This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
War Is A Lie: Second Edition(2016) -- widely praised best-selling classic. "WAR IS A LIE is a thorough refutation of every major argument used to justify wars, drawing on evidence from numerous past wars, with a focus on those wars that have been most widely defended as just and good. This is a handbook of sorts, a manual to be used in debunking future lies before future wars have a chance to begin.
Thursday, April 13, 7:00 PM Friends Meeting at Cambridge 5 Longfellow Park Cambridge, MA 02138
In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Out In The Adventure Car Hop Night - A CD Review
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: 1957: Still Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Now 1957 was a good year for rock, for "boss" cars, and for car hops if you could keep them, at least that was what some of the older guys told me later. In 1957 my drive-in restaurant experiences were limited to, when we had a car, a working car in our family which was an iffy proposition at best, sitting in the back seat of some beat up sedan waiting during the daytime (the night belonged to the teens and no self-respecting or smart parent would bring tender children to such a place at night) for some cold plastic hamburger with fries. Jesus.
But the music was on fire as the breakout of the previous couple of years hit the pre-teen audience that was just as starved for its own not parent-seal-of-approval music as the older kids. Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and a ton of other talent was hitting the airwaves so that if you tired of hearing one song after the one thousandth consecutive playing you could move right on.
In this The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era series some years, I believe reflecting banner years, have two CDs dedicated to the greatest hits for that year. For 1957, which has the magic two, I think that the other 1957 CD is a bit better but this one covers the rest of what should have been preserved. Stick outs here include Chuck Berry’s Rock & Roll Music (Christ, he had about ten hits in those years and most of them still crank up the teen-memory dark night air with their electricity); The Platters’ classic last dance, school dance (oh, please, please save that last dance for me certain she that I have eyed until my eyes got sore all night, and she, certain she, peeked at me too); Little Richard’s Jenny, Jenny (another guy who had a ton of hit in a short period, although they haven't worn as well as Chuck's); and Fats Domino’s Blue Monday (yah, back to school days Monday blahs, except for Monday morning boys' "lav" bragging rights if that certain she I just mentioned really did mean to look my way for that last dance, otherwise why have a Monday anyway).
Before The
Jug….Was The Jug-With John Sebastian’s Hungry Eye Jug Band In Mind
By Lester
Lannon
A while
back, maybe two three years ago just after they had witnessed the fiftieth
anniversary union performance of what was left of the original Jim Kweskin Jug
Band (Jim, Maria Muldaur and ex-husband Geoff Muldaur) at the Club Passim in
Harvard Square Sam Lowell, Bart Webber and Jack Callahan had been sitting in
Jack’s down the street sipping some high end whiskeys when they started to cut
up old touches about their own experiences at jug music and jug band under the
long ago influence of that very jug band(and of course through them finding out
running back to genesis to the Memphis Jug Band, Cannon’s Stompers, The
Mississippi Shieks and a half dozen old state name in front Shieks where all
the really good jug band material was to be found). Jack, the old-time
washboard player, had blurted out what was on everybody’s mind after that
performance-“what the hell we have time now let’s get a hold of Laura Lynn and
Frank Riley and give the old Riverdale Jug Band a local revival.” (Riverdale
the home town of all five of the original named players, an occasional sit in
fiddler and magic kazoo player were from neighboring Gloversville and hence
Riverdale).
Sam, the jug
man supreme, was at first hesitate for the very same reason the band had
disbanded after a couple of years and some local success-there was not enough
space in the then fading folk revival minute to support, support as a
professional operation more than one serious jug band and that band was clearly
the Jim Kweskin outfit (which in their turn would split up for various reasons,
personality clashes, declining energies, declining public interest and the
usual hubris). Fifty years later and a look at the greying demographics at Passims’
only made Sam more sanguine about such prospects. At least that night Jack was
unsuccessful in persuading either Sam or Bart both who were in the slow process
of giving up the day to day running of their respective law office and print
shop to know that they had needed more time think about reforming the old
group. His argument that the Kweskin Jug Band was, except for ceremonial
occasions, not now an on-going operation went for naught. His other argument, a
historical argument, that even the Kweskin experience back in the day had only
been possible because of various reconfigurations in the personal of that band
after various “raids” on other jug bands also fell on deaf ears that night.
But Jack
sensed that there was some mulling over going on and so he went for the jugular
(no pun intended) and brought Laura and Frankie into the mix. Did it in a very
tricky way. John Sebastian, well known from the folk and folk rock days as the
leader of the group The Lovin’ Spoonful (that left out “g” all the rage back
then when everybody wanted to be at one with the “folk” although one never saw
a real “folk” who were trying to get away from that designation and could not
be found within ten miles of any folk revival site) which had hits with Summer in the City, Lovin’ Spoonful (remember no “g”) and Nashville Cats, was scheduled to appear at the Newport Folk
Festival down in Rhode Island like he had in the old days. Jack had purchased a
block of five tickets in order to entice them back to that old summer stomping
ground where they had done a daytime, although no primetime, stage performance
a couple of years in a row when their star was rising (and the lack of any
serious follow-up, follow-up in the way such things counted in those days with
a record contract except a small nimble from Dollar Records who thereafter
passed on producing their first album claiming their work was too derivative,
derivative of the Kweskin Jug Band particularly which started Riverdale Jug
band members, first of all Laura to get married, to go their separate ways).
The hook of
Newport for Jack was that he was privy to something that the others were not
aware of. John Sebastian in the old days before the Lovin’ Spoonful success had
been the founder (and re-founder) of various jug band combinations in the
Village in the early 1960s when jug music was getting a lot of play in the folk
revival. Sebastian’s most famous group, his most famous effort was the Hungry
Eye Jug Band with the great Fritz Diamond on wash basin and Maria Donato on
vocals and tambourines. That grouping was ready to break out, make it to the night
stage at Newport when Fritz and Maria abandoned ship, went over to another
unnamed jug band (but one could figure that out easily enough) and that was
that. John as we know landed on his feet and so he therefore claimed no foul.
The source of the story-John Sebastian himself one night when he was playing by
himself in a stellar performance at the now defunct Boston Folk Festival.
See in those
free and easy 1960s days s groups formed, reformed, talent got stolen away and
every other thing that has happened in the music industry since there was an
industry, maybe before. Jack though if the other members of the old jug band
heard John’s story they might reconsider their position of not re-forming the
band. He also figured once they were back together, back on the road a few
nights playing small coffeehouses and cafes to grab some work in order to work
out the kinks in their material that they too could “raid” the talent pool.
Might have some name in lights like John Sebastian and the Riverdale Jug Band.
Or the Riverdale Jug Band with Jim Kweskin (it would emphatically not be the
Riverdale Jug Band with Maria Muldaur not if he didn’t want to lose Laura and with
her the whole enterprise since her vocals and good looks had gotten them plenty
of play and she would not then nor now abide playing second to any other female
vocalist). But he needed to get them on board, needed to get them to sunny
Newport, needed to have them heard that patented John Sebastian story.
Jack need
not have worried because there must have been something in the air as the next time
the group of five gathered in Cambridge for drinks and conversation Laura asked
if it was still possible to sign up to do a daytime workshop at Newport. The
subject- jug music. And Sam was talking feverishly about where he could find a worthy
jug these days, and so it went. Yeah, before the jug was… the jug.
Songs
To While Away The Social Struggle By-Jim Morrison And The Doors
Peter
Paul Markin comment:
A while back, maybe a half a decade ago
now, I started a series in this space that I presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By
where I posted some songs, you know, The
Internationale, Which Side Are You On?, Viva La Quince Brigada, Solidarity
Forever and others like Deportee,
Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Blowin’ In The Wind, This Land Is Your Land
while not as directly political had their hearts in the right place, that I
thought would help get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our
socialist future. Those “dog days” in America anyway, depending on what leftist
political perspective drove your imagination could have gone back as far as the
late 1960s and early 1970s when all things were possible and the smell of
revolution could be whiffed in the air for a while before we were defeated, or
maybe later when all abandoned hope for the least bit of social justice in the
lean, vicious, downtrodden Reagan years of unblessed memory or later still
around the time of the great world- historic defeats of the international
working class in East Europe and the former Soviet Union which left us with an
unmatched arrogant unipolar imperialist world. That one pole being the United
States, the “heart of the beast” from which we work. Whatever your personal
benchmark they were nevertheless if you had the least bit of political savvy clearly
dog days.
I began posting these songs at a time,
2009, when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of massive
uprising against the economic royalists (later chastised under the popular
sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head
through their economic machinations in what is now called the Great Recession
of 2008. Subsequently, while there were momentary uprisings, the Arab Spring
which got its start in Tunisia and Egypt and enflamed most of the Middle East
one way or another, here in America the defensive uprising of the public
workers in Wisconsin and later the quick-moving although ephemeral Occupy
movement, and the uprising in Greek, Spain and elsewhere in Europe in response
to the “belt-tightening demanded by international financial institutions to
name a few, the response from the American and world working classes has for
lots of reasons if anything further entrenched those interests.
So as the “dog days” continue I have
resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs
selected; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell,
even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist,
although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground.
Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene.
While this kind of formation would mean political death for any serious
revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects,
it will suffice for our purposes here. I like to invite others to make
additional comments on certain pivotal songs, groups and artists and here is
one by my old friend Josh Breslin, whom I met out in California during the
heyday of the summer of love 1967, that reflects those many possibilities to
“turn the world upside down” back in the 1960s and early 1970s before the
“night of the long knives” set in:
WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin
My old friend from the summer of love
1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point then of answering, or
rather arguing which tells a lot about the kind of guy he was (is) when he gets
his political hind legs up with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day
that “music is the revolution.” Strangely when I first met him in San
Francisco that summer you would have been hard-pressed to tell him that was not
the case but after a few hit on the head by the coppers, a tour of duty in the
military at the height of the Vietnam War, and what was happening to other
political types trying to change the world for the better like the Black
Panthers he got “religion,” or at least he got that music as the agency of
social change idea out of his head. Me, well, I was (and am not) as political
as Markin so that I neither got drowned in the counter-culture where music was
a central cementing act, nor did I have anything that happened
subsequently that would have given me Markin’s epiphany.
I would listen half-attentively (a
condition aided by being “stoned” a lot of the time) when such conversations
erupted and Markin drilled his position. That position meaning, of course that
contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that
idea and got burned by the flame, some dropping out, some going back to
academia, some left by the wayside and who are maybe still wandering) that
eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do
the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the
garden, into some pre-lapsian Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation
unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell,
the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down the way the word has always
trickled down to the sticks once the next new thing gets a workout, Olde Saco
Park, in the town up in Maine where I grew up would not feed on itself and grow
to such a critical mass that the quite nameable enemies of good, kindness
starting with one Lyndon Johnson and one Richard M. Nixon and working down to
the go-fers and hangers-on, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere,
defeated or at least defanged.
Many a night, many a dope-blistered
night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to
Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was
too “into the moment,” too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and too into
finding some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous
ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and
roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main
Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the
guys on the other side, were arguing about.
Now it makes perfect sense that music,
or any mere cultural expression standing alone, would be unable to carry enough
weight to turn us back to the garden (I won’t use that “pre-lapsarian’ again to
avoid showing my, and Markin’s, high Roman Catholic up-bringing and muddy what
I want to say which is quite secular). I guess that I would err on the side of
the “angels” and at least wish that we could have carried the day against the
monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day. (Although
I had a draft deferment due to a serious physical condition, not helped by the
“street” dope I was consuming by the way, I supported, and something vehemently
and with some sense of organization, a lot of the political stuff Markin was
knee deep into, especially Panther defense when we lived in Oakland and all
hell was raining down on the brothers and sisters.)
Thinking about what a big deal was made
of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in
smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue–pink dawn came rising up to smite
our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth
(if one could be jaded in Podunk Olde Saco, although more than one parent and
more than one teacher called me “beatnik” back then whatever that meant to
them) I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact
or not. Perhaps it was some off-shoot DNA thing since my people on my mother’s
side (nee LeBlanc) were French-Canadian which had a deep folk heritage both up
north and here although such music was not played in the house, a house like a
lot of other ethnics where in the 1950s everybody wanted to be vanilla American
(Markin mentioned that same thing about his Irish-etched parents). So it initially
started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the
Great Depression of the 1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either
in Normandy where my father first went to Europe under some very trying
conditions or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting
through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank
(Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris
Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to
believing was the catalyst along with the DNA stuff I already mentioned, my
father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles
blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia. (Again such music
except every once in a while Hank Williams who I didn’t know about at the time
was not played in the house either. Too “square” I guess.)
The origin of my immersion
into roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the
likes of Son House(and that raspy, boozy country voice on Death Letter Blues), Skip James ( I went nuts over that voice first
heard after he had been “discovered” at the Newport Folk Festival I think in
1963 when he sang I’d Rather Be The Devil
Than Be That Woman’s Man on the radio after I had just broken up with some
devil woman, read girl), Mississippi John Hurt (that clear guitar, simple
lyrics on Creole Belle), Muddy Waters
(yes, Mannish-Boy ), Howlin’ Wolf ( I
again went nuts when I heard his righteous Little
Red Rooster although I had heard the Stones version first, a version
originally banned in Boston) and Elmore James ( his Dust My Broom version of the old Robert Johnson tune I used to
argue was the “beginning” of rock and roll to anybody who would listen).
Then
early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis (stuff
like One Night With You, Jailhouse Rock and
the like before he died in about 1958 or whatever happened to him when he
started making stupid movies that mocked his great talent making him look
foolish and which various girlfriends of the time forced me to go see at the
old Majestic Theater in downtown Olde Saco), Jerry Lee (his High School Confidential, the film song,
with him flailing away at the piano in the back of a flat-bed truck blew me
away although the film was a bust, as was the girl I saw it with), Chuck
(yeah, when he declared to a candid world that while we all gave due
homage to classical music in school Mister Beethoven better move on over with Roll Over Beethoven), Roy (Roy the boy
with that big falsetto voice crooning out Running
Scared, whoa), Big Joe (and that Shake,
Rattle and Roll which I at one point also argued was the “beginning” of
rock and roll, okay, I liked to argue those fine points) and Ike
Turner (who I ultimately settled on with his Rocket 88 as that mythical beginning of rock and roll).
Then later,
with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, the folk music minute before the
British invasion took a lot of the air out of that kind of music, especially
the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan (even a so-so political guy like me,
maybe less than so-so then before all hell broke loose and we had to choose
sides loved Blowin’ in the Wind),
Dave Von Ronk (and that raspy old voice, although was that old then sing Fair And Tender Ladies one of the
first folk songs I remember hearing) Joan Baez (and that long ironed-hair
singing that big soprano on those Child ballads), etc.
I am, and have always been a city boy,
and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or
consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over
time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth.
Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff
with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain
music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bones) and so
on.
All those genres are easily classified
as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to
closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads he fretfully argued against
when I mentioned in passing that The Doors, then in their high holy mantra
shamanic phase with The End and When The Music’s Over epitomized roots
music. That hurt me to the quick, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it
more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.
The Doors are roots music? Well, yes,
in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early
rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors,
the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American
Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs
like The End. More than one rock critic,
professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope
and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up The
Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no
argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the
great American roots tradition. I argued then and will argue here almost
fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic The
Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be
dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women,
think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll, played the
people’s music, played to respond to a deep-seeded need of the people before
them, for keeps.
So where does Jim Morrison fit in an
icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky.
Some icon that Markin could have latched onto. Jim was part of the
trinity, the “J” trinity for the superstitious – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and
Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of
the day (or hour) – “Drugs, sex, and rock and roll.” And we liked that idea
however you wanted to mix it up. Then.
Their deaths were part of the price we
felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most
political among us, including Markin in his higher moments (you figure out what
that “higher,” means since you are bright people) felt those cultural winds
blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative
vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.”
Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive
cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political
change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.
Desperately Seeking Revolutionary
Intellectuals-Then, And Now
From The Pen Of Frank
Jackman
Several
years ago, I guess about five years now, in the aftermath of the demise of the
Occupy movement with the shutting down of its campsites across the country (and
the world) I wrote a short piece centered on the need for revolutionary
intellectuals to take their rightful place on the left, on the people’s side,
and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding
out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise
of the Occupy movement a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at
first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I ran into in
the various campsites and on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and
discouraged when their Utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of
regret from the masses. Now a few years later it is apparent that they have,
mostly, moved back to the traditional political ways of operating or have not
quite finished licking their wounds.
Although
I initially addressed my remarks to the activists still busy I also had in mind
those intellectuals who had a radical streak but who then hovered on the
sidelines and were not sure what to make of the whole experiment although some
things seemed very positive like the initial camp camaraderie. In short, those
who would come by on Sunday and take a lot of photographs and write a couple of
lines but held back. Now in 2017 in the year of the 100th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution it is clear as day that the old economic order
(capitalism if you were not quite sure what to name it) that we were fitfully
protesting against (especially the banks who led the way downhill) has survived
another threat to its dominance. The old political order, the way of doing
political business now clearly being defended by one Donald J. Trump with might
and main is still intact. The needs of working people although now widely
discussed (the increasing gap between the rich, really the very rich, and the
poor, endlessly lamented and then forgotten, the student debt death trap, and
the lingering sense that most of us will never get very far ahead in this
wicked old world especially compared to previous generations) have not been
ameliorated. All of this calls for intellectuals with any activist spark to
come forth and help analyze and plan how the masses are to survive, how a new
social order can be brought forth. Nobody said, or says, that it will be easy
but this is the plea. I have reposted the original piece with some editing to
bring it up to date.
*******
No,
this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad
in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing
books especially those by James P. Cannon, a founding member of the American
Communist Party and the founder of the Socialist Workers Party in America, I
have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists,
including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and
Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the
early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary
leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of
the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the
questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for
revolutionaries were more than adequately defined. A century later with some
tweaking, unfortunately, those same theories and the same need for organization
are still on the agenda although, as Trotsky once said, the conditions are
overripe for the overthrow of capitalism as it has long ago outlived its
progressive character in leading humankind forward.
The
conclusion that I originally drew from that observation was that the
revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians
and intellectuals as previously (although having them, and plenty of them,
especially those who can write, is always a good thing). It needed leaders
steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a
few good day-to-day practical leaders, guys like Cannon, like Debs from the old
Socialist Party, like Ruthenberg from the early Communist Party, to lead the
fight for state power.
In
that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the
name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa
Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. He
led the anti-war movement in Germany by refusing to vote for the Kaiser’s war
budgets, found himself in jail as a result, but also had tremendous authority
among the left-wing German workers when that mattered. In contrast the
subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich
Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later
periods I have, as mentioned previously, held up the name James P. Cannon,
founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization
that he was most closely associated with), as a model. Not so Communist Party
leaders like William Z. Foster and Earl Browder (to speak nothing of Gus Hall
from our generation) or Max Shachtman in his later years after he broke with
Cannon and the SWP. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of
the 20th century. Since I have spent a fair amount of time lately going back to
try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or
rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary
intellectuals. I find that position stands in need of some amendment now.
Let’s
be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to
break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working
class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that,
since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era
and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to lead the struggle
to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding
that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency
objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally
associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said,
rather than some tweaking, we are seriously in need of revolutionary
intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.
It
is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to
cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class
movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general
outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating
of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its
globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of
the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in
need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political
organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that
non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national
question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the
Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of
religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated),
special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier
generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this
moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism,
communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To
address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of
revolutionary intellectuals comes from.
Since
the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of
one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in
his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation
struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military
victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this
has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we
have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of
Lenin or Trotsky.
As
a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student
power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike
lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea
that students were the “new” working class or a “new” vanguard was one Ernest
Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to
boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the
focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in
social struggle an idea that goes back to the days of Marx himself.
And
Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of
the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic
theories based on, frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that
same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray (in the service of Fidel at
the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a
codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many
subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist
Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the
imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960s. I could go on with more
examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a
theoretical trough. The late Mandel’s students from the 1960s have long gone on
to academia and the professions (and not an inconsiderable few in governmental
harness-how the righteous have fallen). Debray’s guerilla foci have long ago
buried their dead and gone back to the cities. The “cities” of the world now
including to a great extent China had broken the third world countryside. This,
my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?
“Corrina, Corrina, Gal Where Did You Stay
Last Night?”-With Blues/Folksinger Taj Majal In Mind
2008
1968
By Music Critic Lance Lawrence
CD Review
Shoutin’ in Key, Taj Majal, 2000
Seth Garth the old time music critic
for the now long gone alternative newspaper The
Eye who had followed all the trends in the folk world in the old days once
his friend from high school, Jack Callahan, had turned him on to the genre
after having heard some mountain music coming on from a fugitive radio station
one summer Sunday night still was interested in what was left of that world.
More importantly who was still left still standing from that rough-hewn folk
minute of the early 1960s. An important part of that interest centered on who
still had “it,” who could still sing and not embarrass the stage, from among
those who were still standing.
That was no mere academic question but
had risen quite sharply in the early part of 2002 when Seth, Jack and their
respective wives had attended a Bob Dylan concert up in Augusta Maine and had
come away disappointed, no, more than disappointed, shocked that Dylan had lost
whatever voice he had had and depended increasingly on his backup singers and
musicians. Dylan no longer had it, both agreed that they would have to be
satisfied with listening to the old records, tapes, CDs, and YouTube. That
single shocking event led subsequently to an earnest attempt to attend concerts
and performances of as many of the old-time folkies as they could before they
passed on. They have documented elsewhere some of those others some who have
like Utah Phillips and Dave Van Ronk subsequently passed on but one night
recently, a few months ago now, they were discussing one Taj Majal (stage name for
a folk and blues singer not the famous wonder of the world in India) and how
they had first heard him back in the day since in anticipation of seeing him in
person up at the great concert hall overlooking the harbor at Rockport on the coast
of Massachusetts.
Naturally enough if you knew Seth and
Jack they disagreed on exactly where they had first seen Taj after Jack had
hear him do a cover of the old country blues classic Corrina, Corrina on that fugitive folk program out of Rhode Island,
WAFJ. Seth said the Club 47 over in Harvard Square in Cambridge and Jack said
they had gone underground to the Unicorn over on Boylston Street in Boston
(that literally the club was below ground and you went down via a door in the middle
of the sidewalk). Of course those disputes never got resolved, never got final
resolution. What was not disputed was that they had both been blown away by the
performance of Taj and his small backup band that night. His blues mastery
proved to them that someone from the younger generation was ready to keep the
old time blues tradition alive, including playing the old National Steel guitar
that the likes of Son House and Bukka White created such great blues classic
on. The highlight that night had been The
Sky Is Crying which has been covered by many others since but not equaled.
The track record of old time folkies
had been mixed as one would expect as the shocking Dylan experiences pointed
out. Utah Phillips by the time they got to see him had lost it, David Bromberg
still had it for two examples. The night they were discussing and disputing the
merit of Taj’s case both agreed that he probably had lost it since that
rough-hewn gravelly voice of his had like Dylan’s and Willie Nelson’s taken a
beating with time and many performances. Needless to say they should not have
worried since Taj was smokin’ that night (although they did when old be-hatted
Taj came out and immediately sat down not a good sign for prior experiences
with other old time performers). Played the old Elmore James Television Blues on the National Steel
like he was about twenty years old. Did his old version of Corrina proud and his version of CC Rider as well. Yeah, Taj still had it. But if you don’t believe
a couple of old folkies and don’t get a chance to see him in person out your
way then grab this album Shoutin’ In Key
from the old days and see what they meant when bluesy guys played for keeps.
Got it.
