*The Fight Of The Russian Left Opposition- The Fight To Save the Russian Revolution, Part 1

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of his 1923 article, "Bureaucratism and Factional Groupings".

BOOK REVIEW

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1923-25), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975

If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from 1923 at the start of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led, through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.

Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.

Although there were earlier signs that the Russia revolution was going off course the long illness and death of Lenin in 1924, at the time the only truly authoritative leader the Bolshevik party, set off a power struggle in the leadership of the party. This fight had Trotsky and the ‘pretty boy’ intellectuals of the party on one side and Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev (the so-called triumvirate)backed by the ‘gray boys’ of the emerging bureaucracy on the other. This struggle occurred against the backdrop of the failed revolution in Germany in 1923 that thereafter heralded the continued isolation, imperialist blockade and economic backwardness of the Soviet Union for the foreseeable future.

While the disputes in the Russian party eventually had international ramifications in the Communist International, they were at this time fought out almost solely within the Russian Party. Trotsky was slow, very slow to take up the battle for power that had become obvious to many elements in the party. He made many mistakes and granted too many concessions to the trio. But he did fight. Although later (in 1935) Trotsky recognized that the 1923 fight represented a fight against the Russian Thermidor (from an analogy with the period of the French Revolution where the radical regime of Robespierre and Saint Just was overthrown by more moderate Jacobins) and thus a decisive turning point for the revolution that was not clear to him (or anyone else, on either side) then. Whatever the appropriate analogy might have been Leon Trotsky was in fact fighting a last ditch effort to retard the further degeneration of the revolution. After that defeat, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled and for what purposes all changed. And not for the better.

The most important document in this volume is clearly and definitely Lessons of October. Although there are a couple of other documents of interest- The New Course, his program to try to bring the agrarian and the industrial crisis into focus- and The Problems of Civil War- Trotsky’s contribution to the so-called “literary discussion” in the party far outdistances those documents in importance. When this document hit the press there was definitely gnashing of teeth by the ruling trio in the Kremlin- Why? Lessons of October is essentially a polemic against fainted-hearted, opportunist failure to appreciate both the rarity of a revolutionary moment and the necessity to have a sharp combat-tested organization to take advantage of that situation. Moreover, this polemic was a direct attack on Zinoviev and Kamenev for their position against insurrection at the time of revolution and on Stalin’s March, 1917 call for political support to the bourgeois Provisional Government.

George Bernard Shaw once called Trotsky the “Prince of Pamphleteers” and he certainly earns that title in Lessons of October. Alas, those who write the best polemics do not necessarily win the power. Those 200,000 plus politically immature or careerist new party members beholding to the increasingly Stalinist bureaucracy drafted under the “Lenin Levy” saw the writing on the wall differently. That was decisive. Nevertheless, Lessons of October is not just any political document- it is an essential document for the education of today’s militants. It bears reading, re-reading, and reading again. I know I always get something new out of it each time I read it.


SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE TROTSKY INTERNET ARCHIVES.

*The Fight Of The Russian Left Opposition- The Fight To Save the Russian Revolution, Part 2

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of his 1927 article, "The Struggle For Peace And The Anglo-Soviet Committee".

BOOK REVIEW

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LEFT OPPOSITION (1926-27), LEON TROTSKY, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1980

If you are interested in the history of the International Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of the writings of Leon Trotsky, Russian Bolshevik leader, from the start in 1923 of the Left Opposition in the Russian Communist Party that he led through his various exiles up until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space) Look in this space under this byline for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by this important world communist leader.

Since the volumes in the series cover a long period of time and contain some material that , while of interest, is either historically dated or more fully developed in Trotsky’s other separately published major writings I am going to organize this series of reviews in this way. By way of introduction I will give a brief summary of the events of the time period of each volume. Then I will review what I believe is the central document of each volume. The reader can then decide for him or herself whether my choice was informative or not.


The period under discussion is one where Stalin further consolidates his hold on the party and state bureaucracy and begins (along with Bukharin) a much more conciliatory policy toward the peasant, especially the rich peasant, the so-called kulak. Such a policy, essentially at the expense of the working class, made no sense until it is understood that this was the long slippery slope to a theoretical and practical result of what the theory of ‘socialism in one country’ meant in the reality of mid-1920’s Russia. As a result of the 1923-24 defeat of the Left Opposition, the way the Soviet Union was ruled, who ruled it and for what purposes all changed. The defeat of the Joint Left Bloc covered in this volume underlined that change.

On the international level the ill-fated British-Russian trade union alliance and the utterly disastrous policy toward the Chinese Revolution meant a dramatic shift from episodic mistakes of policy toward revolution in other countries to a conscious set of decisions to make the Communist International, in effect, solely an arm of Soviet foreign policy. Make no mistake this is the ebb tide of the revolution.


In a sense if the fight in 1923-24 is the decisive fight to save the Russian revolution (and ultimately a perspective of international revolution) then the 1926-27 fight which was a bloc between Trotsky’s forces and the just defeated forces of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin’s previous allies, was the last rearguard action to save that perspective. That the bloc ultimately failed does not negate the importance of the fight.

Yes, it was a political bloc with some serious differences especially over China and the Anglo-Russian Committee. But two things are important here One-did a perspective of a new party make sense at the time of the clear waning of the revolutionary ebbing the country. No. Besides the place to look was at the most politically conscious elements, granted against heavy odds, in the party where whatever was left of the class-conscious elements of the working class were. As I have noted elsewhere in discussing the 1923 fight- that “Lenin levy” of raw recruits, careerists and just plain thugs was the key element in any defeat. Still the fight was necessary. Hey, that is why we talk about it now. That was a fight to the finish. After that the left opposition or elements of it were forevermore outside the party- either in exile, prison or dead. As we know Trotsky went from expulsion from the party in 1927 to internal exile in Alma Ata in 1928 to external exile to Turkey in 1929. From there he underwent further exiles in France, Norway, and Mexico when he was finally felled by a Stalinist assassin. But no matter where he went he continued to struggle for his perspective. Kudos.

Communists have always prided themselves on the creation, production and distribution of their programs. Many a hard fought hour has been spent perfecting such documents. In this the Left Opposition held to tradition. For communists program is not only important, it is decisive. Tell me your program and I will tell you where you fit politically (in the communist movement). Unlike bourgeois parties and politicians who have paper programs, easier for disposal, the idea of program is to focus the way to fight for power. Thus, the key document in this selection is the Platform of the Left Opposition which was geared to the 15th Russian Party Congress.

While not perfect or complete due to the bloc-nature of the opposition at that time this document gives a pretty good idea of how to get the Soviet Union out of some of the extensive internal economic difficulties created by the Stalinist/Bukharinite ‘soft’ agricultural policy, increase internal party democracy and break the Soviet Union out of its international isolation. Hell, some of the points in the program read as if they were written today. Serious militant leftists will want to look at this document in order figure out the program necessary to tackle today’s struggles.

SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE TROTSKY INTERNET ARCHIVES.

*****This Land IS Your Land- With Folk Troubadour Woody Guthrie In Mind

*****This Land IS Your Land- With Folk Troubadour Woody Guthrie In Mind         

          

      

By Bradley Fox

 

Back in 2014, the summer of 2014 Josh Breslin the now retired old-time alternative newspaper and small journal writer from Olde Saco, Maine was sitting with his friend Sam Lowell from Carver out in Concord in the field behind the Old Manse where the Greater Boston Folk Society was holding its annual tribute to folksinger Woody Guthrie he had thought about all the connections that he, they had to Woody Guthrie from back in the 1960s folk minute revival and before. He mentioned that to thought to Sam whom he queried on the subject, wanted to know his personal take on when he first heard Woody (and to Laura Perkins, Sam ‘s long-time companion sitting between them whom Josh had an on-going half flame going back who knows how far but who made it clear to Josh on more than one occasion that she was true blue to Sam although she had thanked him for the attention compliment. Sam was aware of Josh’s interest but also of Laura’s position and so he and Josh got along, had in any case been back and forth with some many collective wives and girlfriends that attracted both of them since they had similar tastes going back to ex-surfer girl Butterfly Swirl that they just took it in stride.)  Here is what Sam had to say:   

Some songs, no, let’s go a little wider, some music sticks with you from an early age which even fifty years later you can sing the words out chapter and verse. Like those church hymns that you were forced to sit through with your little Sunday best Robert Hall white suit complete with tie on or fi a girl your best frilly dress on when you would have rather been outside playing, or maybe doing anything else but sitting in that forlorn pew, before you got that good dose of religion drilled into by Sunday schoolteachers, parents, hell and brimstone reverends which made the hymns make sense.

Like as well the bits of music you picked up in school from silly children’s songs in elementary school (Farmer In The Dell, Old MacDonald, Ring Around Something) to that latter time in junior high school when you got your first dose of the survey of the American and world songbook once a week for the school year when you learned about Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, classic guys, Stephen Foster and a lot on stuff by guys named Traditional and Anonymous. Or more pleasantly your coming of age music, maybe like me that 1950s classic age of rock and roll when a certain musician named Berry, first name Chuck, black as night out of Saint Lou with a golden guitar in hand and some kind of backbeat that made you two left feet you want to get up and dance, told Mr. Beethoven, you know the classical music guy, and his ilk, Mozart, Brahms, Liszt, to move on over there was a new sheriff in town, was certain songs were associated with certain rites of passage, mainly about boy-girl things.

One such song from my youth, and maybe yours too, was Woody Guthrie surrogate “national anthem,” This Land is Your Land. (Surrogate in response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America in the throes of the Great Depression that came through America, came through his Oklahoma like a blazing dust ball wind). Although I had immersed myself in the folk minute scene of the early 1960s as it passed through the coffeehouses and clubs of Harvard Square that is not where I first heard or learned the song (and where the song had gotten full program play complete with folk DJs on the radio telling you the genesis of a lot of the music if you had the luck to find them when you flipped the dial on your transistor radio or the air was just right some vagabond Sunday night and for a time on television, after the scene had been established in the underground and some producer learned about it from his grandkids, via the Hootenanny show, which indicated by that time like with the just previous “beat” scene that you were close to the death-knell of the folk moment).

No, for that one song the time and place was in seventh grade in junior high school, down at Myles Standish in Carver where I grew up, when Mr. Dasher would each week in Music Appreciation class teach us a song and then the next week expect us to be able to sing it without looking at a paper. He was kind of a nut for this kind of thing, for making us learn songs from difference genres (except the loathed, his loathed, our to die for, rock and roll which he thought, erroneously and wastefully he could wean us from with this wholesome twaddle) like Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific, Stephen Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home, or Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade and stuff like that. So that is where I learned it.

Mr. Dasher might have mentioned some information about the songwriter or other details on these things but I did not really pick up on Woody Guthrie’s importance to the American songbook until I got to that folk minute I mentioned where everybody revered him (including most prominently Bob Dylan who sat at his knee, literally, Pete Seeger, the transmission belt from the old interest in roots music to the then new interest, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott who as an acolyte made a nice career out of continued worshipping at that shrine) not so much for that song but for the million other songs that he produced seemingly at the drop of a hat before the dreaded Huntington’s disease got the better of him. He spoke of dust bowl refugees of course, being one himself, talked of outlaws and legends of outlaws being a man of the West growing up on such tales right around the time Oklahoma was heading toward tranquil statehood and oil gushers, talked of the sorrow-filled deportees and refugees working under the hot sun for some gringo Mister, spoke of the whole fellahin world if it came right down to it. Spoke, for pay, of the great man-made marvels of the West and how those marvels tamed the wilds. Spoke too of peace and war (that tempered by his support for the American communists, and their line which came to depend more and more on the machinations of Joe Stalin and his Commissariat of Foreign Affairs), and great battles in the Jarama Valley in Spain where it counted. Hell, wrote kids’ stuff too just like that Old MacDonald stuff we learned in school.     

The important thing though is that almost everybody covered Woody then, wrote poems and songs about him (Dylan a classic Song to Woody well worth reading and hearing on one of his earliest records), affected his easy ah shucks mannerisms, sat at his feet in order to learn the simple way, three chords mostly, recycled the same melody on many songs so it was not that aspect of the song that grabbed you but the sentiment, that he gave to entertain the people, that vast fellahin world mentioned previously (although in the 1960s folk minute Second Coming it was not the downtrodden and afflicted who found solace but the young, mainly college students in big tent cities and sheltered college campuses who were looking for authenticity, for roots).                 

It was not until sometime later that I began to understand the drift of his early life, the life of a nomadic troubadour singing and writing his way across the land for nickels and dimes and for the pure hell of it (although not all of the iterant hobo legend holds up since he had a brother who ran a radio station in California and that platform gave him a very helpful leg up which singing in the Okie/Arkie “from hunger” migrant stoop labor camps never could have done). That laconic style is what the serious folk singers were trying to emulate, that “keep on moving” rolling stone gathers no moss thing that Woody perfected as he headed out of the played-out dustbowl Oklahoma night, wrote plenty of good dustbowl ballads about that too, evoking the ghost of Tom Joad in John Steinbeck’s’ The Grapes Of Wrath as he went along. Yeah, you could almost see old Tom, beaten down in the dustbowl looking for a new start out in the frontier’s end Pacific, mixing it up with braceros-drivers, straw bosses, railroad “bulls,” in Woody and making quick work of it too.      

 

Yeah, Woody wrote of the hard life of the generations drifting West to scratch out some kind of existence on the land, tame that West a bit. Wrote too of political things going on, the need for working people to unionize, the need to take care of the desperate Mexico braceros brought in to bring in the harvest and then abused and left hanging, spoke too of truth to power about some men robbing you with a gun others with a fountain pen, about the beauty of America if only the robber barons, the greedy, the spirit-destroyers would let it be. Wrote too about the wide continent from New York Harbor to the painted deserts, to the fruitful orchards, all the way to the California line, no further if you did not have the do-re-mi called America and how this land was ours, the whole fellahin bunch of us, if we knew how to keep it. No wonder I remembered that song chapter and verse.             

A View From The Left-Construyendo El Movimento Por Los Plenos Derechos De Los Immigrantes

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.     

*****Out In The 1960s Corner Boy Be-Bop Night-With Jersey Boys In Mind

*****Out In The 1960s Corner Boy Be-Bop Night-With Jersey Boys In Mind   

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell 

 

Frank Jackman’s old friend Jack Dawson, his old friend from corner boy days starting in the fifth grade down in back of the Myles Standish Elementary School in Carver about thirty miles south of Boston in the 1950s, had a while back written a short review about seeing the film Jersey Boys. With the wizardry of modern technology Frank had had the review placed in a blog dedicated to all things retro 1950s and 1960s (two slightly different retros but guys like Frank and Jack squeeze both eras.) Prior to Jack’s viewing the film with his lovely wife, Anna, Frank had told him a summary of the plot-line (and the song playlist) one night when they were having one of their periodic “watering hole” get- togethers to cut up old touches at the Sunnyville Grille in Boston when Frank was in town for a conference. Based on that exchange Jack was determined to see the film. A few days later after seeing the film, seeing how a bunch of “from hunger” working class kids from Jersey (but given the plot-line it could have been lots of places including the “projects” down in Carver where he had come of age), how they made it big, made their fifteen minutes of fame and then some Jack started to think about those old days. About the days when chance had caused him to meet Frank at Myles Standish after his family had moved from Clintonville a few miles away in the summer before fifth grade and the two of them along with a couple of other corner boys, Red Radley and Jimmy Jenkins, in sixth grade created their own (imitative) doo-wop group in an attempt to break out of their youthful jails and gain their own fame (although their standard had not been fifteen minutes but infinity, or when the girls started gathering around, whichever came first).    

What got Jack thinking along those lines was something Frank’s long-time companion, Laura, whom he had seen the film with, had told Frank. She said to him that she had had trouble “getting into” the story line at the beginning because as Frank told Jack before he gave him the details of the film the scenes were far too removed from her own strait-laced middle-class upbringing in Manhattan. Laura did said that she assumed that part of the film’s story line, the part about the furious growing up “from hunger” strivings of the guys who would become the Four Seasons out in the 1950s New Jersey night, had dovetailed with Frank’s experiences in his own youth and as well with the kind of things he have been writing about from that period of late. The kind of things that Frank wrote about after Jack and he discussed various incidents in growing up absurd in the 1950s at their “watering hole” sessions which they initiated after they had then recently rekindled their friendship after many years of going their own ways. Laura had been right about that part, about going back to the mist of time and grabbing some thoughts about how those days had formed Frank, for better or worse, no question. And that feeling got through to Jack as well.

Frank’s had told Jack when he asked why he was writing some many sketches about the past, also placed in retro blogs dedicated to such reflections, that his purpose in writing about the old days had not been to put paid to some ghosts of the past as a lot of guys they knew were interested in doing by physically revisiting growing up hometowns like Josh Breslin going back up to Olde Saco in Maine and getting the wits scared out of him that somebody might recognize him at every turn he made, like brawny Bart Webber going back to Carver to re-flame old sport’s dreams by attending the home football games with other old geezers from his high school, or like one of their other pals, Jimmy Jenkins, who had gone to his (their) fiftieth class reunion at Carver High and came away more depressed than anything since all the old gang, those still walking, talked about was various medical conditions and their grandchildren which left him cold. No, that part was done with this late in the game and the fates had called their shots on that saga already. Moreover Frank said he certainly had not intended to evaluate, Jesus, not to always evaluate, how this or that thing that happened back then turned the great Mandela wheel any particular way but merely to put together some interesting tidbits for Jack, Jimmy, and a couple of other of his later acquaintances Josh and Phil Larkin who were also from the same era when everybody got together at the Sunnyville, or at the Kennebunk Pub up in Maine where Josh lived when they all tired of the city and needed to be washed clean by the ocean spray off the fearsome blue-green Atlantic Ocean. 

Of course lately Jack had begun, feeding off Frank’s tidbits as well as that film, writing sketches about his own musical coming of age time in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the time frame that the Four Seasons had blossomed. Strangely both Frank and Jack agreed that except for the classic doo wop be-bop song, Sherri, they were not fans of the Four Seasons although unlike other groups and singers of the time Jack did not hate their sound. What had perked Jack’s big interest in this film had been the almost chemically pure corner boy aspect, Jersey corner boy aspect, which was not at all unlike his (and Frank’s) Carver corner boy growing up saga.        

In fact at certain points the early story of the guys who formed the core of the original group, Frankie, Tommy and Nick was so very, very similar to parts of Jack’s corner boy experiences that he had to laugh. The options for corner boys, guys who grew up “from hunger” in the working class neighborhoods, usually “the projects,” around the country had those same options mentioned early in the film once they came of age, the Army one way or another many times under some judge’s “trying to make a man out you” threat of the Army or jail, for those who rap sheets were too long to warrant options then just jail or for a guy they knew, Slammer Johnson, who was as tough as they come at age twelve and even older guys, serious corner boys who knew a thing or two about whipsaw chains and brass knuckles, the reformatory, or become famous. Jack knew that part, knew that “wanting habits” hunger that all the young guys in Carver were trying break from, break from when they saw Elvis or Jerry Lee burning stages up and so he and the boys had tried the latter, the fame game, at one point.

It all started in the summer before sixth grade when doo wop was all the craze after Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had asked the magic question-why do fools fall in love- and drove the song by the same name to the top of the charts. There were other guys groups (doo wop girls’ groups too who were cruising to the top the charts but the Carver guys really weren’t interested in them because there was no way they could get anything to help them break-out from paying attention to girl groups, yeah, foolish guys) that hit it big, the Five Satins, The Dubs, The Chasers, The Be-Bop Boys and a bunch of others, mostly black guys (and an occasional girl mixed in) which they knew were hitting it big from watching American Bandstand in the afternoons after school. Dick Clark and that Bandstand was in elementary school anyway, in elementary school at the time when they were getting hipped to music was mandatory to see who was who in the teenage song firmament, see what guys were wearing, see what dances guys were expected to know how to do, sweaty palms and two left feet not withstanding, and, and what chicks looked cool on the show. That last maybe the biggest draw of all as everybody rushed home after school to catch the show.     

Funny the black group thing was not a big deal, or Jack and the others didn’t think much about it since the only time they saw black people was on television. Jack would never really since a live black person until years later when he ran track and would run against black guys in the big meets up in Boston Garden. Other than grabbing tips, like having the lead singer off to the side, everybody having the same outfit, the harmony guys snapping their fingers to the beat, and staying on beat with the lead singer they had no racial options about the music and they,  meaning mainly Jack at first, figured their niche would be as white guy doo-woppers so they would be working a different street. (Jack and Frank, later in high school, when the civil rights movement was on the television every night practically would get a very rude awaking both within their families and among their fellow students and neighbors when they expressed the slightest sympathy for the black liberation struggle but back in sixth grade there was nothing to it)  That niche was not all thought out in such a refined manner as Jack was now recalling in retrospect but what was thought out was that fame part, thought out big time.   

That summer before sixth grade right after school got out for the summer was when the Myles Standish corner boys’ natural leader, Red Radley, driven to distraction by the notion of fame, got them together around their corner every night to practice. Since there had not been any stores to stand in front of holding up the wall in the “projects” where they lived like in the pictures they had seen on music magazines they looked through up in the main library up in Carver Square their corner had been in back of the Myles Standish Elementary School. On hot summer nights the back was all lit up brightly since the night basketball leagues would be holding forth across the field from the gym entrance where they hung out. So under “the street lights” just like those New York City and Philly street corner guys they sang. Sang the doo-wop craze stuff which Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had started and which Red following Jack’s lead about the white boy doo-wop niche figured they could cash in on.

For a couple of weeks they practiced like crazy each night, no paying much attention to much else except exchanging fantasies about what kind of suits they would by, how to act when the crush of the crowds came on, what to do with swooning girls, kids’ stuff dream stuff. But mainly the practiced, trying like hell to work a smooth harmonious sound on the material they covered, covered by Frank copying down the lyrics each time a song they wanted to cover came on WMEX the local rock station (fortunately the big hits got played endlessly each cycle so Frank mainly got the words but on few he missed a couple and so they just incorporated what was there) with Red in the lead. Red really did have the best voice, really could project his voice, and Jack thinking back thought Red with some work and breaks could have made a nice career maybe as a lounge act out of his talent.      

That doo wop practice worked, well, worked for what their other purpose was, gathering interesting girls around them. See, a lot of this doo wop jail break out had to do with sexual stirrings, with this cohort of corner boys finally noticing that those shapeless girls from fifth grade class like Cindy, Linda, Bessie, Rosalind (Jack’s favorite), some of them, were starting to get shapes and who the year before had been noting but nuisances but now were, well, interesting. So each night all through that summer as day turned to night Red and the Roosters (nice name, right) crooned, kept working on their timing, and talking about their look, their niche.

At first they were left all by themselves, maybe the older serious basketball players would chuckle as they left the courts, but then one night a couple of girls, girls they knew from class were standing maybe fifty yards away up against a fence not hiding or anything but just kind of listening and swaying back and forth to the songs. (Jack thought the song they were working on was Little Antony and the Imperials Tears On My Pillows, although he would not swear to that. In any case that was the song that got him a dance with Rosalind so maybe he was confusing the two situations.)

A few nights later there would be several girls, including sixth grade girls and one from the other fifth grade class, Lorna who they called Lorna Doone for no particular reason but who was hot, standing at that fence. Jack thought that night if they did a song that all the girls could join in on they might come closer. So they switched up and did the Tune-Weavers’ tear-jerker Happy Birthday Baby everybody knew and was easy to sing. Sang it several times. The girls came running on the excuse that they thought it was somebody’s birthday, somebody who needed consoling. Yeah, it was like that in the innocence boy-girl thing then, probably still is. The summer passed that way with the boy-girl thing working its virginal way through the old neighborhood just like since Adam and Eve time, maybe before. Jack never got to Rosalind then only later after school started and then she moved to another town and that ended his first serious love affair. Frank even with his two left feet got a date for the movies with Bessie, and Jack thought Red (with that mass of red hair), the best looking guy of the bunch from what the girls said but maybe that was just because they wanted get near the lead singer, as always, had gone “steady” with Lorna for a while until Red kind of went off by himself.           

See here is where things broke down. Sure Red and the Roosters could draw the local girls in, girls who, well, had sexual stirrings too but here is what had happened. Their problem was, unlike Frankie and the Four Seasons from the get-go, they really did not have any serious raw musical talent (except Red) and did not as Frankie and his guys did really have a new angle on the music of the times. Moreover Frank’s voice changed about mid-way through sixth and threw everything off (later Jack’s and then Jimmy’s did too but that was after the group broke up). So, sadly, this edition of the corner boys broke up in the summer before junior high. Red was bitter since he more than the rest of them was staking his life, his break-out from the ‘from hungers,” on musical fame.

Red would a little later after they moved on to junior high turn against any musical aspirations, get himself into a new career path, the life of crime, which had Jack and to a lesser extent Frank in its thrall for a while, remember they were from hunger too, before they backed off but it was a close thing, very close. Both of them had been “look-outs” when Red began his “clip” five-fingers discount rampage of the various stores up in Carver Center and Jack had worked with Red one night when they jack-rolled a drunk for fifty bucks. Frank and Jack soon moved away from that business though once they realized it was too much work and they felt too much anguish over what they were doing to make a career out of that life.     

Red would go on to form another corner boy crowd with some older tougher boys who hung around Jimmy Jack’s Diner based on midnight creeps and some of those corner boys later wound up in the Army, a couple dead in Vietnam for their troubles names now etched in black marble down in Washington and on a granite monument on Carver Commons, or in jail (including Billy later who did a nickel’s worth for an armed robbery after he failed to make a half-hearted one more chance career singing alone and who in the end wound up on the short end of a shoot-out with the cops trying to rob a two-bit White Hen down in some godforsaken town in North Carolina after a second nickel stretch for another armed robbery).       

Jack as he thought about Red as he had not done so in a long time, thought about those last parts of the Carver corner boy story, the parts about the fate of the Reds of the world as against the luck of the Four Seasons thought the difference was important because no matter how “from hunger” you are you need the talent and the quirky niche in order to survive in the musical world. Even then as Jack noted in that review he had written and as became apparent as the film unfolded fame is a very close thing. A couple of twists one way or another and the fifteen minutes of fame is up, gone. And fame as Frankie Valli and the boys found out the hard way despite their hard work doesn’t shield you from life’s woes as the break-up of the group, Frankie’s daughter’s death and the financial problems created by “from hunger” Tommy who thought the money would rain in their faces forever attest to. Not an unfamiliar fame story but one worth seeing once again. And telling the Carver corner boys story too.   

[By the way as the film moved on to the performance parts the when the Four Seasons started getting some breaks, got a natural song-writer, and got tight and in synch both Laura and Anna said they did settle in and liked the rest of the film. And why wouldn’t they as children of that time as well the Carver corner boys when they were glued to their transistor radios up in some bedroom listening to the aforementioned Sherri, other like Dawn, Walk Like A Man,  Rag Dog, Big Girls Don’t Cry and all the rest that drove the young girls wild back then.]

From The Archives-NICARAGUA - DANIEL ORTEGA REDUX

COMMENTARY

U.S. HANDS OFF NICARAGUA!

Karl Marx once commented that many historical events have occurred first as tragedy and a second time as farce. I do not know any tragic part of the Nicaraguan revolution of the 1980’s except the U.S. sponsored Contra War which led to the closing down of revolutionary progress and eventually to defeat of that revolutionary upsurge. However, the apparent resurrection (perhaps, literally as he has reconciled himself to the reactionary Catholic Church) of Daniel Ortega, the old Sandinista leader as President of Nicaragua definitely fits into that second category of historical experience. In order to achieve office Ortega has refined the art of master chameleon and has changed political allies in search of the main chance as often as he changes his stockings. Gone is the old socialist–oriented program that animated the revolution and the young generation of Sandinista revolutionaries who defended it. Now it is the fight for the main chance of parliamentary office- and let the desperately impoverished masses be damned.

This is hardly the first time a formerly progressive organization or politician has degenerated with time or a change in fortunes, but it does remind this writer of the old commitments of leftists in America to the fight against U. S. imperialist intervention in Nicaragua in the 1980’s. Despite Ortega’s and his fellow Sandinistas political demise those commitments remain. Why? One George W. Bush and his dwindling coterie of die-hard supporters who have never forgiven the "lost" of Cuba, continue to have fits over the upstart Hugo Charvez and see "red" when the name Ortega comes up. The United States State Department has issued a statement that it wants to be friendly with the Ortega government. That is the kiss of death. Beware and be ready!

In the 1980's many of us defended the Nicarauguan Revolution against American imperialism’s efforts, through its proxy- the wholly United States funded Contras, to send that regime back into the Stone Age. And they finally succeeded. Nevertheless leftists saw this upheaval as a sign of a renewal of the revolutionary struggles in Central and South America in the aftermath of the death of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in failed guerilla warfare in the hinterlands of Bolivia and the failed popular front parliamentary socialist experience in Chile under Allende.

Many leftists I knew then fought against American policy under the principle that a small country had a democratic right to national to self-determination against the designs of the United States to “prevent” the establishment of a "Soviet" beachhead in Central America. Those were the days of Cold War and Nicarauga, after Cuba, was in the crosshairs of American imperialist fury. American policy treated the stodgy Soviet bureaucrats of the time as if they were some kind of "global class warriors" spreading revolution everywhere rather than the narrow devotees to "socialism in country" they were. To give a funny, if not bizarre, example of the way that American policy responded to the Sandinista threat I recall a speech by the supposedly rational President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who stated that the Sandinista’s army was only two days march to the east coast side of the Texas border. A small, ragtag army, assuming that it wanted to make that trek, was thus suppose to threaten the mightiest military power on earth on its home ground. Weird, even for those times.

Many of us also argued, unlike Fidel Castro and others, that the Sandinistas needed to push the revolution forward by major expropriations and nationalizations like those that had occurred in Cuba and pushed the Cuban Revolution forward. The Sandinistas backed off from any such strategy. Today, fifteen years after the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas Nicaragua stands as one of the poorest nations on earth, the land question is still unresolved and the country is desperately in need of investment in industrial infrastructure and immediate aid. However, for a very long time the Nicaragua has been off the radar of the world's concerns. Only with the resurfacing of Ortega, as a faded reminder of past conflicts, has the American government expressed any interest in conditions there-mainly to blast the election of Ortega. In any case, although leftists are not now called upon to defend a left wing government like that formed in the 1980’s by the then subjectively revolutionary Sandinistas it is still necessary to call on militants to say- U.S. HANDS OFF NICARAGUA!

*From The Partisan Defense Committee- Free Ed Poindexter

Click on the headline to link to "Workers Vanguard", dated November 9, 2007, for the article on the subject noted above.

From Veterans For Peace-Four More Years Of War-We Have Work to Do!

From Veterans For Peace-Four More Years Of War-We Have Work to Do!

	Veterans For Peace calls for all of our members and those who believe peace is possible to remember that  peace is not found in elections, it is found in the work we do to create it. This election season has been one of the darkest and disappointing in recent history. Peace was missing from all the debates. Now that we know who will be the next president, we have a lot of work to do and it begins now! Soon President-elect Donald Trump will take office. While he does not have a foreign policy record to examine, there are a few things we know. Candidate Trump condemned the nuclear agreement Iran made with world powers. He claims he will renegotiate the deal, calling for a “double up and triple up of sanctions.” Trump is not only committed to keeping nuclear weapons, he seems unfazed by the possibility of more countries becoming nuclear powers and talks casually about using nuclear weapons. Candidate Trump constantly claimed that the U.S. military is depleted and called for increases in military spending beyond the 2013 sequester levels. Perhaps his best known foreign policy positions that bridge directly into domestic policy are his call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and building a wall along the border of the U.S. and Mexico.  Donald Trump made positive observations when he questioned the need for NATO. However, his position is not about making peace. Trump’s questioning  NATO was about funding and doing U.S. bidding instead calling for the alliance to forward peaceful global conflict resolution. On the domestic front, we know President-elect Trump provides great momentum to many of the most repressive and dark social tendencies our nation has struggled to discard. Trump’s campaign ran on the toxic energy of hate. It began with calling Mexicans criminals and rapists. It revved up by calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States and it completed its triangle of xenophobia and misogyny by defending sexual assault. The Trump campaign has put on a facade of reaching out to the Black community, however his words make it clear that he is hostile to people of color when he characterizes Black and Hispanic communities as “hell” and called for law and order and stop frisk. His hostility is clear enough to White supremacists that many endorsed him as their candidate. The peace movement must stand strong against policies that call for more violence and war. We must resist all forms of hate and xenophobia. We must stand in solidarity with domestic struggles that move forward women’s rights, immigration reform and all forms of racial, economic and social justice. With our allies across all struggles, we must build a full spectrum movement to create peace at home and abroad. Peace is possible if we make it so. It will happen if we build it together. The work begins now! Two Ways to Take Action Today! Take the Peace Pledge!  We know that voting won't stop wars, but social movements will! Plan your Armistice Day Event and let us know!
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*****Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101

*****Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death-Magical Realism 101

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Scene: Brought to mind by the cover art on some deep fogged memory producing, maybe acid-etched flashback memory at the time, accompanying CD booklet tossed aside on the coffee table by a guy from the old days, the old New York University days, Jeff Mackey, who had been visiting Sarah, Josh Breslin’s wife of the moment. Jeff had just placed the CD on the CD player, the intricacies of fine-tuned down-loading from YouTube beyond anybody’s stoned capacity just then and so the “primitive” technology (stoned as in “turned on,” doped up, high if you like just like in the old days as well although Josh had gone to State U not NYU but the times were such that such transactions were universal and the terms “pass the bong” and “don’t bogart that join” had passed without comment). Don’t take that “wife of the moment” too seriously either since that was a standing joke between Sarah and Josh (not Joshua, Joshua was dad, the late Joshua Breslin, Jr.) since in a long life they had managed five previous  marriages (three by him, two by her) and scads of children and two scads of grandchildren (who had better not see this piece since grandma and grandpa have collectively expended many jaws-full hours of talk  about the danger of demon drugs, the devil’s work).

When Josh had picked up the tossed aside booklet he noticed a  wispy, blue-jeaned, blouse hanging off one shoulder, bare-foot, swirling mass of red hair, down home Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night. The woman maybe kin to Janis, maybe not, but certainly brethren who looked uncannily like his first ex-wife, Laura, who had taught him many little sex things learned from a trip to India and close attention to the Kama Sutra which he had passed to everybody thereafter including Sarah. And no again don’t take that wistful though about Laura as anything but regret since their civil wars had passed a long time before and beside Laura had not been heard from since the time she went down to Rio and was presumably shacked up with some dope king or diamond king or something probably still earning her keep with those little India tricks.

Still looking at the tantalizing artwork he thought of the time of our time, passed. Of wistful women belting out songs, band backed-up and boozed-up, probably Southern Comfort if the dough was tight and there had been ginger ale or ice to cut the sweet taste or if it was late and if the package store was short of some good cutting whiskey, but singing, no, better evoking, yes, evoking barrelhouse down-trodden black empresses and queens from somewhere beyond speaking troubled times, a no good man taking up with that no good best girlfriend  of hers who drew a bee-line to him when that empress advertised his charms, no job, no prospect of a job and then having to go toe to toe with that damn rent collector man on that flattened damn mattress that kept springing holes, maybe no roof over a head and walking the streets picking up tricks to pass the time, no pocket dough, no prospects and a ton of busted dreams in some now forgotten barrelhouse, chittlin’ circuit bowling alley complete with barbecued ribs smoking out back or in a down town “colored” theater. Or the echo of that scene, okay. Jesus, maybe he had better kick that dope thing before he actually does start heading to Rio.

*******

Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some merry prankster yellow brick road bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or someplace like that, maybe Russia he was not sure of the geography all he knew was that he had made a wag wiggle a little for his indiscretion)  was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, weary even of hanging out with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish up some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Yeah, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do, the Prince mused to himself. Chuckled really, term paper stuff was just not his “thing” right then. Hell, he had dropped out of State U, dropped out of Laura Perkin’s life, dropped out of everything to chase the Western arroyo desert ocean washed dream that half his generation was pursuing just then.

Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, 1967 version to be exact, autumns of drugs, strange brews of hyper-colored experience drugs and high shamanic medicine man aztec druid flame throws, winters of Paseo Robles brown hills discontent, brown rolling hills until he sickened of rolling, the color brown, hills, slopes, plains, everything, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of Martin Luther King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim former high school runner’s frame could not afford.

Now the chickens had come home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed, after graduating from high school, that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, the Prince is nothing but a Mainiac, Olde Saco section, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though before she went back to her golden-haired surfer boy back down in Carlsbad (his temperature rose even now every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.

What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Lawrence Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.

Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Miss Ruby, as he called her as a little bait, a little come on bait, playing on her somewhere south drawl, although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message).

Josh, all throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. Guys like Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, even a gal like Wanda Jackson, when they were hungry, and that hunger not only carried them to the stars but slaked some weird post-World War II, red scare, cold war hunger in guys like Josh Breslin although he never, never in a million years would have articulated it that way back then. That was infernal Captain Crunch’s work (Captain is the “owner” of the “bus” and a story all his own but that is for another time) always trying to put things in historical perspective or the exact ranking in some mythical pantheon that he kept creating (and recreating especially after a “dip” of Kool-Aid, LSD for the squares, okay).

But back to Ruby love. He got a surprise one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and he felt was meant to be a little coquettish and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.

What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace that someone, Bonnie Raitt or Maria Muldaur, had found in old age out in some boondock church social or something, mad Bessie Smith squeezed dry, freeze-dried by some no account Saint Louis man and left wailing, empty bed, gin house wailing ever after, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie, the queen of the double entendre, sex version, with her butcher, baker, candlestick-maker men, doing, well doing the do, okay, and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog made just for her that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all a full-blast Piece Of My Heart.

Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey just up the road from the Big Sur merry prankster yellow bus camp, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting some work at the Monterrey Pop Festival held each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl (or maybe some cheap gin or rotgut Southern Comfort, cheap and all the in between rage for those saving their dough for serious drugs).

Ya just a wisp of a girl, wearing spattered blue-jeans, some damn moth-eaten tee-shirt, haphazardly tie-dyed by someone on a terminal acid trip, barefoot, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma, (although he had seen a fair share of the breed in Fryeburg Fair Maine) who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster.

Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. And maybe some sweet sidle promise, who knows in that alcohol blaze around three in the morning. All Josh knew was this woman, almost girlish except for her sharp tongue and that eternal hardship voice, that no good man, no luck except bad luck voice, that spoke of a woman’s sorrow back to primordial times, had that certain something, that something hunger that he recognized in young Elvis and the guys. And that something Josh guessed would take them over the hump into that new day they were trying to create on the bus, and a thousand other buses like it. What a night, what a blues singer.

The next day Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that just slightly off-hand look in her eye that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him, and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either, whoever that dull-wit was) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August, sign up for State U., and still be okay but that he had better grab Ruby now while he could.

*****The Latest From The "Jobs With Justice Blog"-It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 Is The Slogan

*****The Latest From The "Jobs With Justice Blog"-It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 Is The Slogan Of The Day.

Click below to link to the Jobs With Justice Blog for the latest national and international labor news, and of the efforts to counteract the massively one-sided class struggle against the international working class movement.

http://www.jwjblog.org/

From the American Left History blog-Wednesday, June 17, 2009
 

With Unemployment Too High, Way Too High - The Call "30 For 40"- Now More Than Ever- The Transitional Socialist Program

Click Below To Link To The Full Transitional Program Of The Fourth International Adopted In 1938 As A Fighting Program In The Struggle For Socialism In That Era. Many Of The Points, Including The Headline Point Of 30 Hours Work For 40 Hours Pay To Spread The Work Around Among All Workers, Is As Valid Today As Then.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

Guest Commentary
 

From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International In 1938- Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours

Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.

The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.

Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment,“structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.

Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.