Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!

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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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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!

********Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Preacher man, don't tell me,

Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!

Stand up for your rights. come on!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Most people think,

Great god will come from the skies,

Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.

But if you know what life is worth,

You will look for yours on earth:

And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )

Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )

Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )

Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )

Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )

Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -

Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can't fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),

We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

So you better:

Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )

Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )

*********

 

 

ELECTION DAY, November 4:

One Million Massachusetts Workers Need the Right to Earned Sick Time!

 

Raise Up Massachusetts, which is leading the campaign, writes:

This weekend will mark 30 days from Election Day and we have a lot of work to do. We’re planning canvasses across the state and we need you to join us. So far, our canvasses have been great successes: volunteers have been able to talk to dozens of voters a shift and have meaningful conversations that have spread the message of our campaign.  But as we get closer to Election Day (again, we’re only 30 days out!), we need to start talking to even more voters every weekend. You can either sign up for an event near you, or if you there’s nothing close, sign up here to set up canvassing in your neighborhood.

 

Our friends at Massachusetts Peace Action are pitching in:

You can join Massachusetts Peace Action's work on this effort in several ways. 1) Volunteer for shifts at regional call centers in many towns around the state using the state of the art HubDialer system, which guarantees many contacts with voters.  2) Use your own phone and a computer at home to do a shift using HubDialer (after simple web based training in using the system).  3) Call from an old fashioned paper list. 4) Join door to door canvasses to reach likely supporters.  5) Reach out to family, friends, co-workers and in your community to those and ask them to sign a pledge a vote for Yes on 4.

Please click here to join in the Raise Up Campaign by volunteering for a shift making calls or reaching out to your friends, neighbors, and family in support of YES on 4

And DORCHESTER PEOPLE FOR PEACE is committed to turning out at the polls for Question 4 on Election Day – and also for our local ballot QUESTION 5 to say “we want to get big money out of our politics!”

 

Sharon Bilodeau (sgbilodeau@gmail.com / 617-504-1645) writes:

We need your help on Election Day, November 4. Can you cover a morning or evening shift (or both)? Can you work the same shift you worked in September? Would you like a new time and place? Were you busy on Primary Day but can work Election Day?  Please email at sgbilodeau@gmail.com or call me at 617-504-1645
Here are the ballot questions:
1. Earned Sick Time. Our ally, New England United for Justice, has been working for the right to earned sick time for all Massachusetts workers for seven years. In November it will be a binding question on the ballot. Many people haven't heard about it but will support it if we let them know.

2. Getting Big Money Out of Politics. Recent Supreme Court decisions have allowed billionaires and corporations to spend unlimited amounts in elections, treating corporations as ‘Persons’ with free speech rights. To show that our elected officials that voters do not agree, Sydney and Hayat led a drive that put a non-binding question on the ballot in Dan Cullinane’s district. The ballot question calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to saying that corporations are not people and money is not a form of speech – it must be regulated in political campaigns.

The polling places are, in priority order with double precincts and heavier-voting precincts first: 
Dorchester Academy (the former Woodrow Wilson School), 18 Croftland St, Codman Hill (Ward 17, Precincts 4 and 11)
Mildred Avenue School, Mildred Ave, Mattapan (Ward 17, Precinct 10 and Ward 18, Precinct 2)
Lower Mills Library, Richmond St (Ward 17, Precincts 13 and 14)
Groveland Community Room, Franklin Field (Ward 18, Precincts 1 and 4)
Chittick School, 154 Ruskindale Road between Cummins Highway and River St (Ward 18, Precincts 6 and 21)
Adams Street Library, near Ashmont St (Ward 16, Precinct 8)
Florian Hall, 55 Hallet St (Ward 16, Precinct 11)
Charles H. Taylor School, 1060 Morton St (Ward 17, Precinct 12)
Mattahunt School, 100 Hebron St (Ward 18, Precinct 3)
Hassan Apartments, 705 River St (Ward 18, Precinct 5)

The shifts are:  7-9 am, 5-8 pm (or 5-7 if you can't stay the whole time)

Please sign up now so we can cover all these polling places. And thanks!  

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  

RUSSIA--AMERICA


A wind in the world! The dark departs;
The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and bones,
Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones,
And slavery is lifted from your hearts.

A wind in the world! O Company
Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain,
Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain
Go shrinking out across a summer sky.

A wind in the world! Our God shall be
In all the future left, no kingly doll
Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole,
But walk the earth--a man, in Charity.

       *       *       *       *       *

A wind in the world! And doubts are blown
To dust along, and the old stars come forth--
Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth
A field of broken spears and flowers strown.

A wind in the world! Now truancy
From the true self is ended; to her part
Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart
A great America cries: Death to Tyranny!

A wind in the world! And we have come
Together, sea by sea; in all the lands
Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands
With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home!

_John Galsworthy_

Thu, Oct 02, 2014 11:36 AM

Help Massachusetts Peace Action support the Yes on 4 -- Raise Up Massachusetts campaign, because... One Million Massachusetts Workers Need the Right to Earned Sick Time! On November 4, Massachusetts voters can vote Yes on 4 to allow workers to take sick time without losing their jobs. With our help, RaiseUp Massachusetts won an $11/hr minimum wage in the legislature. Now is the time to win the right to earned sick days on the November ballot. This is a basic part of a social justice agenda. Join the Massachusetts Peace Action team supporting Raise Up Massachusetts in the last month before the November 4 election! The business interests who prevented the earned paid sick days bills from passing the legislature are poised to spend millions in ad campaigns designed to confuse the issue. Raise Up Massachusetts plans to contact tens of thousands of less frequent voters who are likely to directly benefit, to expand the electorate and clarify any confusion. You can join Massachusetts Peace Action's work on this effort in several ways. 1) Volunteer for shifts at regional call centers in many towns around the state using the state of the art HubDialer system, which guarantees many contacts with voters.  2) Use your own phone and a computer at home to do a shift using HubDialer (after simple web based training in using the system).  3) Call from an old fashioned paper list. 4) Join door to door canvasses to reach likely supporters.  5) Reach out to family, friends, co-workers and in your community to those and ask them to sign a pledge a vote for Yes on 4. Please click here to join in the Raise Up Campaign by volunteering for a shift making calls or reaching out to your friends, neighbors, and family in support of YES on 4-- the ballot question establishing earned paid sick days. Raise Up Massachusetts is fighting to ensure earned sick time for workers across the state.  For nearly 1 million workers in Massachusetts, staying home to care for themselves or a sick child could mean losing their job. The ability for workers to care and provide for themselves and family members should be a right, not a privilege, and now is the time to make it a reality for working families. Click here to volunteer for one or more shifts contacting voters or to get YES on 4 committments in your community.as part of our Peace Action team. Read more about our Yes on 4 campaign here! In solidarity, John Ratliff Massachusetts Peace Action Economic Justice Coordinator Join Massachusetts Peace Action - or renew your membership in advance for 2015!   Dues are $40/year for an individual, $65 for a family, or $10 for student/unemployed/low income.  Members vote for leadership and endorsements, receive newsletters and discounts on event admissions.  Donate now and you will be a member in good standing through December 2015!  Your financial support makes this work possible! Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138 617-354-2169  • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter Click here to unsubscribe

Tue, Oct 28, 2014 02:44 PM

November 4th is not the end of 15 Now in Boston or New England. We are continuing to fight for working people to receive a real living wage of $15 with new, exciting campaigns in the new year! Get in touch to get involved. CONTACT 15NowNewEngland@gmail.com www.15now.org Like the Question 5 Facebook Page!    Let's Make History:  Vote Yes for $15 an Hour! Tuesday, November 4th At Your Polling Station The 10th Suffolk State Rep District has the ability to make history next Tuesday, November 4th. By voting 'Yes' on Ballot Question 5 - for a $15 an hour minimum wage, the 10th Suffolk will be standing up for all working people in Boston, the state of Massachusetts and the US in saying that we want a real living wage for all workers. Ballot Question 5 is an advisory question that can serve as a referendum on not just the minimum wage but on the need for substantial changes in living standards for working people. A strong showing for a 'Yes' vote can serve as a building block for future movements in the city and state that emphasize the needs of working people over corporate profits To make the strongest campaign for $15/hr, we need your help in the ballot box but also at the polls. Please contact us if you are able to help build the movement by standing out at polling stations throughout the district next Tuesday. We've got an opportunity to make a historic impact for the Fight for 15 movement. Let's do it!

Get one of these fantastic yard signs to show your support today! Upcoming Events  Build 15 at the Polls! November 4th All Day Join the Vote Yes on 5 campaign at the polling stations on election day November 4th. Stay all day and talk to folks about why they should support $15/hr or just take a shift! Please contact us if you can help! TOMORROW!!! Build the Campaign for Question 5! For a $15/hr minimum wage October 18th - 1:00 PM  West Roxbury Public Library RSVP The 10th Suffolk State Representative District, comprising West Roxbury, South Brookline and Roslindale, has a unique opportunity to make an impact for a $15/hr minimum wage in Boston. On November 4th, the 10th Suffolk will have the historic opportunity to vote 'Yes' on an advisory ballot question to support the adoption of a $15 an hour minimum wage.  A strong 'Yes' vote would have a major impact on the discussion around and campaign to fight for $15 and other issues facing working people in Boston. The 10th Suffolk has the ability to be at the forefront of this. Join us on Saturday, October 18th, to come out and discuss with your neighbors how to make the strongest possible impact for $15 in the district. We need as many supporters and volunteers as possible to make this reality!   Get Involved with Vote Yes on 5 today! 15NowNewEngland@gmail.com Facebook.com/votefor15minwage - www.15Now.org 910-639-3948

***Johnny Boy, Indeed-Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Suspicion, starring Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1941

The twentieth century, the triumphant “age of democracy,” at least in the developed West was not a particularly good time for properly trained elite school gentlemen, assorted nobles, and wayward royalty as the stresses of war, the masses, and the vigor of more secular states did in more empires than one could shake a stick at from Russia to Britain and France and broke up empires without regret. They, those sullen gentry, especially daunted second sons and certainly forlorn third or more with no hope inheriting more than a piss-pot, those degreed nobles who could neither hold onto their estates against a fellahin world or pay the damn mortgage after successive generations of entailment, social if not legal, those “kings” among men working as dime a dozen waiters in Parisian cafes or huddled in some backwater corner reliving their former splendors to a bored world all had that insufferable proper training, good breeding and only hanging with the best café society.

But the twentieth century (and now extending into the twenty-first) besides bringing fellahin uprisings and democratic veneers was preeminently the “age of the cash nexus” as well and that little problem of entailed estates, social or legal, and mortgaged to the hilt princely residences required more that some nodding acquaintance with fellow blue-bloods before selling the family silverware for one last blast before the streets.  All of this by way of introducing a stellar British example of the wayward proper gentry left adrift in the twentieth century (and extending into the twenty-first for the progeny), Johnny A., (no full last name needed as his is emblematic of the breed), and his self-imposed financial problems in the film under review, Suspicion.  Oh yes, since this film does not hinge on some left-wing sociological analysis and has the imprimatur of Sir (belatedly Sir) Alfred Hitchcock, a director known for mudding the waters with some off-hand intrigue and suspense before resolving all doubts, has the smell of murder in the air, murder most foul if certain imaginations are allowed to get the better of the situation.      

Here’s why we can speak candidly of murder, murder most foul. Our boy Johnny A. (played to a tee by Cary Grant who seems to have been born to fill such ruined high bred, good fellow well met, gentry cinematic roles), all good breeding and manners was a sporting man, a serious sporting man who had run out of possibilities with the known gentry but who still had those nagging problems of owing every Tom, Dick, and Harry around. And one of those Tom, Dick, and Harrys is his friendly bookie who is looking for his dough when Johnny boy’s nags ran out. See he figured that if Johnny had won he would have to have paid out so fair is fair. And Johnny is smart enough to see that if he wants to live another day to make that surefire bet that will get him on easy street that he must agree with such a proverbial thought.

So what is a hard-pressed man about town to do? Well here was Johnny’s scam (guys like Johnny spent many a sleepless night working out the details of such plans rather than face the prospect of gainful employment which would lead to nightmares). Or what looks to an untrained eye like an easy scam He “hit” on this dowdy spinsterly rural gentlewoman, Lina (played by Joan Fontaine, who as the film progresses remarkably loses that dowdiness, loses it all the way to an Oscar), who also has plenty of breeding, very good manners and, some dough, although as a 1940s woman she is not expected to use her obvious intelligence beyond the knitting table. Oh yes she is also looking for a man to sweep her away (although she did not know it). See Johnny, all bluster and sweet sweep her off her feet moves, figured to marry her and live off of her largess like any proper squire. Which he did, both swept her off her feet and married her. Nice work Johnny and good luck on easy street.

 

Well not quite. The problem was Lina’s father, a gentleman of the old school, who had insured Lina’s spinsterly future by keeping her on a short leash, a yearly allowance and not any real dough. And once he passed on later in the film, to show one final kick in the shins distain for Lina’s choice of husband, he left Lina with a thimble full of good thoughts but no dough. Oops, Johnny.            

Once Johnny figured out the score (after running up the bills on the expectation of fatherly largess) he of course decided to go to work, nothing too heavy maybe managing some well- established estate, and make something of himself. Make a crestfallen Lina proud. Hold on, have you been reading this plotline, Johnny was a sport not a worker bee and so the only work he was doing, his only gainful employment, was scratching away at every scheme he could figure out to keep the creditors from the door, or worse. And that is where murder, murder most foul, really where suspicion of such deeds comes in. A series of events unfolds which look very much like somebody is being set up for murder, murder by the book if you want to know, and that somebody is Lina. At least as Johnny grows distant, as untoward things begin to happen that is what Lina believed her fate to be.

That series of unexplained coincidences from the mysterious death of Johnny’s partner in a real estate scheme just before it was to be completed by a party, or parties unknown, to those various suspense-building untoward things happening to Lina drives the last part of the film. Remember too Johnny was a sport, a con man, a flimflam man and not built for murder. Know this as well, if you can believe this about sporting Johnny, in the end, despite his financial problems and whatever drove him to pull his scams on her he actually loved his Lina. Go figure, right.