City Of Devils-Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe’s “L.A. Confidential” (1997)-A Film, No, A Film Noir Review

City Of Devils-Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe’s “L.A. Confidential” (1997)-A Film, No, A Film Noir Review

DVD Review

 

By Film Critic Sam Lowell

L.A. Confidential, starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, 1997

No question those black and white film noir beauties like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s The Big Sleep, Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer’s Out Of The Past and Humphrey Bogart again and Mary Astor’s The Maltese Falcon were the epitome of the genre back in the day, back in the 1940s. But there were also plenty of what were called B-films, low budget things that filled out those Saturday afternoon matinees at the old Majestic Theater that I was addicted to as a kid. Films like City Block with Ralph Stearn and Blow-up with Sara Lang and Ted Asten. Movies I am sure you have never heard of. That same division has occurred in the neo-noir revival of the past couple of decades. Some stuff that passes away without a murmur. And then there is the film under review, L.A. Confidential, which might rightly be the very best of all the revival films.      

 

Here’s the skinny on how this beauty played out. Deep in the early 1950s, 1953 to be exact, before L.A. became the mega-city that it is today although it was even then growing by leaps and bounds with the construction of the big superhighways the old time police establishment had earned it pay by keeping a lid on scandal, especially of the Hollywood variety and of its own ways of doing business. Oh, yeah, and keeping the braceros and the blacks at bay.  You can’t draw people from places like Steubenville, Ohio to the city if they don’t feel safe. That led to some pretty raw police activity to keep things under control. And to how to address the question of what the LAPD should look like -the old-fashioned good old boy way or by cleaning up the operation.      

Tensions quickly developed between the “new wave” represented by Lt Exley, a college boy, play by Guy Pearce and old style “knock them down and as questions later” street cop Bud White played by Russell Crowe. Kind of hanging in between is Sargent Jack Vincennes, played by Kevin Spacey who is more concerned about getting good press via a sleaze-bag “tell all” magazine Hush Hush and his main contact with the rag Sid Hudgens played by Danny Devito. The whole thing explodes one night though when a seemingly botched robbery of an all-night diner, the Nite Owl, turned into a mass murder scene including a suspended cop among the victims. All the evidence points to the culprits being three black guys. What else is new. They are eventually caught and gunned down.    

But something was not right with the whole diner scene, too easy maybe and both Exley and Vincennes sensed that those black guys were framed for some other purpose. And they were, they were the unknowing victims of a power grab, an early power grab by a guy who was running a high-end call girl service and a corrupt cop, a Captain no less, who were trying to corner the lucrative heroin trade. Before the dust settles on this one, with a few “red herring” false leads which are always the hallmark of a good noir, Vincennes figures out that the Captain is the drug kingpin that he was looking for. Little good it did him since that Captain wasted him without a minute’s hesitation. Moreover the Captain has to clean up all over. Get rid of that guy running the high end call girl service, the snoopy rag mag guy, and almost Exley and White who in the end know that the Captain is the drug king. But it was a close thing since that was something like a military-style shoot-out where both Exley and White barely survived and the Captain took the big fall down. Guess what though that Captain in publicity conscious LAPD-speak was made a hero along with Exley. Yeah, cover-up, cover-up deep. Some things never change. Just like the plots of high-end noirs.    

A Mea Culpa… Of Sorts-Down With The Trump Government!- Build The Resistance-Support The General Strike On International Women's Day-March 8th

A Mea Culpa… Of Sorts-Down With The Trump Government!- Build The Resistance-Support The General Strike On International Women's Day-March 8th     

A while back, last year, during the American presidential election campaign of 2016 at a point where the two major contenders, now President Donald Trump and now failed contender Hillary Clinton had been nominated by their respective organizations, I was under constant and hard-core pressure from personal friends and political associates to let up on my opposition of support to the candidate of either of the major parties. I had planned, and had made my stance clear early on to one and all, that I planned to cast a protest vote for Green Party candidate once socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign went down in disgraceful flames (disgraceful because of the horrible way he was treated by the Democratic Party establishment which went out of its way, way out of its way, to favor weak-kneed leading candidate Clinton). On November 8^th I did just that here in Massachusetts whose Electoral College votes were overwhelming won by Mrs. Clinton. 

The gist of my opposition to the two major party candidates was that I could discern no qualitative difference between war-hawk Clinton and war-hawk Trump, the issues around war and peace being the central reason that I have steadfastly opposed both major parties since my military service during the Vietnam War. A war whose long duration like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were started by one party’s president (Johnson in the case of Vietnam and avidly pursued by another before the fall of Saigon, Nixon/Ford). While I was not, and have not been, agnostic on my differences on other social and personal liberty issues that war and peace issue has always anchored my politic perspectives since the old days. And those personal friends and political associates have known that as well. Yet as the general election campaign progressed, if that is the right word for the down and dirty slug-fest between both candidates which nobody could rightly accept as reasonable political discourse, they continued their drumbeat. Something in that hard sell twisted me to become more adamant in my opposition-in my seeing that there was as the late great American novelist Gore Vidal no stranger to mainstream politics only “one ruling party in America with two branches-Democratic and Republican.”

I wrote a number of blogs and other commentaries as a result all along this line which not only included my opposition to the two parties but my fervent desire to get on with the real business of people with my brand of politics-organize against the endless wars and home and abroad. Here is a sample of my thinking at the time:

“Now several years ago, maybe late 2007, early 2008 when one Barack Obama made his presence felt on the American national political stage and sought to slay the dragon, to slay what we would come to find out was the dragon lady but who just then was in the first blush of her endless drive to win the Oval Office I noted that the Hillary-Obama race for the Democratic Party nomination looked like a breath of fresh air and although I would not have voted for either for love nor money I decided to try to chronicle the beginning storms of the campaign that year. (In the interest of full disclosure I voted for Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party that year a natural choice as a black and woman with a political past which she need not be ashamed of and who had at least a passing acquaintance with the truth-a big plus that year after all the bullshit was cleared away)   

“Early on though somewhere around the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary (which Hillary had won late by a hair and kept her campaign alive) in 2008 I gave up the enterprise as so much blather and as so much hot air and realized that the “promise” of 2007 had turned to ashes as neither candidate could give the approximate location of the truth in a time when all hell was breaking loose in the economy and working people, the working poor were being beaten down mercilessly by what would be called the Great Recession of 2008. And as we witness in 2016 working people, hard-working working people of all ethnic, racial and gender identifications have been taking it on the chin lo these many years. Taken it on the chin so they have in some cases fervently listened as one Dump the Trump (sorry I could not resist that slam, not the worst thing that will ever happen to that ill-bred bastard) lulls them to sleep with his balderdash, with his contempt for those who have so fervently supported him despite any good sense. We will find no truth coming from anywhere in that precinct. Worse this year milady Hillary has lost all her slight girlish charms from 2008 and is frothing at the mouth in anticipation of next week’s coronation as war-monger-in-chief.      

“Here is the hard truth, the truth neither billionaire Donald nor Wall Street Hillary have a clue about. For working people, for the hard-working people of this country who have been put up against the wall and blindfolded for a while now there is no salvation this side of capitalism, this side of that  defunct system that has had its day and had long ago lost any progressive content that it had in its golden age. “Speak the truth no matter how bitter” and that is the bitter truth as we will, once again learn over the next dreary four years. Yeah, Leon Trotsky, one of his books the place where I first read the truth of that “bitter” phrase, would have said it himself if he was not beyond the pale. You heard it here-think about it okay.”    

I was almost as surprised as everybody else come the morning of November 9^th to find one Donald “Dump The Trump” (no apology for that now) had been an upset winner of the 2016 American election. Although maybe not as surprised as most as I kept hearing a small drumbeat from working class guys and gals too whom I would meet in my work, or somebody would tell me about that there something underground in the political world, something down at the base was happening for Trump. Hell I even heard stuff when I played golf with guys on public golf courses (not Donald’s private ones) in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire that Trump was their guy for jobs, for keeping black and Latinos down, keeping the fucking immigrants out and making America an armed fortress. 

Then as the transition began its awful cycle on the turnover Trump daily almost shocked me, and everybody else like me, with his choices for who would aid him in his government. This is where the “mea culpa” of the title of this piece comes in. I now am ready to concede that there is some qualitative difference between a Trump government and what Hillary’s would have looked like- if only because she would leave us alone. I still stand by my vote of “no confidence” and am still glad, very glad, that I cast my protest vote for Jill Stein but we are in a mess for the next four years no question. Practically speaking though I was down in Washington on January 20^th to express my opposition, no, my resistance to the Trump government on day one.

Down with the Trump government!-Build The Resistance   

Fight Sexism - Strike for our Rights! March 8 Forum

 

3/1/2017 10:00 PM

 

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International Women's Day Forum! View this email in your browser RSVP on Facebook! March 8th - 6:30 PM 9A Hamilton Place, Boston, MA   Trump's landslide of Executive Orders has made it clear that his goal is making attacks on women and immigrants the priority of his administration. With the specter of a right-wing Supreme Court and attacks on Planned Parenthood, Roe v. Wade and trans rights there have been calls for strikes and other actions on International Women's Day (March 8th) to push back against Trump from the grassroots. But the attacks on womens' rights are not alone. Trump's plan to increase deportations en masse pose an existential threat to undocumented immigrants in the US. The early battles of resistance to prevent these attacks on women and immigrants will play a key role in the defeat of Trump's policies. Come join us for a International Women's Day forum with speakers focused on defeating Trump's attacks on women and immigrants by pointing towards mass strike and boycott action on May 1st throughout the country. We must stand together united in action as working people in order to beat Trump. An injury to one is an injury to all! Speakers from Socialist Alternative, Democratic Socialists of America and others TBA Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

We Are In A Cold Civil War-Join The Anti-Fascist Resistance-For Labor/Black Action to Stop Fascists!

We Are In A Cold Civil War-Join The Anti-Fascist Resistance-For Labor/Black Action to Stop Fascists!

By Frank Jackman

Usually I place articles and announcement from various left-wing and progressive groupings that I do not necessarily agree with but think that the general radical-left liberal milieu might find of interest in a blog site dedicated to American Left History (and its complement cultural component) past and present. I have noted more than once that I usually do not comment on the views expressed and if I do have differences I can either write my own comments or if the differences are severe or reflect bad taste not post the item. Occasionally in the struggle against the ugly forces that have reared their heads in the age of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States and apparently nothing but a common criminal and maybe a sociopath, have felt the wind at their backs under his tenure I find some article or statement which I am in general agreement with and will as here take the time to express general if not total solidarity with the views expressed by others.  

The most important point made in the article belong which deals with an analysis and program to defeat the emergent serious extra-parliamentary right-wing threat is that we must learn the hard lessons of history on the question of stopping the fascist and fascistic elements in the egg. If that had been done in Germany at any point up to and including 1933 the history of the Western world could very well have taken a different trajectory and we would today probably not be faced with what looks like yet again a global right-wing counter-revolutionary movement baring its knuckles. Closer to home we have to nip the small but growing fascist threat which seemingly is turning the cold civil war we have been facing for a while now and which is getting more heated in the bud- and in the streets.

A second point to note is knowing what period we are in and who is and who is not going to benefit from the rise of the fascists (call them as they call themselves “the alt-right” it is the same damn thing that has been with us since post-World War I times). The rise of Trump was by parliamentary means-by regular bourgeois norms elections and does not represent a fascist take-over as some claim. The ruling class at this moment has not been defeated anyplace in the world militarily, at least where it would fatally hurt, as it did in Germany after their World War I defeat and that ruling class here is not now, and I emphasize not now, confronted by any militant mass left-wing movements that would threaten their power necessitating the need to go beyond their normal military/police forces to curb.   

As this cold civil war heats up there will be plenty of those in the opposition, on our side, who want to call on the government to stop the fascists, or better yet, call on the opposition party, the Democrats, to do something about the matter. Wrong. While we may unite with all who want to oppose the fascist threat on the streets, including democrats, to rely on the good offices of any establishment political organization to do our work for us is fool-hardy and in the end dangerous. We must rely centrally on our ability to gather masses of working people and the oppressed to stop these sewer rats. History shows no other way but a straight up fight to the finish or else these scumbags, excuse my vulgar usage but we are in a fierce fight and the niceties of everyday politics are not called for, will be further emboldened. Those who profess some “rational” and “reasoned” approach to deal with this life-threatening menace are doomed to the scrap heap.

Finally there is no room for being “liberal” in this fight. These fascists are not a literary/political club movement we can debate with or permit to spew their trash talk under the banner of “free speech.” Those who thought that approach might work in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and early 1930s either had to flee into exile or found themselves in some death camp. We can give no quarter here. Period. 

So yes, for once, on this issue of fighting the emerging fascist threat I stand in solidarity with the views expressed below with its sober analysis and program to fight the menace right now.  

********

Workers Vanguard No. 1110	21 April 2017

For Labor/Black Action to Stop Fascists!

Fascists Fueled by Trump Election

Hundreds of Jewish headstones desecrated. Women wearing the headscarf attacked on the streets. Two software engineers from India shot, one fatally, in Kansas in February by a Navy vet who howled, “Get out of my country.” A Sikh American shot in his driveway in Kent, Washington, last month by a masked white man screaming, “Go back to your own country.” Timothy Caughman, a 66-year-old black man, murdered on the streets of Manhattan on March 20 by a white-supremacist who had come to New York City from Baltimore with the express purpose of killing black men.

The race-terrorists have been emboldened by the campaign and victory of the right-wing demagogue Donald Trump, and are taking their cue from the unabashed racism and anti-immigrant vitriol emanating from the White House. The ultimate aim of the fascists, including those who congregate around the “alt-right,” is racial genocide and the destruction of workers organizations, including unions and the left.

The race-terrorists have played on the racist backlash against Barack Obama, America’s first black president. Obama’s eight years in office offered nothing to black and working people; the Democratic Party no less than the Republicans represents the very capitalist order that breeds fascism. During the Obama administration, conditions for black people and workers continued to worsen while cops wantonly gunned down black people on the streets. More industrial areas turned into rust bowls, while strongholds of union power continued their steep decline. Obama rigorously pursued U.S. imperialism’s war aims abroad, while ramping up the “war on terror” at home, which targets Muslims in particular. The fascist thugs feed off anger and frustration arising from economic devastation; they scapegoat black people, immigrants and minorities for the misery inflicted on the population by the capitalist rulers.

On April 15, when hundreds of “protesters” descended on downtown Berkeley for a pro-Trump rally, the fascists infesting the crowd made clear that they were out for blood. Chanting “Hitler did nothing wrong” and giving Nazi salutes, they viciously attacked antifa activists and leftists with clubs, flagpoles and knives. One viral video shows Nathan Damigo, head of the fascist group Identity Evropa, punching a woman in the face. Last June, in Sacramento, white-supremacists of the Traditionalist Workers Party and the Golden Gate Skinheads stabbed and slashed at least seven anti-fascists, sending them to the hospital. In Berkeley, anti-fascists were able to defend themselves from fascist violence but a number were injured.

Individual acts of courage are not enough to smash the fascist threat. What is needed are massive, integrated, disciplined mobilizations based on the social power of the multiracial working class. The workplace is the only real point of integration in American society, providing the potential basis for unity in struggle to defend working people and the oppressed. Black workers in particular can be the living link that unites the power of the working class with the anger of the ghettos.

The union movement has been flat on its back for many years under a misleadership that is committed to capitalism and has shackled the unions to the Democratic Party. A fight by militant unionists to organize labor/black power to crush the fascists can give the working class a taste of its social power. It is the fascists—not black people, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, leftists and others—who must be made to feel the sting of fear.

Who Are These Scum?

Today, many fascist groups in the “alt-right” claim that they are something different from the Klan and Nazis. They dress in “respectable” suits and ties and promote themselves as intellectuals. One of their leading voices is Richard Spencer, führer of the innocuously named National Policy Institute (NPI). When the NPI held a conference in Washington, D.C., shortly after Trump’s election, Spencer responded to the audience’s stiff-armed Nazi salutes by declaring: “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” (the latter a translation of the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil”).

Allied with Spencer is Identity Evropa, which describes itself as an organization of “awakened Europeans” and requires that its members be of “European, non-Semitic heritage.” Its leader, Damigo, is a former Marine who was twice deployed to Iraq. After returning, he held up an immigrant taxi driver at gunpoint in San Diego in 2007, believing the man was Iraqi. While in prison for four years, he immersed himself in the writings of “former” Klansman David Duke. Before founding Identity Evropa in March 2016, Damigo—who describes black people as “inferior to whites, genetically”—was a leader of the now-defunct National Youth Front, the youth arm of the white-supremacist American Freedom Party.

Identity Evropa is currently waging a campaign, called “Project Siege,” to recruit from College Republicans. Its members have appeared at colleges and its posters and stickers have been spotted on campuses around the country. These posters consist of Greco-Roman images with slogans like, “Protect Your Heritage.” Their slick website serves as a portal for those who claim racial superiority and who deny the Holocaust. As part of their recruitment drive, Damigo, Spencer and others held a rally on 6 May 2016 at UC Berkeley, the former bastion of left-wing student protest.

Today, outfits like Identity Evropa, the Traditionalist Workers Party and others are still small. But they will strike with force, as seen in Sacramento and Berkeley. It is vital that they be crushed in the egg before they grow. Against those who call for bans on “hate speech” or who argue for “free speech” for fascists, we say that when these race-terrorists rear their heads they must be repulsed through mass protest. Fascism is not about speech or ideas; it is about racist terror. “Anti-extremism” bans, whether instituted by campus administrations or government forces, will always be used to silence leftists, anti-racists and minority activists.

Fascism in the U.S. is rooted in the defeat of the Confederacy by the Union Army in the Civil War, when 200,000 black soldiers and sailors played a key role in destroying slavery. The Klan and other race-terrorists came into being after that victory and bloodily suppressed the newly freed slaves. No less than the KKK, the fascist vermin in the “alt-right” represent a threat to the very right of black people to exist. They aim to reverse the verdict of the Civil War.

Prepare to Fight!

Unlike Germany in the 1930s, when the Nazis rose to power and went on to carry out the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, America’s capitalist rulers do not at this time feel the need to resort to fascism. The U.S. is not a defeated imperialist power, as Germany was after World War I, nor does the U.S. bourgeoisie currently face a challenge to its rule from the working class. The daily terror meted out by the cops against black people and minorities is today deemed sufficient to keep the oppressed in check. At the same time, the capitalist rulers hold the fascist shock troops in reserve, to be unleashed at times of social crisis in order to spike any prospect of revolutionary struggle by the working class.

The Trump administration is not fascist, but the fascists sure as hell have a lot of friends in high places. Trump appointed as his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, a well-known “white nationalist” who took over Breitbart News and turned it into “the platform of the alt-right,” as he boasted. Trump’s top counter-terrorism advisor, Sebastian Gorka, is reportedly a member of the Vitezi Rend, a Hungarian organization that harks back to the fascistic interwar dictatorship of Admiral Horthy—Gorka wore its medal at Trump’s inauguration ball. Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s senior advisors, joined Richard Spencer in organizing an anti-immigrant event at Duke University in 2007. He went on to work for notorious racist and defender of the Confederacy, Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general. One could go on.

Bolstered by their high-ranking friends, the fascists have put the left in their deadly sights. We of the Spartacist League were targeted earlier this year, when a fascist secretly videoed one of our comrades distributing Workers Vanguard at the D.C. inauguration protests. The fascist posted the video on YouTube and vowed to “infiltrate” our organization. In Berkeley, the fascists made it clear that they are targeting leftists by chanting “commies, off our street!” It is a matter of life and death for the left to fight for united-front actions, based on the power of the unions, to beat back the fascist threat. In such united fronts, every organization must be free to put forward its political program in the course of struggle. As Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky put it: “March separately, but strike together!”

During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, much like today, the official racism of the White House encouraged the Klan and Nazis. When the fascists tried to hold rallies in major urban centers, the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee initiated and organized labor/black mobilizations. From Washington, D.C., where the Klan threatened to stage an anti-immigrant provocation, to Chicago, where the Nazis took aim at a Gay Pride demonstration, and elsewhere, we succeeded in sparking protests of thousands to stop the fascists. At the core of these actions were contingents of determined workers from the multiracial unions standing at the head of the black poor, immigrants and all the intended victims of fascist terror.

These mobilizations required a constant political struggle—against the cops, courts and other forces of the capitalist state, as well as capitalist politicians. Fearing the specter of labor/black power, Democratic mayors and other officials preached “tolerance” and “peace.” They called diversionary rallies far from where the fascists intended to march while violence-baiting those who wanted to stop fascist violence. And time and again, they were joined by reformist leftists who promoted reliance on the Democrats. When, in October 1999, we issued a call to stop the Klan from marching in New York City, the International Socialist Organization refused to endorse and instead joined a diversion organized by the Democrats where they shared the platform with a Latino police association. It should be an elementary understanding for leftists that the cops are the enemy. Historically, the policeman and the Klansman have often been the same man.

What is needed is a fight to finish the Civil War through an American workers revolution that achieves the promise of black equality, the liberation of all the exploited and oppressed and puts the last nail in the coffin of the fascist killers. The labor/black mobilizations we initiated are a small example of the leadership and forces needed to build a party of our class in struggle against the capitalist enemy. In the face of the growing fascist menace, we must be prepared to mobilize.  

From the Archives of Marxism-Friedrich Engels' “From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom”

Workers Vanguard No. 1096	23 September 2016

From the Archives of Marxism-Friedrich Engels' “From the Kingdom of Necessity to the Kingdom of Freedom”

We publish below excerpts from Friedrich Engels’ 1880 work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. In explaining scientific socialism, Engels makes clear that only through the conquest of power by the working class and the expropriation of the capitalist class can the benefits of science, technology and education be available to all, laying the material basis for the full liberation of humanity. The excerpts below are taken from the Marx and Engels Selected Works (Progress Publishers, 1976).

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in men’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.

What is, then, the position of modern socialism in this connection?

The present structure of society—this is now pretty generally conceded—is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the feudal system, with the privileges it conferred upon individuals, entire social ranks and local corporations, as well as with the hereditary ties of subordination which constituted the framework of its social organisation. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie developed with a rapidity and in degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its more complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalistic mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class....

The perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market. “The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.” (Marx’s Capital, p. 671)....

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production. And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of Nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself....

Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realisation were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times....

Division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself has become an obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually, a hindrance to development.

This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless, face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialised appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties—this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom....

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.

A Film Review Short-The French Film “Tell No One”

A Film Review Short-The French Film “Tell No One”

Nowadays in order for a thriller to pass muster there have to be many little twists and turns or else the film get very tedious, get very boring, never gets, as a friend of my who is into both written and cinematic thrillers has suggested, off the slow-moving track which spells death to the film, makes one reach for the remote very quickly. That is not the case with the thriller under review, the French film, Tell No One, although frankly I thought that the film would in its opening scenes succumb to that slow-moving death every thriller has to dodge.

Here are the twists in this “cold file” case. Doctor Beck’s wife, Margot, had been killed, senselessly killed by a serial killer, several years earlier and he was just beginning to put his life back together when a whole ton of hell started coming down on his head. Reason: a couple of male bodies filled with bullets had been found out in the country where his wife had been killed. Beck had just barely gotten out of the clutches of the law back then since the law thought under the odd-ball evidence in the case that he was the mastermind behind the deed. He had been mysteriously found unconscious on the dock despite his allegations that he had been hit and fallen into the water by the killer being a chief reason that he had been suspected by the cops.    

Lots of things begin to pop up that have the cops interested in reopening the case, hoping to see the big frame placed around his head. Unaccounted for bruises to his wife’s face on photos that survived, a gun found in secret place in his house, the murder most foul of his wife’s best friend are just some of the examples that dog him. Put those together with Beck’s taking it on the lam to figure out what the hell was going on and for the average cop never mind what country he or she works in and you have and open and shut case of consciousness of guilt and an easy and early wrap-up to the cases.

But hold on. This Doctor Beck actually loved his wife, was not faking the trouble he had trying to put his life back together. Something else was going on, some nefarious plot to get him to take the big step-off and let him rot in prison forgotten after a while. Not only was something going on in the frame department but the good doctor was getting information via his e-mail that his wife was still alive. So two trails of events were going on at the same time (always a good sign in a thriller): the net tightening over his head by the coppers and his frenzy to find his wife knowing now that she is not dead. That’s all I will tell you because I have been asked to “tell no one” in order not to spoil the ending, okay. Except old Doc Beck was not crazy, was not wrong in assuming that nefarious forces were out to get him although it would take a while before he learned that it was because of something that Margot had knowledge about shortly before her “death” which had people in high places ready, willing and able to do her in. Watch this award-winning film.   

A Day Without A Woman Rally - International Women's Day- Downtown Boston

A Day Without A Woman Rally - International Women's Day- Downtown Boston

A Day Without A Woman Rally - Downtown Boston

Date:

Wed, 03/08/2017 - 4:00pm

Location Name: The Staircase at Downtown Crossing

Address:

On Washington Street between TJ Maxx and Millennium Tower

Description:

Women make 82 cents on the dollar for every dollar a man makes and women of color make even less. On International Women's Day, organizers are asking you to work 82% of the day and join in collective action supporting the values and impact of the working women we have in our communities and society. Gather at Downtown Crossing and take a stand in support of working women.

Sponsored by: Chinese Progressive Association, Community Labor United, Matahari Women Workers' Center, SEIU 32BJ District , Right to the City Boston, New England United for Justice, Alternatives for Community and Environment, City Life/Vida Urbana

Feel free to share the flyer attached below.
For more info:
For more information, contact Lindsay McCluskey at lindsay@massclu.org

Attachment Size
day_without_women_flyer_3.8.17.pdf 91.03 KB

On The Wild Side Of Life Minute-With Mister Jerry Jeff Walker’s Music In Mind

On The Wild Side Of Life Minute-With Mister Jerry Jeff Walker’s Music In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James   

Great Gonzos, Mister Jerry Jeff Walker,

The 1980s, the early 1980s, were a tough time to try and weather the financial doldrums of the alternative newspaper industry (much like today, in 2017, the whole print press and journal industry is going down with the ship in the digital age). That was the age of Ronald Reagan, a time when the night-takers took their revenge in big gobs, those who almost got kicked in the ass for good back in the 1960s except we forget the first rule of a power struggle whether down on the corner boy block or in order to take state power-if you are going to take on the big guys you had better be ready to go all the way down and dirty or just back off.

As if to put paid to that “victory” those who would in earlier times come through and supported such ventures as truth-teller alternative media took a dive, waved the white flag and fell into line (a straight and narrow line that even the latest polls have shown they never have backed away from, have passed on that “keeping their heads down” to their kids, hell, their grandkids, Jesus) the money dried up and the publication that Seth Garth had been the film critic for in good times and bad for over a decade The Eye had put him on short rations, had almost reduced him to the free-lancer status he had started out in the business doing. To alleviate their dilemma, maybe to draw one last breathe would have been a better way to put it Benny Gold the long time editor had begged Seth to take a long swig at the then emerging outlaw country music scene that was starting to bust out of Nashville, started getting up a head of steam in Texas, Austin, really and places like Colorado, Iowa and the like.    

Seth Garth, for those who didn’t remember the name from when what he had to say about some song, album (tapes in those days really), or a performer carried weight via the distribution of The Eye on the coasts and with some strongholds in the center of the country too or were too young to know who he was could give, to use and expression from his corner boy days which he had never given up, a rat’s ass about country music, the Nashville Grand Ole Opry stuff. Held his nose whenever anybody mentioned that George Jones had not shown up at a concert for the millionth time or that Loretta Lynn had the vapors and was a “no show” at one of her performances. Yeah could give a rat’s ass no question. Moreover having just started the process of divorcing his third wife (three wives and a brood of kids, all young) he was in a sullen funk about starting all over like some rookie chasing ambulances and cop cars for a fucking story. Was trying, seriously trying, to decide whether he might link up with his old corner boy Johnny Blade who was now out of stir after doing a nickel for his last armed robbery and start pulling a few quick haul bank robberies. That larcenous heart of his that he had held in check for a number of years now was beginning to come to the fore. Seth after all was the guy back in the day who had perfected the “clip,” had designed the plans for the neighborhood midnight creeps in Mayfair swell houses that kept the boys in clover through high school.

In the end though, at least for the public prints, Seth decided that he would give the outlaw country scene a quick run through to see if circulation would rise and The Eye would stop bleeding away financially. So he held his nose and headed to Austin (he refused to go to Nashville where some of the guys he was supposed to check out still had connections enough to draw work if the “outlaw” thing was running a little to the lean side). He first ran into a guy named Townes Van Zandt who was a true outlaw, could have given a fuck about Nashville just wanted to write his lyrics, drown his sorrows in liquor and chase young honeys, the younger the better. But Townes with his downer lyrics, his lusts and his short-handed way of talking when he was not singing was not going to help himself out of his miseries never mind a left-leaning newspaper in need of a big circulation jump.         

So Seth pushed on, had a nice interview with Willie Nelson but the guy was almost too big by then, hell, he was playing Northern venues to sell-out crowds, radio stations were ready to switch formats if they could get a hook from him. Same with Kris Kristofferson who was getting acting jobs as well as drinking the state of California dry. Then Big Bill Bloom who had made a career out of big bang folk lyrics that everybody in the 1960s was chewing on (or chewing on partially because while everybody knew maybe three verses of his stuff they could not go the distance on the whole song, half the time Seth couldn’t) called Seth to tell him that he had heard that The Eye was on the ropes (The Eye always gave Big Bill great build-up reviews although a couple of times Seth had nixed his work but Benny had nixed his nix) and that he was working the outlaw country racket. Did Seth know about a guy, Jerry Jeff Walker, who just then was out of jail but who was a great performer, wrote great lyrics and had a pal, a guy named Guy Clark, who wrote stuff for him?             

Seth told Big Bill that he had never heard of the guy, was moreover worried about that “just out of jail” bit even if he was an outlaw but when Big Bill said he could make the connections Seth in desperation said he would go for it. And strangely enough they connected, connected when Seth was able to see that Jerry Jeff was just another larcenous corner boy except down Texas way and out West they called them good old boys. Seth was the guy who gave Jerry Jeff’s first concert out of jail a big play. Got him a connection to a big record producer and even got him his first gig north of the Mason-Dixon line. Got him into Harvard Square for crying out loud. The crowd almost all old folkies and raw college kids with dates went crazy for a real outlaw country singer. For a while, maybe a year, The Eye got by but the Reagan era was in deep throttle and once Jerry Jeff became old news everybody went back to keeping their heads down. And Seth became once again a freaking free-lancer with no place to go but down.