*****From The Archives-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

*****From The Archives-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman (updated January 2016):

As we enter another "bummer" of an election year the notes below from the archives of Labor History seem to be timely if not for this election cycle then as thoughts to drive our  up hill work forward. The sentiments expressed below except the dates of delivery and events characterized could have been written in the year 2016 without blinking an eye. That is not good, not good at all. Read on.  
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These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.

I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
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The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers’ government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) government to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]

For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost, and us) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare off the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto.

That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power. Today focusing on massive job programs at union wages and benefits to get people back to work, workers control of production as a way to spread the available work around, the historic slogan of 30 for 40, nationalization of the banks and other financial institutions under workers control, a home foreclosure moratorium, and debt for homeowners and students. Obviously more demands come to mind but those listed are sufficient to show our direction.

Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when classic capitalism began to become the driving economic norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.

Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.

The most unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really came with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).

Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)

So much then for the historical aspects of the workers party question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party (us, again) today (and again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).

America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing about. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the main ticket. We, even in America, are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass- based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) Cannon stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.

Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.

[A reference back to the American Communist Party’s work in the 1920s may be informative here. As mentioned above there was some confusion, no, a lot of confusion back then about building a labor party base on workers and farmers, a two -class party. While the demands of both groups may in some cases overlap farmers, except for farm hands, are small capitalists on the land. We need a program for such potential allies, petty bourgeois allies, but their demands are subordinate to labor’s in a workers’ party program. Fast forward to today and it is entirely possible, especially in light of the recent Occupy experiences, that some vague popular frontist trans-class movement might develop like the Labor Non-Partisan League that the labor skates put forward in the 1930s as a catch basin for all kinds of political tendencies. We, of course, would work in such formations fighting for a revolutionary perspective but this is not what we advocate for now.]


In 2014 AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.

And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals (us, yet again) can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.

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*HONOR THE SPANISH REVOLUTION-Professor Payne's In-Depth Study Of The Leftist Parties

Click on title to link the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of his 1933 article "The Spanish "Kornilovs And Stalinists".

BOOK REVIEW

THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, STANLEY G. PAYNE, W.W. NORTON&CO., NEW YORK, 1970

This is the 70th Anniversary of the May 1937 Barcelona Uprising in the Spanish Civil War-the last chance to save the Spanish Revolution


I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. (See May 2006 archives for a review of his work on the Spanish Revolution). Professor Payne’s work under review here on the pro-Republican and left wing parties in that revolution fills out in detail the relationship of the various leftist forces from the abdication of the king in 1931 through the victory by Franco in 1939. Properly used they provide very strong ammunition for Trotsky’s political conclusions.

Professor Payne rightly explores the long dominance of anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism in Spain and its hold over the organized working class, both industrial and rural, up to the time of the revolution. Its history of apoliticism and localism left it ill- prepared to lead a revolution and in one of those ironies of history it joined a very bourgeois Popular Front government against all its so-called theoretical intransigence. Payne also notes the tensions in the Socialist Party that resulted from both Spanish conditions and the general European political scene after the defeat of the German working class by Hitler. It was this tension between the reformist and revolutionary sections of many European socialist parties that Trotsky noted and led to his tactic of entry into those parties in order to split out a new international revolutionary organization. The professor also gives plenty of space to the vanguard role of Catalonia in Spanish developments including the equivocal role of the anti-Stalinist pro-communist Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). Most importantly, he charts the dramatic rise of the Stalinist Communist Party, agent of the Comintern and Soviet foreign policy, as the backbone of the political, security and military establishment of the Popular Front government. In the end, of course, as we know their role was not merely anti-revolutionary but counter revolutionary.

Professor Payne’s political position seems to be that somehow, somewhere a democratic republic could have been forged out of the welter of parties fighting for power in Spain. That is the thread that runs through the book. Thus, the lessons he wants to draw are very different from those we want to draw. Fair enough. If we only used favorable left-wing sources we would have a rather skewed look at history. Nevertheless in his presentation Professor Payne keeps hammering on the point that the forces he hoped would have succeeded were not there or were not up to the task. And as 1936 approached that situation only got worst. That, my friends, although Professor Payne does not recognize it is what the pre-conditions for revolutionary action are all about. Spanish society was splitting up and it was either socialism or the Spanish version of fascism. To our sorrow, fascism won. Spain represented the last best opportunity for a straight up socialist revolution in Europe. Thus the events there bear careful study. Especially a study of the left-wing forces. Needless to say, as with all older historical works, much new information has surfaced in the post-Franco period and the scholarly literature on the period has exploded but as a general study of the leftist parties, their programs and their policies it holds up very well. Take advantage of that fact. Yes, read Hugh Thomas for a general history of the revolution. Yes, read Trotsky for the politics. But also read this book.

Listen Up-From The Pen Of Abolitionist Frederick Douglass- What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852

Listen Up-From The Pen Of Abolitionist Frederick Douglass-  What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852




Click on link to Cindy Sheehan's blog for stirring words from Frederick Douglass that ring true even day, maybe especially today. 




http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2016/07/what-to-slave-is-fourth-of-july.html

The Endless Sleep-Perchance To Dream-Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep-A Review

The Endless Sleep-Perchance To Dream-Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep-A Review   

Book Review

By Sam Lowell

Perchance To Dream, Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, 

Funny what will turn up on your summer reading list and why. Sure I am like any other heated, roasted urban dweller and looking for a little light reading to while away the summer doldrums. These days usually I review high-toned literary masterpieces or squirrelly little historical books fit for the academy. But those kind of books cannot survive the summer siege. Which brings us to the genesis of the book under review, Perchance To Dream: Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, a mouthful crime novel, of all things. That is not as condescending as it sounds since long ago I learned the very hard lesson that serious crime writers like Dashiell Hammett, the above mentioned Raymond Chandler, Nelson Algren, Ross MacDonald and a few others, had earned their places in the American literary canon. Their hard-bitten sparse dialogues and plotlines were worthy of emulation.

And that is how in a roundabout way we get to this book. See every year when the doldrums come I automatically reach for a little Chandler or Hammett from my library to see the real deal in order to spruce up (and parse, if possible) my own writing. This year when I did so I noticed a book Poodle Spring by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This final Philip Marlowe series book was never finished by Chandler before he died in 1959. Sometime many years later showing respect for his own crime novel efforts the Estate of Raymond Chandler hired Parker to finish the book. I have reviewed that effort mostly positively in this space, although personally I was sorry that the old errant knight tilter at windmills Marlowe had gotten himself married to a foxy rich dame who wanted to keep him as her pet poodle out there in the Poodle Springs desert and that he seemed to have lost a step or two as he “matured” in the 1950s twilight. Robert B. Parker, of course is a name known to me as the crime novel writer of the Spenser series of which I had read several of the earlier ones before moving on to others interests. While checking up on what Parker, who died in 2010, had subsequently written I noticed the title under review. Now we are all caught up on genesis.                   

Naturally a sequel is a touchy thing to successfully do, especially if written by a different writer as here. Of course Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep was his first big time Philip Marlowe novel, the one that after writing for years in the pulp crime story market put him over the top. The one, as well, that had two films made out of his storyline, Humphrey Bogart to me the definitive Marlowe on screen in 1942 and a remade with more than adequate Robert Mitchum in the early 1980s. So the storyline, the sense of what could and could not be done with a sequel was pretty tightly circumscribed. Moreover Chandler’s literary credentials as a legitimate member of the American literary canon were established in that book if for nothing else that last couple of paragraphs giving his take on the big sleep much as F. Scott Fitzgerald did in the last couple of paragraphs of The Great Gatsby with the sense of awe at the possibilities the first comers to New York had when they approached Long Island Sound. Most of us could write for a hundred years and never get it right like they got it right in those two instances. So Parker had some big shoes to fill, Chandler devotee and expert or not.

The original storyline bears a little summary for those not in the know, although Parker did a great service by inserting along the way particularly at the beginning of his sequel pertinent sections of the original to give his own story some context. Philip Marlowe, PI, was hired by rich old oilman General Sternwood out sunny LA in the 1930s to look into the matter of some gambling debts, some blackmail attempts  and the whereabouts of his confidante Rusty Regan who had blown town without leaving a forwarding address. Now to mix things up the old codger had a couple of wild daughters, Vivian who had been married to Regan although she didn’t seem to be bothered by his disappearance and a real wildcat, sex and drug crazed one, Carmen, who would bring everyone to grief. Into the mix came a gay pornographer subsequently murdered, a small time grifter looking for the main chance who also was subsequently murdered, and, most importantly, hard-nosed gangster Eddie Mars, who had been making friendly advances at Vivian and her pile of dough. Word around for a candid world to buy into was that Eddie’s wife had run off with old rogue Rusty.          

Well the murders of the pornographer and the grifter solved the blackmail end of things. But then there was that small matter of where the hell was Rusty. Along the way Marlowe went toe to toe with Vivian who has her own stake in the matter and Carmen who threw herself at Marlowe as her kind of strong and ruggedly handsome guy. He rebuffed that advance. The trail seemed cold until Marlowe got word from a straight-shooting guy who paid with his life for doing so from one of Eddie’s thugs that Eddie’s wife was out in the boondocks hiding out. In the meantime Eddie not liking the idea of Marlowe mixing up in his business has let his “hit man,” the same guy who killed the straight-shooter, loose to kill one Philip Marlowe. They wind up meeting at that boondock hideout and it was to be curtains for one Marlowe. Silly thought, no way he, with some help from Eddie’s wife, blew that hit man away.

Mystery solved. Well not quite there was still the matter of what happened to Rusty if he was not with Eddie’s wife. That is where Carmen’s bagful of grief came in, really her off-the-wall mental condition. See Carmen did not like to be brushed off if she wanted something, wanted a man so one day she had Rusty, who had rebuffed her advances, down by the old family oil pumps teaching her to shoot a gun and getting her anger up she blew him away. How did Marlowe find that hard fact out?  The hard way when he brought her down to that same oil pump and she almost wasted him. Sick girl. Sick but rich and to save the old man anguish before he went to his own big sleep he forced Vivian to have her institutionized, or else. Fade out                           

That is where the sequel begins with Carmen in a rest home, sanatorium, funny farm, call it what you may, or rather missing from a rest home although it takes a while to find out whether she is there or not since the well-connected doctor who ran the place was playing it cozy. So once again it was all about Carmen. All about, now that old man Sternwood was mercifully dead, Vivian having to keep her out of mischief, or to try. This time the old retainer Norris brought Marlowe in to find dear sweet innocent when she dreams Carmen. For the sake of the dead old man, his old boss, who was sleeping the big sleep. Vivian had had other ideas, had her fancy man, one Eddie Mars, still the hard-nosed gangster but soft as mush around Vivian, and not just for her dough, trying to find Carmen. No go, nothing but dead-ends and stalls, To each his own though. Eddie have just stuck to his rackets and leave sleuthing to a guy like Marlowe.              

Now back to that doctor who is the key to the whole deal about Carmen being missing and not findable. His “connection,” the thing that made him invulnerable, this super wealthy guy Simpson who owed half the known world and wanted the other half. Nothing new there. What was new, well not new but what drives Parker’s story line was that this Simpson had very strange sexual appetites ranging from sado-mach stuff to snuffing out his ex-lady loves. You know cutting them up as a sexual thrill. Damn. The doctor, to earn his “connected” status, fed mad man Simpson the bait, the girls with the strange sexual habits at his rest home. And guess who was being groomed to be his next conquest, his next victim. Old sexually kinky Carmen who just loved her sweet long gone new daddy.    

For the dead old man’s sake, for Vivian’s sake, for Carmen’s sake, for Norris’ sake, hell for his uneasy ally of the moment one Eddie Mars, if you can believe that, Marlowe had to jump hoops. Found out that Carmen was being held on Simpson’s luxury liner yacht as he was getting ready to “ditch” her. Marlowe, the old errant knight, came swooping down the harbor, alone, and got Carmen the hell out of there after the usual blasting away of a half dozen or so tough guys who fell down like timber at the touch. Eddie, although not needed on this caper, had his back on in the harbor with his small army of gunmen. Strange allies indeed. The whole thing went hush though after the escape guys with billions can plea out mental insanity. The doctor had blown town in the melee. Check this out though once again Marlowe forced Vivian to send Carmen to a nice quiet sanitarium. Jesus, not an ending to provide material for a sequel to the sequel. A good if not great extension of Chandler’s original storyline but at the end I still missed something, something about Chandler’s language, but also something missing like Chandler ruminating in the end about the big sleep we all face.      

A View From The Left-Build A Movement For Full Rights For All Immigrants!

A View From The Left-Build A Movement For Full Rights For All Immigrants!

Frank Jackman comment:

Usually when I post something from some other source, mostly articles and other materials that may be of interest to the radical public that I am trying to address I place the words “ A View From The Left” in the headline and let the subject of the article speak for itself, or let the writer speak for him or herself without further comment whether I agree with the gist of what is said or not. After all I can write my own piece if some pressing issue is at hand. Occasionally, and the sentiments expressed in this article is one such time, I can stand in solidarity with the remarks made. I do so here.     

IN THE TIME OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

THE TERROR-THE MERCILESS WAR FOR FREEDOM IN REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE, DAVID ANDRESS, FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, NEW YORK, 2005

This year marks the 218th anniversary of the beginning of the Great French Revolution with storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789. An old Chinese Communist leader, the late Zhou Enlai, was once asked by a reporter to sum up the important lessons of the French Revolution. In reply he answered that it was too early to tell what those lessons might be. Whether that particular story is true or not it does contain one important truth. Militants today at the beginning of the 21st century can still profit from an understanding of the history of the French Revolution.

There are many books that outline the history of that revolution. I have reviewed some of them in this space. Probably the most succinct overview, although it was written over one half century ago, is Professor Georges Lefebvre’s study. For those who want a more up-to-date overview of the main events and political disputes reflecting the tremendous increase in scholarship on the subject the book under review has a lot to recommend it. The author, a professor at the University of Portsmouth, England, covers all the main points from the pre-revolutionary problems confronting France at the time, including its terrible debt problems caused in the main by its support of the American Revolution to the political, social and, yes, sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI. As has been noted by many commentators on revolution, including the author and myself, one of the prerequisites for revolution is that the old regime can no longer govern in the same way. The personage of Louis XVI seemingly fits that proposition to a tee.

Professor Andress goes on to highlight the key events. Obviously, and most visibly, the storming of the Bastille that opened up the cracks in the old monarchial regime. He details the struggle to create a constitutional monarchy through the various legislative assemblies that sought to carry out the reforms necessary to bring France into the modern age short of declaring a republic. And also the attempts, including by Louis himself, by forces of the old regime to return the old monarchy or stop the revolution in its tracks. When those efforts failed and the revolution began in earnest Professor Andress goes into great detail analyzing the internal struggle by the revolutionaries, most notably the great fight between the Girondins and Jacobins for power, and the formation of the republic. After the defeat of the Girondins this led to the further fights to ‘purify’ the revolution among the Jacobin forces and the reign of the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety that consolidated the gains of the revolution through the ‘Reign of Terror’. Finally, the professor highlights the downfall and execution of Robespierre in 1794 that represented the reaction that most revolutions exhibit when the political possibilities for further revolutionary moves are no longer tenable.

The author has done more than provide an outline though for those who are trying to understand the sometimes confusing political alignments in Paris and in the country. He discusses the voting patterns of the delegates in the various legislative assemblies; the role of the sans-culottes in pushing the revolution leftward; the falling out among the Jacobins; the international situation (meaning the immediate European one); and, most importantly, the reaction in non-Paris, the countryside that rebelled for various reasons against the central authority in the capital. Other subjects include the murder of Marat by Corday that set the revolution bloodily leftward, the Festival of the Supreme Being as an attempt to finally destroy the power of the Catholic Church and other reforms by the left-Jacobins to consolidate the revolution.

The major negative of this book is political. As is almost always the case in any discussion of the first five years of the French Revolution there is an almost fatalistic portrayal of the emergence of Robespierre intertwined throughout all of the earlier events giving the impression that he was inevitably bound to take power. And, also inevitably, due to the excesses of the ‘Reign of Terror’, to lose it. This may be a good way to save one’s political soul but it is bad history. Revolutions, particularly great revolutions, are few and far between. They are messy affairs at the time and remain the samre seen through the historical lens. Nevertheless if the social tensions in society could always, or should always, be resolved in a nice non- violent parliamentary way there would be no revolutions. Damn, where would that leave us as the inheritors of the sans-culottes tradition?

*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky -On The POUM In The Spanish Revolution-"The Lessons Of Spain-The Last Warning"

Click on the headline to link to a "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive" articel from the pen Of Leon Trotsky on the POUM in the Spanish Revolution-"The Lessons Of Spain-The Last Warning."

Markin comment:

Leon Trotsky speaks. Stand back, way back, on this one.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The Spanish Left in its Own Words-The Communist Party Calls for a Professional Army

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Tom Paine

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for American (English and French, as well) revolutionary leader, Tom Paine.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

*****The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog

*****The Latest From The Cindy Sheehan Blog

 

http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/

A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.

Frank Jackman comment:

I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. And an on-going fetish for her running for office whatever seems to be worth looking at. In 2014 it was the Governor's race in California. Other years it has been for President and for Congress. That Congressional race made sense because it was against Congresswoman and U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who at one time was a darling of the liberals and maybe still is. But electioneering while necessary and maybe useful is not enough. So while her politics and strategy are not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times they do provide enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left, the parliamentary left, to which she is appealing.

One though should always remember, despite our political differences, Ms. Sheehan's heroic action in going down to hell-hole Crawford, Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize in 2002-2003 after we had millions in the streets for a few minutes and not much after when it would have counted. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.

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Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

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Another note from Frank Jackman  

There are many ways in which people get “religion” about the issues of war and peace, about the struggle to oppose the imperial adventures of the American government.  Learn that it is our duty to oppose those decisions as people who are “in the heart of the beast” as the late revolutionary Che Guevara who knew about the imperial menace both in life and death declared long ago. My own personal “getting religion” and those who I have worked with in such organizations as Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) and later Veterans For Peace (VFP) came from a direct confrontation with the American military establishment either during or after our service. Those were hard confrontations with the reality of the beast back in those days and it is no accident that those who confronted the beasts directly then are still active today. Remain active as a whole new threat to world peace emanates from Washington into the Middle East highlighted by the air wars in Syria and Iraq and the now new lease on life in Afghanistan.     

In a sense the military service confrontation form of “getting religion” on the issues of war and peace is easy to understand given the horrendous nature of modern warfare and its massive weapons overkill and disregard for “collateral damage.” Less easy to see is the radicalization of older women, mothers, mothers of soldiers like Cindy Sheehan in reaction to the senseless death of their loved ones. As pointed out above whatever political differences we have I will always hold Ms. Sheehan’s heroic actions in confronting one George W. Bush then President of the United States and the “yes man” for the war in Iraq started in 2003 (the various aspects of the Iraq saga have to be dated since otherwise confusion prevails) in high regard. She took him on down in red neck Texas asking a simple question-“if there were no weapons of mass destruction, not even close, why did my son die in vain?” Naturally no sufficient answer ever came from him to her. There she was a lonely symbol of the almost then non-existent anti-war movement. And then she started, as this blog of hers testifies to, to put the dots together, “got religion,” got to understand what Che meant long ago about that special duty radicals and revolutionaries have “in the heart of the beast.” And she too like those hoary military veterans I mentioned is still plugging away at the task.      

Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

*****Just Before The Sea Change - With The Dixie Cups Going To The Chapel Of Love In Mind

 

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

There were some things about Edward Rowley’s youthful activities, those that he thought would bring some small honor to his name, that he would rather not forget, things that defined his life, gave him that “fifteen minutes of fame,” if only to himself and his, that everybody kept talking about that everyone deserved before they departed this life. That “fifteen minutes of fame” business which he thought had been uttered by the Pop-artist Andy Warhol in one of his prankster moments, one of his New York high society put-downs, was fine by him even if it had been the result of some small honor thing.

The subject of that small honor done in the spurt of his youth that had defined a lot of what came later is what got him thinking one sunny afternoon in September about five years ago as he waited for the seasons to turn almost before his eyes about the times around 1964, around the time that he graduated from North Adamsville High School, around the time that he realized that the big breeze jail-break that he had kind of been waiting for was about to bust out over the land, over America. (His world view did not encompass the entire world or what was the same thing the young nations part of that view but later after making plenty of international connections from here and there he could have said he was waiting for that breeze to bust out over the world.)

It was not like Edward was some kind of soothsayer, like some big think tank thinker paid well to keep tabs on social trends for those in charge so they didn’t get waylaid like they did with the “rebel without a cause” and “beat” phenomena or anything like that back then, like could read tea leaves or tarot cards like some latter day Madame La Rue who actually did read his future once down at the Gloversville Fair when she had come to that location with her daughter, Gypsy Anne, one hot August week when he was about twelve. Madame that day read that he was made for big events. The big event that he was interested in just then was winning a doll, a stuffed animal or something like that for dark-haired, dark-eyed just starting to fill out  Gypsy Anne at the Skee game which he was an expert at. (For those clueless about Skee, have forgotten or have never spent their illicit around carnivals, small time circuses, or penny-ante amusement parks, the game is simplicity itself once you get the hang of it and play about 10,000 hours’ worth of games you roll small balls, which come down a chute one you pay your dough, or credit/debit card the way they have the machines worked now a days, and you roll them like in bowling up to a target area like in archery and try to get a ton of points which gives you strips of coupons to win a prize depending on high your score is, and what you want. Like I say, simple.) And Edward did win her a stuffed animal, a big one, and got a very big long wet kiss for his heroics (and “copped a little feel” from that starting to fill out shape of hers and he finally solved, no, he solved for that one minute that budding girls turned to women were as interested in sex, or at least being “felt up” as the other guys around Harry’s Variety Store had told him  they were if approached the right way) down by the beach when she gave her best twelve year old “come hither” look, not the last time he would be snagged by that look by her or any other women later. No way though that tarot reading when he was twelve left an impression, left him with that vague feeling about the big breeze coming, not then when the hormones drove his big thoughts, and not for a long while.

That big breeze blowing through the land thing had not been Edward’s idea anyway, not his originally although he swore by it once he thought about the possibilities of breaking out of Podunk North Adamsville, but came from “the Scribe,” the late Peter Paul Markin, a corner boy at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys on Thornton Street where he occasionally hung out in high school since he had been childhood friends with the leader of that crowd, Frankie Riley, who read books and newspapers a lot and would go on and on about the thing on lonesome Friday nights when all the guys were waiting, well, just waiting for something to happen in woebegone North Adamsville where the town mainly went to sleep by ten, or eleven on Friday and Saturday night when Jack Slack’s closed late (for the younger set, Doc’s Drugstore, the place where he and Frankie hung in their younger days as well, the place where they all first heard rock and roll played loud on Doc’s jukebox by the soda fountain, every night was nine o’clock at night just when things were getting interesting as the shadows had time to spank vivid boy imaginations and you wonder, well, maybe not you, but parents wondered why their kids were ready to take the first hitchhike or hitch a freight train ride out of that “one-horse town” (an expression courtesy of the grandmothers of the town, at least the ones he knew, mostly Irish grandmothers with corn beef and cabbage boiling on their cast-iron stoves and smirks on their faces, if grandmothers could have smirks over anything, about how dear the price of everything was if you could get it a very big problem, including Edward’s Anna Riley, where he first heard the words).

Here is where that big breeze twelve million word description thing Markin was talking about intersected with that unspoken trend for Edward (unknown and unspoken since the corner at Jack Slacks’ did not have a resident professional academic sociologist in residence to guide them since those “hired guns” were still hung up on solving the juvenile delinquency problem and so as usual well behind the curve  and Markin, the Scribe as smart as he was, was picking his stuff up strictly from newspapers and magazines who were always way also behind the trends until the next big thing hit them in the face). Edward’s take on the musical twists and turns back then is where he had something the kids at North Adamsville High would comment on, would ask him about to see which way the winds were blowing, would put their nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukeboxes to hear based on his recommendations.

Even Markin deferred to him on this one, on his musical sense, the beat or the “kicks” as he called then although he, Markin, would horn in, or try to, on the glory by giving every imaginable arcane fact about some record’s history, roots, whatever which would put everybody to sleep, they just wanted to heard the “beat” for crying out loud. Edward did have to chuckle though when he thought about the way, the main way, that Markin worked the jukebox scene since he was strictly from poverty, from the projects, poorer even than Edward’s people and that was going some if you saw the ramshackle shack of a house that he and his four older brothers grew up in. The Scribe used to con some lonely-heart girl who maybe had just broken up with her boyfriend, maybe had been dateless for a while, or was just silly enough to listen to him into playing what he wanted to hear based on what Edward had told him. But he was smooth in his way since he would draw a bee-line to the girl who just put her quarter in for her three selection on Jack Slack’s jukebox (Doc’s, sweet and kindly saint Doc whose place was a bee-hive after school for that very reason , had five for a quarter if you can believe that). He would become her “advisor,” and as the number one guy who knew every piece of teenage grapevine news in the town and whom everybody therefore deferred on that intelligence so he would let her “pick” the first selection, usually some sentimental lost love thing she could get weepy over, the second selection would be maybe some “oldie but goodie,” Breathless or At The Hop, which everybody still wanted to hear, and then on number three, the girl all out of ideas Markin would tout whatever song had caught his ear. Jesus, Markin was a piece of work. Too bad he had to end the way he did down in Mexico now lying in some unmarked grave in some town’s potter’s field back in the mid-1970s which guys from the old town were still moaning over.

That was Markin on the fringes but see Edward’s senses were very much directed by his tastes in music, by his immersion into all things rock and roll in the early 1960s where he sensed what he called silly “bubble gum” music (what high priest Markin called something like the “musical counter-revolution” but he was always putting stuff in political bull form like that) that had passed for rock.  Which, go figure, the girls liked, or liked the look of the guys singing the tunes, guys with flipped hair and dimples like Fabian and Bobby Rydell but was strictly nowhere with Edward. The breeze Edward felt was going to bury that stuff under an avalanche of sounds going back to Elvis, and where Elvis got his stuff from like Lonnie Johnson and the R&B and black electric blues guys, the rockabilly hungry white boys, and forward to something else, something with more guitars all amped to big ass speakers that were just coming along to bring in the new dispensation.

More importantly since the issue of jailbreaks and sea changes were in the air Edward was the very first kid to grasp what would later be called “the folk minute of the early 1960s,” and not just by Markin when he wrote stuff about that time later before his sorry end. Everybody would eventually hone in on Dylan and Baez, dubbed the “king and queen” of the moment by the mass media always in a frenzy to anoint and label things that they had belatedly found about out about and run into the ground.  But when folk tunes started showing up on the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner over on Latham Street where the college guys hung and where families went to a cheap filling dinner to give Ma a break from the supper meal preparations it was guys like the Kingston Trio, the Lettermen, and the Lamplighters who got the play after school and some other girls, not the “bubble gum” girls went crazy over the stuff when Edward made recommendations.

He had caught the folk moment almost by accident late one Sunday night when he picked up a station from New York City and heard Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie songs being played, stuff that Mr. Dasher his seventh grade music teacher had played in class to broaden youthful minds, meaning trying to break the Elvis-driven rock and roll habit. So that musical sense combined with his ever present sense that things could be better in this wicked old world drilled into him by his kindly old grandmother, that Anna Riley with her boiling kettles and smirks mentioned before,   who was an old devotee of the Catholic Worker movement kind of drove his aspirations (and Markin’s harping with the political and so-called historical slant triggered by his own grandmother’s devotion to the Catholic Worker movement added in). But at first it really was the music that had been the cutting edge of what followed later, followed until about 1964 when that new breeze arrived in the land.

That fascination with music had occupied Edward’s mind since he had been about ten and had received a transistor radio for his birthday and out of curiosity decided to turn the dial to AM radio channels other that WJDA which his parents, may they rest in peace, certainly rest in peace from his incessant clamoring for rock and roll records and later folk albums, concert tickets, radio listening time on the big family radio in the living room, had on constantly and which drove him crazy. Drove him crazy because that music, well, frankly that music, the music of the Doris Days, the Peggy Lees, The Rosemary Clooneys, the various corny sister acts like the Andrews Sisters, the Frank Sinatras, the Vaughn Monroes, the Dick Haynes and an endless series of male quartets did not “jump,” gave him no “kicks,’ left him flat. As a compromise, no, in order to end the family civil war, they had purchased a transistor radio at Radio Shack and left him to his own devises.

One night, one late night in 1955, 1956 when Edward was fiddling with the dial he heard this sound out of Cleveland, Ohio, a little fuzzy but audible playing this be-bop sound, not jazz although it had horns, not rhythm and blues although sort of, but a new beat driven by some wild guitar by a guy named Warren Smith who was singing about his Ruby, his Rock ‘n’ Roll Ruby who only was available apparently to dance the night away. And she didn’t seem to care whether she danced by herself on the tabletops or with her guy. Yeah, so if you need a name for what ailed young Edward Rowley, something he could not quite articulate then call her woman, call her Ruby and you will not be far off. And so with that as a pedigree Edward became one of the town’s most knowledgeable devotees of the new sound.

Problem was that new sound, as happens frequently in music, got a little stale as time went on, as the original artists who captured his imagination faded from view one way or another and new guys, guys with nice Bobby this and Bobby that names, Patsy this and Brenda that names sang songs under the umbrella name rock and roll that his mother could love. Songs that could have easily fit into that WJDA box that his parents had been stuck in since about World War II.

So Edward was anxious for a new sound to go along with his feeling tired of the same old, same old stuff that had been hanging around in the American night since the damn nuclear hot flashes red scare Cold War started way before he had a clue about what that was all about. It had started with the music and then he got caught later in high school up with a guy in school, Daryl Wallace, a hipster, or that is what he called himself, a guy who liked “kicks” although being in high school in North Adamsville far from New York City, far from San Francisco, damn, far from Boston what those “kicks” were or what he or Edward would do about getting those “kicks” never was made clear. But they played it out in a hokey way and for a while they were the town, really high school, “beatniks.”  So Edward had had his short faux “beat” phase complete with flannel shirts, black chino pants, sunglasses, and a black beret (a beret that he kept hidden at home in his bedroom closet once he found out after his parents had seen and heard Jack Kerouac reading from the last page of On The Road on the Steve Allen Show that they had severely disapproved of the man, the movement and anything that smacked of the “beat” and a beret always associated with French bohemians and foreignness would have had them seeing “red”). And for a while Daryl and Edward played that out until Daryl moved away (at least that was the story that went around but there was a persistent rumor for a time that Mr. Wallace had dragooned Daryl into some military school in California in any case that disappearance from the town was the last he ever heard from his “beat” brother).

Then came 1964 and  Edward was fervently waiting for something to happen, for something to come out of the emptiness that he was feeling just as things started moving again with the emergence of the Beatles and the Stones as a harbinger of what was coming.

That is where Edward had been psychologically when his mother first began to harass him about his hair. Although the hair thing like the beret was just the symbol of clash that Edward knew was coming and knew also that now that he was older that he was going to be able to handle differently that when he was a kid.  Here is what one episode of the battle sounded like:                   

“Isn’t that hair of yours a little long Mr. Edward Rowley, Junior,” clucked Mrs. Edward Rowley, Senior, “You had better get it cut before your father gets back from his job working on repairing that ship up in Maine, if you know what is good for you.” That mothers’-song was being endlessly repeated in North Adamsville households (and not just those households either but in places like Carver, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Ann Arbor, Manhattan, Cambridge any place where guys were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing hair a little longer than boys’ regular was the flash point) ever since the British invasion had brought longer hair into style (and a little less so, beards, that was later when guys got old enough to grow one without looking wispy, had taken a look at what their Victorian great-grandfathers grew and though it was “cool.” Cool along with new mishmash clothing and new age monikers to be called by.)

Of course when one was thinking about the British invasion in the year 1964 one was not thinking about the American Revolution or the War of 1812 but the Beatles. And while their music has taken 1964 teen world by a storm, a welcome storm after the long mainly musical counter-revolution since Elvis, Bo, Jerry Lee and Chuck ruled the rock night and had disappeared without a trace, the 1964 parent world was getting up in arms.

And not just about hair styles either. But about midnight trips on the clanking subway to Harvard Square coffeehouses to hear, to hear if you can believe this, folk music, mountain music, harp music or whatever performed by long-haired (male or female), long-bearded (male), blue jean–wearing (both), sandal-wearing (both), well, for lack of a better name “beatniks” (parents, as usual, being well behind the curve on teen cultural movements since by 1964 “beat”  except on silly television shows and by “wise” social commenters who could have been “Ike” brothers and sisters, was yesterday’s news).

Mrs. Rowley would constantly harp about “why couldn’t Edward be like he was when he listened to Bobby Vinton and his Mr. Lonely or that lovely-voiced Roy Orbison and his It’s Over and other nice songs on the local teen radio station, WMEX (he hated that name Eddie by the way, Eddie was also what everybody called his father so you can figure out why he hated the moniker just then). Now it was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a cranky-voiced guy named Bob Dylan that has his attention. And that damn Judy Jackson with her short skirt and her, well her… looks” (Mrs. Rowley like every mother in the post-Pill world refusing to use the “s” word, a throw-back to their girlish days when their mothers did not use such a word either and so everybody learned about sex is some strange osmotic out in the streets, in the school lavs, and from older almost as clueless older brothers and sisters just like now.)     

Since Mrs. Rowley, Alice to the neighbors, was getting worked up anyway, she let out what was really bothering her about her Eddie’s behavior, "What about all the talk about doing right by the down-trodden Negros down in Alabama and Mississippi. And you and that damn Peter Markin, who used to be so nice when all you boys hung around together at Jimmy Jack’s Diner [Edward: corner boys, Ma, that is what we were and at Jack Slack’s alleys not Jimmy Jack’s that was for the jukebox and for checking out the girls who were putting dough in that jukebox] and I at least knew you were no causing trouble, talking about organizing a book drive to get books for the little Negro children down there. If your father ever heard that there would be hell to pay, hell to pay and maybe a strap coming out of the closet big as you are. Worse though, worse than worrying about Negros down South is that treasonous talk about leaving this country, leaving North Adamsville, defenseless against the communists with your talk of nuclear disarmament. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone and stuck with your idea of forming a band that would play nice songs that make kids feel good like Gale Garnet’s We’ll Sing In The Sunshine or that pretty Negro girl Dionne Warwick and Her Walk On By instead of getting everybody upset."

And since Mrs. Rowley, Alice, to the neighbors had mentioned the name Judy Jackson, Edward’s flame and according to Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talk, Judy’s talk they had “done the deed” and you can figure out what the deed was let’s hear what was going on in the Jackson household since one of the reasons that Edward was wearing his hair longer was because Judy thought it was “sexy” and so that talk of doing the deed may well have been true if there were any sceptics. Hear this:      

“Young lady, that dress is too short for you to wear in public, take it off, burn it for all I care, and put on another one or you are not going out of this house,” barked Mrs. James Jackson, echoing a sentiment that many worried North Adamsville mothers were feeling (and not just those mothers either but in places like Gloversville, Hullsville, Shaker Heights, Dearborn, Cambridge any place where gals were waiting for the new dispensation and wearing their skirts a little longer than mid-calf was the flash point) about their daughters dressing too provocatively and practically telling the boys, well practically telling them you know what as she suppressed the “s” word that was forming in her head. She too working up a high horse head of steam continued, "And that Eddie [“Edward, Ma,” Judy keep repeating every time Mrs. Jackson, Dorothy to the neighbors, said Eddie], and his new found friends like Peter Markin taking you to those strange coffeehouses in Harvard Square with all the unwashed, untamed, unemployed “beatniks” instead of the high school dances on Saturday night. And that endless talk about the n-----s down South, about get books for the ignorant to read and other trash talk about how they are equal to us, and your father better not hear you talk like that, not at the dinner table since he has to work around them and their smells and ignorance over in that factory in Dorchester.  And don’t start with that Commie trash about peace and getting rid of weapons. They should draft the whole bunch of them and put them over in front of that Berlin Wall. Then they wouldn’t be so negative about America."

Scene: Edward, Judy and Peter Markin were sitting in the Club Nana in Harvard Square sipping coffee, maybe pecking at the one brownie between them, and listening to a local wanna-be folk singing strumming his stuff (who turned out to be none other than Eric Von Schmidt whose Joshua Gone Barbados and a couple of other songs would become folk staples and classics). Beside them cartons of books that they are sorting to be taken along with them when they head south this summer after graduation exercises at North Adamsville High School are completed in June. (By the way Peter’s parents were only slightly less irate about their son’s activities and used the word “Negro” when they were referring to black people, black people they wished their son definitely not to get involved with were only slightly less behind the times than Mrs. Rowley and Mrs. Jackson and so requires no separate screed by Mrs. Markin. See Peter did not mention word one about what he was, or was not, doing and thus spared himself the anguish that Edward and Judy put themselves through trying to “relate” to their parents, their mothers really since fathers were some vague threatened presence in the background in those households.)

They, trying to hold back their excitement have already been to some training sessions at the NAACP office over on Massachusetts Avenue in the Roxbury section of Boston and have purchased their tickets for the Greyhound bus as far as New York’s Port Authority where they will meet others who will be heading south down to Mississippi goddam and Alabama goddam on a chartered bus. But get this Peter turned to Edward and said, “Have you heard that song, Popsicles and Icicles by the Mermaids, it has got great melodic sense.” Edward made a very severe off-putting “no way” face. Yes, we are still in the time just before the sea change after which even Peter will chuckle about “bubble gum” music. Good luck though, young travelers, good luck.

 

 

 

 

In Honor Of The Working Class Militants In The Spanish Civil War- An Anniversary, Of Sorts

Click on the headline to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (International Brigades)Archives website.

I have noted in other posts that some of our working class anniversaries like the Paris Commune, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and the establishment of the Communist International are worthy of yearly commemoration. So, let us say, the 94th anniversary of the Russian revolution while awkward as a milestone is nevertheless, because of its world-historic importance (both in its establishment and its demise), an appropriate yearly commemoration. Others, like the Russian Revolution of 1905 are worthy of the more traditional five, ten and multiples observations. I have also noted previously my dismay (although that may be too strong a word) at the rise of odd-ball year anniversaries (30th, for example) and rise in the number of mundane occasions for such celebrations although I am not immune to that fever myself. Here, as the headline notes, I am observing a traditional milestone. However, the event itself, that I am observing has far less historic importance (actually far, far less importance) than as an occasion to make some point about the Spanish Civil War. The 50th anniversary designation is to commemorate the first time that I seriously studied the “lessons” of the Spanish Civil War. And the form that that study took was as the subject my very first high school term paper in 9th grade Civics class. I can hear the air being let out of the tires now. But hear me out on this one.

I make no pretense that I can zero in on when I first became interested in the subject of the Spanish Civil War but I was driven by two things in that direction- the general hatred of fascism as transmitted by family and others, the other, and this one is less precise as to origin, was a devotion to the fighters in the American-led Abraham Lincoln battalion of the 15th Brigade of the International Brigades. I believe it may have been hearing Pete Seeger doing a version of Viva La Quince Brigada but I am just not sure. In any case by the spring of 1961 I was knee-deep in studying the subject, including time after school up at the North Adamsville branch of the town’s Thomas Crane Public Library. My first stop, I remember, was looking through the Encyclopedia Americana for the entry on the Spanish Civil War for sources and then turning to the card catalogue. For those not familiar with those ancient forms of research the Encyclopedia was like the online Wikipedia today (except no collective editing, for good or evil, at a touch) and the card catalogue was just a paper version on, well, 3X5 cards, of the computerized systems in most libraries today. But enough of this history of research back in the Dark Ages because what this entry is about is the lessons of that event.

I have noted before, although here too I cannot remember all the details of the genesis of the notion, that on the subject of the Spanish Civil War I have been “haunted” (and still am) by the fact of the lost by the Republican side when in July and August of 1936 (and for about a year later as well) victory against Franco’s brutal counter-revolutionary forces seemed assured. In a sense Spain, and the various stages of my interpretation of events there, represents kind of a foundation stone for my political perspectives as I gained more understanding of the possibilities. I have, more recently, characterized 1930s Spain as the last serious chance to create a companion to the original Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and so we had best look at its lesson closely, very closely.

Of course as a 9th grade political neophyte I was not even close to making that kind of observation just mentioned. I distinctly recall, and it was reflected in my liberal politics at that time, that the center of my argument on that term paper was the perfidy of the Western democracies in not coming to the aid of the Spanish republicans and further in not allowing the republicans to get arms from them or other sources, other than the Soviet Union. Mainly I was incensed that the British and French did not do more except cave in to Hitler when he called a tune. Now that was pretty raw stuff, pretty raw analysis, although probably not bad coming from that perspective. But depending on outside forces to save your bacon (or revolution) is always tricky and so as I moved leftward in my own political perspective I spent more time looking at the internal political dynamics driving the revolution. For an extremely long time I was under the spell (the proto-Stalinist derived spell) as articulated by the majority of the pro-republican organizations.- it was first necessary to win the war against Franco and then the revolution, presumably socialist, would be pursued under which all manner of good things like workers control of production, land to the tiller, some justice on the various national questions (Catalonia, Basque country) could take place, co-operative and collective government established, etc.

As I moved further leftward, leftward not just politically but also organizationally away from left-liberal and social democratic operations, and began to study more closely radical and revolutionary movements for social change I began to chaff under that war-revolution dichotomy and look more closely as the policies of the various organization within the republican camp. That was rather more eye-opening than not. The gist of it was that all the major organizations were working at cross purposes but most importantly they were putting brakes on the continuation of a revolutionary thrust in Spain. An so in the final analysis, although this was hardest to finally see in the cases of the CGT-FAI and POUM organizations and some individual militants, it was the failure to seek revolutionary solutions that would have galvanized the masses (or could have, rather than after 1937 left them indifferent, mainly, to the republican cause).

What was lacking? Obviously since even opponents agree there was a revolutionary situation in that period a party willing to go right to the end to achieve its goals, a Bolshevik-style party. Such things, as we are now painfully aware of, make all the different. And it is that little pearl of wisdom that makes this anniversary entry worth thinking about for the future.