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The Struggle Continues...Supporter The Military Resisters-Support The G.I. Project
By Frank Jackman
The late Peter Paul Markin had gotten “religion” on the questions of war and peace the hard way. Had before that baptism accepted half-knowingly (his term) against his better judgment induction into the Army when his “friends and neighbors” at his local draft board in North Adamsville called him up for military service back in hard-shell hell-hole Vietnam War days when the country was coming asunder, was bleeding from all pores around 1968. Markin had had some qualms about going into the service not only because the reasoning given by the government and its civilian hangers-on for the tremendous waste of human and material resources had long seemed preposterous but because he had an abstract idea that war was bad, bad for individuals, bad for countries, bad for civilization in the late 20th century. Was a half-assed pacifist if he had though deeply about the question, which he had not.
But everything in his blessed forsaken scatter-shot life pushed and pushed hard against his joining the ranks of the draft resisters whom he would hear about and see every day then as he passed on his truck route which allowed him to pay his way through college the Boston sanctuary for that cohort, the Arlington Street Church. Markin had assumed that since he was not a Quaker, Shaker, Mennonite, Brethren of the Common Life adherent but rather a bloody high-nosed Roman Catholic with their slimy “just war” theory that seemed to justify every American war courtesy of their leading American Cardinal, France Spellman, that he could not qualify for conscientious objector status on that basis. And at the time that he entered the Army that was probably true even if he had attempted to do so. Later, as happened with his friend, Jack Callahan, he could at least made the case based on the common Catholic upbringing. Right then though he was not a total objector to war but only of what he saw in front of him, the unjustness of the Vietnam War.
That was not the least of his situation though. That half-knowingly mentioned above had been overridden by his whole college Joe lifestyle where he was more interested in sex, drink, and rock and roll (the drugs would not come until later), more interested in bedding women than thinking through what he half-knew would be his fate once he graduated from college as the war slowly dragged on and his number was coming up. Moreover there was not one damn thing in his background that would have given pause about his future course. A son of the working-class, really even lower than that the working poor a notch below, there was nobody if he had bothered to seek some support for resistance who would have done so. Certainly not his quiet but proud ex-World War II Marine father, not his mother whose brother was a rising career Army senior NCO, not his older brothers who had signed up as a way to get out of hell-hole North Adamsville, and certainly not his friends from high school half of whom had enlisted and a couple from his street who had been killed in action over there. So no way was an Acre boy with the years of Acre mentality cast like iron in his head about servicing if called going to tip the cart that way toward straight out resistance.
Maybe he should have, at least according to guys he met in college like Brad Fox and Fritz Tylor, or guys who he met on the hitchhike road going west like Josh Breslin and Captain Crunch (his moniker not real name which Josh could not remember). The way they heard the story from Markin after he got out of the Army, after he had done his hell-hole thirteen months in Vietnam as an infantryman, twice wounded, and after he had come back to the “real” world was that on about the third day in basis training down in Fort Jackson in South Carolina he knew that he had made a mistake by accepting induction. But maybe there was some fate-driven reason, maybe as he received training as an infantryman and he and a group of other trainees talked about but did not refuse to take machine-gun training, maybe once he received orders for Vietnam and maybe once he got “in-country” he sensed that something had gone wrong in his short, sweet life but he never attempted to get any help, put in any applications, sought any relief from what was to finally crack him. That, despite tons of barracks anti-war blather on his part from Fort Jackson to Danang.
Here’s the reason though why the late Peter Paul Markin’s story accompanies this information about G.I. rights even for those who nowadays enter the military voluntarily, as voluntarily as any such decision can be without direct governmental coercion. Markin, and this part is from Josh Breslin the guy he was closest to toward the end, the guy who had last seen him in the States before that fateful trip to Mexico, to Sonora when it all fell apart one day, had a very difficult time coming back to what all the returnees called the “real” world after Vietnam service. Had drifted to drug, sex and rock and roll out on the West Coast where Josh had first met him in San Francisco until he tired of that, had started to have some bad nights.
Despite the bad nights though he did have a real talent for writing, for journalism. Got caught up in writing a series about what would be later called the “brothers under the bridge” about guys like him down in Southern California who could not adjust to the real world after ‘Nam and had tried to keep body and soul together by banding together in the arroyos, along the railroad tracks and under the bridges and creating what would today be called a “safe space.”
Markin’s demons though were never far from the surface. Got worse when he sensed that the great wash that had come over the land during the counter-cultural 1960s that he had just caught the tail-end had run its course, had hit ebb tide. Then in the mid-1970s to relieve whatever inner pains were disturbing him he immersed himself in the cocaine culture that was just rearing its head in the States. That addiction would lead him into the drug trade, would eventually lead him as if by the fateful numbers to sunny Mexico, to lovely Sonora way where he met his end. Josh never found out all the details about Markin’s end although a few friends had raised money to send a detective down to investigate. Apparently Markin got mixed up with some local bad boys in the drug trade. Tried to cut corners, or cut into their market. One day he was found in a dusty back street with two slugs in his head. He lies down there in some unknown potter’s field mourned, moaned and missed until this very day.
On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" (1957)-San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for City Lights Bookstore a very important location in the westward expansion of the "beat" generation of the 1950s from New York City.
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis) Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my older brother Alex they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when they acolytes came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands). Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned. Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-Jack Kerouac- On The Road To “On The Road”-“Maggie Cassidy”
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just kicks, stuff, important stuff has happened on some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the men New York streets, mean very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world, called the “beat” generation. Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, dead beat, run out on money, women life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified like saintly and all high holy Catholic like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings. Hell they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well. So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind. These were the creation documents the latter which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life.
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother Alex’s name in to the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh, and a few others still alive recently had me put together tribute book for in connection with the Summer of Love, 1967. Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer seeker who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before (and which nobody in the crowd paid attention to, or dismissed out of hand in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation them but of a very different world.
But above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had caused a big splash in 1957 and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely end. With maybe this difference from today’s young. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly from hunger working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan that was for smooth as silk Frankie to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into, still doesn’t, that genre despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using a term from the times, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital.
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell a working class town very much like North Adamsville and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.
Markin comment: Every year, in October, in Jack Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts a Jack Kerouac Festival is presented to keep his be-bop working class fellaheen memory alive. The link is http://www.lowellcelebrateskerouac.org/lck-2010 Book Review
Maggie Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, Penguin Books, New York , 1993 As I have explained in another entry in this space in reviewing the DVD of “The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg”, recently I have been in a “beat” generation literary frame of mind. I mentioned there, as well, and I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on Jack Kerouac’s lesser work under review here, “Maggie Cassidy”, where the action takes place in his hometown, that it all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space. Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of his better known works dedicated to Lowell’s ‘bad boy’, the “king of the 1950s beat writers”. And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then, “On The Road”, his classic modern physical and literary ‘search’ for the meaning of America for his generation which came of age in post-World War II , readily comes to mind. No so well known is the fact that that famous youthful novel was merely part of a much grander project, an essentially autobiographical exposition by Kerouac in many volumes, starting from his birth in 1922, to chart and vividly describe his relationship to the events, great and small, of his times. The series, of which the book under review, “Maggie Cassidy”, about the trials and tribulations, the inevitable schoolboy quests for love and the “meaning of the universe” of his high school days in Lowell and a little about his prep school days is part, bears the general title “The Legend Of Duluoz”. So that is why we today, in the year of the forty anniversary of Kerouac’s death, are under the sign of “Maggie Cassidy”. I have mentioned in a note to a review of “On The Road” after a recent re-reading of that master work that Kerouac ‘s, not unexpectedly for a novelist of the immediate post- World War II generation, worldview was dominated by what today would be regarded as deeply, if not consciously, sexist impulses. Moreover, the whole “beat” experience of which he was “king” was, with a few exceptions, a man’s trip. All of the books that I have read of his have that flavor. They may be, some of them, great literature but they are certainly men’s books. Also, not unexpectedly, for a shy, sly, French-Canadian (with a little Native American thrown in) working class athletic youth from Lowell, Kerouac’s escapades center in this book on his high school male bonding experiences with his “corner” boys. And being, from all reports and a quick glance at his youthful photographs a handsome man, his exploits with young women. And here enters the sultry Maggie Cassidy, the Irish colleen dream of every heterosexual youth. Although the dramatic tension of this book is not exactly gripping, after all despite some very grand, descriptive narration about Lowell, about the neighborhood, about the beauties of the Merrimack River, and above all, about women, the episodes here clearly fall under the category of high school hi-jinks which have had a long literary exposition. Still, this is a nice little trip down memory lane and I can visualize some of the same streets and same building that he refers in this book from those long ago connections that I mentioned above Note to Jack Kerouac wherever you are: Damn, you should have ‘talked’ to me about Maggie before you got involved. I grew up in a part of a town that while not “Little Dublin” was close enough to bear that title here in America. I knew a million Maggies (and Moe Coles) and I could have warned you that chandelier, lace curtain or shanty, these nice Irish Catholic girls will break your heart, or something else, every time. Now that I think about it though I never listened either. Farewell grand working class fellaheen. Allen Ginsberg, beat generation, beat poets, beatniks, Gregory Corso, Jack Keroauc, Neal Cassady, post- World War II New York, william s.burroughs
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-You’re On The Bus, Or Off The Bus- An Ode To Aging Hippies- Ken Kesey’s “The Further Inquiry”
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for something, maybe the truth, maybe just for kicks, for stuff, important stuff that had happened down in the base of society where nobody in authority was looking or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to its neck in flea-bit hotels, all-night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the “fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat” generation. (Yes, I know that the actual term “beat” was first used by Kerouac writer friend John Clemmon Holmes in an article in some arcane journal but the “feel” had to have come from a less academic source so I will crown the bandit prince Corso as genesis)
Beat, beat of the jazzed up drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what somebody told me, maybe my oldest brother Alex who was washed clean in the Summer of Love, 1967 but must have known the edges of Jack’s time since he was in high school when real beat exploded on the scene in Jack-filled 1957, they called “blowing to the China seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, that high white note he heard achieved one skinny night by famed sax man Sonny Johns, dead beat, run out on money, women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell, let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all Jack’s kid stuff high holy Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the poet princely mean streets of New York, Chi town, Mecca beckoning North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five cents a night flea-bag sleeps (and the fleas were real no time for metaphor down in the bowels where the cowboy junkies drowse in endless sleeps, raggedy winos toothless suck dry the dregs and hipster con men prey on whoever floats down), half stirred left on corner diners’ coffees and groundling cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as well and so very appropriate to mention since there were a million threads, fibers, connections between “beat” and “hippie” despite dour grandpa Jack’s attempts to trash those connection when the acolytes and bandit hangers-on came calling looking for the “word.” So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and Jack’s travel book of a different kind (not found on the AAA, Traveler’s Aid, Youth Hostel brochure circuit if you please although Jack and the crowd, my brother and his crowd later would use such services when up against it in let’s say a place like Winnemucca in the Nevadas or Neola in the heartlands).
Literary stuff for sure but the kind of stuff that moves generations, or I like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation documents the latter of which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down to his career life as a high-road lawyer (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back which has caused more riffs and bad words than I want to yell about here).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then add my brother’s Alex name into the mix that automatically brings up memories of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Frankie, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh (he a separate story from up in Olde Saco, Maine and so only an honorary corner boy after hitching up with the Scribe out on a Russian Hill dope-filled park), Bart, and a few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in connection with that Summer of Love, 1967, their birthright event, just mentioned. Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker, what did Jack call his generation’s such, oh yeah, holy goofs, who got several of them off their asses and out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before 1967 (and which nobody in the crowd paid any attention to, or dismissed out of hand, what they called “could give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers, conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same generation as them but of a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s travel adventure book which had caused a big splash in 1957(after an incredible publishing travail since the story line actually related to events in the late 1940s and which would cause Jack no end of trauma when the kids showed up at his door looking to hitch a ride on the motherlode star, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s and even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part). Made the young, some of them anyway, like I say I think the best part, have to spend some time thinking through the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains, mountain, desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out on the road two years and other guys, other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years upon his return before his untimely and semi-tragic end down some dusty Jack-strewn road in Mexico cocaine deal blues. With maybe this difference from today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and pinkos called it that for fear of being tarred with those brushes. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly “from hunger” working class kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants any way they could as anything else. Down at the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to struggle too much to get even that little bit “from hunger” takes a big toll on your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the James family to go toe to toe with the law back then when the coppers were just waiting for corner boy capers to explode nay Friday or Saturday night, it was a close thing for all us boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley “Scribe” from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan. That was for smooth as silk Frankie now also like Alex a high-road lawyer to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny Bob Dylan above all else.) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road. They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring. So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping almost like Jack wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll in about three weeks. So it was through the Scribe via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.
Book Review
The Further Inquiry, Ken Kesey, Viking Press, New York, 1990 In a recent DVD review of the late Dennis Hopper’s role as a fugitive radical in the 1990 comedy on the subject of the 1960s counter-culture, Flashback, I noted, no I exclaimed, no I shouted out that I was not to blame for this reach back but that the reader should blame it on Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters (including “beatnik” holdover/ bus driver Neal Cassady). Or blame it on a recent re-read of Tom Wolfe’s classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test that pays “homage” to Kesey, his Pranksters, their psychedelically-painted bus "Further", and their various adventures and misadventures. Or, better, blame it on Jack Kerouac and that self-same central character Cassady (as Dean Moriarty) for his On The Road. The same sentiment can serve here in reviewing Ken Kesey’s concept book on the occasion of the 25th anniversary (1989) of the famous coast to coast (West to East, if you can believe that) bus ride/drug trip/self-awareness adventure/madcap escape that Tom Wolfe chronicled in the above-mentioned novel. I used the words "concept book" here in exactly the right sense. Kesey, although having apparently exhausted himself in the literary field after his early successes with One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion still had enough savvy in him to come up with an appropriate way to celebrate his most well-known adventure. The book is set up in the form of a trial transcript. Wait a minute who is on trial at this late date? Ken Kesey, for cooking up the perhaps ill-advised adventure, or on some belatedly-revealed drug charge? No. The WASP West Coast college students out on a romp who formed the core of the Merry Pranksters finally get their comeuppance from the neo-con counter-revolutionaries ? No. Here is the funny part. It’s the bus driver, stupid-Neal Cassady-the refugee from the “beat" generation, and one of the "fathers" of the 1960s cultural uprising. And what is the charge (or charges)? Well, the modern day version of “corrupting the youth.” That makes sense, right? He should have pleaded guilty, very guilty, and be done with it. Along the way on this "bus ride" we get plenty of "contrite" testimony about the evil genie out of the bottle Cassady, heart-rending tales about the spell he put on those “innocent” young people, about his non-stop spiel, and about his fantastic, if just slightly unorthodox, driving habits. We also get plenty of testimony in his defense, as well. And all of this is accompanied by over one hundred photographs from the old “family” album, including many, many photos of the arch-villain Cassady himself. Just a point here though. You should read Wolfe’s book before you try to read this one-this is strictly for aficionados of the “beat” and “hippie” cultural movements. Note: The volatile figure of Neal Cassady was central to Jack Kerouac’s On The Road (as Dean Moriarty, and as Cody Pomeroy in Visions of Cody, a similar exposition). Although Neal is central to this book, a reading of Wolfe’s book places his role in a much more secondary position- something of a highly energetic, fast-talking grand old man of the “beat” generation teaching the youth “the ropes” and passing the “break the mold” bug to a new generation. That seems about right. Kerouac will be remembered as long as youth yearn for the open road, literally or spiritually. Kesey, to a lesser extent, will hold that same position. Neal Cassady will be remembered mainly for being the guy, an important guy, who glued everything together. Finally, off of a reading of Cassady’s “testimony” here, which is somewhat painful to read at this far remove, is more incoherent drug-induced ranting than “hipness”, or wisdom for the ages. A reading of any single page of Kerouac (or Kesey, for that matter) will provide much more insight into that period. Some of the other “testimony” of the other “witnesses” reads rather obtusely as well. But hell, these guys (Kerouac, Kesey, Ginsberg, et al.) went looking for, and got, their authentic "All-American" drugstore cowboy/untutored plebeian philosopher king/jack-of-all trades/ manly sex symbol for the post-World War II world, warts and all. Neal Cassady was his name.
The
Girl With The Gun-Simple Eyes-With Robert Mitchum And Jane Greer’s The Big Steal In Mind
By Zack
James
Duke
Halliday had a funny feeling that he had seen her before, had seen her maybe
one time when he was in Acapulco over by the ocean on other side of Mexico from
where he was now landing in Vera Cruz on the eastern side of this benighted
sweat-filled dusty road bracero country. Yeah she had come up on he from behind
speaking some low-slung Spanish to a bracero that he had pushed aside, pushed
aside hard and she had made her apologies for the whole gringo race to that
besotted bracero and then levelled off and told Duke what was what in proper
schoolteacher or something English. She had not gotten half way through her
schoolmarm berating an errant student when he had had that funny feeling that
while her hair was darker (the result of some man-made potions that as the old
television ad said only her candy man hairdresser would know), she was a little
more shapely and had a couple of small crow’s feet showing around the eyes she
was the spitting imagine of Kathie, Kathie who had tried to kill him, kill him
good as they were heading to Baja California and the good life. Left him on the
side of the road after having just crashed through a police blockade and with
two big slugs in his almost heart leaving him for dead and for taking the fall,
the big step-off fall if it came to that.
That funny
feeling maybe not so funny because when he had seen her the last time she had
already broken his spirit so bad that it would have taken emergency surgery,
maybe more to put the broken pieces back together. The story flashed through
his now fevered brain almost as quickly as it happened. In those days he had
been a private eye, a shamus, and a pretty good one with a partner who maybe
wasn’t so good but who covered his back, mostly. Yeah Duke had been known for
taking no prisoners when he got on a case. Left no untidy pieces and was as
anybody could tell from a quick look at him that he was built for heavy
lifting, could handle himself in a tight corner, and could give and take a few
swift punches. That is what brought him to the attention of Whit Sterling, Whit
the big-time mobster out in Reno. Whit had as most guys, guys including
big-time mobsters a woman problem, had it bad for a piece of fluff named
Kathie. Nothing but a work of art femme fatale and noting but big trouble from
the first day she came out of some ditch in some Podunk looking for the next
best thing with that come hither look of hers and the guys fell right in line.
No heavy lifting for that gal, none. She had for kicks skipped out on Whit with
a chunk of dough, about forty thou, not much today, not much then maybe either
but being a big-time mobster meant no sweet pussy was going to do a dance of
death on him. Not if he expected to stay on top of the totem pole. And so he
hired Duke to find her, bring her back if possible, bring back that fucking
forty thou though even if he had to waste her. That waste her being perhaps necessary
since she carried a very un-ladylike .32 and had used it on some long ago lover
whom she shot dead as a doornail, and walked. Walked when the jury believed
that she had been raped by that guy. Had clipped Whit too when she was in the
process of her escape.
As they
headed out in Whit’s automobile for freedom in the Baja they ran into that
police roadblock which they ramped their way through and Duke sensing he was in
for a rough tumble if he ever crossed Kathie decided that he would turn himself
in. Needless to say Kathie did not like that idea and placed two neat slugs in
what she though was Duke’s heart. Doing this with one hand on the steering wheel
the other on bang-bang trigger while she was driving at high speed to boot. Crazy
gun-simple bitch. The commotion though caused the car to crash and Duke jumped
out trying to get the hell away. Kathie lay with her head over the steering
wheel, maybe dead, maybe alive. That was the last he saw of her, the last time
he had been in trouble over a woman after he squared himself with the coppers
on the Whit and private eye beefs.
Now that he
looked at her a second time Duke could see that although she looked very much
like Kathie, and giving a few pounds and years gone by this was not her,
although she did have that gun simple look in her eyes that he had come to fear
but it may have just been coincidence. As for her, as for Joan, she too had
some sneaking feeling that she had met Duke before, had met him up in Reno one
night when she was feeling frisky after a few drinks, after winning a few bucks
at the gaming tables and feeling like she wanted a man that night had picked a
guy with broad shoulders, big hands that knew where to be put them with a
willing woman, and the ability to fend off any guy whom she didn’t want to deal
with once she gave him her best come hither look. He who called himself Jeff
had been built strictly for one night stands which was fine by her that night
as they hit the sheets without even knowing last names, also that night okay
with her. A second look at this guy said behind those sleepy blue eyes and that
granite chin was long-time serious affairs not one night stands. Still given
what her predicament was just then trying to get a couple of thou back from the
last guy who threw her over for some cheap laughing eyes Spanish whore who
probably would give him a sexually transmitted disease those big shoulders,
those hands and those fighter’s eyes would come in handy in case she ran into
trouble with Jim, Jim Fiske if that was his real name.
Duke looked
her up and down and licked his chops and she took note that he ate her up, a
conquest and she wasn’t even wearing her jasmine something scent that was
guaranteed to get from a guy whatever she wanted from sex to heavy-lifting. So
their dance in a dance began. He asked her if she wanted a drink, she accepted
and they went into Senor somebody’s cantina. They drank for a few hours, talked
the talk and headed to her place (he didn’t have a place since he was just off the
boat) and hit the sheets just the way they both figured when they compared
notes in the morning. Here is the funny part, the part that would glue them
together for the duration. Joan had a photograph of that last guy she had
tangled with, the guy who had run out on her on her bedroom table face down.
When Duke turned the frame over and saw one Jim Fiske he flipped out. Pulled
out his revolver and carefully aimed it at Joan. She in turn turned around and
pulled out her own gun. A draw. That was when upon inquiry Duke found out that
Joan and this Fiske had been lovers. Fiske was the guy who had taken a powder
on her. More importantly to Duke this Fiske had waylaid him when he worked for Wells
Fargo and taken some quarter of a million in cash from the bags strapped to his
wrists. Then Joan told her two bit story. Comparing notes they decided to work
together, after another run under the sheets to seal the deal, seal the deal by
request from Joan on this one (Duke was not sure that he cared for her sexual aggression
but she had little tricks that he liked that usually only whorehouse whores
knew).
They
gathered information that Fiske had hit the highway for Mexico City where he
probably would try to convert the cash he had stolen from Duke which any way
one looked at it was hot as a pistol since one did not usually act so foolishly
as to rob a Wells Fargo armored truck or its employees. So they rented a car
and headed west stopping along the way to give a description of the dapper
Fiske who had the look of a solid gringo and not some stinking bracero. They
had some trouble in a small town, really just a trading post and a cantina,
over cashing a check. That is where Duke started buckling a little once Joan
took out her little snub-nosed gun and forced the proprietor to cash the check.
Duke just stood there with his jaw hanging until she told him to wise up and
that they had better vamoose.
Having been
given a description of Jim’s car they hit a little town and noticed a car
fitting Jim’s description being worked on. They waited around for Jim to show
to pick up the car and a couple of hours later he did show up. With a look of
surprise on his face at seeing Joan he sized Duke up and figured that at best
in a mix he would get the worst of it and so he “cut” them in on the robbery
dough not knowing that Duke was the guy whom he had robbed. They travelled
together uneasily until they hit the outskirts of Mexico where they went up a
private road and entered a big hacienda where Senor Blanco was waiting for Jim
to deliver the hot money to fence. Jim took a cool one hundred thou in the
transfer, and was glad to get it. Duke figured he was a goner, could never work
security again. When the trio got outside though before Jim could say to Joan
for them to move on together without Duke Joan coolly put two slugs between his
eyes. He fell like a tree. Joan just as coolly went over to the fallen Jim and
swooped up the dough. Asked if Duke was up for the road ahead. Not sure just
then that he had not played out this scene already he walked toward her and
took the gun out of her hand. Then took her arm as they walked out into the
sunset but the look on his face said he would spent many sleepless nights
watching over his shoulder for the other shoe to fall. Jesus these gun simple
women would kill him yet.
A View From The Left-Independence For Catalonia-Now!
The national question in Catalonia is on the agenda-here is a view from the left concenring a struggle to get that idea right from the leftist perpective of national slef-determination
The Basque Country and Catalonia
There is a single Basque nation and a single Catalan nation, both of which are divided and oppressed by two capitalist states. The differences in how nationalist sentiments are expressed in the northern and southern provinces of the Basque Country and Catalonia reflect the differences in capitalist development in Spain and France.
In Spain, the Catalans and the republican Basques played a vanguard role in the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s. After its defeat, the influx of tens of thousands of refugees reinvigorated national vitality in the northern part of these nations in France. Under Franco, all languages except Castilian were outlawed, and this was embodied in the slogan “one nation, great and free.” The autonomy statutes enacted by the Republic in 1932 were abolished. The Franco regime carried out harsh and punitive repression against oppressed nations, symbolized by the 1937 carpet bombing of the Basque city of Guernica by the Nazis at Franco’s behest. As a result of this repression, after Franco died in 1975 the struggles of the oppressed nations were mainly expressed along national lines, in contrast to those of the 1930s, when the working classes of these same nations fought directly for power.
The Spanish constitution of 1978 maintained the rule of the Bourbon monarchy in Spain, which was restored by the grace and favor of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. The restoration of the monarchy was essential to stabilize the central Castilian state and retain the oppressed nations within Spain by force. In order to stabilize the Spanish state, Catalonia and the Basque Country—along with other regions—were granted greater autonomy. This contrasts with “glorious” republican France (“the country of the rights of man”), where to this day the oppressed nations have no linguistic or legal rights. Especially in the Basque Country, the population faces as much repression as in Spain. Due to the historical weakness of the Castilian bourgeoisie relative to the Basque and Catalan bourgeoisies, the defeat of the Spanish Revolution and the resulting Franco dictatorship, the motor force of pro-independence movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country comes from the regions forcibly retained within Spain. Thus, the fate of the provinces forcibly retained within France strongly depends on what will happen on the Spanish side of the border. We call for the independence of the Basque Country and Catalonia, in the North and the South. If the Basque or Catalan regions of Spain obtained independence, it is likely that the regions in France would want to join them. If they wanted to remain part of France, we would defend their right to thus exercise their self-determination.
Jan Norden, editor of Workers Vanguard at the time, was centrally responsible for our line in opposition to national liberation struggles in Catalonia and the Basque Country on the Spanish side. For its part, the LTF is centrally responsible for our chauvinist line on the Basque Country and Catalonia on the French side. In the years around Franco’s death, Spain was shaken by significant workers struggles, leading to a social radicalization. While the struggle against national oppression played a central role in these mobilizations, WV, which regularly commented on these events, completely ignored this question. This silence had to be conscious and shows hostility to the fate of nations oppressed by the Spanish state. We launched a vicious polemic in defense of the oppression of Catalonia the first time we commented on this question in 1979.
This conference repudiates the article “Spanish LCR Pays Homage to Catalan Bourgeois Nationalism” (WV No. 233, 8 June 1979). This article is a gross capitulation to Castilian and French chauvinism and is a perversion of Leninism on the national question. We cite a polemic by Lenin against “cultural national autonomy,” and we outrageously use his arguments to oppose regional autonomy and independence, i.e., secession:
“As Leninists have always held, recognizing the right of self-determination is quite distinct from calling for its implementation, i.e., independence. And Spain is one of the most striking examples where communists would struggle doggedly to maintain working-class unity within the framework of the present state.”
This grotesque article is a loyalty oath in defense of the unity of Spain. WV acted as water boys for the bourgeoisie and the monarchy in the struggle against the national liberation of the Catalans and Basques.
The article also asserts that:
“The Basque and Catalan regions, while suffering discrimination (linguistic prohibitions, distribution of state services, repression) at the hand of the Francoist state apparatus, were the most developed regions in the country, containing the core of Spanish industry. Were they to separate, the two largest, best organized, most combative sectors of the proletariat would be subtracted, greatly weakening the workers movement in the rest of Spain and representing a considerable defeat for the European proletarian revolution.” (emphasis in original)
In fact, independence for Catalonia and the Basque Country would have been a step forward for the workers movement in Europe. This is all the more true today, when the breakup of Spain would profoundly destabilize the European Union, a reactionary imperialist bloc.
The problem with the way the LTF has approached the Basque and Catalan questions can be summed up in the following statement by a Basque nationalist: “There is not a Basque problem in France but a French problem in the Pays Basque.... The struggle of the Pays Basque will endure as long as there are Basques” (James E. Jacob, Hills of Conflict: Basque Nationalism in France[Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994]). In 1987, at the same time that the French state was fiercely repressing the Basques, the LTF published an article that mainly attacked their demands for national rights. We wrote: “Indeed, while there is no national question in the French Basque Country, the military siege by [police ministers] Pasqua-Pandraud could well lead to one being created!” (“Gestapo-Style Raid in the Basque Country”). The article continues with a polemic against a “united, socialist Euskadi” and asserts that “self-determination is out of the question for the Basque region.” The forcible assimilation of the Basques in France is presented as a gain of the French Revolution.
These problems were only very partially corrected in 1998, when the LTF recognized the right of self-determination for the Basques in France. The International and the LTF repudiated the former political line, but in a dishonest way that covered up the full scope of the chauvinism of the 1987 article. However, we never reviewed our opposition to independence for the Basque Country nor for any other nation retained in the Hexagon.
When the question of independence for Catalonia was raised in 2014, the LTF decided not to take a position in favor of it. When the recent fight broke out in the International, the LTF did not undertake a review of its approach but instead rushed to produce a draft with a line comparable to the pre-1998 position. In a letter to the LTF, comrade Sacramento asserted:
“Your draft fundamentally equates the nationalism of the oppressed with the nationalism of the oppressors, misquoting Lenin to Salomonically denounce ‘aggressive bourgeois nationalism.’ You chose to emphasize that you are for independence of Basques and Catalans ‘in Spain,’ while somewhere in the next paragraph you barely mention that on the other side of the border we support ‘their right to join an independent Basque Country.’ In this formulation, you don’t mention explicitly their right to secede from France, regardless of what their co-nationals may do on the southern side of the border. And, as always, you found a way to ignore the Catalans in France.”
In 2014, the IEC adopted a line, against initial objections from the LTF, in favor of independence for the Basque Country and Catalonia. This change represented a qualitative improvement in our program. Nevertheless, this was done without making a complete break from the weaknesses of our former methodology: the aspirations of the oppressed for national liberation were still considered to be an obstacle to working-class struggle that we needed to “get off the agenda.” We are for independence—in the here and now—and we consciously fight to lead the struggle for national liberation toward socialist revolution. Our program is for workers republics in Catalonia and in the Basque Country.
To this day, our main argument for independence for the Basque Country and Catalonia has been that this would foster unity with the Castilian working class. In regard to Catalonia, our call for independence was based on an empirical and conjunctural assessment in the context of the 2014 referendum. The Basques and the Catalans have resisted assimilation for hundreds of years, thus expressing their desire to exist as nations. Another weakness in our recent articles is that they fail to explicitly call for the abolition of the monarchy. The fight for independence also means putting an end to this Francoist excrescence. Down with the monarchy!
