In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution- The Cindy Sheehan Blog

In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution- The Cindy Sheehan Blog

http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/

A link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.

Frank Jackman comment:

I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. And of late (2014) a fetish for running for office whatever seems to be worth looking at. This year it was the Governor's race in California. Other years it has been for President and for Congress. That Congressional race made sense because it was against Congresswoman and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who at one time was a darling of the liberals and maybe still is. But electioneering while necessary and maybe useful is not enough. So while her politics and strategy are not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times they do provide enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing.

One though should always remember, despite our political differences, Ms. Sheehan's heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush in 2005 when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize in 2002-2003 after we had million in the streets for a few minutes. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after about fifty other theories did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes us different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

***********

Additional Jackman comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after having “tasted” about fifty other theories which did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power, hell, they/we couldn’t even bring down the milk toast university administrations never mind the armed to the teeth imperial state) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes those of us who proudly claim a leftist mantel different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on. 

In Boston Tuesday November 28th Professor Cornel West And Company On The Black Lives Matters Struggle

In Boston Tuesday November 28th Professor Cornel West And Company On The Black Lives Matters Struggle 

In Boston –The Latest Bash Back Boston-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18th on Boston Common

In Boston –The Latest Bash Back Boston-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18^th on Boston Common   

Frank Jackman comment:

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that we have been for a while in a state of cold civil war in America that has only had fuel to the fire added to it, make it tend toward a hot civil war, by the massive frauds, midnight rip-off actions, and general ignorance promoted by the Trump Administration. This rightly, and I think most thankfully, has gotten the previously moribund left, the bewildered and the oppressed up in arms enough to slowly begin a counter-attack against the night-takers from corrupt and venal right-wing bourgeois politicians like Trump and his ilk to the more dangerous extra-parliamentary forces-call them alt-right, fascist, KKK, etc. that have been unleashed-have been given fresh wind in their sails.

Not everything the left and its allies argue for in counter-attack either makes senses or provides a road forward in the anti-fascist struggle for example RefuseFascism has identified the Trump-Pence regime as fascist and has called for a parliamentary impeachment process to get rid of the bums. This Bash Back Boston seems to be more militant but not quite sure that confrontation in itself without more gets us anyplace. I leave it an open question today. But for now as we sort things out, or as they get sorted for us which is as likely and has actually been the case over the past several months, let’s keep to the united front idea going until further notice. In short Saturday November 18^th in Boston be on the Boston Common to stop the Nazis, fascists and their ilk in their tracks whatever anti-fascist ideas you march under.  

           

In Boston –The Latest From RefuseFascism-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18th on Boston Common

In Boston –The Latest From RefuseFascism-Stop The Fascists In Their Tracks November 18^th on Boston Common   

Frank Jackman comment:

I have mentioned on more than one occasion that we have been for a while in a state of cold civil war in America that has only had fuel to the fire added to it, make it tend toward a hot civil war, by the massive frauds, midnight rip-off actions, and general ignorance promoted by the Trump Administration. This rightly, and I think most thankfully, has gotten the previously moribund left, the bewildered and the oppressed up in arms enough to slowly begin a counter-attack against the night-takers from corrupt and venal right-wing bourgeois politicians like Trump and his ilk to the more dangerous extra-parliamentary forces-call them alt-right, fascist, KKK, etc. that have been unleashed-have been given fresh wind in their sails.

Not everything the left and its allies argue for in counter-attack either makes senses or provides a road forward in the anti-fascist struggle for example this call by RefuseFascism to identify the Trump-Pence regime as fascist and to call for a parliamentary impeachment process to get rid of the bums. But for now as we sort things out, or as they get sorted for us which is as likely and has actually been the case over the past several months, let’s keep to the united front idea going until further notice. In short Saturday November 18^th in Boston be on the Boston Common to stop the Nazis, fascists and their ilk in their tracks whatever anti-fascist ideas you march under.  

Serving Them Off The Arm-Ellen Burstyn And Kris Kristofferson’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) - A Film Review

Serving Them Off The Arm-Ellen Burstyn And Kris Kristofferson’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) - A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, starring Ellen Burstyn, Kristofferson, directed by Martin Scorsese, 1974     

You know some films in this wicked old world appeal to some people and for very different reasons not to others. Take the film under review Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore which I recently saw with my old friend and colleague from American Film Gazette days (when that publication was hard copy and not solely on-line as today) who got me my job here and who still clutters cyberspace as film critic emeritus and his lovely long-time companion Laura Perkins (companionship being the better option after he had had three marriages and three divorces and a parcel of nice kids along the way who nevertheless almost drove him over the edge when those college tuition bills came floating through his door). I won’t speak of my reaction to the film here since it will become apparent throughout the review. Sam did not like the film since he wrote it off as a so-so effort in the eternal Hollywood boy-meets girl formula department where from the minute the two central characters finally meet you know the flames will burn brightly. Laura loved the film mainly for the reason that it was nice to see an older film which dealt with the issue even if in a somewhat funny way of single motherhood AND the inevitable boy-girl subtext. In short this one played out as a “chick flick” as my old friend film critic Anna Devine one time coined to give this kind of genre a label to grab onto.       

I do not believe that anybody involved in the production of this film saw it as a chick flick although it certainly had qualities which would qualify it for that type of film. I believe that the producers were looking to deal in a funny and unobtrusive way with the then emerging social category of single motherhood and it trials and tribulations. Here Alice, played by Ellen Burstyn, is a recently widowed mother living in nowhere Socorro, New Mexico, her late husband’s hometown, with a let us say giving him the benefit of the doubt precocious son whom she loves dearly but who tries her patience more than somewhat. Cash short and dreaming of her own childhood home Monterey out in California and expecting to use her talents as a singer to make ends meet they blow that burg and hit the road. Hit the road to Phoenix first where Alice meets and beds a wild man wife abuser and has to flee. Flee to the next best thing Tucson where short on dough and short on singing possibilities she gets a job serving them off the arm at let’s call it the Last Chance Café.          

Between the snotty and never-ending demands of that what did we call him, oh yes, precocious son and the dead-end waitressing job (now known as wait person or wait staff) in a flea-bitten diner she is at wits end. Enter rancher handsome Johnny David, played by singer-song-writer Kris Kristofferson in his early movie career days, who makes the big play for Alice. But she isn’t buying after that run-in with that crazy wife-beater in Phoenix and she is still intent on hitting the road for Monterey when she gets enough dough together to flee this burg. But the guy grows on her and so that was that. Things went along well for a while until David tried to discipline her son and that threw the whole thing off. Done. Well almost done since David was ready to move heaven and earth to stay with Alice as he made clear in a public mea culpa in the two-bit diner-even to move to Monterey to be with her. (That Laura mentioned was the key turning point of why she loved the film.) On reflection Alice decided that she could sing for her supper anywhere and so they will stay in Tucson after all. Happy ending. 

I watched a couple of episodes of the successful television spin-off of this film, Alice, in setting up this review which was overbearing and trite but I think that I agree with Laura that this Martin Scorsese-directed film has merit as a look at the troubles of raising a child alone. Enough said.    

On Armistice Day- Iraq War Veteran Warrior Writer Douglas Randall- Jihadi Girl- a poem

On Armistice Day- Iraq War Veteran Warrior Writer Douglas Randall- Jihadi Girl- a poem

Frank Jackman comment:

Every war will bring out some writing or other artistic ability not necessarily previously shown by those who had the hard task of fighting wars up close and personal, too personal, in order to make some sense, some fucking sense in GI speak, out of the ordeal. World War II to name one such war had three outstanding writers tell what they saw and felt-James Jones of From Here To Eternity fame, Norman Mailer of The Naked And The Dead fame and William Styron of Sophie’s Choice (I know, I know, J. D. Salinger was a soldier-writer when he penned Catcher In The Rye but I am talking war story stuff not young guys coming of age stuff just now). My Vietnam War generation had Phil Caputo and Tim Neal among others. And so on through the litany of endless wars since those halcyon 1940s days. Iraq/Afghanistan is just starting to produce writing from guys and gals (the latter only on the margins of previous wars) who have had time to think about what they went through. Douglas Randall is one of the new faces on the scene from the recent series of endless wars.     

************

On Armistice Day- Iraq War Veteran Warrior Writer Douglas Randall- Jihadi Girl- a poem

Frank Jackman comment:

Every war will bring out some writing or other artistic ability not necessarily previously shown by those who had the hard task of fighting wars up close and personal, too personal, in order to make some sense, some fucking sense in GI speak, out of the ordeal. World War II to name one such war had three outstanding writers tell what they saw and felt-James Jones of From Here To Eternity fame, Norman Mailer of The Naked And The Dead fame and William Styron of Sophie’s Choice (I know, I know, J. D. Salinger was a soldier-writer when he penned Catcher In The Rye but I am talking war story stuff not young guys coming of age stuff just now). My Vietnam War generation had Phil Caputo and Tim Neal among others. And so on through the litany of endless wars since those halcyon 1940s days. Iraq/Afghanistan is just starting to produce writing from guys and gals (the latter only on the margins of previous wars) who have had time to think about what they went through. Douglas Randall is one of the new faces on the scene from the recent series of endless wars.     

I am a Muslim informant for the U.S. Government.  My boyfriend, Paul, is a colonel in the U.S. Army.  Jihadi terrorists abduct me and make me their hostage.  They take me to the desert.  Of course the U.S. won’t pay my ransom. Why should they?

My desert prince places my fingers on the blade of his knife. He’s gentle. The knife leaves a slash mark on my fingers, but no blood. His friend video records my prince and me in the desert. Do I want to say anything?  “Paul,” I murmur, my American boyfriend’s name.

My prince draws the blade slowly across my throat. It is so sharp, I don’t feel anything but the tickle of blood as it seeps from the slash across my throat. I look wildly across the desert. The video camera’s red light pulses erotically. Prince grips my hair strongly pulling my head up as his blade continues its journey.  Up higher he pulls. The blade seems to circle my neck. Suddenly there’s a popping sound and I watch my body tumble to the sand. I’ve never seen my body from that angle before. I’m laughing uncontrollably. I’ve always enjoyed laughing, but now I run out of breath unable to inhale, my facial muscles frozen in a curious smile. I want to wave my arms, but they’re tied to my body sprawled in the sand. There was a movie, “Blood and Sand,” with Tyrone Power as a bull fighter. I remember him delivering the coup de grace to a dying bull. He was so handsome. My torso paints the desert red, the shifting sands cover all traces of human contact. I feel sad. A bold prince rides across the desert on a camel. Lawrence of Arabia. He’s come to save me. From what? I’m not in pain. Arabs loved Lawrence. He came to save them too. Behind Lawrence came a smiling Britannia.  France was smiling too…and far in the distance the United States.  Only Lawrence wasn’t smiling.

They came to carve up my Arabia….Sykes-Picot – PARTITION southern Iraq, northern Iraq, Jordan, Turkey – pain…..League of Nations – PARTITION Syria – pain…..Balfour Agreement – PARTITION Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq  – pain….Great Britain, France, Faisal and in the far distance America are laughing….Jihadi prince -  PARTITION my head from my body….so slowly I thought I would die. Three seconds is a long time. Blackout.

                                        end

**I Hear That Whistle When She Blows-Creation Of A Unitary Continental United States-State- The Building Of The Transcontinental Railroad

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the (First) Transcontinental Railroad discussed below.

Book Review

Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, Stephen E. Ambrose, Touchstone Books, New York, 2000

I have spend a great amount of time, and I believe rightly so, in drawing out the lessons of the struggle against slavery as they were played out as the great task of the American Civil War of the mid-19th century. I have mentioned, generally in passing, that the other great task of that fight was the preservation (and extension) of a continental nation-state by the victory of the Union forces. As Karl Marx did, steeped as he was in the traditions of historical materialism, I too saw the creation of a unitary capitalist state at that time as a historically progressive outcome. That said, it is one thing to be in favor of such an outcome, another to see how, in the specific circumstances of the vast North American land mass, that state was to be unified. The subject of this book, the struggle to create a transcontinental railroad, goes a long way to understanding how that task was accomplished, not only as a marvelous engineering feat but as a spur to a more systematic capitalist mode of mass production.

As the author the late Stephen Ambrose, previously known more for his historical works chronicling the war leaders and dog soldiers of his generation, the generation of my parents, the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and fought World War II, has noted this Herculean task was done using the most basic pre-capitalist methods, simple tools and man power, lots of man power. When completed in a few years time , as he also noted, the United States looked, or rather would look shortly thereafter light years different that the simple agrarian society projected by the founders of the country. Today, in our digital age, we are probably closer to those who created the transcontinental railroad society that they were to the hundred of generations before them who walked or used horses to do their traveling.

Of course, this railroad story is a rather good cautionary tale about the virtues and vices of capitalism, capitalists and the onset of the “Gilded Age” that the railroads, their financing and their political clout would speed up. This then is not a laconic tale of hoboes jungled up along some railroad right of way or “riding the blinds” or taking to the road in search of adventure as Kerouac's “beat” generation did. This is a tale of dreams, plans, power, greed, more greed, hard work, hard living, hard drinking and hard dying. Ambrose lays it out in a very compelling and easy to read way, although a minor fault is a too frequent repetition of the facts in one chapter being used again in another in order to bulk up a narrative with a pretty straightforward theme.

As to the dreams, that was the easy part and affected everyone in pre-Civil War America from the old railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln to such well-known speculators and Gilded Age figures as Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Coliss Huntington. As to the plan- private enterprise (backed by the government) was the order of the day and the route, finally established after much political dickering, through the center of the country with two competing lines-the Central Pacific (now part of today’s Southern Pacific –the sight of which when I travel in the West still makes me nostalgic) and the aptly-named Union Pacific.

As to the massive engineering task forgotten names like Ted Judah and the Civil War general, Grenville Dodge. drove the thing forward, through thick and thin. As to the hard work, mainly done by my Irish forbears on the UP side and the Chinese (with important help from the Mormons in Utah) on the CP side, as detailed by Ambrose represents the first inkling of what industrial mass production would look like later. Needless to say the heroes of this story who left no diaries or other writings are those workers who toiled endlessly and effectively to completion. I do have one question, just to be contrary as usual. Why was this project not done as a national task by the central government? As we know the later tales of railroad finacing after 1869, like the Credit Mobilier scandal, not covered in the book, made some of today’s financial shenanigans look tame by comparison. Why were the rails only nationalized, if at all, after those private railroads went belly-up with the advent of mass production automobiles and super highways ( of which one, I-80, follows the basic CP-UP route from Omaha) in the late 20th century?

IMAGINE! An Evening of Encouragement.Inspiration.Radical Imagination

VFP Smedley via smedleyvfpforum

12:52 PM

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This is an event we are Co sponsoring with Boston Black lives Matter.  Please show your support by following the link below and purchasing tickets ASAP.  This will allow Black Lives Matters Boston to notify their speakers that the immmediate response to this event has been robust.  Please Forward to people and groups you know.

Thank you,

Dan Luker

Coordinator

From Karlene Giffith Sekou today.  Boston Black Lives Matter

Hi Dan,

Good Morning!

Hope you are well. 

Checking in and sending along some key info for our BLM fundraiser event IMAGINE!:

Our great need and HUGE Campaign is to sell out this event! We want people to come AND ,if they can, sponsor a ticket! Even if they cannot come, our ask, especially of Sponsors, is to ask your folks and networks to support BLM Boston with this end of year giving of $35.00 for a ticket or two (certainly more if they can). Please note people who cannot afford a ticket will be not denied entrance to this event due to lack of funds.

If folks want to purchase a ticket by check, please make payable to: “One Square World”

They can give checks to you/your organization or mail to:

Karlene Griffiths Sekou

955 Massachusetts Avenue #175

Cambridge, MA 02139

so thrilled and grateful!

Thank you

Karlene 

Link for tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/imagine-an-evening-of-encouragementinspirationradical-imagination-tickets-39679715096?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-source=strongmail&utm-term=listing

IMAGINE! An Evening of Encouragement.Inspiration.Radical Imagination

by Black Lives Matter Boston, Union United Methodist Church, The Dignity Project

We have been working. We have been organizing. We have been marching. We have been resisting. We have been fighting back! Now let us come together for a time of refreshing, an evening of soulful, intimate conversation. Encouragement. Inspiration. Radical Imagination! We need it...

Ticketed Event: $35.00 (additional donation to sponsor another attendee). No one turned away due to funds.

Doors open at 6:30

Email:m4blmboston@gmail.com for more info

DATE AND TIME

Tue, November 28, 2017

7:00 PM – 9:30 PM EST

LOCATION

Union Church

485 Columbus Avenue

Boston, MA 02118

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In Boston-Black Lives Matter Stand-Out

BLM Ashmont stand out

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Last DPP and Smedley BLM stand out this year.

Ashmont  T Station  5:30 to 6:30   Thursday November 16th

    

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Reality needs to know you're out here-Free Reality Leigh Winner Now!

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The support Reality needs most right now Reality Winner’s defense team plans to file an appeal of the ruling in her recent bail hearing, but for the time being, Reality is unjustly behind bars. That’s despite having no criminal record and a spotless record of service in the Air Force, and despite the government’s total lack of material evidence that she poses any kind of threat. To justify keeping her in jail, the government is trying to turn Reality into a larger-than-life symbol, a vague but terrifying “threat to America” that must be locked up and contained, due process be damned. We’ve written before about Reality’s courage and patriotism, but it’s equally important to remember that Reality is just a regular person, like any of us, who is facing extremely difficult and scary circumstances. The government is singling her out for an incredibly harsh and disproportionate prosecution. But beside that, Reality faces the everyday indignities of life behind bars in America’s sprawling prison-industrial complex. Reality and her fellow inmates have had their medical and dietary needs ignored. They’ve been denied necessary medication, medical treatment, and time outdoors. They’ve had visits arbitrarily cut short or denied. And these are not unique or even uncommon complaints about treatment in any jail or prison. Take a moment to imagine if this was happening to your daughter, or your sister, or your close friend. Beyond support for her cause, Reality needs our support as a human being. Let Reality know she's not alone Reality’s family and friends say her biggest need right now is to hear from her supporters. “My sister is being held in a county jail that does not provide her with adequate nutrition or outside time,” Reality’s sister Britty said. “Reality needs to know that she has friends thinking about her and writing to her.” It takes regular people committing extraordinary acts of bravery to fight back against a government determined to keep its citizens in the dark. When people decide to put it all on the line, and then face the consequences, they need to know that somebody will be there to have their back. Can you write Reality a postcard this week? You can find her at this address: Reality L Winner Lincolnton County Jail PO Box 970 Lincolnton GA 30817 Keep in mind that all correspondence is reviewed by jail staff. If you’re able, please donate to Reality’s legal defense fund. She’s committed to proving her innocence in court, and it’s going to be a long haul. Help make sure Reality and her defense team have the resources to go the distance.

STAND WITH REALITY WINNER ~ PATRIOT & ALLEGED WHISTLEBLOWERc/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610 ~ 510-488-3559 standwithreality.org ~ facebook.com/standwithreality

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In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution-Understanding The British Leftist Blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

In Defense Of The Russian October Revolution-Understanding The British Leftist Blog-Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

Click below to link to the Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism blog  

http://histomatist.blogspot.com/

Frank Jackman comment:

While from the tenor of the articles, leftist authors featured, and other items promoted it is not clear to me that this British-centered blog is faithful to any sense of historical materialism that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky would recognize I am always more than willing to "steal" material from the site. Or investigate leads provided there for material of interest to the radical public-whatever that seemingly dwindling public in need of timely re-enforcements make be looking which lately now that we are deep into an age of serious night-takers, not that they were not there before, had been for the last forty plus years ever since they came hell-bent from out of paradise’s lost battles to raise hell on earth with what amounted to mostly gentle angry people seem to be coming out of the woodwork in the seemingly end tiems days we are be muscled through.

Of late the site of necessity had taken to publicizing more activist events particularly around the struggle to defend the Palestinian people in Gaza against the Zionist onslaught, the endless and unfathomable civil war in Syria, the slaughter Saudi is imposing on Yemen and a thousand other brush-fire wars civil, and uncivil. That is to be commended. However, in the main, this site continues to promote the endless conferences on socialism, Marxism, and Trotskyism that apparently are catnip to those on the left in Britain all the while touting the latest mythical "left" labor leader who is willing to speak anywhere to the left of the Genghis Klan (although I hesitate to involve his name as barbarian since he too has his defenders who argue that cleaning out cesspool of Asia and heading west had a progressive character-you have to love the intellectuals of the academy for this kind of “defense” is like catnip to them. I continue to stand willing with the original comment above about "stealing" material from the site though.      

No question since the demise of the Soviet Union as a flawed but vital counter-weight to world imperialism and the rise of the basically one-superpower world socialism, communism as poles of attraction except in spots (like South Africa or Greece and the edges of other places in Europe) to the working and oppressed masses of the world has taken a serious hit. Have become seen something of “utopian” schemes by labor militants in the world despite the desperate situations today in many parts of the world, including America and Great Britain, Great Britain in the equivocal age of Brexit, which cry out to high heaven for socialist solutions.

As the weight of that demise has set in there has been a corresponding demise in the level of programmatic and theoretical understandings by those who still espouse the cause. The events and works by socialist commentators emphasized by this Histomat blog amply demonstrates the proposition that in the post- Soviet period (if not before) there has been a dramatic tendency to throw out all the experiences since the Russian Revolution of 1917 and try to begin anew as if that event never occurred. Unfortunately meaning generally to go back to pre-World War I theories of revolutionary organization (and in some cases to forgo the necessity of revolution at all as if capitalism were now the highest permanent condition of humankind). The main organizational form to face the scrap heap is Lenin’s theory, a theory many times honored more in the breech than in the observance, of the “vanguard party” of conscious revolutionary intellectuals and advanced workers working as full-time professionals as revolutionaries.           

The clearest example of this is the revival of certain pre-World War I (a war to sever all pre-war illusions for those who could see right in front of themselves) theorists like the “Pope of Marxism,” Karl Kautsky, although interestingly not back to Marx and Engels of the post-1848 period when they argued for something very much like Lenin’s concept in the wake of the defeats of the working class and it allies in the 1848 struggles. A main organizational concept of Kautsky’s German Social-Democratic of which he was a leading theorist was the “party of the whole class,” a concept which denied, or muted the differences in the working class movement in the interest of numbers (numbers of votes in parliamentary elections really) that would somehow be worked out in the course of the revolution. Well life itself, with many, many examples, had shown how worthless that type of organization was when the deal went down. When a revolutionary situation popped up as recently in Greece for example. There are, granted, many new concepts necessary in the 21^st century to reach the masses in order to revive the socialist message with the new technology, the new urgency, and the new allies necessary to fight for socialism but the threadbare theory of the “party of the whole class” is not one of them.        

Additional Jackman comment:

I place some material in this space which I believe may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. One of the worst aspects of the old New Left back in the 1970s as many turned to Marxism after having “tasted” about fifty other theories which did not work out (mainly centered on some student-based movements that were somehow to bring down the beast without a struggle for state power, hell, they/we couldn’t even bring down the milk toast university administrations never mind the armed to the teeth imperial state) was replicating the worst of the old Old Left and freezing out political debate with other opponents on the Left to try to clarify the pressing issues of the day. That freezing out , more times than I care to mention including my own behavior a few times, included physical exclusion and intimidation. I have since come to believe that the fight around programs and politics is what makes those of us who proudly claim a leftist mantel different, and more interesting. The mix of ideas, personalities and programs, will sort themselves out in the furnace of the revolution as they have done in the past. 

Off-hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these various blogs and other networking media. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read on.