*****Eddie Daley’s Big Score –With Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting In Mind

*****Eddie Daley’s Big Score –With Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting In Mind

 

 

 

 

A Sketch From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

Eddie Daley, Edward James Daley, to the 1940s slapdash Dorchester triple-decker tenements within earshot of the rattling Redline subway born, dreamed, dreamed big dreams, ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper as the old time used-up now corny expression had it, of making the big score, making easy street, and in the process leaving behind a legend that guys, corner boy guys and grifters would talk about long after he was gone. Talk about in reverent hushed whispers about the guy, Eddie Daley, thereafter to be dubbed the “king of the grifters” who pulled the biggest con that there ever was, and walked away from it free as a bird. Not all big scores, cons, even if consummated, had that final part, that walk away free part, just ask the shade of Frankie Finn who pulled the big Shiloh Fur scam worth two million easy (a lot of money back in the 1950s even when split four ways and a fifth cut for the fence plus his expenses although just walking around money today), pulled it off with just four guys, a good number for the haul, but who “forgot” that he was dealing with one “Rocket Kid,” Johnny Silver, in his entourage who after the heist put two between the eyes of his three confederates, figuring one is easier to count that three no matter than two of the guys were his long time corner boys. The Rocket Kid, Johnny, was subsequently “hit” by one of Buddy Boyle’s boys, everybody though Rolling Rex Buddy’s main contract man did the deed since he had not been seen around for a while, when he tried to fence the stuff since Buddy was the front money man on that caper and Frankie Finn’s cousin to boot. Buddy already rolling in dough had his own way of figuring one is easier to count when he was the one. So that walking away free part was no small part of the leaving a legend behind scenario.

Eddie’s dream might seem strange to the squares, to those who live life on the square, wake up and do the nine to five bit, or whatever the time bit these days with flexible hours, take two weeks’ vacation in Maine summer, raise and put three kids through college at great expense and get a gold watch or a pat on the back when they are turned out to pasture. Yeah, that dream definitely might seem odd to those who have never been from hunger, not just “wants” hunger like a million guys have, maybe more, but no food on the table hunger when the old man drank away the week’s paycheck at the Dublin Grille or hand-me-down clothes from older brothers in style or not hunger that ate deeply into every way that Eddie thought about things from very early on. Those who never worried about big scores, or cons since they had it coming in whatever they had to put out in expenses would never figure Eddie’s dreams out.

See Eddie was a what they called, called back in the old days, back in the 1930s, and still called them back in Eddie’s coming of age time in the 1960s when he came of age in that Dorchester section of Boston where he triple decker tenement grew up a natural-born grifter. When Eddie first heard that word used, strangely after he had already done his first con and somebody on the corner, that hang out corner being Mel’s Variety on Neponset Avenue near the Fields Corner subway stop, called him a born “grifter” he faked it and said yeah and then next day went to the library and looked it up in the dictionary and came up with this-“A grifter is someone who swindles you through deception or fraud. Synonyms include fraudster, con artist, cheater, confidence man, scammer, hustler, swindler, etc.”

Eddie smiled the smile of the just on that one. Yeah, a grifter, is a guy like him who figured some angles, any angles, a guy who did this and that, did the best he could without working some nine to five hump job. [Here is a practical corner boy, not Mel’s but Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner down in Carver about thirty miles south of Dorchester but still in “from hunger” land definition- “A grifter to fill in the gaps for the unknowing and clueless was a guy, sometimes a dame, although usually where there was a dame involved she was a roper especially if the mark was hopped up on some sex thing, who spent his eternal life figuring how to go from point A to point B, and point A was wanting dough and point B was getting it by any means necessary but mainly by stealth. By the way do not discount women in the grifter society one of the best who ever lived was a gal who went by the name Delores Del Rio, named herself after the 1940s movie star, who took some duke over in Europe for a cool two million in jewelry after she got him all jammed up and picked him clean leaving him with some fake jewels worth about six dollars in Woolworth’s, beautiful.]

So Eddie started figuring the angles very early on, very early on indeed and would regale, if that is the right word for it, the corner boys in front of Mel’s Variety Store on Neponset Avenue with tales of his daring do once he started hanging out there when he began high school at Dot High. Of course that was all kids’ stuff, baubles and beads stuff, since nobody expected a kid to have the talents for grifting right out of the box (having the heart, the “from hunger” wanting habits heart was a separate and maybe more pressing question) but there are certain guys, certain Eddie guys, who cling to those dreams pretty hard and give themselves a workout getting in shape.

From what one guy, Southie Slim, one of the Mel’s corner boys before he moved on to other stuff told me Eddie started pretty early, started simply conning other kids out of their milk money in elementary school over at the Monroe Trotter School. Here is the skinny on that first round according to Slim who got caught out himself before he picked up the grifter life for a while until he found out dealing high-grade dope to the Beacon Hill crowd was a great deal more profitable, and socially smart too once you added in willing women. Eddie somehow had picked up some dice, yeah, a pair and he would bet other kids, boys or girls it did not matter, their milk money on the results. Of course he somehow had “loaded” them so he would win. Now that was a fairly easy thing but here is where Eddie learned his craft. To keep play going he would let the other kids win occasionally, just enough to keep them interested rather than be a greed-head like big bully Matty Dugan down at my elementary school, Myles Standish, down in Carver who just strong-armed a kid a day for his (or her, it did not matter) milk money. But the real tip he picked up young as he was that as long as kids, people, think they can  “pick you clean” you will always have a willing pool of suckers, of people to swindle, small or large but think large.            

One night, one slow Friday night year later after he had settled deeply into the routine of the life, Eddie was cutting up touches about his old days while smoothing down high-shelf scotch (a no-no when you are on the hustle by the way save that for slow Friday nights when you are cutting up old touches Eddie said), about how he moved up after that dice thing ran its course as all such scams do if for no other reason that the grifter gets tired of the play, and he related what happened after that first scam when he got to the Curley Junior High School. Here is how it went, the basic outline since Eddie was kind of cagey about some of the details like the guys he was talking to that night were going to run right out and pull the scam themselves. Eddie basically ran a pyramid scheme on his fellow students. He conned the kids into giving him their money by saying he knew a guy, a friend of his older brother, Lawrence, who worked as a stable boy at the track and who knew when the fix was on in a race and who could place bets for him and get some bucks fast. Eddie convinced a couple of guys that if they put all their dough together they could buy a ticket and make some easy dough. And it worked for a while since Eddie in his devilish way paid off the guys with his own dough. Each guy getting maybe a buck which to a “from hunger” kid was a big deal. Word got out and soon plenty of kids, even girls were looking to get in on easy street. And so he would dole out some more dough. Then he pulled the plug, told everybody that he was going in for a big score that he was going to put twenty dollars on a sure thing that the stable boy had tipped him to. In the event he actually got about thirty five dollars collected altogether. Of course the horse ran out, never came close so all was lost. Hey, wait a minute have you been listening? Eddie didn’t know any stable boy, didn’t make any bet, so minus his seed money expenses he cleared twenty-five bucks. Here is what Eddie learned though know the “clients” (Eddie’s word) who you are dealing with and don’t be too greedy. He did that same small con for a couple of years and it worked like magic, got him his money for the jukebox at Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Gallivan Boulevard and movie money too. Small con wisdom but still wisdom.

Eddie as he got older, got into high school, got hanging around with his corner boys at Mel’s, got restless, always had that idea in back of his mind that he would pull a big score if he learned all the tricks of the trade, if he could get onto something big. For a while in high school it looked like he was on the fast track, he learned how to work the charity circuit for walking daddy (his term) walking around money using the old homeless but proud gag that those private charity donors love that he picked up one day when he was playing hooky from school and ran into an old con man, Railroad Bill, on a bench at Boston Common near the Park Street Station who gave him the tip. Eddie would laugh at how easy it was to pull off walking into let’s say the United Methodist Church Social Services office up on Beacon Street dressed in his very real hand-me- downs and unshaven making him look older but not too old (meaning the old telltale sign that the guy had been “on the bum” too long to be proud and work his way out of his current jam) going through his rough things but wanting to get back on track if he only had a the price of a week’s rent in one of the rooming houses that dotted the other side of the hill then (a few still there even today, significantly fewer though). That was good for ten or twenty at a time although the down side of that caper was that you could only use it once, maybe twice. The upside was that there were numerous private social service agencies like that looking for somebody “worthy” to give the dough to.  

 With that walking around money Eddie would work a variation of his kids’ stuff milk money run, he would sell lottery tickets (in the days before the state got its greasy hands into that racket), for different charities, say he was raising it for blind kids or to send kids to summer camp. Offer as prizes radios, televisions, maybe a record player, stuff like that which people wouldn’t mind spending a dollar or “three for five dollars” on to help some crippled-up kids, give them fresh air, or some other small break or something. So he would grab the dough and then have one or more of his corner boys rip off what was needed over at Lechmere Sales or someplace like that (usually using at first “Five Fingers” Riley or “Rat” Malone who started that racket early once they figured out that if you were fearless in grabbing stuff nobody was going to catch you, and that worked for a long time until they “graduated” to armed robberies and did consecutive nickels, dimes and quarters in various Massachusetts state pens).

See nobody gave a good damn if the charity he was hustling for ever got the dough all they knew was that for a buck, or three for five, they had a chance for their own television, radio, or record player important to hard-pressed high school kids who would not have those items otherwise. Needless to say the corner boys he used were good and he paid them off well like he should to keep them in line, another lesson learned, and so he honed his skills.

When Eddie graduated from high school and was to face the workaday world though he panicked a bit, decided that he needed to move up a step if he was going to avoid the fate of his belabored father, belabored by drink, yes, but also hard work on the docks, not always steady and with a brood of kids and a nagging wife to contend with. If the nine-to-five was not for Eddie neither was staying down in the depths either. (A history teacher had mentioned one time in class that all of her charges should seek to move up the latter of society at least one jump ahead of their parents and that kind of stuck with him.) So he started going into downtown Boston, started hanging around the Commons regularly unlike in high school where he would go just when playing hooky but really to blow off steam when something exploded at home in that damn crowded apartment, started to listen to guys to see if they had any ideas like that time “Railroad Bill” gave him the scoop on the private charity gag, had been on easy street at one time. He didn’t bother with the eternal winos and junkies for they had nothing to say that he could use but to guys and there always were guys who maybe had been on the hustle and got waylaid, or just got old in a young man’s racket and so maybe had some words to share. And before he knew it he met Sidewalk Sam and Bright Boy Benny a couple of guys who told him about old time scams, about how guys survived by their wits in the hard-ass Depression days. And come some old Friday night, a slow girl-less Friday usually, Eddie would hold forth about what he had learned in the world, learned from Sidewalk and Bright Boy.

Here, for example, is what he told the boys one Friday night, one “Five-Fingers” Malone-less Friday night marking the first time he got bagged for doing a robbery, unarmed that time, of a gas station and was doing a six month stretch at Deer Island, which will give you an idea of where Eddie was heading, a story of a scam that seemed impossible to pull off given what they were trying to do. Unless you knew how very greedy some guys, even smart guys were. Let’s call it the wallet switch, an old scam that Eddie would perform a couple of times later, successfully. You need two guys for this, at least. In this case two used to be “from hunger” Great Depression grifters Denver Slim and Gash Lavin. And you must know your mark’s movements pretty well and whether they have dough on them, a more usual circumstance than you might think back then than now that we are in this age of the ATM and cashable credit cards among those a shade to the left of the law (and a whole new Eddie-less generation tech- savvy grifters with their dreams, and stories they are telling their confederates on slow Friday nights). I won’t go into the preliminaries about setting the mark up, but they knew their guy, knew his movements and knew what he was carrying, so just rest assured that Denver and Gash had seeded their mark. Well actually Denver had seeded the mark, one Ricardo “Slice” Russo (you figure out the why of that moniker, okay), who was the bag man for Lou Thorpe’s numbers racket in New York City, yes the Lou Thorpe who ran wild back in the day and made a splash in Vegas to top off his career but this is earlier when he was greedier than Midas and so was particularly susceptible to any scheme that put money in his waiting hands.

Once a week Slice headed for Chicago on the midnight train to pay off Lou’s confederates there (at the high end of the rackets there are always confederates to pay off, cops too so it is just part of the overhead to keep on the streets. Guys down the bottom of the food chain don’t have such financial worries they are too busy keeping one eye out for looming John Law.)

Now bag men are pretty low in the food chain of any criminal enterprise but are like Eddie and every other Eddie-like dreamer also groomed on the con, on easy street dreams. What Denver did was to ask Slice, whom he cornered by evoking “Shark” Mahoney’s name, a mutual acquaintance, as he was heading to the station on the way to Chicago to drop off three thousand to a guy, “Bones” Kelly, also known to both men, on Division Street in that city for him. That money had been placed in a wallet, a black leather wallet similar to the one Slice was carrying the twenty thousand pay-off in, and when Slice got to Chi town he gave the wallet to the Division Street guy, to Kelly, the one with three thousand in it, three thousand in counterfeit money as Kelly later found out. See Slice had figured that doing Denver’s delivery was like finding money on the ground especially when he thought up the fake dough angle. So tough luck, Denver. Worse though, worse for Slice anyway, the mob’s wallet also had twenty thousand in counterfeit money when he delivered the wallet to an office in the Loop.

What had happened was that Gash had been on that train, had in the course of bumping into Slice switched wallets and got off in Cleveland leaving Slice to his troubles. But here is what you have to know, know about the mob. They thought Slice, a troublesome bag man and so an easy fall guy was pulling a fast one on them when he explained what he thought had happened and he wound up in the Illinois River face down before anybody investigated anything. Beautiful work by Denver and Gash who headed out West for a while just to be on the safe side but also know this-if you are running on the high side expect some blow-back, nasty blow-back if you don’t walk away clean. Just ask Slice

One night, another of those aimless nights when there was no action, or maybe Eddie was cooling out from a con, a wise move since overdoing the con scene leads inevitably to trouble, usually fist, gun or John Law trouble, he told the guys a story, a story about the granddaddy of all the scores, a haul of almost half a million back in the 1930s when half a million was not just walking around money like it is today. A story that Nutsy Callahan, another one of the Great Depression guys he would listen to over on the Commons told him about one afternoon after he had played out some luscious honey over on Tremont Street who had “curled his toes” and he was a bit too restless to head home (Eddie wasn’t much for girlfriends or serious female company on his way up and maybe it was better for him to just catch a quick “curl the toes” on an off-afternoon with some passing fancy because no question women are far tougher to deal with that the hardest scam). The way Nutsy told the story implied that he might have been in on the caper, although like all good grifters, grafters, percentage guys, and midnight sifters, he would put the account in the third person just in case the statute of limitations had not run out on whatever the offenses were, or, more likely, some pissed off Capo or his descendants were still looking to take some shots at guys who pulled such scams.

Nutsy had told Eddie a few lesser scams that he had been involved in and Eddie told a few lies of his own but the important thing for Eddie, or rather Eddie’s future was that he was looking to break out of the penny-ante grifts and ride easy street so he was looking for ideas, long ago ideas really because just maybe with a duke here and a juke there the thing could be played again. Eddie didn’t bother to tell Nutsy that for Nutsy would probably not have told the story or as likely dismiss Eddie’s chances out of hand. So Nutsy told the story and Eddie’s eyes went bonkers over the whole set-up.

This one involved “Top Hat” Hogan so named for the simple fact that as long as anybody had known him, or could remember, he always wore a fancy day top hat although rarely, very rarely, with any accompanying evening clothes. Some of his girl friends said he wore the damn thing when he was in bed with them and that was just fine because Top Hat was a walking daddy when it came to loving his women. Top Hat had been widely assumed to have been the brains behind the Silver Smith Fur scam, the Morgan Bank scam and the Golden Gate Mine dust-up which people talked about almost until the war (World War II if you are counting). So Top Hat under any circumstances was a number one grifter who any guy with any dough, any serious dough, had better check up on to see if Top Hat had been in the vicinity if he wanted to keep said cash. The other key guy, and the reason Top Hat, who had been semi-retired at the time of this caper and rightfully so having run the rack already, was a raw kid, a kid with promise but not much else then, was “Jet” Jenkins. And the reason that Top Hat even considered teaming up with a raw kid like Jet, was that he was the son of Happy Heddy Jenkins, a fancy woman who had “curled his toes” back in his younger days. Heddy had had some good days and bad days but one of the bad days had been meeting up with the famous gambler, Black Bart Benson, one of the great flim-flam, flim-flam meaning simply a cheater without mercy and guys, leg-breakers if anybody had a problem with that, poker players of the day.

Old Bart had nevertheless had run into a streak of bad luck at cards which even cheaters face at times, had borrowed and lost almost a one hundred thousand dollars from Heddy (who ran on the best, friendliest, and easiest to enter if you had the money whorehouses in Chicago). Somehow things had taken a turn for the worst after Black Bart left Heddy high and dry and she was back on cheap street trying to raise a helter-skelter growing boy with short funds. Not so Black Bart who had cheated his way to a million dollar bonanza when his luck changed. (That cheating not known, obviously, to the guys taking the beating at the card table but Heddy knew her Bart and imparted that wisdom onto her son.) When Heddy sent Jet to see if Bart would ante up the cash he had borrowed from her he dismissed Jet with a flick of his hand, and after a serious beating by one of his leg-breakers had him dumped him in some back alley in Altoona one night. Bart had, with a laugh, as his boys administered that beating, told Jet that he should sue him in court to get his money back as he wasn’t in the mood to give some bent whore dough that she had gotten from her whorehouse dollies. So Heddy, so Jet, and after hearing about what Bart had called Heddy, so Top Hat were primed for revenge. But more than revenge because that is easy, kids’ stuff, but to send Bart back to cheap street hustling winos with three-card Monte tricks or stuff like that.

The key to understanding Black Bart was that like a lot of con artists, no, most con artists, no, make that all con artists, is that beside being easy prey to any scam especially a scam that plays to their greed they always assume that they are smarter than whoever is making the proposition and can double-back on it to their profit. Top Hat had easy pickings when he ran across guys like Bart. Here is the way that Top Hat worked his magic, although when Nutsy finished telling Eddie the lay Eddie thought the venture had too many moving parts, too many guys in on the score once Black Bart was brought down.

It went like this. “Buggy” Bannon knew Black Bart, knew he was always interested in an easy score so Buggy put the word in Bart’s ear about some silver and gold mining stock that was about to go through the roof once the worst parts of the Depression were over. So Buggy, who had worked with Top Hat on the Silver Smith scam and so was trustworthy, or as trustworthy as any guy working on a scam can be introduced Top Hat to Bart as a chief stockbroker for Merrill Lynch. Then Top Hat went through the traces, got Bart hooked in with the knowledge about the gold and silver stock. Of course Top Hat had had “Horseless” Harry sent up a nice brochure in color all about the various possibilities of the mining stock and Bart got interested, saw quick dollar signs. Of course even an over-the-top greedy guy like Bart had to see some real stuff, some real stockbroker operation, so Top Hat had rented out space in a building in the financial district and created out of sheer nothing a stock market room complete with ticker-tape, running around employees (all grifters from out west so that Bart would not recognize them) or and investors milling around.

That was the part that Eddie thought was over the top, the too many moving parts aspect, but in any case it all looked good to Bart. Here is the carrot Top Hat told Bart to invest a few thousand to see how it went. And so Bart did, bringing to the stock room five thousand in cash as all con artists did then in the days before working kited checks and credit cards and stuff like that opened out new ways to bilk people, including smart guys. A few days later Top Hat delivers ten thousand to Bart, all fresh dough, and so they are off to the races because now he sees that this thing could make him really rich. Of course Top Hat knowing that you have to bring a guy, a sucker along, knowing you needed to whet his appetite had just added five of his own money to Bart’s to bring in the bonanza (writing it off as overhead just like any other legal or illegal operation).

Bart, although no fool and who still had some suspicions, was no question hooked though as Top Hat fed him another stock tip and told him he should let the ten thousand ride, which he did. About a week later Top Hat delivers twenty-two thousand to Bart and he was really hooked, really wants to put more money down. Especially when that twenty-two went to fifty grand a few weeks later. Bart said to Top Hat that it was like finding money on the street. Then Top Hat really got to him, let him know that in South Africa, a known gold, silver and diamond mother lode to everybody in those days that a new field was within days of being explored and discovered and that Bart should be ready to go big and get in on the ground floor. Here is the beauty of the thing though. The financial pages were almost in a conspiracy with Top Hat because they were also projecting some speculation about new minefields. One day Top Hat told Bart to get all the cash he could gather because that South African stock, low, very low at the time would be going through the roof once the discovery was confirmed. So a few days later Bart brought a suitcase filled with cash, about a million maybe a little less, and pushed it over to Top Hat. Top Hat went to the cashier (“Hangman” Henry of all people) and brought back a receipt to Bart.

Now you can figure out the rest. A few days later news of that new minefield did come in and that stock did rise although in a world filled with gold and silver with nobody to buy stuff yet not as much as you would have expected but still a good take. Bart then called Top Hat to tell him to cash in. No answer at Top Hat’s number. Bart then went to the stock exchange room to find nothing but a “for rent” sign on the doors. As for Top Hat and Jet well they were on the train back to New York with that one hundred grand for Heddy and a twinkle came into Top Hat’s eyes about those old days when she “curled his toes,” and might again. Beautiful.

That story etched in his brain Eddie Daley started putting together a few ideas in his head, getting on the phone to a few guys (fewer than Top Hat had in his operation), and started making some dough connections for financing. Out in the grifter night they still talk about Eddie Daley, whereabouts unknown, “king of the grifters” after he took Vince Edwards the big book operator for about a million and a quarter in cold hard cash. You now know the back story on that one.  

*****From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Website

*****From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Website

 

 

Click below to link to the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty website.

http://www.mcadp.org/

 

Frank Jackman Comment: Talking to those who daily stood outside the Federal courthouse in Boston during the Tsarnaev trial, you know Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi,  Catholic Workers, and other anti-death penalty activists out on the streets, you would find a bit of a different take since nowhere were any representatives of this organization seen at that location. Sometimes the streets are the places to be and this was one of them. Think about it.  
 
 
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Markin comment:

I have been an opponent of the death penalty for as long as I have been a political person, a long time. While I do not generally agree with the thrust of the Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Committee’s strategy for eliminating the death penalty nation-wide almost solely through legislative and judicial means I am always willing to work with them when specific situations come up. (Think about the 2011 Troy Davis case down in Georgia for a practical example of the limits of that strategy and think today in Massachusetts with the recent death sentence for the remaining Marathon bomber where some of us were down at the Moakley Federal Court House protesting the death penalty with seeing anybody from the MCADP anywhere near that scene.) In any case they have a long pedigree extending, one way or the other, back to Sacco and Vanzetti and that is always important to remember whatever our political differences.

Here is another way to deal with both the question of the death penalty and of political prisoners from an old time socialist perspective taken from a book review of James P. Cannon's Notebooks Of An Agitator:

I note here that among socialists, particularly the non-Stalinist socialists of those days, there was controversy on what to do and, more importantly, what forces socialists should support. If you want to find a more profound response initiated by revolutionary socialists to the social and labor problems of those days than is evident in today’s leftist responses to such issues Cannon’s writings here will assist you. I draw your attention to the early part of the book when Cannon led the Communist-initiated International Labor Defense (ILD), most famously around the fight to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti here in Massachusetts. That campaign put the Communist Party on the map for many workers and others unfamiliar with the party’s work. For my perspective the early class-war prisoner defense work was exemplary.

The issue of class-war prisoners is one that is close to my heart. I support the work of the Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99 Canal Street Station, New York, N.Y 10013, an organization which traces its roots and policy to Cannon’s ILD. That policy is based on an old labor slogan- "An injury to one is an injury to all" therefore I would like to write a few words here on Cannon’s conception of the nature of the work. As noted above, Cannon (along with Max Shachtman and Martin Abern and Cannon’s longtime companion Rose Karsner who would later be expelled from American Communist Party for Trotskyism with him and who helped him form what would eventually become the Socialist Workers Party) was assigned by the party in 1925 to set up the American section of the International Red Aid known here as the International Labor Defense.

It is important to note here that Cannon’s selection as leader of the ILD was insisted on by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) because of his pre-war association with that organization and with the prodding of “Big Bill’ Haywood, the famous labor organizer exiled in Moscow. Since many of the militants still languishing in prison were anarchists or syndicalists the selection of Cannon was important. The ILD’s most famous early case was that of the heroic anarchist workers, Sacco and Vanzetti. The lessons learned in that campaign show the way forward in class-war prisoner defense.

I believe that it was Trotsky who noted that, except in the immediate pre-revolutionary and revolutionary periods, the tasks of militants revolve around the struggle to win democratic and other partial demands. The case of class-war legal defense falls in that category with the added impetus of getting the prisoners back into the class struggle as quickly as possible. The task then is to get them out of prison by mass action for their release. Without going into the details of the Sacco and Vanzetti case the two workers had been awaiting execution for a number of years and had been languishing in jail. As is the nature of death penalty cases various appeals on various grounds were tried and failed and they were then in imminent danger of execution.

Other forces outside the labor movement were also interested in the Sacco and Vanzetti case based on obtaining clemency, reduction of their sentences to life imprisonment, or a new trial. The ILD’s position was to try to win their release by mass action- demonstrations, strikes and other forms of mass mobilization. This strategy obviously also included, in a subordinate position, any legal strategies that might be helpful to win their freedom. In this effort the stated goal of the organization was to organize non-sectarian class defense but also not to rely on the legal system alone portraying it as a simple miscarriage of justice. The organization publicized the case worldwide, held conferences, demonstrations and strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti. Although the campaign was not successful and the pair were executed in 1927 it stands as a model for class-war prisoner defense. Needless to say, the names Sacco and Vanzetti continue to be honored to this day wherever militants fight against this American injustice system.
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Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears Bury the rag deep in your face For now's the time for your tears." last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan, 1963 

Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011): Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat. On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward. 

 Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011: No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00 PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!

*The Trotskyist Defense Of The Soviet Union In World War II- A Commentary

Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard", newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S, article on the subject mentioned in the headline.

*Greensboro 1979- A Guest Commentary From "Workers Vanguard"

Click on the title to link to a "Workers Vanguard", newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S, article on the subject mentioned in the headline.

*****Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now!

*****Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now! 

 

 

Support "Courage To Resist"-The Organization Supporting Military Resisters And Chelsea Manning 

 



Frank Jackman comment on Courage To Resist and military resisters: 

I have always admired military resisters having, frankly, done my time in the military, Vietnam Era 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, began to see thing through the fog of war and got serious “religion” on the questions of war and peace from several sources. At first 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 one way or another was half in mutiny toward the end of American involvement in that war. And a serious need as guys, guys who get 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 when I had 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 while satisfying and rewarding by actually working 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 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 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 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 hometown, Gloversville, up 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.     

With Less Than A Week To Go In The American Election Circus- Where Is Vladimir Lenin When You Need Him

With Less Than A Week To Go In The American Election Circus- Where Is Vladimir Lenin When You Need Him

 

By Frank Jackman

I am nervous, nervous as a kitten as one of my ex-wives used to say when she was frustrated by something I had done or said and was afraid to speak her mind since she did not necessarily know what my reaction would be, would I take it in good humor, take it in stride or go off on some mindless fury. But enough of that personal business since I have changed quite a bit since those youthful hot and heavy days for what I want to speak of, speak of with that same nervousness that that ex-wife was apprehensive about is next week’s American Presidential elections to elect the next war-monger-in-chief which has me worried to perdition, to hell and back if you like that idea better. No, I am not weepy-eyed over Donald Trump’s coming to him pasting. No, I am not weepy-eyed over how the media has jumped all over Hillary about a few mild and minor indiscretions in her nefarious private e-mail server (nobody, not the mainstream media anyway has taken her to task for her real crimes, jail time crimes to borrow a phrase from Dump the Trump, on the destruction of Libya which had her fingerprints all over it). What worries me is that for the next four, and maybe eight years those of us who stand outside and to the left of the two party system that tweedle-de-dee, tweedle-do-dum’s this system are going to be working overtime fighting a rearguard action against the next wars on the American foreign policy menu and another rearguard action trying to defend working people, hard-working working people from taking it on the chin like they have for the past couple of decades, maybe more. In short, it is not the party system that is dysfunctional, it is the capitalist system that has outlived it usefulness. And that, sisters and brothers ain’t no lie.               

Recently I wrote another short piece about my take on the elections. In that piece I mentioned that the beginning of political wisdom was to tell the truth, the unvarnished truth. The truth like the words in the last couple of lines in that last paragraph about the system’s fate. I also mentioned that "speak the truth no matter how bitter,” was a mantra that the great Russian evolutionary and civil war military leader Leon Trotsky was fond of quoting when there was nothing but dust being blown in the faces of the masses, of the working stiffs from the factories who were the backbone of the Bolshevik cause when the deal when down in October, 1917, when to not speak the truth would have turned the whole damn thing on its head. I pointed out as well not  without a little tongue-in-cheek that it was probably a sacrilege to mention the name Leon Trotsky in the same breathe as the two reprobates running for the office of official warmonger-in-chief of the United States, one Hillary Clinton and one Donald Trump. But these are harsh times for revolutionaries. Hard times for any truth-tellers but unfortunately we don’t always get to choose what we are up against, what we need to comment on. 

Since I have already committed one sacrilege I hereby am going to commit another by invoking the name of Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky’s fellow outstanding Russian revolutionary and political leader of the Bolsheviks who turned the world upside down in 1917. He too spoke the truth at a time when not to do so would turned the whole damn thing on its head as well, for example of that truth, a classic statement of his in the Soviet in pre-October was that he was prepared with his fellow Bolsheviks to take control of the government to get Russia out of World War I and get the country’s working people and peasants on the road to socialism. They, the big time socialist politicians of the time laughed at him, called him crazy for thinking his then small following could run the show. Here though I want to remark on another time when he spoke the truth. Maybe not the hard momentary truth necessary to get the job done in Russia in the fall of 1917 but a wider longer lasting truth that has some application today-strange as it seems almost one hundred years later.       

Lenin, Trotsky and others who were committed to an internationalist socialist perspective knew that Russia could not go that trail alone even though it was the first nation to attempt the effort. They also knew that the old socialist organizations, particularly the Second International which they all belonged to in the pre-war period which had worked okay, well had worked sort of okay, in peacetime fell apart the minute war loomed and the vast majority surrendered to the dictates of their own bourgeoisies. A new, third, Communist International was necessary to bring about international socialism and so they created that organization in the early months of 1919 when they had a little breathing room in the civil war struggle they were waging against the Whites and their international capitalist allies. At that conference Lenin proposed a series of theses about what needed to be done, what perspective the international movement needed to be clear about. That document-Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat [see below] outlined the general tasks for the epoch of capitalist decay (a situation we are even more graphically in today). Spoke the truth than no band-aids to the capitalist system like a lot of socialists who knew better were proposing. The old system had to go.             

Guess what. After reading this document recently I made a comment that in broad outline the strategy and the polemic against political opponents seemed like with a little up-dating the theses could have been written today when the same needs are to be met. Guess what as well. After reading that document I was for the moment not quite so nervous, nervous as a kitten about the future struggles ahead. Then I thought about the monsters we are up against and got nervous all over again. Forward.  

*****

Workers Vanguard No. 1098	21 October 2016

From the Archives of Marxism-“Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”-by V.I. Lenin

We reprint below Theses by Lenin that counterpose the soviet system of workers democracy established by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia to the fraud of capitalist democracy. Lenin presented the Theses to the First Congress of the Third (Communist) International in March 1919, while Europe was being shaken by revolutionary working-class upheavals. In January of that year a workers uprising in Berlin was crushed and Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated.

The Communist International was founded in opposition to the Second (Socialist) International. Most of the parties of the Second International had betrayed the working class by supporting their own imperialist ruling classes in the slaughter of World War I. The Communist International won substantial numbers of workers from the old Socialist (Social Democratic) parties to revolutionary communism.

This translation of the Theses is taken from Lenin’s Collected Works. The Berne International Conference that Lenin references sought to re-establish the Second International, which had collapsed at the start of WWI.

*   *   *

1. Faced with the growth of the revolutionary workers’ movement in every country, the bourgeoisie and their agents in the workers’ organisations are making desperate attempts to find ideological and political arguments in defence of the rule of the exploiters. Condemnation of dictatorship and defence of democracy are particularly prominent among these arguments. The falsity and hypocrisy of this argument, repeated in a thousand strains by the capitalist press and at the Berne yellow International Conference in February 1919, are obvious to all who refuse to betray the fundamental principles of socialism.

2. Firstly, this argument employs the concepts of “democracy in general” and “dictatorship in general,” without posing the question of the class concerned. This non-class or above-class presentation, which supposedly is popular, is an outright travesty of the basic tenet of socialism, namely, its theory of class struggle, which socialists who have sided with the bourgeoisie recognise in words but disregard in practice. For in no civilised capitalist country does “democracy in general” exist; all that exists is bourgeois democracy, and it is not a question of “dictatorship in general,” but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, i.e., the proletariat, over its oppressors and exploiters, i.e., the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance offered by the exploiters in their fight to maintain their domination.

3. History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forcible suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters—a resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing. The bourgeoisie, whose domination is now defended by the socialists who denounce “dictatorship in general” and extol “democracy in general,” won power in the advanced countries through a series of insurrections, civil wars, and the forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveowners and their attempts at restoration. In books, pamphlets, congress resolutions and propaganda speeches socialists everywhere have thousands and millions of times explained to the people the class nature of these bourgeois revolutions and this bourgeois dictatorship. That is why the present defence of bourgeois democracy under cover of talk about “democracy in general” and the present howls and shouts against proletarian dictatorship under cover of shouts about “dictatorship in general” are an outright betrayal of socialism. They are, in fact, desertion to the bourgeoisie, denial of the proletariat’s right to its own, proletarian, revolution, and defence of bourgeois reformism at the very historical juncture when bourgeois reformism throughout the world has collapsed and the war has created a revolutionary situation.

4. In explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilisation, bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system, all socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels, namely, that the most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists. There is not a single revolutionary, not a single Marxist among those now shouting against dictatorship and for democracy who has not sworn and vowed to the workers that he accepts this basic truth of socialism. But now, when the revolutionary proletariat is in a fighting mood and taking action to destroy this machine of oppression and to establish proletarian dictatorship, these traitors to socialism claim that the bourgeoisie have granted the working people “pure democracy,” have abandoned resistance and are prepared to yield to the majority of the working people. They assert that in a democratic republic there is not, and never has been, any such thing as a state machine for the oppression of labour by capital.

5. The Paris Commune [of 1871, when the Parisian working class briefly seized power]—to which all who parade as socialists pay lip service, for they know that the workers ardently and sincerely sympathise with the Commune—showed very clearly the historically conventional nature and limited value of the bourgeois parliamentary system and bourgeois democracy—institutions which, though highly progressive compared with medieval times, inevitably require a radical alteration in the era of proletarian revolution. It was Marx who best appraised the historical significance of the Commune. In his analysis, he revealed the exploiting nature of bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system under which the oppressed classes enjoy the right to decide once in several years which representative of the propertied classes shall “represent and suppress” (ver- und zertreten) the people in parliament. And it is now, when the Soviet movement is embracing the entire world and continuing the work of the Commune for all to see, that the traitors to socialism are forgetting the concrete experience and concrete lessons of the Paris Commune and repeating the old bourgeois rubbish about “democracy in general.” The Commune was not a parliamentary institution.

6. The significance of the Commune, furthermore, lies in the fact that it endeavoured to crush, to smash to its very foundations, the bourgeois state apparatus, the bureaucratic, judicial, military and police machine, and to replace it by a self-governing, mass workers’ organisation in which there was no division between legislative and executive power. All contemporary bourgeois-democratic republics, including the German republic, which the traitors to socialism, in mockery of the truth, describe as a proletarian republic, retain this state apparatus. We therefore again get quite clear confirmation of the point that shouting in defence of “democracy in general” is actually defence of the bourgeoisie and their privileges as exploiters.

7. “Freedom of assembly” can be taken as a sample of the requisites of “pure democracy.” Every class-conscious worker who has not broken with his class will readily appreciate the absurdity of promising freedom of assembly to the exploiters at a time and in a situation when the exploiters are resisting the overthrow of their rule and are fighting to retain their privileges. When the bourgeoisie were revolutionary, they did not, either in England in 1649 or in France in 1793, grant “freedom of assembly” to the monarchists and nobles, who summoned foreign troops and “assembled” to organise attempts at restoration. If the present-day bourgeoisie, who have long since become reactionary, demand from the proletariat advance guarantees of “freedom of assembly” for the exploiters, whatever the resistance offered by the capitalists to being expropriated, the workers will only laugh at their hypocrisy.

The workers know perfectly well, too, that even in the most democratic bourgeois republic “freedom of assembly” is a hollow phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings at their disposal, and enough leisure to assemble at meetings, which are protected by the bourgeois machine of power. The rural and urban workers and the small peasants—the overwhelming majority of the population—are denied all these things. As long as that state of affairs prevails, “equality,” i.e., “pure democracy,” is a fraud. The first thing to do to win genuine equality and enable the working people to enjoy democracy in practice is to deprive the exploiters of all the public and sumptuous private buildings, to give the working people leisure and to see to it that their freedom of assembly is protected by armed workers, not by scions of the nobility or capitalist officers in command of downtrodden soldiers.

Only when that change is effected can we speak of freedom of assembly and of equality without mocking at the workers, at working people in general, at the poor. And this change can be effected only by the vanguard of the working people, the proletariat, which overthrows the exploiters, the bourgeoisie.

8. “Freedom of the press” is another of the principal slogans of “pure democracy.” And here, too, the workers know—and socialists everywhere have admitted it millions of times—that this freedom is a deception while the best printing-presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule over the press remains, a rule that is manifested throughout the world all the more strikingly, sharply and cynically the more democracy and the republican system are developed, as in America for example. The first thing to do to win real equality and genuine democracy for the working people, for the workers and peasants, is to deprive capital of the possibility of hiring writers, buying up publishing houses and bribing newspapers. And to do that the capitalists and exploiters have to be overthrown and their resistance suppressed. The capitalists have always used the term “freedom” to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death. In capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion. In this respect, too, the defenders of “pure democracy” prove to be defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the rich control over the mass media. They prove to be deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible, fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement. Genuine freedom and equality will be embodied in the system which the Communists are building, and in which there will be no opportunity for amassing wealth at the expense of others, no objective opportunities for putting the press under the direct or indirect power of money, and no impediments in the way of any workingman (or groups of workingmen, in any numbers) for enjoying and practising equal rights in the use of public printing-presses and public stocks of paper.

9. The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demonstrated, even before the war, what this celebrated “pure democracy” really is under capitalism. Marxists have always maintained that the more developed, the “purer” democracy is, the more naked, acute and merciless the class struggle becomes, and the “purer” the capitalist oppression and bourgeois dictatorship. The Dreyfus case [witchhunt against Jewish army officer in the 1890s] in republican France, the massacre of strikers by hired bands armed by the capitalists in the free and democratic American republic—these and thousands of similar facts illustrate the truth which the bourgeoisie are vainly seeking to conceal, namely, that actually terror and bourgeois dictatorship prevail in the most democratic of republics and are openly displayed every time the exploiters think the power of capital is being shaken.

10. The imperialist war of 1914-18 conclusively revealed even to backward workers the true nature of bourgeois democracy, even in the freest republics, as being a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Tens of millions were killed for the sake of enriching the German or the British group of millionaires and multimillionaires, and bourgeois military dictatorships were established in the freest republics. This military dictatorship continues to exist in the Allied countries even after Germany’s defeat. It was mostly the war that opened the eyes of the working people, that stripped bourgeois democracy of its camouflage and showed the people the abyss of speculation and profiteering that existed during and because of the war. It was in the name of “freedom and equality” that the bourgeoisie waged the war, and in the name of “freedom and equality” that the munition manufacturers piled up fabulous fortunes. Nothing that the yellow Berne International does can conceal from the people the now thoroughly exposed exploiting character of bourgeois freedom, bourgeois equality and bourgeois democracy.

11. In Germany, the most developed capitalist country of continental Europe, the very first months of full republican freedom, established as a result of imperialist Germany’s defeat, have shown the German workers and the whole world the true class substance of the bourgeois-democratic republic. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg is an event of epoch-making significance not only because of the tragic death of these finest people and leaders of the truly proletarian, Communist International, but also because the class nature of an advanced European state—it can be said without exaggeration, of an advanced state on a world-wide scale—has been conclusively exposed. If those arrested, i.e., those placed under state protection, could be assassinated by officers and capitalists with impunity, and this under a government headed by social-patriots [Social Democrats], then the democratic republic where such a thing was possible is a bourgeois dictatorship. Those who voice their indignation at the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but fail to understand this fact are only demonstrating their stupidity, or hypocrisy. “Freedom” in the German republic, one of the freest and advanced republics of the world, is freedom to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat with impunity. Nor can it be otherwise as long as capitalism remains, for the development of democracy sharpens rather than dampens the class struggle which, by virtue of all the results and influences of the war and of its consequences, has been brought to boiling point.

Throughout the civilised world we see Bolsheviks being exiled, persecuted and thrown into prison. This is the case, for example, in Switzerland, one of the freest bourgeois republics, and in America, where there have been anti-Bolshevik pogroms, etc. From the standpoint of “democracy in general,” or “pure democracy,” it is really ridiculous that advanced, civilised, and democratic countries, which are armed to the teeth, should fear the presence of a few score men from backward, famine-stricken and ruined Russia, which the bourgeois papers, in tens of millions of copies, describe as savage, criminal, etc. Clearly, the social situation that could produce this crying contradiction is in fact a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

12. In these circumstances, proletarian dictatorship is not only an absolutely legitimate means of overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but also absolutely necessary to the entire mass of working people, being their only defence against the bourgeois dictatorship which led to the war and is preparing new wars.

The main thing that socialists fail to understand and that constitutes their shortsightedness in matters of theory, their subservience to bourgeois prejudices and their political betrayal of the proletariat is that in capitalist society, whenever there is any serious aggravation of the class struggle intrinsic to that society, there can be no alternative but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Dreams of some third way are reactionary, petty-bourgeois lamentations. That is borne out by more than a century of development of bourgeois democracy and the working-class movement in all the advanced countries, and notably by the experience of the past five years. This is also borne out by the whole science of political economy, by the entire content of Marxism, which reveals the economic inevitability, wherever commodity economy prevails, of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that can only be replaced by the class which the very growth of capitalism develops, multiplies, welds together and strengthens, that is, the proletarian class.

13. Another theoretical and political error of the socialists is their failure to understand that ever since the rudiments of democracy first appeared in antiquity, its forms inevitably changed over the centuries as one ruling class replaced another. Democracy assumed different forms and was applied in different degrees in the ancient republics of Greece, the medieval cities and the advanced capitalist countries. It would be sheer nonsense to think that the most profound revolution in human history, the first case in the world of power being transferred from the exploiting minority to the exploited majority, could take place within the time-worn framework of the old, bourgeois, parliamentary democracy, without drastic changes, without the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions that embody the new conditions for applying democracy, etc.

14. Proletarian dictatorship is similar to the dictatorship of other classes in that it arises out of the need, as every other dictatorship does, to forcibly suppress the resistance of the class that is losing its political sway. The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of other classes—landlord dictatorship in the Middle Ages and bourgeois dictatorship in all the civilised capitalist countries—consists in the fact that the dictatorship of the landowners and bourgeoisie was the forcible suppression of the resistance offered by the vast majority of the population, namely, the working people. In contrast, proletarian dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, i.e., an insignificant minority of the population, the landowners and capitalists.

It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail not only a change in democratic forms and institutions, generally speaking, but precisely such a change as provides an unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by those oppressed by capitalism—the toiling classes.

And indeed, the form of proletarian dictatorship that has already taken shape, i.e., Soviet power in Russia, the Räte [council]-System in Germany, the Shop Stewards Committees in Britain and similar Soviet institutions in other countries, all this implies and presents to the toiling classes, i.e., the vast majority of the population, greater practical opportunities for enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic bourgeois republics.

The substance of Soviet government is that the permanent and only foundation of state power, the entire machinery of state, is the mass-scale organisation of the classes oppressed by capitalism, i.e., the workers and the semi-proletarians (peasants who do not exploit the labour of others and regularly resort to the sale of at least a part of their own labour power). It is the people, who even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, while possessing equal rights by law, have in fact been debarred by thousands of devices and subterfuges from participation in political life and enjoyment of democratic rights and liberties, that are now drawn into constant and unfailing, moreover, decisive, participation in the democratic administration of the state.

15. The equality of citizens, irrespective of sex, religion, race, or nationality, which bourgeois democracy everywhere has always promised but never effected, and never could effect because of the domination of capital, is given immediate and full effect by the Soviet system, or dictatorship of the proletariat. The fact is that this can only be done by a government of the workers, who are not interested in the means of production being privately owned and in the fight for their division and redivision.

16. The old, i.e., bourgeois, democracy and the parliamentary system were so organised that it was the mass of working people who were kept farthest away from the machinery of government. Soviet power, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the other hand, is so organised as to bring the working people close to the machinery of government. That, too, is the purpose of combining the legislative and executive authority under the Soviet organisation of the state and of replacing territorial constituencies by production units—the factory.

17. The army was a machine of oppression not only under the monarchy. It remains as such in all bourgeois republics, even the most democratic ones. Only the Soviets, the permanent organisations of government authority of the classes that were oppressed by capitalism, are in a position to destroy the army’s subordination to bourgeois commanders and really merge the proletariat with the army; only the Soviets can effectively arm the proletariat and disarm the bourgeoisie. Unless this is done, the victory of socialism is impossible.

18. The Soviet organisation of the state is suited to the leading role of the proletariat as a class most concentrated and enlightened by capitalism. The experience of all revolutions and all movements of the oppressed classes, the experience of the world socialist movement teaches us that only the proletariat is in a position to unite and lead the scattered and backward sections of the working and exploited population.

19. Only the Soviet organisation of the state can really effect the immediate break-up and total destruction of the old, i.e., bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery, which has been, and has inevitably had to be, retained under capitalism even in the most democratic republics, and which is, in actual fact, the greatest obstacle to the practical implementation of democracy for the workers and working people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch-making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken the second.

20. Destruction of state power is the aim set by all socialists, including Marx above all. Genuine democracy, i.e., liberty and equality, is unrealisable unless this aim is achieved. But its practical achievement is possible only through Soviet, or proletarian, democracy, for by enlisting the mass organisations of the working people in constant and unfailing participation in the administration of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete withering away of any state.

21. The complete bankruptcy of the socialists who assembled in Berne, their complete failure to understand the new, i.e., proletarian, democracy, is especially apparent from the following. On February 10, 1919, [Swedish Social-Democratic leader Hjalmar] Branting delivered the concluding speech at the international Conference of the yellow International in Berne. In Berlin, on February 11, 1919, Die Freiheit, the paper of the International’s affiliates, published an appeal from the Party of “Independence” to the proletariat. The appeal acknowledged the bourgeois character of the [German Social Democrat Philipp] Scheidemann government, rebuked it for wanting to abolish the Soviets, which it described as Träger und Schützer der Revolution—vehicles and guardians of the revolution—and proposed that the Soviets be legalised, invested with government authority and given the right to suspend the operation of National Assembly decisions pending a popular referendum.

That proposal indicates the complete ideological bankruptcy of the theorists who defended democracy and failed to see its bourgeois character. This ludicrous attempt to combine the Soviet system, i.e., proletarian dictatorship, with the National Assembly, i.e., bourgeois dictatorship, utterly exposes the paucity of thought of the yellow socialists and Social-Democrats, their reactionary petty-bourgeois political outlook, and their cowardly concessions to the irresistibly growing strength of the new, proletarian democracy.

22. From the class standpoint, the Berne yellow International majority, which did not dare to adopt a formal resolution out of fear of the mass of workers, was right in condemning Bolshevism. This majority is in full agreement with the Russian Mensheviks [social democrats] and [peasant-based] Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the Scheidemanns in Germany. In complaining of persecution by the Bolsheviks, the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries try to conceal the fact that they are persecuted for participating in the Civil War on the side of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Similarly, the Scheidemanns and their party have already demonstrated in Germany that they, too, are participating in the civil war on the side of the bourgeoisie against the workers.

It is therefore quite natural that the Berne yellow International majority should be in favour of condemning the Bolsheviks. This was not an expression of the defence of “pure democracy,” but of the self-defence of people who know and feel that in the civil war they stand with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

That is why, from the class point of view, the decision of the yellow International majority must be considered correct. The proletariat must not fear the truth, it must face it squarely and draw all the necessary political conclusions. 

 

Artists’ Corner- Happy 600th Birthday Piero della Francesca

Artists’ Corner- Happy 600^th Birthday Piero della Francesca

 

Zack James comment:

 

Normally my tastes in art run to the late Expressionists, Surrealists, Abstract Expressionists, works in that vein, more modern material that represents to my mind a more truthful representation of a fractured world we live in. But a painter like early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca interests me because if you look at his work while he is as religiously oriented as any other 14^th century painter he does not play for that that wicked sense of adoration that the more traditional artists strove for to show their love of God, or something sublime like that. As the paint above demonstrates della Francesca has a more modern look, tells a story but without the glitter and halos. So thanks. And happy 600^th birthday brother.

*****Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Time Of Motorcycle Bill-Take Two

*****Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Time Of Motorcycle Bill-Take Two

 

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

[My old friend, Sam Lowell, whom I know from the summer of love days out in Frisco days in the late1960s and who hails from Carver down in Massachusetts asked me to fill in a few more details about this relationship between Motorcycle Bill and Lily. He thought I was originally kind of skimpy on why a nice Catholic girl would go all to pieces over a motorcycle guy, would get on his bike like she was some low-rent tart from the wrong side of town the usual type that went for motorcycle guys in his book. Sam didn’t get the idea that when that cycle surge came lots of ordinary teens went with the flow. So here is a little extra, a take two for Sam, and maybe for others who missed that big motorcycle moment.]      

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There was a scourge in the land, in the 1950s American land. No, not the one you are thinking of from your youth of from your history book, not the dreaded but fatalistically expected BIG ONE, the mega-bomb that would send old mother earth back to square one, or worst, maybe only the amoebas would survive to start the long train of civilization up the hill once again. Everybody expected that blow to come if it did come and we in America were not vigilant, did not keep our shoulders to the wheel and not ask questions from the nefarious Russkies (of course we that were just coming to age in the rock and roll night would not have had a clue as to what questions to ask if asking questions was acceptable then and it was not and we as young as were knew that it was not from parents to teachers to Grandpa Ike and his cabinet). From a guy named Joe Stalin which one of our teachers said meant “steel” in Russian but it could have been from any Russian guy as we learned later after Stalin died and other atomic bomb-wielding guys took over in Red Square.

Sure that red scare Cold War was in the air and every school boy and girl had their giggling tales of having to hide, hide ass up, under some desk or other useless defense in air raid drill preparations for that eventually. I wasn’t any revolutionary or radical or “red” although one teacher looked at me kind of funny but I couldn’t the purpose of hiding under some old-timey elementary school wooden desk when every film I ever saw of what an atomic blast looked like said you might as well not have your ass sticking up in the air when Armageddon came. Like I said one teacher looked at me very funny. So sure the air stunk of red scare, military build-up cold war “your mommy is a commie turns her in (and there were foolish kids who did try to use that ploy when dear mother said no to some perfectly reasonable request and junior thought to get even he would rat her out)”

But the red scare, the Cold War ice tamp down on society to go along to get along was not the day to day scare for every self-respecting parent from Portsmouth to the Pacific. That fear was reserved for the deadly dreaded motorcycle scare that had every father telling his son to beware of falling under the Marlon Brando sway once they had seen the man complete with leather jacket, rakish cap and surly snarl playing Johnny Bad in The Wild One at the Strand Theater on Saturday afternoon and deciding contrary to the cautionary tale of the film that these Johnnies were losers spiraling down to a life, a low life of crime and debauchery (of course said son not knowing of the word, the meaning of debauchery, until much later just shrugged his innocent shoulders).

More importantly, more in need of a five alarm warning, every mother, every blessed mother, self-respecting or not, secretly thinking maybe a toss in with Marlon would bring some spice to her otherwise staid ranch house with breezeway existence warned off their daughters against this madness and perversity in leather. Warned those gleaming-eyed daughters also fresh from the Saturday afternoon matinee Stand Theater to not even think about hanging with such rascals contrary to the lesson that cute waitress in the film gave about blowing Johnny off as so much bad air. (Of course forgetting, as dad had with junior, to bring up the question of sex which is what Sissy had on her mind after one look at that cool attire of Johnny and her dream about how she could get that surly smirk off of his face.)     

Of course that did not stop the wayward sons of millworkers slated for work in the mills when their times came from mooning over every Harley cat that rode his ride down Main Street, Olde Saco (really U.S. Route One but everybody called it Main Street and it was) or the daughters slated for early motherhood under proper marriage or maybe sales clerks in the Monmouth Store from mooning (and maybe more) over the low- riders churning the metal on those bad ass machines when they went with their girlfriends over to Old Orchard Beach on sultry sweaty weekend nights in summer.

This is how bad things were, how the cool cats on the bikes sucked the air out of any other guys who were looking for, well, looking whatever they could get from the bevies of girls watching their every move like hawks. Even prime and proper Lily Dumont, the queen of Saint Brigitte’s Catholic Church rectitude on Sunday and wanna-be “mama” every other waking minute of late. Now this Lily was “hot” no question so hot that my best friend in high school Rene Dubois, the best looking guy around the Acre where we all lived and who already had two girlfriends (and later in life would have four, count them, four wives before he gave the marriage game up and just shacked up with whatever romantic interest he had at the moment), would go to eight o’clock Mass every Sunday and sit a couple of rows in back of her and just watch her ass. (I know because I was sitting beside him watching that same ass). He never got anywhere with her, she knew about the two girlfriends since they were friends of hers, and neither did I. Lily was a classic French-Canadian beauty long thin legs, petite shape but with nice curves, long black hair and pop-out blue eyes. Nice but like I said but strictly the ice queen as far as we could tell. Especially when she would constantly talk about her friendship with Jesus and the need to say plenty of rosaries and attend many novenas to keep in touch with him.        

In this time of the motorcycle craze though something awoken in her though, maybe just the realization that Jesus was okay but guys who thought she was hot maybe needed some tending too. In any case, and I didn’t find this out until several years later after Lily had left town, my sister who was one of Lily’s close friends then and Lily could confide girl talk to her during this motorcycle dust up Lily would find herself restless at night, late at night and contrary to all good Catholic teachings would put her hand in a place where she shouldn’t (this is the way my sister put it you know Lily was just playing  with herself a perfectly natural feeling for teenagers, and older people too) and she was embarrassed about it, didn’t know if she could go to confession and say what sin she committed to old Father Pierre. I don’t know if she ever did confess or things got resolved a different way and that idea was out of play but there you have it.     

And the object of her desire? One “Motorcycle Bill,” the baddest low- rider in all of Olde Saco. Now baddest in Olde Saco (that’s up in ocean edge Maine for the heathens and others not in the know) was not exactly baddest in the whole wide world, nowhere as near as bad as say Sonny Barger and his henchmen outlaws-for- real bikers out in Hell’s Angels Oakland as chronicled by Doctor Gonzo (before he was Gonzo), Hunter S. Thompson in his saga of murder and mayhem sociological- literary study Hell’s Angels. But as much is true in life one must accept the context. And the context here is that in sleepy dying mill town Olde Saco mere ownership, hell maybe mere desire for ownership, of a bike was prima facie evidence of badness. So every precious daughter was specifically warned away from Motorcycle Bill and his Vincent Black Lightning 1952 (although no mother, and maybe no daughter either, could probably tell the difference between that sleek English bike and a big pig Harley). But Madame Dumont felt no need to do so with her sweet sixteen Lily who, maybe, pretty please maybe was going to be one of god’s women, maybe enter the convent over in Cedars Of Lebanon Springs in a couple of years after she graduated from Olde Saco High along with her Class of 1960.

But that was before Motorcycle Bill appeared on the horizon. One afternoon after school walking home to Olde Saco’s French- Canadian (F-C) quarter, the Acre like I said where we all lived, all French-Canadians (on my mother’s side, nee LeBlanc for me) on Atlantic Avenue with classmate and best friend Clara Dubois (my sister was close to Lily but not as close as Clara since they had gone to elementary school together), Lily heard the thunder of Bill’s bike coming up behind them, stopping, Bill giving Lily a bow, and them revving the machine up and doing a couple of circle cuts within a hair’s breathe of the girls. Then just a suddenly he was off, and Lily, well, Lily was hooked, hooked on Motorcycle Bill, although she did not know it, know it for certain until that night in her room when she tossed and turned all night and did not ask god, or any of his associates, to guide her in the matter (the matter of that wayward hand for those who might have forgotten).

One thing about living in a sleepy old town, a sleepy old dying mill town, is that everybody knows everybody’s business at least as far as any person wants that information out on the public square. Two things are important before we go on. One is that everybody in town that counted which meant every junior and senior class high schooler in Olde Saco knew that Bill had made a “play” for Lily. And the buzz got its start from none other than Clara Dubois who had her own hankerings after the motorcycle man (her source of wonder though was more, well lets’ call it crass than Lily’s, Clara wanted to know if Bill was build, build with some sexual power, power like his motorcycle. She had innocently, perhaps, understood the Marlon mystique). The second was that Bill, other than his bike, was not a low life low- rider but just a guy who liked to ride the roads free and easy. See Bill was a freshman over at Bowdoin and he used the bike as much to get back and forth to school from his home in Scarborough as to do wheelies in front of impressionable teenage girls from the Acre.

One day, one afternoon, a few days after their Motorcycle Bill “introduction,” when Lily and Clara were over at Seal Rock at the end of Olde Saco Beach Bill came up behind them sans his bike. (Not its real name but given the name Seal Rock because the place was the local lovers’ lane at night and many things had been sealed there including a fair share of “doing the do,” you know hard and serious sex. During the day it was just a good place to catch a sea breeze and look for interesting clam shells which washed up in the swirling surf there.) Now not on his bike, without a helmet, and carrying books, books of all things, he looked like any student except maybe a little bolder and a little less reserved.

He started talking to Lily and something in his demeanor attracted her to him. (Clara swore, swore on seven bibles, that Lily was kind of stand-offish at first but Lily said no, said she was just blushing  a lot.) They talked for a while and then Bill asked Lily if she wanted a ride home. She hemmed and hawed but there was just something about him that spoke of mystery (who knows what Clara thought about what Lily thought about that idea). She agreed and they walked a couple of blocks to where he was parked. And there Lily saw that Vincent Black Lightning 1952 of her dreams. Without a word, without anything done by her except to tie her hair back and unbutton a couple of buttons from her starched white shirt she climbed on the back of the bike at Bill’s beckon. And that is how one Lily Dumont became William Kelly’s motorcycle “mama.”