive in hard times. In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. This old time prophet animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand today the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown.  He prophetic words upon the scaffold about purging the evil of slavery in blood proved too true. But that demeanor in the face of defeat was very appealing to me back then.  I have learned since that these results, the imprisonments or executions are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order if one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871 when that experience was crushed in blood after heroic resistance. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar with now there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy that led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown, and of his friend Frederick Douglass.

I used to fervently believe that if Douglass had come on board as Brown had urged the chances for success would have been greater, at least more blacks (mostly free blacks and not plantation blacks for obvious reasons) and more radical whites who could have been mobilized as a result of all of the events of the 1850s especially the struggle against the Fugitive Slave Act and the struggle against the imposition of slavery in Kansas. Now I am not so sure that Douglass’ acceptance would have qualitatively changed the outcome. He went on to do yeoman’s work during the Civil War articulating the left black perspective and organizing those black regiments that shifted the outcome of the war at a decisive point. In any case honor the memory of old Captain John Brown and his heroic band at Harper’s Ferry.