Tuesday, January 10, 2017

On The 112th Anniversary Of Russian Revolution of 1905

On The 112th Anniversary Of Russian Revolution of 1905 As We Honor Of The Three L’s –Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht-Honor Another  Historic Leader Of The Russian Revolution-Leon Trotsky




EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. DURING THE MONTH WE ALSO HONOR OTHER HISTORIC LEADERS AS WELL ON THIS SITE.


THIS IS A BOOK REVIEW ORIGINALLY WIRTTEN IN 2007 OF LEON TROTSKY’S HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 1930-32, (EDITION USED HERE-THREE VOLUMES, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1980) BY AN UNREPENTANT DEFENDER OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION OF 1917. HERE’S WHY.
Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. Furthermore, in Trotsky’s case there is nothing like having a central actor in the drama he is narrating, who can also write brilliantly and wittily, give his interpretation of the important events and undercurrents swirling around Russia in 1917.

If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its effect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s History of the Russian Revolution offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s Notes on the Russian Revolution. For a more journalistic account John Reed’s classic Ten Days That Shook the World is invaluable. Trotsky covers some of this material as well. However, if additionally, you want to get a feel for the molecular process of the Russian Revolution in its ebbs and flows down at the base in the masses where the revolution was made Trotsky’s is the book for you.

The life of Leon Trotsky is intimately intertwined with the rise and decline of the Russian Revolution in the first part of the 20th century. As a young man, like an extraordinary number of talented Russian youth, he entered the revolutionary struggle against Czarism in the late 1890’s. Shortly thereafter he embraced what became a lifelong devotion to a Marxist political perspective. However, except for the period of the 1905 Revolution when Trotsky was Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and later in 1912 when he tried to unite all the Russian Social Democratic forces in an ill-fated unity conference, which goes down in history as the ‘August Bloc’, he was essentially a free-lancer in the international socialist movement. At that time Trotsky saw the Bolsheviks as “sectarians” as it was not clear to him time that for socialist revolution to be successful the reformist and revolutionary wings of the movement had to be organizationally split. With the coming of World War I Trotsky drew closer to Bolshevik positions but did not actually join the party until the summer of 1917 when he entered the Central Committee after the fusion of his organization, the Inter-District Organization, and the Bolsheviks. This act represented an important and decisive switch in his understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary workers party to lead the socialist revolution.

As Trotsky himself noted, although he was a late-comer to the concept of a Bolshevik Party that delay only instilled in him a greater understanding of the need for a vanguard revolutionary workers party to lead the revolutionary struggles. This understanding underlined his political analysis throughout the rest of his career as a Soviet official and as the leader of the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution. After his defeat at the hands of Stalin and his henchmen Trotsky wrote these three volumes in exile in Turkey from 1930 to 1932. At that time Trotsky was not only trying to draw the lessons of the Revolution from an historian’s perspective but to teach new cadre the necessary lessons of that struggle as he tried first reform the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International and then later, after that position became politically untenable , to form a new, revolutionary Fourth International. Trotsky was still fighting from this perspective in defense of the gains of the Russian Revolution when a Stalinist agent cut him down. Thus, without doubt, beyond a keen historian’s eye for detail and anecdote, Trotsky’s political insights developed over long experience give his volumes an invaluable added dimension not found in other sources on the Russian Revolution.

As a result of the Bolshevik seizure of power the so-called Russian Question was the central question for world politics throughout most of the 20th century. That central question ended (or left center stage, to be more precise) with the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. However, there are still lessons, and certainly not all of them negative, to be learned from the experience of the Russian Revolution. Today, an understanding of this experience is a task for the natural audience for this book, the young alienated radicals of Western society. For the remainder of this review I will try to point out some issues raised by Trotsky which remain relevant today.

The central preoccupation of Trotsky’s volumes reviewed here and of his later political career concerns the problem of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement and its national components. That problem can be stated as the gap between the already existing objective conditions necessary for beginning socialist construction based on the current level of capitalist development and the immaturity or lack of revolutionary leadership to overthrow the old order. From the European Revolutions of 1848 on, not excepting the heroic Paris Commune, until his time the only successful working class revolution had been in led by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917. Why? Anarchists may look back to the Paris Commune or forward to the Spanish Civil War in 1936 for solace but the plain fact is that absent a revolutionary party those struggles were defeated without establishing the prerequisites for socialism. History has indicated that a revolutionary party that has assimilated the lessons of the past and is rooted in the working class, allied with and leading the plebeian masses in its wake, is the only way to bring the socialist program to fruition. That hard truth shines through Trotsky’s three volumes. Unfortunately, this is still the central problem confronting the international labor movement today.

Trotsky makes an interesting note that despite the popular conception at the time, reinforced since by several historians, the February overthrow of the Czarist regime was not as spontaneous as one would have been led to believe in the confusion of the times. He noted that the Russian revolutionary movement had been in existence for many decades before that time, that the revolution of 1905 had been a dress rehearsal for 1917 and that before the World War temporarily halted its progress another revolutionary period was on the rise. If there had been no such experiences then those who argue for spontaneity would have grounds to stand on. The most telling point is that the outbreak occurred in Petrograd, not exactly unknown ground for revolutionary activities. Moreover, contrary to the worshipers of so-called spontaneity, this argues most strongly for a revolutionary workers party to be in place in order to affect the direction of the revolution from the beginning.

All revolutions, and the Russian Revolution is no exception, after the first flush of victory over the overthrown old regime, face attempts by the more moderate revolutionary elements to suppress counter-posed class aspirations, in the interest of unity of the various classes that made the initial revolution. Thus, we see in the English Revolution of the 17th century a temporary truce between the rising bourgeoisie and the yeoman farmers and pious urban artisans who formed the backbone of Cromwell’s New Model Army. In the Great French Revolution of the 18th century the struggle from the beginning depended mainly on the support of the lower urban plebian classes. Later other classes, particularly the peasantry through their parties, which had previously remained passive enter the arena and try to place a break on revolutionary developments.

Their revolutionary goals having been achieved in the initial overturn- for them the revolution is over. Those elements most commonly attempt to rule by way of some form of People’s Front government. This is a common term of art in Marxist terminology to represent a trans-class formation of working class and capitalist parties which have ultimately counter-posed interests. The Russian Revolution also suffered under a Popular Front period under various combinations and guises supported by ostensible socialists, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, from February to October. One of the keys to Bolshevik success in October was that, with the arrival of Lenin from exile in April, the Bolsheviks shifted their strategy and tactics to a position of political opposition to the parties of the popular front. Later history has shown us in Spain in the 1930’s and more recently in Chile in the 1970’s how deadly support to such popular front formations can be for revolutionaries and the masses influenced by them. The various parliamentary popular fronts in France, Italy and elsewhere show the limitations in another less dramatic but no less dangerous fashion. In short, political support for Popular Fronts means the derailment of the revolution or worst. This is a hard lesson, paid for in blood, that all manner of reformist socialists try deflect or trivialize in pursuit of being at one with the ‘masses’. Witness today’s efforts, on much lesser scale, by ostensible socialists to get all people of ‘good will, etc.’, including liberal and not so liberal Democrats under the same tent in the opposition to the American invasion of Iraq.

One of Trotsky’s great skills as a historian is the ability to graphically demonstrate that within the general revolutionary flow there are ebbs and flows that either speed up the revolutionary process or slow it down. This is the fate of all revolutions and in the case of failed revolutions can determine the political landscape for generations. The first definitive such event in the Russian Revolution occurred in the so-called "April Days" after it became clear that the then presently constituted Provisional Government intended to continue participation on the Allied side in World War I and retain the territorial aspirations of the Czarist government in other guises. This led the vanguard of the Petrograd working class to make a premature attempt to bring down that government. However, the vanguard was isolated and did not have the authority needed to be successful at that time. The most that could be done was the elimination of the more egregious ministers. Part of the problem here is that no party, unlike the Bolsheviks in the events of the "July Days" has enough authority to hold the militants back, or try to. These events only underscore, in contrast to the anarchist position, the need for an organized revolutionary party to check such premature impulses. Even then, the Bolsheviks in July took the full brunt of the reaction by the government with the jailing of their leaders and suppression of their newspapers supported wholeheartedly by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionary Parties.


The Bolsheviks were probably the most revolutionary party in the history of revolutions. They certainly were the most consciously revolutionary in their commitment to political program, organizational form and organizational practices. Notwithstanding this, before the arrival in Petrograd of Lenin from exile the Bolshevik forces on the ground were, to put it mildly, floundering in their attitude toward political developments, especially their position on so-called critical support to the Provisional Government (read, Popular Front). Hence, in the middle of a revolutionary upsurge it was necessary to politically rearm the party. This political rearmament was necessary to expand the party’s concept of when and what forces would lead the current revolutionary upsurge. In short, mainly through Lenin’s intervention, the Party needed to revamp its old theory of "the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry" to the new conditions which placed the socialist program i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat on the immediate agenda. Informally, the Bolsheviks, or rather Lenin individually, came to the same conclusions that Trotsky had analyzed in his theory of Permanent Revolution prior to the Revolution of 1905. This reorientation was not done without a struggle in the party against those forces who did not want to separate with the reformist wing of the Russian workers and peasant parties, mainly the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries.

This should be a sobering warning to those who argue, mainly from an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist position, that a revolutionary party is not necessary. The dilemma of correctly aligning strategy and tactics even with a truly revolutionary party can be problematic. The tragic outcome in Spain in the 1930’s abetted by the confusion on this issue by the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and the Durrutti-led left anarchists, the most honestly revolutionary organizations at the time, painfully underscores this point. This is why Trotsky came over to the Bolsheviks and why he drew that lesson on the organization question very sharply for the rest of his political career.


The old-fashioned, poorly trained, inadequately led peasant-based Russian Army took a real beating at the hands of the more modern, mechanized and disciplined German armies on the Eastern Front in World War I. The Russian Army, furthermore, was at the point of disintegration just prior to the February Revolution. Nevertheless, the desperate effort on the part of the peasant soldier, essentially declassed from his traditional role on the land by the military mobilization, was decisive in overthrowing the monarchy. Key peasant reserve units placed in urban garrisons, and thus in contact with the energized workers, participated in the struggle to end the war and get back to the take the land while they were still alive. Thus from February on, the peasant army through coercion or through inertia was no longer a reliable vehicle for any of the various combinations of provisional governmental ministries to use. In the Army’s final flare-up in defense, or in any case at least remaining neutral, of placing all power into Soviet hands it acted as a reserve, an important one, but nevertheless a reserve. Only later when the Whites in the Civil War came to try to take the land did the peasant soldier again exhibit a willingness to fight and die. Such circumstances as a vast peasant war are not a part of today’s revolutionary strategy, at least in advanced capitalist society. In fact, today only under exceptional conditions would a revolutionary socialist party support, much less advocate the popular Bolshevik slogan-‘land to the tiller’ to resolve the agrarian question. The need to split the armed forces, however, remains.

Not all revolutions exhibit the massive breakdown in discipline that occurred in the Russian army- the armed organ that defends any state- but it played an exceptional role here. However, in order for a revolution to be successful it is almost universally true that the existing governmental authority can no longer rely on normal troop discipline. If this did not occasionally occur revolution generally would be impossible as untrained plebeians are no match for trained soldiers. Moreover, the Russian peasant army reserves were exceptional in that they responded to the general democratic demand for "land to the tiller" that the Bolsheviks were the only party to endorse and, moreover, were willing to carry out to the end. In the normal course of events the peasant, as a peasant on the land, cannot lead a modern revolution in even a marginally developed industrial state. It has more often been the bulwark for reaction; witness its role in the Paris Commune and Bulgaria in 1923, for examples, more than it has been a reliable ally of the urban masses. However, World War I put the peasant youth of Russia in uniform and gave them discipline, for a time at least, that they would not have otherwise had to play even a subordinate role in the revolution. Later revolutions based on peasant armies, such as China, Cuba and Vietnam, confirm this notion that only exceptional circumstances, mainly as part of a military formation, permit the peasantry a progressive role in a modern revolution.


Trotsky is politically merciless toward the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary leaderships that provided the crucial support for the Provisional Governments between February and October in their various guises and through their various crises. Part of the support of these parties for the Provisional Government stemmed from their joint perspectives that the current revolution was a limited bourgeois one and so therefore they could go no further than the decrepit bourgeoisie of Russia was willing to go. Given its relationships with foreign capital that was not very far. Let us face it, these allegedly socialist organizations in the period from February to October betrayed the interest of their ranks on the question of immediate peace, of the redistribution of the land, and a democratic representative government.

This is particularly true after their clamor for the start of the ill-fated summer offensive on the Eastern Front and their evasive refusal to convene a Constituent Assembly to ratify the redistribution of the land. One can chart the slow but then rapid rise of Bolsheviks influence in places when they did not really exist when the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, formerly the influential parties of those areas, moved to the right. All those workers, peasants, soldiers, whatever political organizations they adhered to formally, who wanted to make a socialist revolution naturally gravitated to the Bolsheviks. Such movement to the left by the masses is always the case in times of crisis in a period of revolutionary upswing. The point is to channel that energy for the seizure of power.

The ‘August Days’ when the ex-Czarist General Kornilov attempted a counterrevolutionary coup and Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government, in desperation asked the Bolsheviks to use their influence to get the Kronstadt sailors to defend that government points to the ingenuity of the Bolshevik strategy. A point that has been much misunderstood since then, sometimes willfully, by many leftist groups is the Bolshevik tactic of military support- without giving political support- to bourgeois democratic forces in the struggle against right wing forces ready to overthrow democracy. The Bolsheviks gave Kerensky military support while at the same time politically agitating, particularly in the Soviets and within the garrison, to overthrow the Provisional Government.

Today, an approximation of this position would take the form of not supporting capitalist war budgets, parliamentary votes of no confidence, independent extra-parliamentary agitation and action, etc. Granted this principled policy on the part of the Bolsheviks is a very subtle maneuver but it is miles away from giving blanket military and political support to forces that you will eventually have to overthrow. The Spanish revolutionaries in the 1930’s, even the most honest grouped in the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) learned this lesson the hard way when that party, despite its equivocal political attitude toward the popular front, was suppressed and the leadership jailed by the Negrin government despite having military units at the front in the fight against Franco.

As I write this review we are in the fourth year of the American-led Iraq war. For those who opposed that war from the beginning or have come to oppose it the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution shows the way to really end a fruitless and devastating war. In the final analysis if one really wants to end an imperialist war one has to overthrow the imperialist powers. This is a hard truth that most of even the best of today’s anti-war activists have been unable to grasp. It is not enough to plead, petition or come out in massive numbers to ask politely that the government stop its obvious irrational behavior. Those efforts are helpful for organizing the opposition but not to end the conflict on just terms. The Bolsheviks latched onto and unleashed the greatest anti-war movement in history to overthrow a government which was still committed to the Allied war effort against all reason. After taking power in the name of the Soviets, in which it had a majority, the Bolsheviks in one of its first acts pulled Russia out of the war. History provides no other way for us to stop imperialist war. Learn this lesson.

The Soviets, or workers councils, which sprang up first in the Revolution of 1905 and then almost automatically were resurrected after the February 1917 overturn of the monarchy, are merely a convenient and appropriate organization form for the structure of workers power. Communists and other pro-Communist militants, including this writer, have at times made a fetish of this organizational form because of its success in history. As an antidote to such fetishism a good way to look at this form is to note, as Trotsky did, that a Soviet led by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries does not lead to the seizure of power. That tells the tale. This is why Lenin, in the summer of 1917, was looking to the factory committees as an alternative to jump-start the second phase of the revolution.

Contrary to the anarchist notion of merely local federated forms of organization or no organization, national Soviets are the necessary form of government in the post- seizure of power period. However, they may not be adequate for the task of seizing power. Each revolution necessarily develops its own forms of organization. In the Paris Commune of 1871 the Central Committee of the National Guard was the logical locus of governmental power. In the Spanish Civil War of 1936 the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias and the factory committees could have provided such a focus. Enough said.

For obvious tactical reasons it is better for a revolutionary party to take power in the name of a pan-class organization, like the Soviets, than in the name of a single party like the Bolsheviks. This brings up an interesting point because, as Trotsky notes, Lenin was willing to take power in the name of the party if conditions warranted it. Under the circumstances I believe that the Bolsheviks could have taken it in their own name but, and here I agree with Trotsky, that it would have been harder for them to keep it. Moreover, they had the majority in the All Russian Soviet and so it would be inexplicable if they took power solely in their own name. That, after a short and unsuccessful alliance with the Left Social Revolutionary Party in government, it came down to a single party does not negate this conclusion. Naturally, a pro-Soviet multi-party system where conflicting ideas of social organization along socialist lines can compete is the best situation. However, history is a cruel taskmaster at times. That, moreover, as the scholars say, is beyond the scope this review and the subject for further discussion.

The question of whether to seize power is a practical one for which no hard and fast rules apply. An exception is that it important to have the masses ready to go when the decision is made. In fact, it is probably not a bad idea to have the masses a little overeager to insurrect. One mistaken assumption, however, is that power can be taken at any time in a revolutionary period. As the events of the Russian Revolution demonstrate this is not true because the failure to have a revolutionary party ready to roll means that there is a fairly short window of opportunity. In Trotsky’s analysis this can come down to a period of days. In the actual case of Russia he postulated that that time was probably between late September and December. That analysis seems reasonable. In any case, one must have a feel for timing in revolution as well as in any other form of politics. The roll call of unsuccessful socialist revolutions in the 20th century in Germany, Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria, Spain, etc. only painfully highlights this point.

Many historians and political commentators have declared the Bolshevik seizure of power in October a coup d’état. That is facile commentary. If one wants to do harm to the notion of a coup d’état in the classic sense of a closed military conspiracy a la Blanqui this cannot stand up to examination. First, the Bolsheviks were an urban civilian party with at best tenuous ties to military knowledge and resources. Even simple military operations like the famous bank expropriations after the 1905 Revolution were mainly botched and gave them nothing but headaches with the leadership of the pre- World War I international social democracy. Secondly, and decisively, Bolshevik influence over the garrison in Petrograd and eventually elsewhere precluded such a necessity. Although, as Trotsky noted, conspiracy is an element of any insurrection this was in fact an ‘open’ conspiracy that even the Kerensky government had to realize was taking place. The Bolsheviks relied on the masses just as we should.

With almost a century of hindsight and knowing what we know now it is easy to see that the slender social basis for the establishment of Soviet power by the Bolsheviks in Russia was bound to create problems. Absent international working class revolution, particularly in Germany, which the Bolsheviks factored into their decisions to seize power, meant, of necessity, that there were going to be deformations even under a healthy workers regime. One, as we have painfully found out, cannot after all build socialism in one country. Nevertheless this begs the question whether at the time the Bolsheviks should have taken power. A quick look at the history of revolutions clearly points out those opportunities are infrequent. You do not get that many opportunities to seize power and try to change world history for the better so you best take advantage of the opportunities when they present themselves.

As mentioned above, revolutionary history is mainly a chronicle of failed revolutionary opportunities. No, the hell with all that. Take working class power when you can and let the devil take the hinder post. Let us learn more than previous generations of revolutionaries, but be ready. This is one of the political textbooks you need to read if you want to change the world. Read

*****From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 98th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The CI (1919)

From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 98th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919) -Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then








Click below to link to the Communist International Internet Archives"

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

Markin comment from the American Left History blog (2007):

BOOK REVIEW

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001

An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.

Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.

The Russian Revolution, and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working-class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.

Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social-democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".

However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.

Johnny Prescott’s Itch- With Kudos To Mister Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A -Lula

Johnny Prescott’s Itch- With Kudos To Mister Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A -Lula



YouTube film clip of Gene Vincent performing his rock classic, Be-Bop-A-Lula.


He had the itch. John Prescott had the itch and he had it bad, especially since his eyes flamed up consumed with hell-bend flames when he saw Elvis performing live on the Ed Sullivan Show one Sunday night. And he had it so bad that he had missed, unbeknownst to his parents who would have been crestfallen and, perhaps, enraged, his last few piano lessons. Sure, he covered his butt by having saxophonist Sid Stein, drummer Eddie Shore, and bass player Kenny Jackson from his improvisational school jazz combo, The G-Clefs (ya, a well-thought out name for a musical group) come by his house to pick him up. While standing at the Prescott door parents and sidemen went through the “well aren’t things looking up for you boys,” and “they seem to be” scene without missing a beat. But as soon as Kenny’s 1954 Nash Rambler turned the corner of Walnut Street Johnny was a long-gone daddy, real long-gone. And where he was long-gone but not forlorn to was Sally Ann’s Music Shop over on the far end of West Main Street. Now the beauty of Sally Ann’s was that it was, well, Sally Ann’s, a small shop that was well off the main drag, and therefore no a likely place where any snooping eyes, ears or voices that would report to said staid Prescott parents when Johnny went in or out of the place. Everyone, moreover, knew Sally Ann’s was nothing but a run-down, past its prime place and if you really wanted all the best 45s, and musical instrument stuff then every self-respecting teenager hit the tracks for Benny’s Music Emporium right downtown and only about a quick five-minute walk from North Clintondale High where Johnny and the combo served their high school time, impatiently served their high school time.

Now while everybody respected old Sally Ann’s musical instincts (she was the queen of the jitterbug night in the 1940s, had been on top of the be-bop jazz scene with Charley, Dizzy and the guys early on, guys whom the G-Clefs covered, covered like crazy, and nixed, nixed big time that whole Patti Page, Teresa Brewer weepy, sad song thing in the early 1950s) she was passé, old hat when it came to the cool blues coming out of Chicago, and the be-bop doo wop that kids, white kids, because there were no known blacks, or spanish, chinese, armenians, or whatever, in dear old Clintondale were crazy for ever since Frankie Lyman and his back-up guys tore up the scene with Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

But her greatest sin, although up until a few weeks ago Johnny would have been agnostic on that sin part, was that she was behind, way behind the curve, on the rock ‘n’ rock good night wave coming though and splashing over everybody, including deep jazz man, Johnny Prescott. But Sally Ann had, aside from that secluded locale and a tell-no-tales-attitude, something Johnny could use. She had a primo Les Paul Fender-bender guitar in stock just like the one Gene Vincent used that she was willing to let clandestine Johnny play when he came by. And she had something else Johnny could use, or maybe better Sally Ann could use. She had an A-Number One ear for guys who knew how to make music, any kind of music and had the bead on Johnny, no question. See Sally Ann was looking for one more glory flame, one more Clintondale shine moment, and who knows maybe she believed she could work some Colonel Parker magic and so Johnny Prescott was king of the Sally Ann day.

King, that is, until James and Martha Prescott spotted the other G-Clefs (Kenny, Sid, Eddie) coming out of the Dean Music School minus Johnny, minus a “don’t know where he is, sir,” Johnny. And Mr. Dean, Johnny’s piano instructor, was clueless as well, believing Johnny’s telephone story about having to work for the past few weeks and so lessons were to be held in abeyance. Something was definitely wrong if Mr. Dean, the man more who than anyone else who recognized Johnny’s raw musical talent in about the third grade had lost Johnny's confidence. But the Prescotts got wise in a hurry because flutist Mary Jane Galvin, also coming out the school just, then and overhearing the commotion about Johnny’s whereabouts decided to get even with one John Prescott by, let’s call a thing by its right name, snitch on him and disclosed that she had seen him earlier in the day when she walked into Sally Ann’s looking for an old Benny Goodman record that featured Peggy Lee and which Benny’s Emporium, crazed rock ‘n’ rock hub Benny’s would not dream of carrying, or even have space for.

The details of the actual physical confrontation with Johnny by his parents (with Mr. Dean in tow) are not very relevant to our little story. What is necessary to detail is the shock and chagrin that James and Martha exhibited on hearing of Johnny’s itch, his itch to be the be-bop, long-gone daddy of the rock ‘n’ roll night. Christ, Mr. Dean almost had a heart attack on the spot when he heard that Johnny had, and we will quote here, “lowered himself to play such nonsense,” and gone over to the enemy of music. As mentioned earlier Mr. Dean, before he opened his music school, had been the roving music teacher for the Clintondale elementary school sand had spotted Johnny’s natural feel for music early on. He also knew, knew somewhere is his sacred musical bones, that Johnny’s talents, his care-free piano talents in particular, could not be harnessed to classical programs, the Bachs, Beethoven, and Brahms stuff, so that he encouraged Johnny to work his magic through be-bop jazz then in high fashion, and with a long pedigree in American musical life. When he approached the Prescotts about coordinating efforts to drive Johnny’s talents by lessons his big pitch had been that his jazz ear would assure him of steady work when he came of age, came of age in the mid-1950s.

This last point should not be underestimated in winning the Prescotts over. James worked, when there was work, as welder, over at the shipyards in Adamsville, and Martha previously solely a housewife, in order to pay for those lessons (and be a good and caring mother to boot) had taken on a job filling jelly donuts (and other donut stuff) at one of the first of the Dandy Donuts shops that were spreading over the greater Clintondale area.
Christ, filling donuts. No wonder they were chagrined, or worst.

Previously both parents were proud, proud as peacocks, when Johnny really did show that promise that Mr. Dean saw early on. Especially when Johnny would inevitably be called to lead any musical assemblage at school, and later when, at Mr. Dean’s urging, he formed the G-Clef and began to make small amounts of money at parties and other functions. Rock ‘n’ rock did not fit in, fit in at all in that Prescott world. Then damn Elvis came into view and corrupted Johnny’s morals, or something like that. Shouldn’t the authorities do something about it?

Johnny and his parents worked out a truce, well kind of a truce,kind of a truce for a while. And that kind of a truce for a while is where old Sally Ann enters again. See, Johnny had so much raw rock talent that she persuaded him to have his boys (yes, Kenny, Sid and Eddy in case you forgot) come by and accompany him on some rock stuff. And because Johnny (not Sally Ann, old Aunt Sally by then) was loved, loved in the musical sense if not in the human affection sense by the other boys they followed along. Truth to tell they were getting the itch too, a little. And that little itch turned into a very big itch indeed when at that very same dime-dropper, Mary Jane Galvin’s sweet sixteen party concert (yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl), the G-Clefs finished one of their covers, Dizzy’s Salt Peanuts with some rock riffs. The kids started to get up, started dancing in front of their seats to the shock of the parents and Mary Jane(yes, Mary Jane was that kind of girl), including the senior Prescotts, were crazy for the music. And Johnny’s fellow G-Clefs noticed, noticed very quickly that all kinds of foxy frails (girls, okay), girls who had previously spent much time ignoring their existences, came up all dream-eyed and asked them, well, asked them stuff, boy-girl stuff.

Oh, the Sally Ann part, the real Sally Ann part not just the idea of putting the rock band together. Well, she talked her talk to the headmaster over at North Clintondale High (an old classmate, Clintondale Class of 1925, and flame from what the boys later heard) and got the boys a paying gig at the up coming school Spring Frolics. And the money was more than the G-Clefs, the avant guarde G-Clefs made in a month of jazz club appearances, to speak nothing of girls attached. So now the senior Prescotts are happy, well as happy as parents can be over rock ‘n’ roll. And from what I hear Johnny and the Rocking Ramrods are going, courtesy of Aunt Sally, naturally, to be playing at the Gloversville Fair this summer. Be-bop-a-Lula indeed.

Monday, January 09, 2017

*****Will The Circle Be Unbroken-The Music OF The Carter Family (First Generation)


******Will The Circle Be Unbroken-The Music Of The Carter Family (First Generation)

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

You know it took a long time for Sam Eaton to figure out why he was drawn, seemingly out of nowhere, to the mountain music most famously brought to public, Northern public, attention by the likes of the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, Etta Baker, The Seegers and the Lomaxes back a couple of generations ago. The Carter Family famously arrived via a record contract in Bristol, Tennessee in the days when radio and record companies were looking for music, authentic American music to fill the air and their catalogs. (Jimmy Rodgers, the great Texas yodeler was discovered at that same time and place. In fact what the record companies were doing to their profit was to send out agents to grab whatever they could. That is how guys like Son House and Skip James got their record debuts, “race record” debut but that is a story for another time although it will be told so don’t worry). The Seegers and Lomaxes went out into the sweated dusty fields, out to the Saturday night red barn dance the winds coming down the Appalachian hollows, I refuse to say hollas okay, out to the Sunday morning praise Jehovah gathered church brethren (and many sinners Saturday wine, women and song singers as well as your ordinary blasphemous bad thought sinners, out to the juke joint(ditto on the sinning but in high fiddle on Uncle Jack’s freshly “bonded” sour mash come Saturday absolution for sins is the last thing on the brethren’s minds), down to the mountain general store to grab whatever was available some of it pretty remarkable filled with fiddles, banjos and mandolins.

As a kid, as a very conscious Northern city boy, Sam could not abide that kind of music (and I know because if I tried to even mention something Johnny Cash who was really then a rock and roll stud he would turn seven shades of his patented fury) but later on he figured that was because he was so embroiled in the uprising jail-break music of his, our generation, rock and roll, that anything else faded, faded badly by comparison. (And I was with him the first night we heard Bill Haley and the Comets blasting Rock Around The Clock in the front end  of a double feature of Blackboard Jungle at the Strand Theater when it was playing re-runs so you know I lived and died for the new sounds)   

Later in high school, Lasalle High, when Brian Pirot would drive us down to Cambridge and after high school in college when Sam used to hang around Harvard Square to be around the burgeoning folk scene that was emerging for what he later would call the "folk minute of the early 1960s" he would let something like Gold Watch And Chain register a bit, registering a bit then meaning that he would find himself occasionally idly humming such a tune. (The version done by Alice Stuart at the time gleaned when he had heard her perform at the Club Nana in the Square one time when he had enough dough for two coffees, a shared pastry and money for the “basket” for a date, a cheap date.) The only Carter Family song that Sam consciously could claim he knew of theirs was Under the Weeping Willow although he may have unconsciously known others from seventh grade music class when Mr. Dasher would bury us with all kind of songs and genre from the American songbook so we would not get tied down to that heathen “rock and roll” that drove him crazy when we asked him to play some for us. (“Don’t be a masher, Mister Dasher,” the implications of which today would get him in plenty of hot water if anybody in authority heard such talk in an excess of caution but which simple had been used as one more rhyming scheme when that fad hit the junior high schools in the 1960s and whose origins probably came from the song Monster Mash not the old-fashioned sense of a lady-killer) But again more urban, more protest-oriented folk music was what caught Sam’s attention when the folk minute was at high tide in the early 1960s.           

Then one day not all that many years ago as part of a final reconciliation with his family which Sam had been estranged from periodically since teenage-hood, going back to his own roots, making peace with his old growing up neighborhood, he started asking many questions about how things turned so sour back when he was young. More importantly asking questions that had stirred in his mind for a long time and formed part of the reason that he went for reconciliation. To find out what his roots were while somebody was around to explain the days before he could rightly remember the early days. And in that process he finally, finally figured out why the Carter Family and others began to “speak” to him.         

The thing was simplicity itself. See his father hailed from Kentucky, Hazard, Kentucky long noted in song and legend as hard coal country. When World War II came along he left to join the Marines to get the hell out of there. During his tour of duty he was stationed for a short while at the Portsmouth Naval Base and during that stay attended a USO dance held in Portland where he met Sam’s mother who had grown up in deep French-Canadian Olde Saco. Needless to say he stayed in the North, for better or worse, working the mills in Olde Saco until they closed or headed south for cheaper labor and then worked at whatever jobs he could find. All during Sam’s childhood though along with that popular music that got many mothers and fathers through the war mountain music, although he would not have called it that then filtered in the background on the family living room record player.

But here is the real “discovery,” a discovery that could only be disclosed by Sam’s parents. Early on in their marriage they had tried to go back to Hazard to see if they could make a go of it there. This was after Sam’s older brother Prescott was born and while his mother was carrying him. Apparently they stayed for several months in Hazard before they left to go back to Olde Saco before Sam was born since he had been born in Portland General Hospital. So see that damn mountain was in his DNA, was just harkening to him when he got the bug. Funny, isn’t it.            

Rage Against The Dying Of The Light-With Dylan Thomas’ Poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight" In Mind

Rage Against The Dying Of The Light-With Dylan Thomas’ Poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight" In Mind






By Fritz Taylor

Richard Roche, normally for public consumption an easy-going, laid back and kindly man, was angry, no better, in a rage. (Somehow the anger of his wickedly harsh childhood had gotten dissipated over the years for let’s say when he was in his late teens or early twenties he was as likely to throw fire and water as to seek to reason with anybody. So much for a little backdrop to fill the reader in on where he had come from to earn that easy-going demeanor.) That rage came with a name Lila Crawford, his long, long time companion who had recently given him his walking papers. That “recently” was well over two months before the time in question so his anger, his rage needs some explanation. No question that Richard (not Rich or Rick) and Lila had had their share of problems in their relationship which had spanned three decades. Somehow, some way, Lila a few months before had decided that whatever ailed the relationship could no longer to fixed, except by separation, a final separation.            

Who knows what might have sparked her anguish, maybe it was that since her retirement Lila was at wits end about what to do with the rest of her life. A big theme when she gave Richard his walking papers had been that she had to find herself, had to figure out who she was and that the journey had to be alone. Richard tried to reason, argue really, that he did not understand why her angst and alienation could not be addressed in the context of the relationship like it had been on several previous occasions. Lila had said that this was different, this was deeper. Closer to the nut was what Lila had sensed were dramatic changes in Richard’s demeanor which had created what she called, and he agreed when it was pointed out, undue tensions in the household. He admitted that his health issues over the previous several months had made him cranky, irritable and a pain in the ass.

He had been poked and prodded some many times by doctors and their cohorts that he was sick unto death, well almost unto death, of the whole thing. And then there were the medications, plural on that word, which were making him crazy (and one of them was doing some damage that way as he later found out, too late later found out). That, the diagnosis of bladder cancer which he had been battling (which he had been in denial about for a period), and his turning sixty had unwound his usual public consumption easy-going ways. From her perspective, from her own considerable health issues point of view she had cut him to the quick when she said that a major cause of her recent illness problems could be laid to the tensions created in the household by him, that he was causing her illnesses to rage unabated. That was the final sting that told him that whatever had happened over the recent past they needed what in his mind was a separation. That like in many interpersonal relationship matters between them she was miles ahead of him.         

After finding a temporary place along the seacoast in Maine for a month through the good offices of Air B ‘n’ B Richard moved him small bundle of precious and necessary goods (okay, clothes, books, a few utensils and the mandatory computer complex complete with printer). The place was to be rented for a month (the limit of the stay in any case since the owners were closing up for the cold weather Mainer winter) at which time Richard had figured that Lila would have come to her senses and be welcoming him back into her embraces again. Even before that month was up Lila made it clear that the separation in her mind, at least the living together part, was final if not irrevocable and they had argued over that since, as usual Richard had assumed that they had agreed on the month and that was that. Naturally he was dead-ass wrong about how serious she was about the break, about the need for the break. She cut him to the quick again by telling him that her health had improved with the lack of tensions around the house in his absence (they had agreed that she would stay in their long time residence since he was more of a rolling stone in his ability to move and then there were the cats who knew no other abode but that place, and incidentally were a separate cause stress for her since they were young and full of pent-up energy.    

Although Lila had gone up to the place Richard had in Maine to signify in her mind that her earlier idea that they would never see each other again had been premature and not well thought out she nevertheless insisted that she need an undisclosed amount of time to get her own life in order (her term had been the diplomatic wishy-wash “for the foreseeable future”). The net effect, no the gross effect, remember Richard had been angry, no again, in a rage over this latest set-back but he had to go along with it-what else was he to do when she didn’t want to  live with him. He then took a place, a winter rental in a seacoast town in New Hampshire under loose tenant at will conditions (meaning that with thirty days’ notice either party could break the lease). His idea was if the Empress recalled him he could get out from under without too much financial damage (moreover he wanted to be by the ocean for reflection and an occasional run to keep in shape so there was a certain method to his madness). And so he moved south closer to Boston where all his connections to the known world were.     

Richard had made some changes though during the separation, which Lila had commented on positively although without giving in an inch. He had under her initial guidance taken up meditation daily in order to get some peace within himself, to calm down and to accept the idea that he had both cancer and had slowed down with age both ideas repugnant to his psyche but there it was. The meditation, something he had laughed at in previous suggestions by Lila had actually helped. When Richard got into something he believed in he was “all in” and he was in that kind of mood (‘all in” a term he had used a couple of years previously when they had been under Lila’s suggestion again in couples counselling and once he got his head around the idea he actually like it, certainly thought it was useful). 

Moreover having been cut to the quick by Lila’s remarks about how he was affecting her health something that had plagued her as long as he had known her he started reflecting on where things had gone some badly, where their early love had drifted to a very bad place. He was determined to “win” her back.      

Now all of these Richard insights were well and good but it takes two to work this kind of thing out even though he now had gotten “religion” but her continual rebuffs of his attempts to reconcile had, well, left him with feelings of rage, with a sense that he was lost. This rage had no place to go, had to break or it would put more fire in his head than he could he use (the “put out fire in his head” a phrase he picked up from a song by Patty Griffin where her lover was in his own problematic world). That rage in his head had initially driven him to seek another companion via a senior citizen on-line dating service which proved fruitless to quell his angst.

The thing finally blew up in his head around Thanksgiving, around the season where family and community come into play. He had had, and Lila had as well which is where they “saved” each other during this holiday season, horrible times around holidays when they were kids and even sixty years later Richard could feel the sting of the past coming on with nobody to help him get through the thing-his Lila a distant memory for that purpose. He determined that he was through with her, decided to let her have the house, having nothing more to do with her, to drift to California and start anew, maybe some find somebody out there so that his morbid fear that he would die “alone” would not come true. So filled with rage for several days which even multiple daily meditations would not curb he was about to call her. Before he could do so she called him, said she had been depressed around the holidays and could she come up and see him. Yeah, sure. That is what their thing had always been, why he always liked the pleasure of her company. “Yeah, sure come on up.” Sometimes raging against the fading of the light is the only course though.             


[Although Lila was adamant for the “foreseeable future” about not living together they did agree to see each other on occasion as a result of that meeting but who knows where that will lead if anywhere. F.T.]  

From Code Pink-We Desperately Need President Obama To Commute Chelsea Manning's Sentence To Time Served

From Code Pink-We Desperately Need President Obama To Commute Chelsea Manning's Sentence To Time Served  



CODEPINK
chelsea4.png
Dear Daniel,
Thank you for signing the urgent petition demanding the release of Chelsea Manning. The petition exceeded its goal. However, our work is not done. President Obama leaves office on January 20, 2017, and now more than ever, we need to ask him to give Chelsea time served. She’s been in prison since May 2010. During that time, she was held in solitary confinement and attempted suicide twice. She is currently serving a 35-year sentence.

Chelsea risked everything to do what she felt was right. But her situation is about to go from bad to worse. K.T. McFarland, the incoming administration’s pick for Deputy National Security Advisor, has repeatedly called for Chelsea to be executed.

President Obama has one last chance to do the right thing, but he’ll only do it if we generate a massive outcry, right now. We only have a couple of weeks left. 

Take the time to send her a letter and tell her how much you appreciate her courage and that you pushed Obama for her.
Mail her a card or letter to: 
CHELSEA E. MANNING 89289
1300 NORTH WAREHOUSE ROAD
FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-2304

Imagine what her life must be like in that prison and what she did to change the world.

Rising in 2017...
Ann, Ariel, Farida, Jodie, Mariana, Mark, Medea, Nancy, Paki, Paula, and Samira
Donate Now
CODEPINKThis email was sent to deh43@comcast.net.To stop receiving emails, click here.Created with NationBuilder
        

On The Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution Of 1905-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-All Honor To The Communards

In Honor Of The  Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-All Honor To The Communards










Some events can be honorably commemorated every five, ten, twenty-five years or so like the French Revolution. Other events need to be honorably commemorated yearly, and here I include the uprising which went on to form the Paris Commune, established on March 18, 1871, the first time the working class as such took power if only for a short time and only in one city, although that the city was Paris was not accidental since the city of lights had an honorable history of such plebian uprisings from 1789, 1830, and 1848 and other lesser such insurrectionary happenings (there was an expression at the time in radical and revolutionary circles that as long as Blanqui was alive and people remembered the Babeuf uprisings that when the deal when down you could always depend on Paris to rise). We can, those of us in what now is a remnant who still believe in the old time verities and who still fight for such things as working-class led revolution, socialism leading to a world communist federation or some such seemingly utopian vision and a fairer shake in the appropriation of the world’s good, still draw lessons from that experience.

Sadly the bulk of the world’s working classes most definitely in the wake of the rather quick demise of the Soviet Union and East Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s which for better or worse had represented some socialist vision however distorted (or to use Trotsky’s terminology deformed workers states) have either dismissed socialist solutions out of hand these days when the situation in places like Greece, Spain and lots of East Europe countries cry out for such solutions or the links to such previous socialist ideas has become so attenuated that the ideas are not even in play. To take Greece as a current example anybody with the least bit of sense knows that you cannot keep squeezing the living standards of the vast majority of people in that country yet the number of those who seek a communist way out, at least as exemplified by the recent parliamentary results, a quick measure of the strength of the harder left is disheartening.

So yes, in the absence of more current positive examples, we can use the Commune to draw lessons that might help us in the one-sided fight against the human logjam that the international capitalist system, complete with its imperial coterie at the top, led by the United States, the has bequeathed us almost a century and one half later and that is ripe, no overripe to be replaced by a more human scale way of producing the good of this wicked world. Hence the commemoration in this the 144th anniversary year.

Some “talking head” commentator in the lead-up to the 2015 celebration of the French Revolution on July 14th, a commentator specifically brought in for the occasion, I heard recently on a television talk show reflecting the same sentiment I have heard elsewhere from other academic and ideological sources, had declared the French Revolution dead. By that he meant that the lessons to be learned from that experience has been exhausted, that in the post-modern world that event over two hundred years ago had become passé, passé in the whirlwind of the American century now in full bloom (an American century that we thought had run its course in the wake of the Vietnam defeat but drew new life, if only by default, with the demise of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence). While not arguing here with the validity of that statement on the French revolution, a classic bourgeois revolution when the bourgeoisie was a progressive movement in human history and actually drew some connections between the Enlightenment philosophies that gave it inspiration and the tasks of the risen people, there are still lessons to be drawn from the Commune. If for no other reason than we still await that international working class society that such luminaries as the communist Karl Marx expanded upon in the 19th century.          

Obviously like the subsequent Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the Chinese revolutions of the 1920s and 1940s, the Vietnamese which took up a great deal of the middle third of the twentieth century, and others the Paris Commune was formed in the crucible of war, or threat of war. Karl Marx, among others, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky for one, had noted that war is the mother of revolution and the defeat of the French armies and the virtual occupation by the victorious German armies around Paris certainly conformed to that idea that the then current government was in disarray and the social fabric after a near starvation situation required more. Every revolutionary commentary has noted that those factors formed a classic pre-revolutionary phenomena. Moreover the Commune had been thrust upon the working masses of Paris by the usual treachery of the bourgeois government thrown up after Louis Bonaparte lost control. That had not been the most promising start to any new society. But you work with what you have to work with and defend as Marx, the First International, and precious few others did the best you can despite the odds, and the disarray. So no hard and fast blueprint on revolutionary upheavals except by negative example, by what was not done, could come ready-made from that experience.  

To my mind, and this is influenced by the subsequent Russian revolutions of 1905 and February and October 1917, no question the decisive problem of the Commune was what later became to be known as the crisis of revolutionary leadership. Of course they should have expropriated the banks and centered their efforts around strengthening the authority of the Central Committee of the National Guard and not let lots of windbags and weirdos have their say based on barely deserved reputations but the result of those failures were that no serious party or parties were available to take charge and create a strong government to defend against the Thiers counter-attack from Versailles. (Also no appeals to other communes to come to the defense of Paris and no work among the Versailles soldiers.) It is problematic whether given the small weight of the industrial proletariat (masses factory workers like at Putilov in Petrograd rather than the small shop artisans and workman which dominated the Paris landscape), the lack of weaponry to fend off both the Germans and the Versailles armies, and food supply whether even if such a revolutionary leadership had existed that the Commune could have continued to exist in such isolated circumstances but the contours for the future of working class revolution would have been much different. The central and critical role of a revolutionary leadership which got fudged around in places like Germany where the working class party for all intents and purposes was barely a parliamentary party in the struggle against capitalism would have been clarified and at least a few revolutions, including those in Germany between 1918 and 1924 might have turned out differently and the world as well. The “what ifs” of history aside which are always problematic that is the bitter lesson we still before us today.