“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938

Click below to link to documents of the early 4th International.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/

Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):

Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had  also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21^st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward. 

A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy. Support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For 15.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution workers the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of retail stores. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012 labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. The most egregious recent example that I can recall- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).  

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, I argued that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (Islamic State) in Iraq we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! No Intervention In Syria! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East! Stop The Bombing Campaign! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner on this issue, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets by going to prison. The only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.  

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

 

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.    

Of course a guy who liked to walk on the wild side, who was organically incapable of saying a straight thing if for no other reason than self-preservation would have many a back room tavern wench taking him around the world (yes, they, the wenches, and their procurers, knew all about “taking a guy around the world” like that little sexual trick was invented by Master and Johnson or something). And on a normal night, maybe after stealing some gold from a merchant’s back room, maybe pilfering some goods just off the boat from the Japan seas, maybe after waylaying some drunken sot for his ready bag of cash that would be good enough, would sate his sexual desire. But once every dark moonless night, maybe feeling a little put upon by his wretched place in the world he would seek the high life, “go uptown” as they said in their own way among the brotherhood.

And here is how it was done. A great and gratifying scam. Some poor high life guy who made his dough off the Japan seas or something like that had a lady love who could not be moved except by words, words of love. And he from rough usage spoke only in twaddle. No sale. So sweet boy Villon to the rescue. Pretty words at a dime a throw. A few ducats. But get this that poor roughly used guy would have old boy Villon prate the words to his love to his love. And sometimes, sometimes when there was a dark, moonless, night maybe a little sweaty milady would close her virginal eyes and act the backroom tavern wench and take old brother Villon around the world. See she knew such arts too. And that roughly sued sot would never be the wiser. Oh sweet boy Villon teach your arts.        

When you mess with women though, mess in the bedroom anyway, some paid for bedroom, and it was not you paying the freight, whether it was Eve in the garden, hell, maybe before when two primates started doing the courtly dance or today with some Evita trying to avoid getting your toes stepped on by some fast moving female you have to be prepared to take the gaff. Be prepared to find that the end could only lead one way, and it was not in favor of Villon and his progeny. So, Eve, Helen, Mary, the Pea, some sweetie, whoever was ready to throw you to the wolves once they were done with you. Or maybe throw you to the wolves even if they were not done with you just for practice. Ah, love, love divine, love in the back alleys, love in that scented boudoir but love nevertheless. Except when you mess with another man’s woman, go against some broken code, and this too has been going on since the garden, maybe before, maybe in some half-remembered tussle in the savannah where the winner dragged the queen of Sheba, his queen of Sheba anyway by the hair and took her by main force you must take the gaff as well and be prepared to run after the rut. Whether she liked it or not. But still playing with kingly woman is always a dicey thing and so Villon, Adam, Markin, whoever is now out begging for alms, for his life for the chance once more to get at that jasmine scent that maddens his mind, keeps his thoughts clouded, disturbs his sleep and makes him ask the question-what the fuck- or whatever old Villon term used with his corner boys to signify defeat. And proclaim that defeat in sweet saucy words to a candid world.        

Ah youth, ah the flower of youth and immorality, and living forever. Who had time for worrying about tomorrow today was the thing with some loose dope, some loose talk, some loose luscious butterfly swirl keeping you company against the dark, against the light if it came to that over some misty river spill or some Norman exile deep sea ocean twirl. She slumming against the drab home that she fled the last time, fled that that too soon met husband. And so she headed north to the May time fair, headed north to see if she could find a certain guy that she had dreamed about ever since that night when he performed on stage and only had eyes for her. Well, she was wrong about those eyes only for her but she found him among the Mayfair swells, found him and he did look at her then, long longing looks before the night was over, and before the expected other shoe fell. He, a poet after all, spoke of flaxen hair, fierce blue eyes (fiercer when he did some foolish thing even fiercer when some other flaxen-haired woman looked his way, or he hers), high point breasts, shoulders built to be held, a waspish waist, honey dew thighs, a sweet sweet spot and well-turned legs and ankles. Very heaven like some new day Botticelli vision, garlands in her hair, rosy cheeks after he put his heat to her.

And so they spent their time together, moving when rumors floated that her husband had his evil design on her, and on him for having her. But nothing ever came of it, at least nobody around the May fair ever heard anything about any confrontation. As we catch up to our couple though, having travelled some distance up even further north one day they were standing in the square and an old woman (not really old today but then old) strangling flaxen hair, sullen blues eyes (more sullen when some other hag tried to take her flask), sagging breasts which once too had been high pointed, craven shoulders, expanding waist (being kind to years of flask-holding womanhood), flabby thighs, barren sweet spot, veined legs and swollen ankles. The picture of, well, of something but that is not the point. That day that now aging flaxen-haired one (not really aging today but then aging) free butterfly swirl caught just a glimmer of mortality and shuttered.            

Old Villon like all of us, or most of us, was a man of his time, spent his hours in back tavern room lifting up the skirts of some low-born wench when could (when he had his florins at the ready and his friend too) and since he was a mixer and had some decent blood in his veins some high-born virginal white sheets as well if he could get through the door, could find out that her husband was out with the falcons or with his own mistress and he would tumble her and she for days and days would look for a sign from him, foolish woman. Spent his time in low pursuits with his homeboys doing their midnight creep, figuring out some grift.

So, yes, he loved well, he sweated those bulky beds well, devised many a plan to keep himself in clover but hear this he also as a man of his time had to make his peace with the religious sentiments of the time and while he could accused of blasphemy, could face the executioner’s block for what he said, could speak incestuously of his holy mother, could speak of fondling some sweet sister saint. Yes, a man of his time.

But know this old Villon was a man of words, low cunning words, high born spiritual words, crafty words, insincere words, love cometh words, wench-fetching words, suck hole words, slanderous words, but words and for that he will ride the white horse, ride off to some faraway beach.        

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: ‘Item: Donne A Ma Povre Mere’

 

Item

 

This I give to my poor mother

As a prayer now, to our Mistress

– She who bore bitter pain for me,

God knows, and also much sadness –

I’ve no other castle or fortress,

That my body and soul can summon,

When I’m faced with life’s distress,

Nor has my mother, poor woman:

 

Ballade

 

‘Lady of Heaven, earthly queen,

Empress of the infernal regions,

Receive me, a humble Christian,

To live among the chosen ones,

Though I’m worth less than anyone.

Your grace, my Lady and Mistress

Is greater than my sinfulness,

Grace without which, I tell no lie,

None deserve their blessedness.

In this faith let me live and die.

 

Say to your Son that I am His.

Through Him all my sins are lost:

Forgive me, as Mary Egypt was,

Or, so they say, Theophilus,

Who by your grace was still blameless,

Though he vowed the Devil a guest.

Protect me always from like excess,

Virgin, who bore, without a cry,

Christ whom we celebrate at Mass.

In this faith let me live and die.

I am a woman, poor and old,

I can neither read nor spell.

At Mass in church, here, I behold,

A painted Heaven, with harps: a Hell,

Where the damned are boiled, as well.

One gives me joy: one strikes me cold,

Grant me the joy, Great Goddess,

On whom all sinners must rely,

Fill me with faith and no slackness.

In this faith let me live and die.

 

V  irgin, you bore, O High Princess,

I   ssue, whose kingdom is endless,

L  ord, who took on a littleness

L  ike ours: to save us left the sky,

O ffering his lovely youth to death.

N  ow, such is our Lord: such we confess:

In this faith let me live and die.

Toya C.  "Why I Joined Socialist Alternative" Get a subcription to Socialist Alternative newspaper! SUBSCRIBE TODAY! $25 a year - Regular Subscription $50 a year - Solidarity Subscription CONTACT US: (910) 639-3948 Boston@SocialistAlternative.org www.socialistalternative.org www.socialistworld.net Stand Up for Abortion Rights in Ireland Boston Solidarity Rally  Tuesday, October 28th 12:00 PM at the Irish Consulate 535 Boylston St On October 28th, there will be protests at Irish embassies & consulates around the world calling for a referendum to Repeal the 8th Amendment, Ireland's constitutional abortion ban. This day will mark the second anniversary of the death of Savita Halappanavar - victim of Ireland's backward abortion laws. Two years later, despite huge desire for change from below, we've seen no progress.  Please join this International Day of Action - we need to exert huge pressure on the Irish Government and we need your help to force change. This Government must grant the right to a referendum, as per the wishes of the majority of the population in Ireland. It's especially important to make it out to not only show our solidarity from around the world, but also to show the politicians in the US that we won't stand for more attacks on womens' rights! Join Socialist Alternative and others at this important solidarity rally and picket! RSVP on Facebook!

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  

TO FRANCE


What is the gift we have given thee, Sister?
  What is the trust we have laid in thy hand?
Hearts of our bravest, our best, and our dearest,
  Blood of our blood we have sown in thy land.

What for all time will the harvest be, Sister?
  What will spring up from the seed that is sown?
Freedom and peace and goodwill among Nations,
  Love that will bind us with love all our own.

Bright is the path, that is opening before us,
  Upward and onward it mounts through the night;
Sword shall not sever the bonds that unite us
  Leading the world to the fullness of light.

Sorrow hath made thee more beautiful, Sister,
  Nobler and purer than ever before;
We who are chastened by sorrow and anguish
  Hail thee as sister and queen evermore.

_Frederick George Scott_

Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Then, And Now

 

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Several years ago, I guess about three years now, in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement with the shutting down of its campsites across the country (and the world) I wrote a short piece centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I ran into in the various campsites and on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses. Now a few years later it is apparent that they have, mostly, moved back to the traditional political ways of operating or have not quite finished licking their wounds.

Although I initially addressed my remarks to the activists still busy I also had in mind those intellectuals who had a radical streak but who then hovered on the sidelines and were not sure what to make of the whole experiment although some things seemed very positive like the initial camp comradery. In short, those who would come by on Sunday and take a lot of photographs and write a couple of lines but held back. Now in 2014 it is clear as day that the old economic order (capitalism if you were not quite sure what to name it) that we were fitfully protesting against (especially the banks who led the way downhill) has survived another threat to its dominance. The old political order, the way of doing political business now clearly being defended by one Barack Obama with might and main is still intact. The needs of working people although now widely discussed (the increasing gap between the rich, really the very rich, and the poor, endlessly lamented and then forgotten, the student debt death trap, and the lingering sense that most of us will never get very far ahead in this wicked old world especially compared to previous generations) have not been ameliorated. All of this calls for intellectuals with any activist spark to come forth and help analyze and plan how the masses are to survive, how a new social order can be brought forth. Nobody said, or says, that it will be easy but this is the plea. I have reposted the original piece with some editing to bring it up to date.          

*******

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon, a founding member of the American Communist Party and the founder of the Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined. A century later with some tweaking, unfortunately, those same theories and the same need for organization are still on the agenda although, as Trotsky once said, the conditions are overripe for the overthrow of capitalism as it has long ago outlived its progressive character in leading humankind forward.   

The conclusion that I originally drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them, and plenty of them, especially those who can write, is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders, guys like Cannon, like Debs from the old Socialist Party, like Ruthenberg from the early Communist Party, to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. He led the anti-war movement in Germany by refusing to vote for the Kaiser’s war budgets, found himself in jail as a result, but also had tremendous authority among the left-wing German workers when that mattered. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have, as mentioned previously, held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. Not so Communist Party leaders like William Z. Foster and Earl Browder (to speak nothing of Gus Hall from our generation) or Max Shachtman in his later years after he broke with Cannon and the SWP. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spent a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. I find that position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to lead the struggle to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, rather than some tweaking, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.

It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the “new” working class or a “new” vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an idea that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on, frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray (in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. The late Mandel’s students from the 1960s have long gone on to academia and the professions (and not an inconsiderable few in governmental harness-how the righteous have fallen). Debray’s guerilla foci have long ago buried their dead and gone back to the cities. The “cities” of the world now including to a great extent China had broken the third world countryside. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?