This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Happy International Day of Nonviolence and Happy 146th
Birthday to Gandhi!
Today is
International Day of Non-Violence and the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of
the Indian independence movement and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of
non-violence. <More>
Keep Space for Peace Week is a decentralized week of
local actions held around the globe to bring the issue of the militarization of
space to the public. For the past 13 years the Global Network Against Weapons
& Nuclear Power in Space has organized the week of actions which include
protests at key Space Command bases, space weapons technology production
facilities, as well as film showings and public meetings. Space technology now
coordinates all US warfare on the planet and increasingly “allied” nations,
largely through NATO, are becoming “interoperable” with the US satellite
directed war fighting system.
On October 7, as the U.S./NATO war in
Afghanistan enters Year 15, with new U.S. troops just deployed, but also as we
mark the anniversary of a popular revolution without war in the Philippines, the
world's social media (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr) will be flooded with the
message that we've had enough of war and are ready to move beyond it.
You can't
wait for October 7th to act. To be a part of this thunderclap sign up
beforehand. Click this link to signup: http://thndr.me/NChhRE
If you indicate now that you
will support the thunderclap on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or all three, your
message will automatically go out on October 7th along with everyone else's,
flooding social media with a message from Afghan Peace Volunteers.
Back to Top
Solidarity with German Anti-drone Protestors!
Click image to watch video
Ret. Colonel Ann Wright, Lifetime Member of Veterans
for Peace, and Medea Benjamin founder of CODEPINK: Women For Peace send a
message to our German friends and allies protesting killer drones at Ramstein
Air Force Base in Germany. Back to Top
Travel Opportunities for Activists
We will
embark on our third VFP trip to Cuba January 22-29 2016. Members and supporters
of our message of peace are welcome to join us. However, please be advised that
we take 15-20 people, and only 8 spaces remain. Our tours are led by VFP member
and Cuban documentary film maker Jim Ryerson, who has been to the island more
than 25 times. If you are interested, please contact Jim. Like the other 2
trips, this one will sell out. jim@travelingman.net 323-436-5223
Dennis Bernstein Interviews Gerry Condon on the Golden Rule
Peace Boat
Legendary investigative reporter and radio host Dennis
Bernstein interviewed VFP Vice President, Gerry Condon on the Golden Rule while
it was docked in San Francisco last week. The interview was featured at the top
of his Thursday, June 24, edition of Flashpoints on KPFA radio. <Radio Interview>
Le Ly Haslip
will speak in October at various locations throughout the Northeast. Ms. Haslip
was one of the many speakers at this year's convention. She is an
internationally known Vietnamese-American author, philanthropist, peace activist
and speaker. She is the founder of both Global Village Foundation and East Meets
West Foundation, which has helped rebuild Vietnam since 1986 through an array of
projects including the construction of hospitals and schools, and a Mobile
Library project which brings books to rural schools. For more
information and updates to the tour, please visit the Global Village Foundation facebook page.
This winter,
VFP members will host a delegation to accompany local communities who are
opposing U.S. bases on their islands in Jeju, South Korea and Okinawa, Japan.
For more
information on the delegation, please email Tarak Kauff @ takauff@gmail.com.
Join us as we
continue to denounce the failed U.S. policies, which have left a brutal legacy
of impunity and Human Rights violations throughout the
hemisphere. If you
haven't already done so, start making your travel arrangements to Georgia!
Please contact Casey at casey@veteransforpeace.org or 314-725-6005 if you plan to
attend the SOAW gathering this year. Hourly Shuttle Info from Atlanta to Columbus
VFP
Chapter 46 in Monterey, CAwill
host a question and answer event on Saturday, Nov 7th that will address
miltarization of the police. For more details, please email Phil Butler @ butlerphil@comcast.net VFP
Chapter 26 in Chicago, IL is working on a proposed national campaign to bring
awareness of the need to demilitarize high schools. Visit their website for more information. Mike
Hastie, member of VFP Portland, OR Chapter 72, submitted poem,
entitled The Oregon Massacre. <Poem>
Support "Courage To Resist"-The Organization Supporting Military Resisters And Chelsea Manning
Frank Jackman comment on Courage To Resist and military resisters:
During the early stages of the Vietnam War, say 1965, 1966, frankly, I was annoyed at, dismayed by, appalled by and perplexed by guys my age, who were refusing to be drafted, refusing in some cases to even sign up for the draft (although I admit I was “late” signing up myself not for political or moral reasons but because I was not living at home having left on the first of about six estrangements from my family and did not receive the letter about the legal requirement to register until much later). Refusing and making a big public deal out of it. And this draft resistance movement was not some faraway situation heard on the news out in the suburbs about actions in the big cities or on some ivy-covered Ivy League elitist campuses but because while I was going to school I supported myself by getting up very early and servicing coffee- making machines in various locales in downtown Boston, including near the landmark draft resistance center, the Arlington Street Church (now U/U –Universalist-Unitarian but then I believe home to only one of the two having subsequently united but I am not sure which denomination ruled the roost at that location then although I believe it was the blessed Unitarians, now blessed for their generous help in the struggles against war and lesser known place of refuge for vagrant monthly folk-music friendly coffeehouses.) The Arlington Street Church moreover held itself out as a main sanctuary protecting under long time religious principles draft-resisters who had taken shelter there in order to avoid being arrested by federal law enforcement agents. So many mornings there would be a bee-hive of activity outside and around the church in support of the resisters. The sight of straggly guys and their supporters protesting would get my blood pressure rising.
Now it was not that I was particularly pro-war even then, probably had not been in favor of escalation of that war and support to the South Vietnamese government since about the time of the Diem regime, the time before Jack Kennedy was murdered in 1963. Somehow I sensed that with each tragic turn there the noose of the draft would tighten around my own neck. But in those days, whatever else I held politically sacred, I, a working class guy from North Adamsville, held all of the usual patriotic sentiments about country, about service and about military duty of my neighborhood and upbringing.
As my grandfather, a veteran of World War I, said of his own experience of volunteering when President Wilson pulled the hammer down looking for recruits back then, never volunteer but if called you go, say you went willingly if anybody asked. So the thought of anybody “shirking” their duty if called really rankled me and while later I did a complete turn-around about the draft resisters, especially the ones who chose jail rather military service then I was disgusted. Disgusted as well by what I perceived vaguely as a class-bias about who was refusing to go and who had to go if those who would normally be called refused to go-working class and minority guys. Don’t hold me to some kind of prescience on that because that was just a vague underpinning for my general reasons of patriotic duty but in the case when I did my own military service, my infantryman grunt service guess who the other guys in the barracks and tents were-yeah, working class and minority guys.
I, on the other hand, have always admired military resisters since my knowledge of them and their actions came later after I had begun my sea-change of views. Knowing too by personal experience that “bucking” the Army system and winding up in the stockade, or worse the dreaded Fort Leavenworth every drill sergeant made a point of telling us about if we screwed up. But I was no resister having, frankly, done my time in the military, Vietnam time, without any serious reflection about the military, my role in the military, or what was just and unjust about that war until after I got out. After I got out and began to see things without “the fog of war” and its infernal “do it for your buddies” which is what a lot of things came down to in the end blinding me and got serious “religion” on the questions of war and peace from several sources.
At first I began working with the Cambridge Quakers who I had noticed around the fringes of anti-war GI work in the early 1970s when there was a serious basis for doing such work as the American army, for one reason or another whether the craziness of pursuing the war, racism, or just guy being fed-up with being cannon-fodder for Mister’s war, was half in mutiny and the other half disaffected toward the end of American involvement in that war. The Quakers front and center on the military resisters just as they had been with the draft resisters at a time when there was a serious need as guys, guys who got their “religion” in the service needed civilian help to survive the military maze that they were trying to fight. This connection with the Quakers had been made shortly after I got out of the service when my doubts crept in about what I had done in the service, and why I had let myself be drafted and why I hadn’t expressed serious anti-war doubts before induction about what the American government was doing in Vietnam to its own soldiers. But, more importantly, and this was the real beginning of wisdom and something I am keenly aware every time the American government ratchets up the war hysteria for its latest adventure, to the Vietnamese who to paraphrase the great boxer Mohammed Ali (then Cassius Clay) had never done anything to me, never posed any threat to me and mine. But as much as I admired the Quakers and their simple peace witness, occasionally attended their service and briefly had a Quaker girlfriend, I was always a little jumpy around them, my problem not theirs, since their brand of conscientious objection to all wars was much broader than my belief in just and unjust wars.
Later I worked with a couple of anti-war collectives that concentrated on anti-war GI work among active GIs through the vehicle of coffeehouses located near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and Fort Dix down in New Jersey. That work was most satisfying and rewarding as I actually worked with guys who knew the score, knew the score from the inside, and had plenty to tell, especially those who had gotten “religion” under fire although that experience was short-lived once American on the ground involvement in Vietnam was minimalized and the horrific draft was abolished as a means of grabbing “cannon fodder” for the damn war. Once the threat of being sent to Vietnam diminished the soldiers drifted off and the anti-war cadre that held things together as well.
What really drove the issue of military resistance home to me though, what caused some red-faced shame was something that I did not find out about until well after my own military service was over. A few years later when I went back to my hometown on some family-related business (another futile attempt to rekindle the family ties) I found out after meeting him on the street coming out of a local supermarket that my best friend from high school, Sean Kiley, had been a military resister, had refused to go to Vietnam, and had served about two years in various Army stockades here in America for his efforts. Had done his “duty” as he saw it. Had earned his “anti-war” colors the hard way.
See Sean like me, like a lot of working-class kids from places like our hometownup in Massachusetts, maybe had a few doubts about the war but had no way to figure out what to do and let himself be drafted for that very reason. What would a small town boy whose citizens supported the Vietnam War long after it made even a smidgen of sense, whose own parents were fervent “hawks,” whose older brother had won the DSC in Vietnam, and whose contemporaries including me did their service without a public murmur know of how to maneuver against the American military monster machine. But what Sean saw early on, from about day three of basis training, told him he had made a big error, that his grandmother who grew up in Boston and had been an old Dorothy Day Catholic Worker supporter had been right that there was no right reason for him to be in that war. And so when he could, after receiving orders for Vietnam, he refused to go (I will tell you more of the details some time when I ask him some questions about events that I have forgotten) and did his time in the military that way.
Sean’s story, and in a sense my belated story, are enough reasons to support Courage to Resist since, unfortunately, there are today very few organizations dedicated to providing informational, legal, and social support for the military resisters of the heinous onslaughts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization needs the help of every ex-soldier who got “religion,” of every anti-war activist, and of every honest citizen who realizes, now more than ever, that the short way to end the endless wars of this generation is to get to the soldiers, get to the cadre on the ground fighting the damn wars. Enough said.
Yes, You Had Better Shake, Rattle And Roll That Thing-With Big Joe Turner In Mind
From The Pen Of Bart Webber
In the old days, the old days when the songs were just starting to be weaned off of the old time religion gospel high heaven savior thing and come down in the mud and of hard drinking, hard lovin’, hard woman on your mind, yeah, the old birth of the blues days, the blue being nothing but a good woman or man on your mind anyway, around the turn of the 20th century and you can check this out if you want to and not take my word for it a black guy, a rascally black guy of no known home, a drifter, maybe a hobo for all I know, and who knows what else named Joe Turner would come around the share-cropper down South neighborhoods and steal whatever was not nailed down, including your woman which depending on how you were feeling might be a blessing and then leave and move on to the next settlement and go about his plundering ways. Oh sure like lots of blues and old country music as it got passed on in the oral traditions there were as many versions of the saga as there were singers everybody adding their own touch. But for the most part the story line about old ne’er-do-well Joe Turner rang very similar over time. So Joe Turner got his grizzly self put into song out in the Saturday juke joints out in places like the Mississippi Delta where more legends were formed than you could shake a stick, got sanctified once old when Willie’s liquor, white lightning home-made liquor got to working, and some guy, maybe not the best singer if you asked around but a guy who could put words together to tell a story, a blues story, and that guy with a scratch guitar would put some verses together and the crowd would egg him on. Make the tale taller as the night went until everybody petered out and that song was left for the next guy to embellish.
By most accounts old Joe was bad man, a very bad man, bad mojo man, just short of as bad as Mister’s plantation foremen where those juke joint listeners worked sunup to sundown six days a week or the enforcers of Mister James Crow’s laws seven days a week. Yeah, Joe was bad alright once he got his wanting habits on, although I have heard at least one recording from the Lomaxes who went all over the South in the 1930s and 1940s trying to record everything they could out in the back country where Joe Turner was something like a combination Santa Claus and Robin Hood. Hell, maybe he was and some guy who lost his woman to wily Joe just got sore and bad mouthed him. Stranger things have happened. In any case the Joe Turner, make that Big Joe, Turner I want to mention here as far as I know only stole the show when he got up on the bandstand and played the role of “godfather” of rock and roll.
That is what I want to talk about, about how one song, and specifically the place of Big Joe and one song, Shake Rattle and Roll in the rock pantheon. No question Big Joe and his snapping beat has a place in the history of rhythm and blues which is one of the musical forbear strands of rock and roll. The question is whether Shake is also the first serious effort to define rock and roll. If you look at the YouTube version of Big Joe be-bopping away with his guitar player doing some flinty stuff and sax player searching for that high white note and Big Joe snapping away being very suggestive about who and what should shake you can make a very strong case for that place. Add in that Bill Haley, Jerry Lee, and Elvis among others in the rock pantheon covered the song successfully and that would seem to clinch the matter.
In 2004, the fiftieth anniversary of the debut of Shake by Big Joe, there had been considerable talk and writing again by some knowledgeable rock critics about whether Shake was the foundational song of rock. That controversy brought back to my mind the arguments that me and my corner boys who hung out in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner in Carver, a town about thirty miles south of Boston, had on some nothing better to do Friday nights during high school (meaning girl-less, dough-less or both). I was the primary guy who argued for Big Joe and Shake giving that be-bop guitar and that wailing sexy sax work as my reasoning while Jimmy Jenkins swore that Ike Turner’s frantic piano-driven and screeching sax Rocket 88 (done under an alias of the Delta Cats apparently for contract reasons a not uncommon practice when something good came up but you would not have been able to do it under the label you were contracted to) was the be-bop beginning and Sam Lowell, odd-ball Sam Lowell dug deep into his record collection, really his parent’s record collection which was filled mainly with folk music and the blues edge played off that to find Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall. And the other corner boys like our leader Frankie Riley lined up accordingly (nobody else came up with any others so it was those three).
Funny thing Frankie and most everybody else except I think Fritz Taylor who sided with Jimmy Jenkins sided with me and Big Joe. The funny part being that several years ago with the advent of YouTube I started to listen to the old stuff as it became available on-line and now I firmly believe that Ike’s Rocket 88 beats out Shake for the honor. As for the old time Joe Turner, done come and gone, well, he will have to wait in line . What do you think of that?
As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues... Some Remembrances-The First Small Anti-War Cries Are Raised To Stop The Madness -
From the Archives of Marxism-Bolshevik Policy in World War I
Pacifism or Marxism (The Misadventures of a Slogan)
by Gregory Zinoviev, 23 August 1915
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts. Also clogged in the trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest bin were the supposedly eternal pledges not honored by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20th century history. Other than isolated groups and individuals mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood.
Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19th century), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve.)
Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already in the first year a death trap for the flower of the European youth.
The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.
The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.
A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’sprisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America the Big Bill Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “club fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell), were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.
Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).
At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. Be ready to fight the operative words.
So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.
Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.
********
Spartacist English edition No. 64
Summer 2014
From the Archives of Marxism
Bolshevik Policy in World War I
Pacifism or Marxism (The Misadventures of a Slogan)
by Gregory Zinoviev, 23 August 1915
One hundred years ago Europe was engulfed in World War I, a bloody interimperialist conflagration that saw the slaughter of more than 16 million people. The betrayal by the dominant parties of the Second International, who supported the war efforts of their “own” bourgeoisies, ultimately led to a decisive split between opportunists and revolutionaries within the international workers movement, and paved the way for the first successful proletarian seizure of power, the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, and to the formation in 1919 of the Third (Communist) International.
Spartacist is pleased to present to our readers the first English translation of an important article by Gregory Zinoviev on the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary internationalist opposition to the war. Written in August 1915, Zinoviev’s “Pacifism or Marxism (The Misadventures of a Slogan)” was one of several major works written in close collaboration with V.I. Lenin during the first two and a half years of war, when both were in exile in Switzerland. Lenin had a division of labor with Zinoviev, then his most senior collaborator, both in writing propaganda and in organizing Bolshevik interventions into the socialist antiwar conferences at Zimmerwald and Kienthal in 1915 and 1916. Zinoviev’s article was written on the eve of the Zimmerwald conference and was first published in the Bolshevik paper Sotsial-Demokrat on 23 August 1915. That month, Lenin and Zinoviev also finished their famous joint work, Socialism and War.
As Zinoviev explains, the core of the Bolsheviks’ perspective was the need to turn the imperialist war into a civil war pitting the proletariat against the capitalists. The 4 August 1914 vote in the Reichstag (parliament) by the German Social Democrats (SPD) to fund the war effort of their own ruling class was replicated by “socialist” leaders in almost all the other combatant countries, Serbia and Russia (and later Bulgaria) being the most notable exceptions. The Bolsheviks fought to break authentic Marxists away from these social-chauvinists and regroup the Marxists in a new, revolutionary Third International.
Countless volumes by bourgeois historians have been published over the past century purporting to explain how the First World War was an accident—the result of age-old Balkan intrigues and diplomatic blunders and misunderstandings by imperialist politicians. Marxists reject such philistine claptrap, recognizing that the world war was the inevitable outcome of the emergence of imperialism, the final stage of capitalism in its decay. This was marked by the concentration of bank and industrial capital—merged as finance capital—in monopolist combines. As Lenin briefly summarized it, “Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed” (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism [1916]).
World War I showed conclusively that the drive to war is inherent in imperialism, with military force used to “settle” the inevitable economic rivalries. As Lenin and Zinoviev demonstrated in their writings, the superprofits derived from colonial exploitation made it possible for the imperialist bourgeoisies to bribe the top layers of the working class, i.e., the labor aristocracy and labor bureaucracy, whose loyalty to their capitalist masters was amply proved from the outset of the war. Thus the struggle for socialist revolution—the only alternative to deepening capitalist barbarism—required first and foremost a political struggle to expose and isolate the social-chauvinist lackeys of imperialism, as well as their social-pacifist allies.
Zinoviev’s wartime articles, others of which analyzed in depth the reasons for the social-patriotic decay of the SPD, were an essential part of the Bolsheviks’ propaganda arsenal. Reading only Lenin’s writings of this period, powerful as they are, provides an incomplete picture of the Bolsheviks’ fight. That is why the key war articles of both Lenin and Zinoviev, including the one below, were compiled in a volume titled Against the Stream, first published in Russian in 1918 by the Petrograd Soviet and then produced in a German edition by the Communist International in 1921. In 1927, Victor Serge and Maurice Parijanine produced a French edition. Most of Zinoviev’s articles in this authoritative volume of Bolshevik propaganda have never appeared in English.
The present article shows how social-pacifist reformists such as French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, known as the tribune of France, who was assassinated by a pro-war nationalist on the eve of the war, in fact served as props for the bourgeois order. But it is particularly valuable for its polemics against the centrist elements who called for “peace,” and were seen by Lenin as the main obstacle to revolutionary clarity. These centrists ranged from SPD leaders Karl Kautsky and Hugo Haase to the British Independent Labour Party and many Russian Mensheviks.
Zinoviev pays particular attention to Nashe Slovo (Our Word), a Paris-based exile journal coedited by Leon Trotsky and Menshevik leader Julius Martov. While seeking to rally opposition to the war, the “non-factional” Nashe Slovo regularly polemicized against the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary perspective. The Mensheviks called for “Neither victory nor defeat” and “Peace without annexations,” while Trotsky criticized the Bolsheviks for refusing to raise the slogan of a “struggle for peace.” The differences over slogans were linked to organizational perspectives; Lenin and Zinoviev attacked Trotsky for giving a left cover to social-pacifist forces and refusing to call for a break with the opportunists.
As Trotsky later acknowledged, the core criticisms raised by Sotsial-Demokrat were “undoubtedly correct and helped the left-wing of the editorial board to oust Martov, in this way giving the newspaper, after the Zimmerwald Conference, a more defined and irreconcilable character” (quoted in Ian D. Thatcher, Leon Trotsky and World War One [Basingstoke, England: Palgrave, 2000]). When revolution broke out in Russia in early 1917, Trotsky broke decisively with social-pacifism and conciliation of the Mensheviks and soon became a central leader of the Bolshevik Party.
Our translation of Zinoviev’s article is taken from the 1927 French edition, published under the title Contre le Courant. It has been checked against the earlier Russian and German publications, with minor changes made to correspond to the Russian. Bracketed material has been inserted by Spartacist. Ellipses in the text are Zinoviev’s own.
For revolutionary Marxists, the peace “slogan” is a much more important question than is sometimes believed. In reality, the dispute comes down to combating bourgeois influence in the workers movement, within the framework of socialism.
The “slogan” of peace is defended in socialist literature from two different points of view. Some, while not accepting pacifism on principle, choose to view this slogan as most appropriate for the present, merely as a code word that is supposed to immediately arouse the masses, as a call that would only play a role in the final months of the war. Others see something more in this slogan: they turn it into a whole system of foreign policy for socialism, to be maintained after the war, in other words, the policy of so-called socialist pacifism.
In fact, the advocates of the former bolster the latter. And this cannot be otherwise.
The latter tendency is the more serious of the two because it has a history, its own theory, and an intellectual foundation. The philosophy of this second tendency is the following: up until now, socialism has not been sufficiently pacifist, it has not sufficiently preached the idea of peace, it has not focused its efforts toward the goal of leading the entire world proletariat to adopt pacifism as the International’s general system of foreign policy. Hence the impotence of the socialist proletariat in the current war, hence the weakness of the International in the face of the erupting horror of the war.
This point of view is strongly emphasized in Max Adler’s recent pamphlet: Prinzip oder Romantik (Principle or Romanticism, Nuremberg, 1915). Max Adler (in words, of course) is an opponent of purely bourgeois pacifism, which he most forcefully rejects. He’s not even the sort of pacifist we find in England in the Independent Labour Party. He is a “Center Marxist,” a Kautskyist. And here is the kind of platform he puts forward under the guise of lessons to be drawn from the 1914-1915 war:
“The foreign policy of socialism can only be pacifist, not in the sense of a bourgeois movement for peace...or in the sense that socialists have hitherto recognized the idea of peace...in other words, as an idea that until now had been considered a secondary goal in the proletariat’s struggle for emancipation... Now is the time to raise the following warning: Unless the Social Democracy makes the idea of peace the central point of its program of foreign and domestic policy, all its internationalism must and will remain utopian… After the war, socialism will either become organized international pacifism or it will no longer exist.”
— pamphlet cited above, pages 61-62 (emphasis in original)
That’s certainly a whole program. But it is not the program of Marxism; it is the program of petty-bourgeois opportunism. This “international pacifism” is but one step away from international social-chauvinism. The logic of this development is very simple: we are pacifists, the idea of peace is the central point of our program; but until pacifism is more deeply rooted among the masses, as long as the idea of peace is still weak, what else can one do but defend one’s own fatherland?! Of course, this can only be a temporary decision, made with “a heavy heart.” Of course after the war, we will have to adopt the idea of peace as the “central point” in our propaganda. But for the time being, we must defend the fatherland. There is no other way out.
And for socialists who cannot conceive of any other perspective—a revolutionary perspective of turning imperialist wars into a civil war—there really isn’t any other way out. From pacifism to social-chauvinism, and from social-chauvinism to new pacifist sermons—this is the vicious circle in which the ideas of opportunists and “Center” Marxists are hopelessly trapped.
“Die Friedensidee zum Mittelpunkt”—“The idea of peace at the heart of our slogans”! Now they say that—after the first pan-European imperialist war has broken out! This is what you have learned from events!
“Nicht Friedensidee, sondern Bürgerkriegsidee”—not the idea of peace, but the idea of civil war—this is what we are tempted to shout at these great utopians who promise such a meager utopia. Not the idea of peace, but the idea of civil war, citizen Adler! This will be the central point of our program.
The problem is not that we failed to sufficiently preach the idea of peace before the war; it is that we did not preach the idea of class struggle, of civil war, enough or seriously enough. Because in wartime, the recognition of class struggle without a recognition of civil war is empty verbiage; it is hypocrisy; it is deceiving the workers.
German Social Democracy first sought ways to fight against imperialist wars in 1900 at the Mainz Social Democratic conference, when Kiautschou [Jiaozhou Bay in China, first seized by Germany in 1897] was occupied. Rosa Luxemburg put it powerfully:
“In times of peace, we thunder daily against the government’s foreign policy; we curse militarism in times of peace. But as soon as there’s a real war, we forget to draw the practical conclusions from it and to show that our years-long agitation has not borne any fruit.”
— Minutes, 165
The problem is not that in times of peace we did not preach peace very much. It is that when war came we found ourselves prisoners of the opportunists, of those who want peace with the bourgeoisie in times of peace and especially in times of war. The problem is that faced with an enemy as powerful as international imperialism, we have been unable to protect the proletariat from bourgeois renegades who emerged from our own ranks; we have been unable to defend it from the opportunism that is now degenerating into social-chauvinism.
You say that socialism will become organized international pacifism or it will totally cease to exist? We reply: you have to understand that by preaching pacifism you are not taking a single step forward; what you are telling us amounts to six of one and a half-dozen of the other; you are moving from social-pacifism to social-chauvinism and from social-chauvinism to social-pacifism. We say to you: either socialism will become organized international civil war or it will not exist...
Max Adler is not alone. We chose him precisely because he is a typical spokesman for an entire current of political thought. Hasn’t the entire Jaurèsist movement, and Jaurès himself, defended this very same social-pacifism within the International? And can anyone doubt that the tribune of France would today be a member of the cabinet of ministers and would be advocating social-chauvinism, along with the entire French party, had he not been sent to his grave by an assassin’s bullet? And, while remaining true to himself, would Jaurès have envisioned any other perspective for the future than “organized international pacifism”?
This is the problem of the Second International; herein lies the reason for its impotence, which has always existed at its core—and prevailed!—a tendency which inscribed on its banner not militant socialism, not the tactic of civil war, but international pacifism, which inevitably leads to the tactic of civil peace.
Today we all applaud the Independent Labour Party because, far from prostrating itself at the feet of the English government, this party had sufficient honesty and courage to refuse to enlist in the imperialist camp, and not to sell out to social-chauvinism. But we must not have any illusions. The Independent Labour Party has been, is, and will be a supporter not of militant Marxism, but of “organized international pacifism.” The Independent Labour Party is temporarily our fellow traveler, but it is not a solid ally for us. While it is honest and courageous, it lacks a consistent socialist program. Let us not forget that it already endorsed the notorious resolutions of the London Conference, at which the unabashed social-chauvinists ran the show.
There are three tendencies in the English workers movement: 1) Social-chauvinism, espoused by the Labour Party, the majority of the Trade Unions, half of the British Socialist Party (Hyndman), the petty-bourgeois Fabian League, etc.; 2) the social-pacifist tendency, which is represented by the Independent Labour Party; and 3) the revolutionary Marxist tendency, which is represented by a very substantial minority (almost half) of the British Socialist Party.
Mutatis mutandis, after all, we find the same division in German Social Democracy. The infamous Kautskyist “Center” today also resolutely calls for peace. By advocating disarmament and arbitration courts, by pleading with the imperialists to refrain from extremes and practice a kind of peaceful imperialism, Kautsky has been drawing closer to the social-pacifists for a long time. And like them, he in fact reveals himself to be, in all serious matters, the ally of opportunists in times of peace, the ally of social-chauvinists in times of war.
In words, social-pacifism rejects the “humanitarian” pacifism of the petty bourgeoisie. But in reality the two are brothers under the skin. And the other side is perfectly aware of this. As the international journal of the pacifists, Die Menschheit (Mankind), correctly stated fairly recently:
“The decisions of the Easter conference of the English Independent Labour Party are worth noting. One might think they were taken word for word from our writings (that is, pacifist literature)...Kautsky has published a pamphlet titled The National State, the Imperialist State and the Alliance of States. The title alone is enough to show the extent to which Kautsky shares the framework of pacifist ideas.”
A prominent representative of petty-bourgeois humanitarian pacifism, Professor A. Forel, clearly states that he has been a “socialist” for decades. And when we read his proposal for organizing a “supranational Areopagus” [High Court in classical Athens] (see his curious pamphlet The United States of the World, 1915, pages 99-196 and elsewhere) to resolve international conflicts, when we see him exhorting the imperialists to conduct a “cultured” colonial policy, we are continually reminded of this thought: after all, and in their entire outlook, in all their skepticism concerning the revolutionary struggle of the masses, our social-pacifists are much closer to the good little petty bourgeois than to revolutionary proletarians.
[The Russian monarchist and Slavophile] Mr. Struve recently wrote that “principled pacifism has always been alien to Social Democracy, to the extent that the latter is based on orthodox Marxism.” He thus blames the Marxists and congratulates the French social-chauvinists (and Plekhanov along with them) for upholding the tradition of the “great pacifist orator Jean Jaurès” through their present conduct. Struve is right. Yes, the principle of pacifism has always been alien to orthodox Marxism. In 1848-1849, Marx openly called on revolutionary Germany, after its victory over absolutism in that country, to join with revolutionary Poland in waging a revolutionary offensive war against tsarism, against that international gendarme, against that pillar of international reaction. For Marx, this conduct obviously had nothing in common with principled pacifism. In 1885, Jules Guesde rejoiced at the threat of war between Russia and England in the hope that a social revolution would emerge from such a catastrophe. When Guesde acted in this way, when he called on the proletariat to make use of the war between two giant powers to hasten the unleashing of the proletarian revolution, he was much more of a Marxist than at present when, along with Sembat, he carries on the tradition of the “great pacifist orator Jean Jaurès.” In 1882, Friedrich Engels (see his 12 September 1882 letter to Kautsky on the fight against colonial policies in Kautsky’s pamphlet Socialism and Colonial Policy, page 79 of the German edition) wrote: “A victorious proletariat cannot forcibly confer any boon whatever on another country without undermining its own victory in the process. Which does not, of course, in any way preclude defensive wars of various kinds” (that is, wars by one or another proletariat victorious in its own country against countries that are fighting to maintain capitalism). With these words, Engels came out as an opponent of the principle of pacifism and spoke as a revolutionary Marxist.
Yes, we are by no means principled pacifists; we are absolutely not opposed to all wars. We are against their wars, we are against wars of the oppressors, against imperialist wars, against wars whose goal is to reduce countless millions of workers to slavery. However “Social Democrats cannot deny the positive significance of revolutionary wars, that is, non-imperialist wars and, for example, those that were waged between 1789 and 1871 to overthrow foreign oppression and create capitalist national states out of fragmented feudal lands or wars that may be waged to safeguard conquests won by the proletariat in its struggle against the bourgeoisie” (see our resolution on pacifism in Sotsial-Demokrat No. 40).
* * *
But does this have any relevance to our Russian disputes, to the disagreements over the question of the slogan of peace, for example between ourselves and the paper of the Russian “Center,” Nashe Slovo?
This is definitely relevant. It is true: we won’t find in Nashe Slovo a consistent defense of the principle of pacifism in the spirit of Adler. But this journal wholeheartedly defends the theory of “democratic peace” and rejects the way that we pose the question when we assert that “anyone who believes in the possibility of a democratic peace without a series of revolutions is profoundly mistaken” (see our resolution in Sotsial-Demokrat No. 40). And this journal certainly does not establish a clearly defined difference between the two worldviews, the two tactics of organized international pacifism and the organized international preparation for civil war...
First of all, we would like to dispense with one supposed point of dispute. If you believe Nashe Slovo, Sotsial-Demokrat is committing “a serious political mistake” by ignoring the mass movement that is taking place around the slogan of peace, for example the demonstration of German socialist women in front of the Reichstag, etc. (Nashe Slovo No. 100). This of course is false. This demonstration was an extremely important event, which we welcome. It became a political event because it did not restrict itself to raising the slogan of peace: the demonstrators clearly protested against social-chauvinism by booing Scheidemann. And from a revolutionary Marxist standpoint, we wonder why the slogan for this demonstration had to be limited to “peace.” Why not “Bread and Jobs”? Why not “Down with the Kaiser”? Why not “For a Republic in Germany”? Why not “Long Live the Commune in Berlin, Paris and London”?
People may tell us: The slogan of peace is easier for the masses to comprehend. The huge sacrifice of blood oppresses them, the deprivations caused by the war are boundless, the chalice of suffering is overflowing: enough blood! Bring our sons and husbands back home! It is this simple slogan that the masses will understand most easily. True enough! But since when does revolutionary social democracy adopt slogans because they are the “easiest to understand”?
Social democracy should certainly not ignore the emerging movement to end the war. To enlighten the masses, it should make use of the growing disgust with the imperialist slaughter of 1914-1915; it should itself arouse this disgust which must be turned into hatred for those responsible for the massacres. But does this mean that its slogan, the political conclusion to be drawn from these grandiose bloody lessons of 1914-1915, the message on its banner, would purely and simply be “peace”?
No, a thousand times no! Social democrats will also participate in demonstrations for peace. But in so doing, they will raise their slogan, and starting from the simple desire for peace, they will call for revolutionary struggle. They will expose the pacifism of the petty bourgeoisie—those in the camp of the bourgeoisie as well as those in the camp of the fake socialists—who lull the masses with promises of a “democratic” peace without revolutionary action.
The “slogan” of peace has no revolutionary content in and of itself. It only takes on a revolutionary character when it is combined with our arguments for a tactic of revolutionary struggle, when it is accompanied by a call for revolution, by revolutionary protests against the government of one’s own country, against the imperialists of one’s “own” fatherland. Trotsky criticizes us for ceding this “slogan” of peace “to the exclusive use of sentimental pacifists and priests” (Nashe Slovo No. 100). What does that mean? We have limited ourselves to stating the most obvious, least disputed fact: those who stand merely for peace without giving this “slogan” any other meaning are the priests (see, for example, the many encyclicals of the Pope) and the sentimental pacifists. This in no way means that we were speaking out “against peace.” The slaughter must be ended as soon as possible; this goal must play and does play a role in our agitation. But this means that our own slogan is revolutionary struggle, that agitation for peace becomes social-democratic only when it is accompanied by revolutionary protests.
Ask yourself this simple factual question: Precisely who, right now, puts forward the notion that peace as a “slogan” is enough in and of itself? Let us try to list impartially the social and political groups that want peace. These are: the English bourgeois social-pacifists; Kautsky, Haase and Bernstein; the German Parteivorstand (party leadership) (see its recent appeal); various bourgeois Leagues for Peace, including in Holland; the head of the Catholic church; a section of the English bourgeoisie (see the revelations made some time ago about English initiatives for peace); and again, in Russia, an “advanced” section of the merchant class, a whole party of courtiers, etc. Naturally, each of these groups, each of these parties is driven by motives which are not those of the others, and each raises the question in its own fashion. And that is precisely what demonstrates that the “slogan” of peace, on its own, cannot be that of the revolutionary social democracy at this time.
Another thing about which there can also be no doubt: the various general staffs and governments play a game around the “slogan” of peace, according to their strategic and political considerations. This has been the case not only during the war, but in times of peace as well. The leader of the German opportunists, Mr. Eduard David, recently made the following significant revelation in his bible of social-chauvinism: it turns out that the Berne peace conference in 1913 included the participation of...the German government.
“We later found out,” David writes, “that the inter-parliamentary attempts at an agreement between France and Germany had been supported by [German Chancellor] Bethmann Hollweg. As [Reichstag] deputy Gothein stated, the participation of representatives of bourgeois parties in the Basel Conference in 1914 had been expressly recommended by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin.”
— Die Sozialdemokratie im Weltkrieg (Social Democracy in the World War), page 81
This is how bourgeois governments act in pursuit of their diplomatic games. They cynically exploit peace efforts by the socialists, whom they maneuver like puppets. Who could say, for example, who played the greater role in the appearance on this godly earth of the recent appeal for peace of the German Parteivorstand? Was there pressure by the workers and the Social Democratic opposition? Or was there a certain “inspiration” coming from “circles” close to Bethmann-Hollweg? This would by no means be in contradiction with the repression against Social Democratic journals which published the appeal. After all, the entire “game” of the likes of Bethmann-Hollweg consists of saying: we are committed as much as ever to war to the bitter end, even after the Lemberg affair [when Lemberg (Lvov) was retaken from Russia by the German army in 1915]; we have plenty of reserves, but “the people” have already had enough victories and are now demanding “an honorable peace.”
It is noteworthy that the official defenders of the “slogan” of peace often don’t even conceal that they take account of the strategic situation of their “fatherland.” By publishing the appeal for peace of the Parteivorstand, the official organs of the German party tell us: “We are authorized to state that, effective 7 May, the leadership unanimously adopted this appeal... But its publication was delayed due to Italy’s entry into the war. After the great military successes (of Germany) in Galicia, the leadership decided to proceed with its publication” (Hamburger Echo No. 147). Those same official organs of German Social Democracy reprinted, without a single word of criticism, the commentary by the semi-official government paper (the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung) on the Parteivorstand’s appeal. “The Social Democratic party leadership,” this government paper wrote, “published its manifesto, like other organizations, based on our complete certainty of victory...”
Such is the simple logic of social-chauvinism. Our [German commanders] Hindenburg or our Mackensen have won victory on the battlefield; that is why we are proponents of the “slogan” of peace. But since “our” [French commander] Joffre or our [British War Secretary] Kitchener have not won any victories, for our part we are therefore in favor of war to the bitter end...
On the other hand, a major defeat may also prompt those responsible for these matters to wink at the “socialists”: go ahead now, fellows, raise the “slogan” of peace. That was the case during the Vienna conference, when the tsar’s troops crossed the Carpathians and Krakow was threatened.
That alone should be enough to prevent revolutionary internationalists from adopting the “slogan” of peace without supplementing it...
There have been many misadventures with this “slogan”—just think, for example, about what happened to it in Nashe Slovo. At first this journal defended it from a purely pacifist standpoint: it argued for peace with certain “conditions,” i.e., a democratic peace. Now it just calls for peace without any conditions, since it has become all too clear that “disarmament,” “arbitration courts,” and so forth, do not suit those who seek to raise the question within a revolutionary framework. But this simple “slogan” of peace is already completely meaningless from the standpoint of Social Democracy. [Russian Tsar] Nicholas II and [German Kaiser] Wilhelm II are also proponents of peace “in general”: they certainly don’t need war for its own sake...
Kautsky has defended the “slogan” of peace ever since the beginning of the war (Kampf für den Frieden, Klassenkampf im Frieden [Struggle for Peace, Class Struggle in Times of Peace]). Vandervelde like Victor Adler, Sembat like Scheidemann, claim to be internationalists and pacifists, and the same is true of all the social-chauvinists. As the end of the war draws closer, diplomatic swindles by bourgeois cliques will become a greater factor behind the scenes and the simple “slogan” of peace will become ever less acceptable for socialist internationalists.
It is wrong and particularly dangerous to think that internationalists should be guided by considerations of who is for the “slogan” of peace and who is against it. If you want to make it impossible for the internationalists of different countries to agree, to close ranks under a definite programmatic banner; if you want to erase any dividing line between ourselves and the “Center,” then the “slogan” of peace must be adopted.
The Italian Social Democrats have made known through their press their intention of convening a conference or congress of internationalists. This undertaking should be warmly supported. But it would lose nine-tenths of its significance if its efforts were restricted to what the international conference of women [Berne, March 1915] and the international youth conference [Berne, April 1915] already did. Indeed, the point is not to draft a “unanimous” resolution together with social-pacifists, which includes the “slogan” of peace, and to slap each other on the back for adopting a so-called “action program” unanimously. In fact, this would be a program of inaction. Instead, faced with the current terrible crisis of socialism, what’s posed is to get our bearings; to regroup what remains of the army of Marxists; to break with the self-declared traitors and the vacillating elements who, in practice, come to their aid; to project a course of struggle for our socialist generation in the imperialist epoch; and to create a Marxist international nucleus.
There are now countless enthusiasts for the “slogan” of peace. And the number will continue to increase. The task of revolutionary internationalists is an entirely different one. We cannot salvage the banner of socialism, we cannot regroup the broad mass of working people under this banner, we cannot lay the cornerstone of the future, truly socialist, International except by proclaiming from this day forward the full Marxist program, by providing a clear and precise answer of our own as to how the socialist proletariat must fight in the epoch of imperialism. The question for us is much broader than the months remaining until the end of the first imperialist world war. The question for us is one of an entire epoch of imperialist wars.
Not with the idea of international pacifism, but with the idea of international civil war—in this sign thou shalt conquer!
In The
Time Of The Vincent Black Lightning-1952-With Richard Thompson In Mind
From The
Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin:
Several years ago, maybe about eight
years now that I think about it, I did a series of sketches on guys,
folk-singers, folk-rockers, rock-folkers or whatever you want to call those who
weened us away from the stale pablum rock in the early 1960s (Bobby Vee,
Rydell, Darin, et al, Sandra Dee, Brenda Lee, et al) after the gold rush dried
up in what is now called the classic age of rock and roll in the mid to late
1950s when Elvis, Jerry Lee, Buddy, Chuck, Bo and their kindred made us jump.
(There were gals too like Wanda Jackson but mainly it was guys in those days.)
I am referring of course to the savior folk minute of the early 1960 when a lot
of guys with acoustic guitars, some self-made lyrics, or stuff from old Harry
Smith Anthology times gave us a reprieve. The series titled Not Bob
Dylan centered on why those budding folkies like Tom Rush, Tom Paxton, Phil
Ochs, Jesse Winchester and the man under review Richard Thompson to name a few
did not make the leap to be the “king of folk” that had been ceded by the media
to Bob Dylan and whatever happened to them once the folk minute went south
after the combined assault of the British rock invasion (you know the Beatles,
Stones, Kinks, hell, even Herman’s Hermits got play for a while),
and the rise of acid rock put folk in the shade (you know the Jefferson
Airplane, the Dead, The Doors, The Who, hell, even the aforementioned Beatles
and Stones got caught up in the fray although not to their eternal musical
playlist benefit). I also did a series on Not Joan Baez, the “queen of
the folk minute” asking that same question on the female side but here dealing
with one Richard Thompson the male side of the question is what is of interest.
I did a couple of sketches on Richard
Thompson back then, or rather sketches based on probably his most famous song, Vincent
Black Lightning, 1952 which dove-tailed with some remembrances of my
youth and my semi-outlaw front to the world and the role that motorcycles
played in that world. Additionally, in light of the way that a number of people
whom I knew back then, classmates whom I reconnected on a class reunion website
responded when I posed the question of what they thought was the great
working-class love song since North Adamsville was definitely a working class
town driven by that self-same ethos I wrote some other sketches driving home my
selection of Thompson’s song as my choice.
The latter sketches are what interest
me here. See Thompson at various times packed it in, said he had no more spirit
or some such and gave up the road, the music and the struggle to made that
music, as least professionally. Took time to make a more religious bent to his
life and other such doings. Not unlike a number of other performers from that
period who tired of the road or got discourage with the small crowds, or lost
the folk spirit. Probably as many reasons as individuals to give them. Then he,
they had an epiphany or something, got the juices flowing again and came back
on the road. That fact is to the good for old time folk (and rock)
aficionados like me.
What that fact of returning to the road
by Thompson and a slew of others has meant is that my friend and I, (okay, okay
my sweetie who prefers that I call her my soulmate but that is just between us
so friend) now have many opportunities to see acts like Thompson’s Trio, his current
band configuration, to see if we think they still “have it” (along with acts of
those who never left the road like Bob Dylan who apparently is on an endless
tour whether we want him to do so or not). That idea got started about a decade
ago when we saw another come-back kid, Geoff Muldaur of the Jim Kweskin Jug
Band, solo, who had taken something twenty years off. He had it. So we started
looking for whoever was left of the old folks acts (rock and blues too) to
check out that question-unfortunately the actuarial tables took their toll
before we could see some of them at least one last time like Dave Von Ronk.
That brings us to Richard Thompson.
Recently we got a chance to see him in a cabaret setting with tables and good
views from every position, at least on in the orchestra section, at the Wilbur
Theater in Boston with his trio, a big brush drummer and an all-around side
guitar player (and other instruments like the mando). Thompson broke the
performance up into two parts, a solo set of six or seven numbers high-lighted
by Vincent Black Lightning, and Dimming Of The Day which was
fine. The second part based on a new album and a bunch of his well-known rock
standards left us shaking our heads. Maybe the room could not handle that much
sound, although David Bromberg’s five piece band handled it well a couple of
weeks before, or maybe it was the melodically sameness of the songs and the
same delivery voice and style but we were frankly disappointed and not
disappointed to leave at the encore. Most tunes didn’t resonant although
a few in all honesty did we walked out of the theater with our hands in our
pockets. No thumbs up or down flat based on that first old time set otherwise
down. However, damn it, Bob Dylan does not have to move over, now. Our
only consolation that great working-class love song, Vincent Black Lightning,
still intact.
Which brings us to one of those
sketches I did based on Brother Thompson’s glorious Vincent Black Lightning.
When I got home I began to revise that piece which I have included below. Now
on to the next act in the great quest- a reunion of the three remaining active
members of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Jim Maria Muldaur, and of course Geoff at
the Club Passim (which traces its genesis back to the folk minute’s iconic Club
47 over on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square. We’ll see if that gets the
thumbs up.
Deadline to place NEW subscription and
new bundle orders: 
Keep Space for Peace Week is a decentralized week of
local actions held around the globe to bring the issue of the militarization of
space to the public. For the past 13 years the Global Network Against Weapons
& Nuclear Power in Space has organized the week of actions which include
protests at key Space Command bases, space weapons technology production
facilities, as well as film showings and public meetings. Space technology now
coordinates all US warfare on the planet and increasingly “allied” nations,
largely through NATO, are becoming “interoperable” with the US satellite
directed war fighting system.
On October 7, as the U.S./NATO war in
Afghanistan enters Year 15, with new U.S. troops just deployed, but also as we
mark the anniversary of a popular revolution without war in the Philippines, the
world's social media (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr) will be flooded with the
message that we've had enough of war and are ready to move beyond it.
Legendary investigative reporter and radio host Dennis
Bernstein interviewed VFP Vice President, Gerry Condon on the Golden Rule while
it was docked in San Francisco last week. The interview was featured at the top
of his Thursday, June 24, edition of Flashpoints on KPFA radio. <Radio Interview>
On Thursday, Oct. 1, the Golden Rule moved to
Sausalito, where it will be docked at Schoonmaker Marina thru the
weekend.
Did you know?
