From The “Brothers Under The Bridge” Series- Kenneth Edward Jackson’s “Masters Of War”-Build The Resistance 2017

Masters Of War-Bob Dylan
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead

Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:

As I mentioned in an earlier entry in this space, courtesy of my old yellow brick road magical mystery tour merry prankster fellow traveler, Peter Paul Markin, who seems to think I still have a few things to say about this wicked old world, recently, in grabbing an old Bruce Springsteen CD compilation from 1998 to download into my iPod I came across a song that stopped me in my tracks, Brothers Under The Bridge. I had not listened to or thought about that song for a long time but it brought back many memories from the late 1970s when I did a series of articles for the now defunct East Bay Eye (California, naturally) on the fate of some troubled Vietnam veterans who, for one reason or another, could not come to grips with “going back to the real world” and took, like those a great depression generation or two before them, to the “jungle”-the hobo, bum, tramps camps located along the abandoned railroad sidings, the ravines and crevices, and under the bridges of California, mainly down in Los Angeles, and created their own “society.”

Not every guy I interviewed, came across, swapped lies with, or just snatched some midnight phrase out of the air from was from hunger, most were, yes, in one way or another but some, and the one I am recalling in this sketch had a nuanced story that brought him down to the ravines. The story that accompanies the song to this little piece, Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, is written under that same sign as the earlier pieces.

I should note again since these sketches are done on an ad hoc basis, that the genesis of this story follows that of the “Brothers Under The Bridge” previously posted (and now is developing into a series).The editor of the East Bay Eye, Owen Anderson, gave me that long ago assignment after I had done a smaller series for the paper on the treatment, the poor treatment, of Vietnam veterans by the Veterans Administration in San Francisco and in the course of that series had found out about this band of brothers roaming the countryside trying to do the best they could, but mainly trying to keep themselves in one piece. My qualifications for the assignment other than empathy, since I had not been in the military during the Vietnam War period, were based simply on the fact that back East I had been involved, along with several other radicals, in running an anti-war GI coffeehouse near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down near Fort Dix in New Jersey. During that period I had run into many soldiers of my 1960s generation who had clued me on the psychic cost of the war so I had a running start.

After making connections with some Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW) guys down in L.A. who knew where to point me I was on my way. I gathered many stories, published some of them in the Eye, and put the rest in my helter-skelter files. A couple of weeks ago, after having no success in retrieving the old Eye archives, I went up into my attic and rummaged through what was left of those early files. I could find no newsprint articles that I had written but I did find a batch of notes, specifically notes from stories that I didn’t file because the Eye went under before I could round them into shape.

The format of those long ago stories was that I would basically let the guy I was talking to give his spiel, spill what he wanted the world to heard, and I would write it up without too much editing (mainly for foul language). I have reconstructed this story here as best I can although at this far remove it is hard to get the feel of the voice and how things were said. This is Kenneth Edward Jackson’s short, poignant, and hell for once, half-hopeful story, a soldier born under the thumb of the masters of war:

Hell, you know I didn’t have to go to Vietnam, no way. Ya, my parents, when I got drafted, put some pressure on me to “do my duty” like a lot of the neighborhood guys in my half-Irish, half- French- Canadian up the old New Hampshire mill town of Nashua. Maybe, you’ve heard of that town since you said you were from up there in Olde Saco, Maine. Hell, they were the same kind of towns. Graduate from high school, go to work in the mills if they were still open, go in the service if you liked, or got drafted, come home, get married, have kids and let the I Ching cycle run its course over and over again. You laughed so you know what I mean. Ya, that kind of town, and tight so if you went off the rails, well it might not be in the Nashua Telegraph but it sure as hell got on the Emma Jackson grapevine fast enough, except if it was about her three boys. Then the “shames” silence of the grave. Nothing, not a peep, no dirty linen aired in public.

See though I was a little different. I went to college at the University Of New Hampshire over in Durham, studied political science, and figured to become either a lawyer or teacher, maybe both if things worked out. So Emma and Hank (my father) were proud as peacocks when I graduated from there in 1967 and then announced I was going to Boston University to pick up a Master’s degree in Education and be on my way. That’s where I met Bettina, my ex-wife, who was studying for her Master’s in Government at the time but was mainly holding up a big share of the left-wing anti-war universe that was brewing at that time, especially as all hell broke loose in Vietnam when in early 1968 the North Vietnamese and their southern supporters ran rampaging through the south. That’s around the time that LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States at the time) got cold feet and decided to call it quits and retire to some podunk Texas place.

Bettina, a girl from New York City, and not just New York City but Manhattan and who went to Hunter College High School there before embarking on her radical career , first at the University of Wisconsin and then at B.U. was the one who got me “hip,” or maybe better “half-hip” to the murderous American foreign policy in Vietnam. Remind me to tell you how we met and stuff like that sometime but for now let’s just say she was so smart, so different, did I tell you she was Jewish, so full of life and dreams, big dreams about a better world that I went head over heels for her and her dreams carried me (and us) along for a while. [Brother Jackson did tell me later the funny details of their relationship but, as I always used to say closing many of my columns, that is a story for another day-JLB.]

Bettina was strictly SDS, big-time SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, 1960s version. Look it up on Wikipedia for more background-JLB), and not just some pacifist objector to the war, she really thought she was helping to build “the second front” in aid of the Vietnamese here in America, or as it was put at the time Amerikkka, and I went along with her, or half-way along really in her various actions, marches, and rallies. Later, 1969 later when SDS blew up into three separate and warring factions she went with the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) the group most committed to that idea of the second front. But that is all inside stuff and not really what was important in 1968. The summer of 1968 when I got, via my parents, notice that my friends and neighbors at the Nashua Draft Board had called my name. And me with no excuses, no draft excuses, none.

So that is when things got dicey, my parents pulling me to do my family, my Nashua, my New Hampshire, my United States, hell, my mother pulled out even my Catholic duty (my father, a deeply patriotic man, in the good sense, and a proud Marine who saw plenty of action in the Pacific in World War II, but kept quiet about it, just rolled his eyes on that one). Bettina, and her friends, and really, some of them my friends too, were pulling me to run away to Canada (she would follow), refuse to be inducted (and thus subject to arrest and jail time), or head underground (obviously here with connections that may have rivaled, may have I say, my mother’s neighborhood grapevine). In the end though I let myself be drafted and was inducted in the fall of 1968.

Bettina was mad, mad as hell, but not as much for the political embarrassment as you would think, but because she, well, as she put it, the first time she said it “had grown very fond of me,” and more than that she had her own self-worth needs, so we were secretly married (actually not so much secretly as privately, very privately, her parents, proudly Jewish and heavily committed Zionists and my parents, rosary-heavy Catholics who were a little slow, Vatican Council II slow, on the news that Jews were not Christ-killers and the like would not have approved ) just before I was inducted.

I will spare the Vietnam details, except to say I did my thirteen month tour (including a month for R&R, rest and recreation) from early 1969 to early 1970, a period when the talk of draw-down of the American troop commitment was beginning to echo through the camps and bases in Vietnam and guys were starting to take no chances, no overt chances of getting KIA (killed in action) or anything like that. I, actually saw very little fighting since as a college grad, and lucky, and they needed someone, I was a company clerk and stayed mainly at the base camp. But every night I fired many rounds any time I heard a twig break on guard duty or in perimeter defense. And more than a few times we had bullets and other ammo flying into our position. So no I was no hero, didn’t want to be, I just wanted to get back home to Bettina in one piece. And I did.

But something snapped in Vietnam, sometime in having had to confront my own demons, my own deep-seeded fears and coming out not too badly, and to confront through my own sights the way my government was savagely conducting itself in Vietnam (and later in other parts of the world) that made me snap when I came back to the “real world.” I had only a few months left and so I was assigned to a holding company down at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And all I had to do was stay quiet, do some light silly busy work paper work duty b.s., have a few beers at the PX and watch a few movies. Nada.

I guess Bettina really did win out in the end, the stuff she said about war, about American imperialism being some two-headed vulture, about class struggle and guys like me being cannon fodder was kind of abstract when she said it at some meeting at B.U., or shouted herself silly a t some rally on Boston Common or got herself arrested a few times at draft boards (ironic, huh).But after ‘Nam I knew she was on to something. Better, I was on to something. So, without telling Bettina, my parents, or anybody, the day I was to report to that holding company at Fort Dix I did. But at that morning formation, I can still see the tears rolling down my face, I reported in civilian clothes with a big peace button on my shirts and yelling for all to hear-“Bring The Troops Home.” I was tackled by a couple of soldiers, lifer-sergeants I found out later, handcuffed and brought to the Fort Dix stockade.

A couple of days later my name was called to go the visitors’ room and there to my surprise were my parents, my mother crying, my father stoic as usual but not mad, and Bettina. The Army had contacted my parents after my arrest to inform them of my situation. And Bettina, in that strange underground grapevine magic that always amazed me, found out in that way, had called them in Nashua to say who she was (no, not about us being married, just friends, they never did know). They had offered to bring her down to Fort Dix and they had come down together. What a day though. My parents, for one of very few times that I can remember said, while they didn’t agree with me fully, that they were proud and Nashua be damned. They were raising money on their home to get me the best civilian lawyer they could. And they did.

Of course for Bettina a soldier- resister case was just the kind of activity that was gaining currency in the anti-war movement in 1969 and 1970 and she was crazy to raise heaven and hell for my defense(including money, and money from her parents too although they also did not know we were married, and maybe they still don’t). She moved to hard town Trenton not too far from Fort Dix to be closer to the action as my court-martial was set. She put together several vigils, marches, rallies and fundraisers (including one where my father, a father defending his own, spoke and made the crowd weep in his halting New England stoic way).

The court-martial, a general court martial so I faced some serious time, was held in early 1970. As any court proceedings will do, military or civilian, they ran their typical course, which I don’t want to go into except to say that I was convicted of the several charges brought against me (basically, as I told the guys at VVAW later, for being ugly in the military without a uniform-while on duty) , sentenced to a year of hard labor at Fort Leavenworth out in Kansas, reduced in rank to private ( I was a specialist, E-4), forfeited most of my pay, and was to be given an undesirable discharge (not dishonorable).

I guess I do want to say one last thing about the trial thought. As any defendant has the right to do at trial, he or she can speak in their own defense. I did so. What I did, turning my back to the court-martial judges and facing the audience, including that day my parents and Bettina was recite from memory Bob Dylan’s Masters of War. I did so in my best stoic (thanks, dad) Nashua, New Hampshire voice. The crowd either heckled me or cheered (before being ordered to keep quiet) but I had my say. So when you write this story put that part in. Okay? [See lyrics above-JLB]

So how come I am down here in some Los Angeles hobo jungle just waiting around to be waiting around. Well I did my time, all of it except good time, and went back home, first to Nashua but I couldn’t really stay there ( a constant “sore” in the community and worry to my parents) and then to Boston where I fit in better. Bettina? Well, my last letter from her in Leavenworth was that she was getting ready to go underground, things with her group (a group later associated with the Weather Underground) had gotten into some stuff a little dicey and she would not be able to communicate for a while. That was the last I heard from her; it has been a few years now.

I understand, and I feel happy for her. We were fond of each other but I was thinking in the stockade that a “war marriage” was not made to last, not between us anyway. Then after a few months in Boston, doing a little or this and a little of that, I drifted out here were things might pop up a little (it’s tough even with millions of people hating the war, hating it until it finally got over a couple of years ago to have an undesirable discharge hanging around your neck. I’m not sorry though, no way, and if I do get blue sometime I just recite that Masters Of War thing and I get all welled up inside).  

I hear the new president, Jimmy Carter, is talking about amnesty for Vietnam guys with bad discharges and maybe I will check into it if it happens. Then maybe I will go to law school and pick up my life up again. Until then though I feel like I have got to stick with my “band of brothers” who got broken up, broken up bad by that damn war. Hey, sometimes they ask me to recite that Masters Of War thing over some night fire.

[The last connection I had with Kenneth Edward Jackson was in late 1979 when he sent a short note to me saying he had gotten his discharge upgraded, was getting ready to start law school and that he was publicly getting re-married to some non-political gal from upstate New York . Still no word from Bettina though.-JLB]

Once Again, The Voice of The Generation Of '68?- Bob Dylan Unplugged-Build The Resistance 2017!

CD REVIEW

The Times They Are A-Changing, Bob Dylan, Columbia, 1963


In this selection we have some outright folk classics that will endure for the ages like those of his early hero Woody Guthrie have endured. "The Times They are A-Changing" still sounds good today although the generational tensions and the alienation from authorities highlighted there is markedly less now than than in those days-not a good thing, by the way. "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" is a powerful tale out of John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" about the plight of an up against the wall family farmer out on the then hardscrabble prairies (and it has only gotten worst since and Dylan made one of his periodic 'comebacks' doing this song at a Farm Aid concert in the 1980's).

"With God On Our Side" like "Masters of War" is a powerful anti-war song although some of the tensions of the Cold War period in which it was written have gone (only to replaced today by the fears generated by the `war on terrorism'). "Only A Pawn In Their Game" was a powerful expression of rage after the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers. The "Hattie Carroll" song shows Dylan's range by dealing with injustice from a different perspective (and a different class) than "Only A Pawn In Their Game". But with no let up in highlighting blatant discrimination and animus in either case. Finally, in reviewing these early Dylan albums (and some of the later ones, as well) I have noticed that they are not complete without at least one song about lost love, longing or perfidy. Here, there is no exception to that rule with the haunting, pleading voice of "Boots of Spanish Leather".

posted by markin at 10:49 AM

7 Comments:
Kim said...
The problem is that Dylan himself clearly states that Masters of War is not an anti-war song:

Q: Give me an example of a song that has been widely
misinterpreted.

A: Take "Masters Of War." Every time I sing it, someone writes
that it's an antiwar song. But there's no antiwar sentiment in
that song. I'm not a pacifist. I don't think I've ever been one.
If you look closely at the song, it's about what Eisenhower was
saying about the dangers of the military-industrial complex in
this country. I believe strongly in everyone's right to defend
themselves by every means necessary... you are affected as a
writer and a person by the culture and spirit of the times. I was
tuned into it then, I'm tuned into it now. None of us are immune
to the spirit of the age. It affects us whether we know it or
whether we like it or not.

from http://expectingrain.com/dok/int/2003tour.html

And I think to say that "With God on Our Side" is an anti-war song is reducing the song to something topical. The idea that it is simply an anti-war song really ignores the last verse in the piece regarding Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot fought in no war, so then, if this is an anti-war song why is he even in the picture?
I believe it is far less an anti-war song and far more a song about asking the question: what does it mean to believe in God? To me, it's more about asking the question: shouldn't we be on God's side and not He on ours?

THIS question then throws into the spotlight the idea that God is on the side of America and that she is always right. Dylan, it seems to me, is not quite buying into that. None of us should. But he's not an either/or kind of a guy. He's not an "America is all bad or all good" kind. Hattie Carroll bites into two groups, and both come out severly wounded: the racists and their racist application of "justice" AND the liberals who decry injustice but do nothing about it.

7:10 PM
markin said...
When I used the term ‘anti-war’ in relationship to Bob Dylan’s song Masters of War I meant that in a generic sense rather than giving it some specific political or pacific meaning. According to the Dylan quote that Kim cited in her comment there is a tendency, including by Dylan, to equate the terms ‘anti-war’ and ‘pacifist’. I would not give such a narrow meaning to the term ‘anti-war’. In Dylan’s context it is essentially anti-militarism, especially the dramatically American militarism of the time by the Brecht-like phrases that he uses. That concept does not preclude the concept of just wars against the escalation of such militarism. Leftists except probably Quakers, as a rule, subscribe to some form of just war theory. Certainly in my youth the concept of just war meant supporting the struggle of the Vietnamese against the American presence.

One need not go back that far for an example, though. Much closer in time is the current ‘struggle’ by Iraqi forces against the American presence there. Although the situation is definitely murkier than in Vietnam, to the extent that any one is fighting directly against the American presence (as opposed to indiscriminately bombing everything that moves), theirs is an example of just war. Hell, in 2003 the simple act of the Iraqis, with or without Sadaam, defending themselves against the American invasion was an example of a just war. So Kim, you see that ‘anti-war’ is a pretty elastic term and that brother Dylan and I are, after all, not so far away in our idea that everyone has a right to defend themselves. It is a question of whose right to such defense is supported at any given point that is at issue.

After the above rather abstract discussion, let us cut to the chase about whether Masters of War is an ‘anti-war’ song. During the Vietnam War I was involved with a group of active duty anti-Vietnam War G.I.s (Army soldiers, in this case) who faced court-martial for disobeying lawful orders. Those orders being refused were orders to go to Vietnam, a rather serious offense for a soldier. As part of their defense at the court-martial a few of them, when they got on the stand to make statements, started reciting Master of War in order to have it placed in the transcript of trial. The colonels and majors who made up the court-martial board tried to, red-faced with anger, stop them. Those officers, at least, knew what ‘anti-war’ lyrics were when they heard them. Enough said, I think.

11:01 AM
markin said...
The question of whether “With God On Our Side” is an anti-war song is a little more problematic than that of “Masters of War”. I would only comment that one should not get hung up on the ‘god’ part as I consider this more a common political convention of the time in order to get a hearing for your song (a not unimportant consideration, by the way) that a universalistic appeal to for America to get “on the right side of god”. In the 1960’s, an age wedded to existential concepts, references to god could be as directed to the void as they could to some religious supreme being. Later, as Dylan entertained more religious feelings in his life and in his work that argument might make more sense but certainly not in the early 1960’s. If one did not have a sense of irony then, one was ‘lost’. That ironic sense is why we listened to Dylan and others. They expressed in song things about the world that disturbed us at the time.

What really interests me today about Dylan’s lyrics on this song is how passive they are in relationship to the task that he has presented. In those days, the threat of nuclear annihilation was palpable as things like the Cold War –driven nuclear arms race and the Cuban Missile Crisis made plain. Dylan was apparently entirely willing to let some ultimately ‘just’ god pull the chestnuts out of the fire for us. Alternately, in those days a number of us preferred to take to the streets to organize the fight for nuclear disarmament. “God” could come along if he/she wanted to-no questions asked. Hell, we were so desperate for recruits that Judas Iscariot was welcome if he wanted to turn over a new leaf.

11:12 AM
markin said...
Here are the lyrics to Masters of War and you can make your own judgment about whether it is an anti-war song or not. I have given my opinion above. Markin

Masters Of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

7:31 AM
markin said...
A Voice Of His Generation

Nod To Bob: An Artists’ Tribute To Bob Dylan on his Sixtieth Birthday, various artists, Red House Records, 2001

A musical performer knows that he or she has arrived when they have accumulated enough laurels and created enough songs to be worthy, at least in some record producer eyes, to warrant a tribune album. When they are also alive to accept the accolades as two out of the four of the artists under review are, which is only proper, that is all to the good (this is part of a larger review of tributes to Greg Brown, Bob Dylan, Mississippi John Hurt and Hank Williams). That said, not all tribute albums are created equally. Some are full of star-studded covers, others with lesser lights who have been influenced by the artist that they are paying tribute to. As a general proposition though I find it a fairly rare occurrence, as I noted in a review of the "Timeless" tribute album to Hank Williams, that the cover artist outdoes the work of the original recording artist. With that point in mind I will give my "skinny" on the cover artists here.


It seems hard to believe now both as to the performer as well as to what was being attempted that anyone would take umbrage at a performer using an electric guitar to tell a folk story (or any story for that matter). It is not necessary to go into all the details of what or what did not happen with Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 to know that one should be glad, glad as hell, that Bob Dylan continued to listen to his own drummer and carry on a career based on electronic music.

Others have, endlessly, gone on about Bob Dylan’s role as the voice of his generation (and mine), his lyrics and what they do or do not mean and his place in the rock or folk pantheons, or both. I just want to comment on a few songs and cover artists on this 60th birthday album. Overall this Red House Records (a well-known alternate folk tradition recording outfit) production is a true folkies’ tribute to old Bob where the artists while well-known in the folk field probably as not as familiar to the general listener. Nevertheless several covers stick out: John Gorka’s rendition of the longing that pervades “Girl Of The North Country" is fine, as is the desperate longing of Martin Simpson’s “Boots Of Spanish Leather”. Greg Brown does a rousing version of “Pledging My Time” and the long time folk singer Rosalie Sorrels does a beautifully measured version of “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”. The finale is appropriately done by old time folkie, and early day Dylan companion on the folk scene Ramblin’ Jack Elliot with “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” Solid work here. Kudos.

3:32 PM
markin said...
In the interest of completeness concerning my earleir evaluation of the Dylan songs "Masters Of War" and "With Good On Our Side" on his early albums here are the lyrics to the latter song.

Interestingly, except for changing the Cold War theme against the Russians then to the so-called War On Terror now against seemingly every Moslem that any American presidential administration can get it hands on (Bush in Iraq and Afgahnistan) and Obama (same and, maybe, Pakistan) these lyrics "speak" to me today. The word they speak is hubris, American hubris, that the rest of the world has had reason to fear, and rightly so. What do they "speak" to you?

"With God On Our Side"

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns on their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

11:32 AM
markin said...
Guest Commentary

I have mentioned in my review of Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home; The Legacy Of Bob Dylan" (see archives) that Dylan's protest/social commentary lyrics dovetailed with my, and others of my generation's, struggle to make sense of world at war (cold or otherwise)and filled with injustices and constricting values. Here are the lyrics of three songs-"Blowin' In The Wind", "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Like A Rolling Stone" that can serve as examples of why we responded to his messages the way we did. Kudos Bob.


The Times They Are A-Changin'

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Copyright ©1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Blowin' In The Wind

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Copyright ©1962; renewed 1990 Special Rider Music


Like A Rolling Stone

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Copyright ©1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter”

Songs For Our Times-Build The Resistance-The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter”    

During, let’s say the Obama administration or, hell, even the Bush era, for example  we could be gentle angry people over this or that notorious war policy and a few others matters and songs like Give Peace A Chance, We Shall Overcome, or hell, even that Kumbaya which offended the politically insensitive. From Day One of the Trump administration though the gloves have come off-we are in deep trouble. So we too need to take off our gloves-and fast as the cold civil war that has started in the American dark night heads to some place we don’t want to be. And the above song from the 1960s, another tumultuous time, makes more sense to be marching to. Build the resistance!      

Gimme Shelter

The Rolling Stones

Come on
Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder yeah!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away yeah

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just…

“Victory To The Fast-Food Workers......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers

“Victory To The Fast-Food Workers......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers

Comments of a supporter of the “Fight for $15” action in Downtown Boston on September 4, 2014 as part of a national struggle for economic justice and dignity for the our hard working sisters and brothers. The words still apply as we head into 2016:

No question in this wicked old world that those at the bottom are “the forgotten ones.” Here we are talking about working people, people working and working hard for eight, nine, ten dollars an hour. Maybe working two jobs to make ends meet since a lot of times these McJobs, these Wal-Marts jobs do not come with forty hours of work attached but whatever some cost-cutting manager deems right. And lately taking advantage of cover from Obamacare keeping the hours below the threshold necessary to kick in health insurance and other benefits. Yes, the forgotten people.

But let’s do the math here figuring on forty hours and figuring on say ten dollars an hour. That‘s four hundred a week times fifty weeks (okay so I am rounding off for estimate purposes here too since most of these jobs do not have vacation time figured in).That’s twenty thousand a year. Okay so just figure any kind of descent apartment in the Boston area where I am writing this-say one thousand a month. That’s twelve thousand a year. So the other eight thousand is for everything else. No way can that be done. And if you had listened to the young and not so young fast-food workers, the working mothers, the working older brothers taking care of younger siblings, workers trying to go to school to get out of the vicious cycle of poverty you would understand the truth of that statement. And the stories went on and on along that line all during the action. 

Confession: it has been a very long time since I have had to scrimp and scrim to make ends meet, to get the rent in, to keep those damn bill-collectors away from my door, to beg the utility companies to not shut off those necessary services. But I have been there, no question. And I did not like it then and I do not like the idea of it now.  I am here to say even the “Fight for $15” is not enough, but it is a start. And I whole-heartedly support the struggle of my sisters and brothers for a little economic justice in this wicked old world. And any reader who might read this-would you work for slave wages? I think not. So show your solidarity and get out and support the fast-food and Wal-Mart workers in their just struggles. 

Organize Wal-Mart! Organize the fast food workers! Union! Union! 

******

The 100th Anniversary Year Of The Bolshevik-Led October Revolution In Russia-Lesson Of The Resistance Then (1)

Markin comment:
Below this general introduction is another addition to the work of creating a new international working class organization-a revolutionary one fit of the the slogan in the headline.

Markin comment (repost from September 2010):

Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
************
France under Hitler and Petain-Manifesto of the Fourth International-November 1940

Adopted: 1940
First Published: December 1940
Source: Fourth International, New York, Volume I, No. 7, December 1940, pages 179-82.
Author: Jean van Heijenoort (according to Robert Alexander’s History).
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Daniel Gaido and David Walters, February, 2006
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskism On-Line, 2006. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the address of this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution, addressed itself to the workers last May with a manifesto in which it explained the causes of the war and indicated the tasks facing the working class in this catastrophe.

Since then the military fall of France has occurred and the French bourgeoisie has abandoned the camp of the “democracies” to collaborate with Hitler in the “reconstruction” of Europe. In the face of these events, the Fourth International can say with confidence that the facts have confirmed its analysis of the present capitalist war, have justified its criticism of the traitorous leaders of the working class, have given a new force to our program of socialist revolution.

The Causes of the French Defeat

The military downfall of France is not a “technical” accident, but the clearest expression of the atrophy of bourgeois democracy in France. The whole strategy of the French general staff consisted of passivity and waiting. Its plan of war was to gain time (in reality, to lose it), reclining blindly confident behind the Maginot line, the gigantic extension of the 1914-1918 trench system.

On the diplomatic field the policy of waiting and of retreat culminated in the inability of France to draw into its orbit and prepare a common system of defense with little Belgium, her ally in the First World War.

After the defeat, the world learned about the internal struggles within the French government, especially between Daladier and Reynaud—a very clear symptom of the decline of democracy, powerless even to produce a new Clemenceau and paralyzed by Byzantine quarrels.

The conduct of the French bourgeoisie and its general staff after the Germans broke through at Sedan confirms to the hilt our analysis, in our Manifesto in May, when we declared:

“The bourgeoisie never defends the fatherland for the sake of the fatherland. They defend private property, privileges, profits. Whenever these sacred values are threatened, the bourgeoisie immediately takes to the road of defeatism.... In order to save their capital, the Spanish bourgeoisie turned to Mussolini and Hitler for military aid against their own people. The Norwegian bourgeoisie aided Hitler’s invasion of Norway. Thus it was and always will be.”

After the German break-through in the North, the military situation was by no means hopeless, had the French bourgeoisie and its general staff been willing to mobilize all the resources of the country. But the general staff and the bourgeoisie felt, as General Weygand explicitly said, that such a situation would be like that of Russia in 1917. “It must not come to that,” said Weygand. Rather than leave open the possibility of the French proletariat coming to power and conducting a revolutionary war against Hitler, the French ruling class preferred to capitulate to Hitler.

The curve of French imperialism has been steadily declining since the “victory” of 1918. Its status in Europe and in the world as a result of the Versailles Treaty was extremely disproportionate to its real economic strength. It could provide its political vassals in Europe (the little Entente, the Balkan states) with financial aid but was incapable of making them customers for her industry, which could not compete successfully with Germany, England or the United States. The handling of the tremendous French colonial empire was also beyond the power of the industrial apparatus of the metropolis. The French bourgeoisie submitted the colonies to an exploitation that was ferocious but yet netted relatively little, for it was extremely backward in its economic methods.

Before the war of 1914-1918, the development of French capitalism was markedly backward compared to that of Germany and England, not to speak of the United States. The military victory of 1918 could not infuse new life into this relatively backward economy but, on the contrary, engendered many illusions and gave the impression of strength where there was only stagnation and decline.

Those Responsible for the Fascist Advance

The street fighting and demonstrations of February, 1934 signalized the approach of a revolutionary crisis, the polarization of the country into two opposed camps—Fascist and revolutionary. The decomposition of bourgeois democracy was only the fruit of the general decline Of the French empire, accelerated by the great economic crisis. This decay of bourgeois democracy was expressed in the rout of its traditional party, the Radical Socialist Party. In June, 1936, the French proletariat occupied the factories} thus placing the country upon the threshold of a revolutionary situation. The socialist revolution then loomed as the only possible road by which the country could come out of its atrophy. But the movement of the French workers was strangled by the apparatus of its own organizations. The treacherous leaders (Jouhaux, Blum, Thorez) did all they could to keep the workers chained to the chariot of decaying parliamentary democracy, in the name of the defense of the “fatherland” and of “democracy.”

The proletarian revolution in France would have opened a new future for the country. A soviet France would have immediately shaken the Fascist regime, and changed the face of Europe. The defense of the “fatherland” by the leaders of the workers’ parties paralyzed the workers in the struggle for their emancipation, but it could not prevent the triumph of Hitler. The defense of bourgeois “democracy” prevented the creation of proletarian Soviet democracy, but could not prevent the appearance of the Bonapartist dictatorship of Petain. The hollow “anti-Fascism” of the Popular Front thus stifled the proletarian revolution and led to the triumph of Fascism throughout Europe.

If the peoples of Europe have had to enter a new slaughter, if Fascism is pushing its way through the continent, the direct responsibility falls upon the leadership of the official organizations of the proletariat: the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the C.G.T. (Genera] Confederation of Labor). The Fourth International must explain patiently to the workers the lessons of the last years in the light of recent events, unmask the treacherous role of both the Socialist and Stalinist leaders and win the proletariat to Bolshevism.

The Petain Government

At the time of the fascist insurrection of February 6, 1934, those champions of democracy, Daladier and his friends, found nothing else in their arsenal but flight. In their place there emerged the government of the decrepit Doumergue, ready to replace the parliamentary mechanism by the police and the army.

After the military downfall of last May these valiant defenders of democracy, including Daladier himself, hastened to run like rats into Spain or to Morocco, without ideas, without perspectives, without a program. The swift invasion of the German troops had shattered the administrative system. The only group representing a certain relative solidity were the top ranks of the army. Around them rallied some Anglophobe politicians. This combination was crowned by the octogenarian Petain. The new Bonaparte did not even use cannon against parliament, which decided on its own hook to disappear.

The German army occupied all that part of France which retained some military and economic importance. Hitler then hoped to make a quick end to England. He left to Petain the care of millions of refugees. A French national government, provided it was docile, could decrease the problems of the invasion. Finally, its existence could prevent the immediate passing of the fleet in the colonies into the English camp. The Petain-Laval crew lent itself to docile service in this maneuver.

The war aims of France had been the liberation of Czechoslovakia, the defense of Poland, the destruction of Nazism and the reestablishment of a “free” Europe. It was in the name of these democratic and humanitarian undertakings that the bourgeoisie (aided by its agents in the workers’ camp) dragged the French workers and peasants into the fields of battle. After the defeat, the bourgeoisie suddenly concluded that it was not worth the trouble to fight for democracy, that democracy was dying throughout the entire world. Laval concluded an agreement with Hitler to participate in the “reconstruction” of Europe. And, as Hitler would not repulse those who fell flat on their bellies before him, a spokesman of the French bourgeoisie spoke of his “incontestable grandeur.” Yesterday the French bourgeoisie wanted to free Czechoslovakia, today it does not wish even to free itself. It leaps into the camp of its “hereditary enemy” and is preparing to aid it against its ally of yesterday. From one day to the next the “national” becomes “anti-national” and vice-versa.

Here is a great lesson for the workers of France and the whole world. The bourgeoisie (and its agents in the workers’ camp) everywhere and always curbs, in the name of “national” interests, the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation. It persecutes revolutionaries for their defeatism and denounces them as agents of the enemy. The experience of France shows once more that “national” considerations serve only to mask the interests of the bourgeoisie which is always ready to change sides when it is a question of preserving its privileges. Let the workers learn a lesson that the bourgeoisie has once again demonstrated!

The Hitlerian “Peace”

Hitler has not as yet succeeded in invading England. The air force can decide nothing without an advance of armies to occupy territories. But that is not so simple. The war continues and can be protracted. Like a widening spiral, it spreads from continent to continent and tomorrow it will have encircled the earth. The armistice of Rethondes or the “peace” of Petain-Hitler will not protect France from the military vicissitudes of the continuing war.

Laval hopes that England will soon be crushed and he already sees the French bourgeoisie collaborating with Hitler in the “reconstruction” of Europe. Even in the case of a German victory, however, it is doubtful that Hitler can “reconstruct” much in Europe and it is still more doubtful that France can take a great part in this task. Goebbels recently declared to the members of the Hitler youth that after the victory they will remember war as the “golden time.” We can believe him. Before the war, European economy had, since the great crisis of 1929, lost all its equilibrium and could find a certain easing of its afflictions only in tremendous armament production. After the war, all the disproportions of a diseased economy will burst into full view, not to speak of national and social struggles. Here is what the “organization of Europe” by Hitler in collaboration with Laval holds out: worse times than the war!

The struggle for democracy under the flag of England (and the United States) will not lead to a noticeably different situation. General De Gaulle struggles against “slavery” at the head of colonial governors, that is to say, of slave masters. In his appeals, this “leader” uses, just like Petain, the royal “we.” The defense of democracy is in good hands! If England should install De Gaulle in France tomorrow, his regime would not in the least be distinguished from that of the Bonapartist government of Petain.

Churchill recently refused to discuss the regime of Europe after a British victory. He has, in effect, nothing to propose. The imperialist solution imposed in 1919 led to a new catastrophe twenty years later. Neither Hitler nor Churchill can regenerate capitalism. The whole system is in a blind alley.

The Class Struggle Continues

Hitler has reduced Europe to a vast concentration camp of nations. The struggle for the unity of all Germans has been followed by that for the unity of all non-Germans under the Nazi boot. But history is a sure guarantee that there has never been national oppression without national struggles.

The big French bourgeoisie has already succeeded in arriving at an understanding with Hitler. National resistance is concentrated in the poorer sections of the population, the urban petty-bourgeoisie, the peasants, the workers. But it is the latter which give the most resolute character to the struggle and will know how to connect it with the struggle against French capitalism and the Petain government.

The workers begin their national and class tasks with little danger from French fascism. The Petain government, far from being the fascist regime which panic-stricken democrats label it, has no mass base underneath it, fascist or otherwise. The fascist organizations can have no serious perspective of taking over the government with any support. In the eyes of the masses, including the petty-bourgeoisie, the French fascists cannot but appear as agents or friends of the victorious enemy. Thus neither Hitler nor Petain find a secure foundation in French society. It is noteworthy to add that the same phenomenon has occurred in Norway, Holland and Belgium, the other countries where the Nazis have installed friendly governments. An atmosphere of universal hostility weighs down upon the Nazi victor and his collaborators, serving to demoralize them while it creates a favorable atmosphere for arousing the masses to struggle.

With winter, the blockade, and the war in the Mediterranean, food has become and will become more and more scarce. The burden weighs more heavily on the cities than on the countryside, more heavily on the poor than on the rich. That means that the worst sufferers are the industrial workers and the lowest sections of the urban petty-bourgeoisie. The government has no solution to offer other than bureaucratic control of food distribution. But the rich always find means of escaping administrative control. Instead of governmental regulation, there should be substituted control by the people themselves. Each town, each section of the city, ought to have its food control committee which can control prices and will supervise the allotment. The state functionaries are always powerless in the struggle against profiteers and speculators and are often, indeed, their accomplices. Only control by the people can put an end to those who are ready to starve the people in order to keep up profits.

For the workers, especially in the unoccupied territory, the economic disorganization takes the form of unemployment. It splits the ranks of the workers and erodes their class solidarity. Against this pestilence the Bolshevik-Leninists propose the sliding scale of hours of work. The available work should be divided between all the workers in the factories, with a minimum salary.

The cost of living will rise more and more. Tomorrow inflation can arise. Here also it is the workers who will receive the hardest blows. Their struggle for wage increases will be useless if they do not obtain the rising scale of wages.

Facing the economic difficulties and the menace of famine, regulation and control are necessary. The bureaucratic measures taken by the state are useless or simply are turned to the profit of a handful of capitalists and to the detriment of broad sections of the working populations. Petain is prepared to regulate production of different branches of industry, thanks to the economic “dictators” at the head of each one of them. To this state control, the Bolshevik-Leninists counterpose workers’ control by the workers themselves. No one knows better than they the sources of waste and anarchy in production.

To the measures of the Bonapartist dictators imposing everywhere the bourgeois bureaucratic control from above, the workers will impose their control from below, exercised through broad sections of the workers in their capacities as producers and consumers.

After having “regulated” the trade unions with the servile aid of the trade union leaders, the Petain government has now decreed outright dissolution of the C.G.T. It is an elementary class duty of the Bolshevik-Leninists to fight shoulder to shoulder with all workers, whatever their political views, against the government’s attacks on the unions. At the same time, however, it is necessary to make the workers understand that the reformist trade unions that they have hitherto known are the product of another epoch, that of bourgeois democracy, and that that kind of trade unionism is dragged along with bourgeois democracy in its decline. The trade unions that the French workers will reestablish will be organs of revolutionary class struggle or they will not be reestablished at all. In the coming explosive struggles against the German generals or the Bonapartist ministry, the form that the workers’ organization is most 1ikely to take is factory committees directly elected by the workers.

A Soviet Union of Europe

The present situation will scarcely last long. Up to now Hitler’s successes have been due above all to the weakness and decline of the democracies. The real test of the Nazi system has only begun.

To the fascist “reconstruction” of Europe; that is to say, to the perpetuation of misery and ruin, we oppose the Soviet United States of Europe, a free federation of the peoples with a socialized economy in which the profit system will be replaced by the cooperation of the workers.

In the face of oppression and dictatorship, the workers will not abandon the struggle for democratic liberties (freedom of the press, of assembly, etc.) but they must understand that this struggle cannot revive the decaying bourgeois democracy which has engendered this very oppression and dictatorship. The only democracy now possible in Europe is proletarian democracy, the system of soviets, the elected organs of the working people.

The French state of Petain-Laval has superseded the Third Republic of Daladier-Reynaud, That has been buried in the past, and nothing can make it live again. To escape out of slavery, oppression and misery, there is but one road, the establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government.

The Fourth International

In a Europe which is the prey of social and national oppression, revolts are inevitable. But the essential condition for success is the existence of a revolutionary leadership. Recent events in France are the direct condemnation of the entire policy of the official workers’ organizations (the Socialist party, the Communist party, the trade union leadership).

After the defeat, the Socialist leaders who called upon the workers to shed their blood to defend bourgeois democracy, rallied in the majority to the Petain government, that is to say, collaborated with Hitler. They have demonstrated once more that they are the docile agents of the bourgeoisie.

The shift by Stalin from one camp to another on the eve of the war disclosed what was the reality hidden behind the propaganda of the Communist Party against fascism and for the defense of democracy: this propaganda had the sole aim of assuring Stalin of the aid of French regiments without the least regard for the revolutionary interests of the French workers. Since Stalin’s diplomatic change of front, the Comintern has replaced “the struggle against Fascism” with denunciations of the imperialists, above all, the British and French. But the basis of the Comintern’s policy remains the same: the subordination of the revolutionary struggle to the interests of the Stalinist oligarchy. In practice, the Stalinist parties now live from day to day on small adventures. In Norway, the Stalinist paper succeeded in maintaining itself for some months under the German occupation, while denouncing English imperialism in the manner of Goebbels. But in the United States, the Communist Party demands the alliance of Moscow and Washington, which is the partner of London. In France, the Stalinists are ready to launch the workers tomorrow into any kind of an adventure that Stalin deems useful to his diplomatic game.

Never forget, workers of France, that the premiership of Blum was not possible without Thorez! The guilt for decapitating the June strikes is shared equally by the Communist Party with the treacherous leaders of the Socialist Party and the trade unions. Today Jouhaux and Blum mean nothing; but their criminal partner of 1936-1938, the Stalinist bureaucracy, can still do terrible damage to the French workers. They constitute today the main danger in the labor movement.

One of the essential tasks of the French Bolshevik-Leninists is to turn toward the duped followers of the agents of Stalin, turn to the Communist workers and to help them draw the lessons from these recent events.

The unprecedented military defeat and the downfall of the Third Republic have introduced disquiet and ferment into all the old organizations. Now the torpor provoked by the suddenness of the catastrophe is beginning to be dissipated. Discussions will not be lacking, but neither will confusion. Alone of all the big and little organizations, the Fourth International can confidently say that its program has passed the test of facts. That is why it can boldly present it to everyone. This program is the socialist revolution attained by the methods of implacable class struggle. An entire epoch has been left behind, that of decaying bourgeois democracy. It has carried away with it its bourgeois-democratic parties and leaders, as well as the workers’ parties and leaders who had bound their fate to it. We have entered into a new epoch, that of the struggles and the convulsions of the death agony of capitalism. But this new epoch is that of the Fourth International and its triumph!

November 1940

International Executive Committee of the Fourth International