This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –George Braques
By Seth Garth
A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.
Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios.
I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.
All The Liquor In Costa Ricah-With The Max Daddy Blues Guitarist Taj Majal In Mind
By Zack James
Seth Garth the old time music critic for the now long gone alternative newspaper The Eye who had followed all the trends in the folk world in the old days once his friend from high school, Jack Callahan, had turned him on to the genre after having heard some mountain music coming on high via the airwaves from a fugitive radio station one summer Sunday night still was interested in what was left of that world. More importantly who was still left still standing from that rough-hewn folk minute of the early 1960s. An important part of that interest centered on who still “had it” from among those who were still standing.
That was no mere academic question but had risen quite sharply in the early part of 2002 when Seth, Jack and their then respective wives had attended a Bob Dylan concert up in Augusta Maine and had come away disappointed, no, more than disappointed, shocked that Dylan had lost whatever voice he had had and depended increasingly on his backup singers and musicians. Dylan no longer “had it.” Both agreed that they would have to be satisfied with listening to the old records, tapes, CDs, and YouTube on sullen nights when they wanted to hear what it was like when men and women played folk music, protest and meaningful existence folk music, for keeps.
That single shocking event led subsequently to an earnest attempt to attend concerts and performances of as many of the old-time folkies as they could find helter-skelter before they passed on. The pair have documented elsewhere some of those others some who have like Utah Phillips and Dave Van Ronk have subsequently passed on. But one night recently, a few months ago now, they were discussing one Taj Majal (stage name not the famous wonder of the world mansion, building, shrine, mausoleum whatever it is in India) and how they had first heard him back in the day in anticipation of seeing him in person up at the great concert hall overlooking the harbor at Rockport.
Naturally enough if you knew Seth and Jack they disagreed on exactly where they had first seen him after Jack had hear him do a cover of the old country blues classic Corrina, Corrina on that fugitive folk program out of Rhode Island, WAFJ. Seth said it was the Club 47 over in Harvard Square in Cambridge and Jack said they had gone underground to the Unicorn over on Boylston Street in Boston. Of course those disputes never got resolved, never got final resolution. What was not disputed was that they had both been blown away by the performance of Taj and his small backup band that night. His blues mastery proved to them that someone from the younger generation was ready to keep the old time blues tradition alive, including playing the old National Steel guitar that the likes of Son House and Bukka White created such great blues classics on. The highlight that night had been The Sky Is Crying which has been covered by many others since but not equaled.
The track record of old time folkies had been mixed as one would expect as the shocking Dylan experiences pointed out. Utah Phillips by the time they got to see him at the Club Passim in Cambridge had lost it, David Bromberg still had it for two examples. The night they were discussing and disputing the merit of Taj’s case both agreed that he probably had lost it since that rough-hewn gravelly voice of his had like Dylan’s and Willie Nelson’s taken a beating with time and many performances. Needless to say they should not have worried (although they did when old be-hatted Taj came out and immediately sat down not a good sign for prior experiences with other old time performers) since Taj was smokin’ that night. Played the old Elmore James Television Blues on the National Steel like he was about twenty years old. Did his old version of Corrina proud and his version of CC Rider as well. Yeah, Taj still had it. But if you don’t believe a couple of old folkies and don’t get a chance to see him in person out your way then grab this album Shoutin’ In Key from the old days and see what they meant. Got it.
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth –
By Seth Garth
A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100th anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.
Poets’ Corner-In The Aftermath Of World War I- Poets Take A Stab At Visually Understanding A Broken World After the Bloodbath
By Lenny Lynch
I don’t know that much about the Dada movement that swept through Europe in the early part of the 20th century in response to the creation of modern industrial society that was going full steam and the modern industrial scale death and destruction such mass scale techniques brought upon this good green earth by World War I. (Foreshadowed it is agreed by the industrial carnage at places like Cold Harbor in the American Civil War, the butchery of the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent river of blood by its own rulers of the Paris Commune and the Boer War.) The war to end all wars which came up quite short of that goal but did decimate the flower of the European youth, including vast swaths of the working class. Such massive blood-lettings for a precious few inches of soil like at the Battle of the Somme took humankind back more than a few steps when the nightmare ended-for a while with the Armistice on November 11, 1918. An event which in observing its centennial every serious artist should consider putting to the paint. And every military veteran to take heart including the descendants of those artists who laid down their heads in those muddy wretched trenches. Should reclaim the idea behind Armistice Day from the militarists who could learn no lessons except up the kill and fields of fire ratios.
I don’t know much but this space over this centennial year of the last year of the bloody war, the armistice year 1918 which stopped the bloodletting will explore that interesting art movement which reflected the times, the bloody times. First up to step up George Groz, step up and show your stuff, show how you see the blood-lusted world after four years of burning up the fields of sweet earth Europe making acres of white-crossed places where the sullen, jaded, mocked, buried youth of Europe caught shells and breezes. Take one look Republican Automatons. Look at the urban environment, look at those tall buildings dwarfing mere mortal man and woman, taking the measure of all, making them think, the thinking ones about having to run, run hard away from what they had built, about fear fretting that to continue would bury men and women without names, without honor either.
Look too at honor denied, look at the handless hand, the legless leg, the good German flag, the Kaiser’s bloody medal, hard against the urban sky. The shaky republic, the republic without honor, shades of the murders of the honest revolutionary Liebknecht walking across Potsdam Plaza to go say no, no to the war budget and grab a hallowed cell the only place for a man of the people in those hard times and gallant Luxemburg, the rose of the revolution, mixed in with thoughts of renegade burned out soldiers ready for anything. Weimar, weak-kneed and bleeding,would shake and one George Groz would know that, would draw this picture that would tell the real story of why there was a Dada-da-da-da-da movement to chronicle the times if not to fight on the barricades against that beast from which we had to run.
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Richard and Mimi Farina performing on Pete Seegers' "Rainbow Quest".
CD Review
Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001
Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:
Disc Three: Phil Ochs on “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”, Richard &Mimi Farina on “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, John Hammond on “Drop Down Mama”, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band on “Rag Mama”, John Denver on “Bells Of Rhymney”, Gordon Lightfoot on "Early Morning Rain”, Eric Andersen on “Thirsty Boots”, Tim Hardin on “Reason To Believe”, Richie Havens on “Just Like A Woman”, Judy Collins on “Suzanne”, Tim Buckley on “Once I Was”, Tom Rush on “The Circle Game”, Taj Mahal on “Candy Man”, Loudon Wainwright III on “School Days”and Arlo Guthrie on “The Motorcycle Song”
Richard &Mimi Farina on “Pack Up Your Sorrows”. Okay, if you have gotten tired (as I sometimes have in all truth) of my going on and on about “the king”, Bob Dylan, and “the queen”, Joan Baez of the old folk revival of the 1960s then try this pair on for an alternative. Joan’s late sister, Mimi, and Bob’s greatest writing competitor before his early motorcycle death in 1966. Mimi’s mountain harp and their nice harmonies on work that he wrote still sound good. This one, by the way, is definitely in the modern American folk songbook. That, my friends, says it all. Richard’s “Birmingham Sunday” is a classic of topical political songwriting. Powerful stuff.
"Birmingham Sunday"
Come round by my side and I'll sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.
That cold autumn morning no eyes saw the sun,
And Addie Mae Collins, her number was one.
At an old Baptist church there was no need to run.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom,
The clouds they were grey and the autumn winds blew,
And Denise McNair brought the number to two.
The falcon of death was a creature they knew,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom,
The church it was crowded, but no one could see
That Cynthia Wesley's dark number was three.
Her prayers and her feelings would shame you and me.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.
Young Carol Robertson entered the door
And the number her killers had given was four.
She asked for a blessing but asked for no more,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.
On Birmingham Sunday a noise shook the ground.
And people all over the earth turned around.
For no one recalled a more cowardly sound.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.
The men in the forest they once asked of me,
How many black berries grew in the Blue Sea.
And I asked them right with a tear in my eye.
How many dark ships in the forest?
The Sunday has come and the Sunday has gone.
And I can't do much more than to sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
And the choirs keep singing of Freedom.
Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon
By Seth Garth
I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.
Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)
In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.
The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.
I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.
For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.
So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.
Click on title to link to Victor Serge's Internet Archives. Serge was an important addition to the international communist movement coming over from the pre-World War I anarchist movement. His political fate at the end is murky, to say the least. What is not murky is his defense of the non-revolutionary actions of Andreas Nin and the POUM in Spain in the course of the revolution there in the 1930's. More later.
BOOK REVIEW
HOMAGE TO A FALLEN REVOLUTIONARY
As far as I know Victor Serge’s biography of Leon Trotsky was the first comprehensive evaluation from a left-wing perspective of the Bolshevik leader’s life and work after his death. From that perspective it is valuable for two reasons. Serge himself was a secondary Communist leader after the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 and witnessed many of the events described in the book. Moreover, for a long period of time he was a member of the Trotsky-led Left Opposition to the rise of Stalinism that formed in the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International in the 1920’s.
Additionally, Serge wrote this book in collaboration with Trotsky’s widow, Natalia Sedova who provides many of the personal insights into Trotsky’s life, work and behavior that round out Serge’s historical narrative. This is a task she also performed in Trotsky’s memoir My Life and there is some overlap of the material used. Most importantly this biography fills out the last ten years of Trotsky’s life not covered in his memoir. If a reader wants a rewarding insider’s view of the whirlwind of Trotsky’s life from prophetic rise to leadership to subsequent fall and isolation for his steadfast beliefs I would recommend reading both books.
The main task Serge sets himself here is to place the dramatic and ultimately fateful events of Trotsky’s life in the content of his role in the peaks and valleys of the Russian revolutionary movement from the turn of the 20th century until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940. Those included his leadership of the defeated Revolution of 1905, his internationalist fight against World War I, his organizing the October Revolution, his creation of the Red Army in the Civil War against the Whites, his various positions as a Soviet official, the defeat of the Trotsky-led Left Opposition by Stalin and his henchmen and his failure to create a viable leftwing alternate to Stalinist rule in while in exile. Just to summarize these highlights of his career indicates that we are dealing with a very big task and a very big historical figure. Although Serge had broken politically with Trotsky several years before this biography was written he senses this and mainly lets Trotsky’s accomplishments and mistakes speak for themselves.
As I noted in my review of Trotsky’s My Life (see March 2006 archives) many of the events depicted in this biography such as the seemingly arcane disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the very real attempts of the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks by force of arms in the Civil War after the Bolshevik seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International in the 1920’s discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can take the measure of the man from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds. As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, theorist, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky was one of the most feared men of the early 20th century to friend and foe alike. Today, the natural audience for the book, especially those trying to find a way out of the impasse that the international labor movement as the victim of a one-sided class war finds itself in, needs to critically assess Trotsky’s life and times. This book will help.
********************
Victor Serge 1936
Letter to Leon Trotsky--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excuse me for not yet having responded to your letter of July 30. I've twice started to and had to stop. I'm overwhelmed with work and don’t know what is what.
And given the fact that despite it all there are no essential disagreements between us (our appreciation of the personal qualities and work capacities of the comrades of RP[1] can’t be considered essential) we can put these subjects off for later. It’s not you that I accuse of sectarianism, but our entire movement. Alas, I think I can prove this very convincingly. But work now permits us to escape from sectarianism! What a shame and even how disgusting it is to see how much paper is blackened concerning the personal chicanery of Molinier, when we haven’t found the means to publish even one pamphlet on our comrades thrown into Stalinist prisons! What! Hundreds of French proletarian comrades know of the disputes about Molinier, but they don’t know the names of Iakovin and Pankratov! This is truly monstrous. But the rising wave of the revolutionary movement will sweep away these monstrosities. Right now something very comforting is occurring. Everyone is rushing to Spain. I just received a desperate letter from Ver[eeken]: all his young people are leaving, they're all en route! He asks that I intervene so that some remain here. I'll try. In Paris it’s the same thing. Two Italian comrades from Marseilles were killed near Saragossa. (And it is again impossible to work; what a filthy article La Lutte Ouvrière dedicated to them.) Rosmer has left. And among the Socialists close to us Collinet. Louzon, too. Anarchists from all over are going there en masse.
It was only after long conversations that I was able to hold back my son (sixteen, he’s quite young). I sent a proposal to the International Secretariat on the subject of the anarchists and the syndicalists. We must ward off the serious conflict which those Spanish Stalinist canaille are mixed up in. Here’s the declaration Hernandez [2] made to the press: “This revolution will be a bourgeois revolution. In no way will it be a social revolution (sic). We'll manage to have done with the anarchists.” (sic, newspaper of August 8). In Barcelona the anarchists killed the Socialist bureaucrat Trillas. Among them those who say: “We're not going to let the Stalinists do whatever they want, we'll kill them first,” are very strong. It’s possible that a civil war will break out in the proletarian ranks! The Spanish anarchists are uncontestably in the majority in Catalonia, an industrial region of decisive importance. Here is the line I propose to choose and the appeal I propose to make:
1. We revolutionary Marxists, considering the reinforcement of the revolution’s rear indispensable, proclaim that the dictatorship of the proletariat must and will mean true freedom for the workers. We will fight along with you in order to assure the freedom of thought and tendencies within the revolution, and solemnly vow to do everything to ensure that no bureaucrat of any color transforms the revolution into a prison of the Stalinist type for the workers.
2. We are partisans of total democracy, and at the same time of total discipline in combat and in production.
3. We consider you anarchists and syndicalists class brothers and devoted revolutionaries and propose to you the maximum collaboration, and at the same time implacable criticism and an ideological struggle in a fraternal atmosphere.
In the name of the IVth International we are the only ones able to speak in this way to the anarchists and the syndicalists. Neither the Socialists like Caballero nor the Stalinists can act in this way. In this we have an immense superiority, which could play a salutary role.
Our press must adopt this line. (The anarchist Ascaso met an exemplary death. Why was our press silent on this! I tried to the best of my ability to repair this error.)
Your last letter leads me to believe that you didn’t receive one of my letters, written by hand in Russian, in which I announced to you that my Soviet citizenship (as well as that of my family) was taken from me, which for the moment prevents me from going to Paris. It would be quite “strange” if this letter were to not reach you. Keep me up to date on this.
I'll go to Paris when I receive the papers allowing me to move around. And I'll come to see you without delay. I'll write you expressly on this subject.
In connection with the events in Spain I proposed to the comrades that they energetically launch the slogan of worker’s control of the army:
1. As a propaganda slogan instituting the duality of powers in the heat of events;
2. And most of all as a propaganda slogan which will permit the unmasking of the adversary and will have the following practical application: every worker will consider himself in the army as a representative of worker’s control and demonstrate a maximum amount of vigilance.
The editor wants me to send him the translation[3] little by little. (I'm pleased by the completely novel way with which you pose the problem of the state. This is a great contribution on the theoretical plain.) I'll wait for your remarks before sending my first batch to the editor.
I strongly and cordially shake your hands, you and N.I.[4]
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Phil Ochs performing the classic anti-war song "I Ain't Marching Anymore".
CD Review
Washington Square Memoirs: The Great Urban Folk Revival Boom, 1950-1970, various artists, 3CD set, Rhino Records, 2001
Except for the reference to the origins of the talent brought to the city the same comments apply for this CD. Rather than repeat information that is readily available in the booklet and on the discs I’ll finish up here with some recommendations of songs that I believe that you should be sure to listen to:
Disc Three: Phil Ochs on “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”, Richard &Mimi Farina on “Pack Up Your Sorrows”, John Hammond on “Drop Down Mama”, Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band on “Rag Mama”, John Denver on “Bells Of Rhymney”, Gordon Lightfoot on "Early Morning Rain”, Eric Andersen on “Thirsty Boots”, Tim Hardin on “Reason To Believe”, Richie Havens on “Just Like A Woman”, Judy Collins on “Suzanne”, Tim Buckley on “Once I Was”, Tom Rush on “The Circle Game”, Taj Mahal on “Candy Man”, Loudon Wainwright III on “School Days”and Arlo Guthrie on “The Motorcycle Song”
Phil Ochs on “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”. Phil Ochs wrote the very politic songs that Bob Dylan either ceded to him or that he did not want to write as he went his own way in the musical world. Phil got the notion that some things desperately needed fixing (and still do) and he was the guy to write about them. Except a bad, a very bad thing happened to Brother Ochs. His generation, our generation of ’68, got cold feet when the deal went down and abandoned the struggle to “seek a newer world”. For a political songwriter that is the kiss of death and no more needs to be said. Someday, Brother, we will not be marching anymore. But until then we have to fight the bastards.
I Ain't Marching Anymore By Phil Ochs
D G C D
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
G C D
At the end of the early British war
G C
The young land started growing
G
The young blood started flowing
C Am D
But I ain't marchin' anymore
For I've killed my share of Indians
In a thousand different fights
I was there at the Little Big Horn
I heard many men lying
I saw many more dying
But I ain't marchin' anymore
C G
It's always the old to lead us to the war
C Am D
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all
For I stole California from the Mexican land
Fought in the bloody Civil War
Yes I even killed my brother
And so many others
And I ain't marchin' anymore
For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore
(chorus)
For I flew the final mission in the Japanese sky
Set off the mighty mushroom roar
When I saw the cities burning
I knew that I was learning
That I ain't marchin' anymore
Now the labor leader's screamin' when they close the missile plants,
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore,
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"
But I ain't marchin' any more.
There seems to be a variety of opinions about the chords for this song. Since I am not able to judge which is right, I will simply present all of them.
The first set of chords were provided by Dave Miller:
D G C D
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
G C D
At the end of the early British war
G C
The young land started growing
G
The young blood started flowing
C Am D
But I ain't marchin' anymore
C G
It's always the old to lead us to the war
C Am D
It's always the young to fall
Jeffrey Shallit tells me that these are the correct chords:
D G C C/B D/A
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
G C C/B D/A
At the end of the early British war
G C
The young land started growing
F Em
The young blood started flowing
Am C D
But I ain't marchin' anymore
Am G
It's always the old to lead us to the war
C Em A
It's always the young to fall
C Em
Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun
Am C D
Tell me is it worth it all
Simultaneously, I got a message from James Barnett giving these chords:
G C D
Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans
G C D
At the end of the early British war
G C Am
A young land started growing
F Em
The young blood started flowing
Am D
But I ain't marchin' anymore
C G
It's always the old to lead us to the war
C Em A
always the young to fall
C Bm Em
Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun
C Am D
Tell me was it worth it all
NOTE:
Most of the historical events referenced in this song are probably pretty obvious, with the possible exception of ``United Fruit.'' Further information can be found in the notes to the song United Fruit.
Once Again Haunted By The Question Of Questions-Who Represented The “Voice” Of The Generation Of ’68 When The Deal Went Down-And No It Was Not One Richard Millstone, Oops, Milhous Nixon
By Seth Garth
I have been haunted recently by various references to events in the early 1960s brought to mind by either seeing or hearing those references. First came one out of the blue when I was in Washington, D.C. on other business and I popped in as is my wont to the National Gallery of Art to get an “art bump” after fighting the dearies at the tail-end of the conference that I was attending. I usually enter on the 7th Street entrance to see what they have new on display on the Ground Floor exhibition areas. This time there was a small exhibit concerning the victims of Birmingham Sunday, 1963 the murder by bombing of a well-known black freedom church in that town and the death of four innocent young black girls and injuries to others. The show itself was a “what if” by a photographer who presented photos of what those young people might have looked like had they not had their precious lives stolen from them by some racist KKK-drenched bastards who never really did get the justice they deserved. The catch here, the impact on me, was these murders and another very disturbing viewing on television at the time, in black and white, of the Birmingham police unleashing dogs, firing water hoses and using the ubiquitous police billy-clubs to beat down on peaceful mostly black youth protesting against the pervasive Mister James Crow system which deprived them of their civil rights.
Those events galvanized me into action from seemingly out of nowhere. At the time I was in high school, in an all-white high school in my growing up town of North Adamsville south of Boston. (That “all white” no mistake despite the nearness to urban Boston since a recent look at the yearbook for my class showed exactly zero blacks out of a class of 515. The nearest we got to a black person was a young immigrant from Lebanon who was a Christian though and was not particularly dark. She, to my surprise, had been a cheer-leader and well-liked). I should also confess, for those who don’t know not having read about a dozen articles I have done over the past few years in this space, that my “corner boys,” the Irish mostly with a sprinkling of Italians reflecting the two major ethic groups in the town I hung around with then never could figure out why I was so concerned about black people down South when we were living hand to mouth up North. (The vagaries of time have softened some things among them for example nobody uses the “n” word which needs no explanation which was the “term of art” in reference to black people then to not prettify what this crowd was about.)
In many ways I think I only survived by the good graces of Scribe who everybody deferred to on social matters. Not for any heroic purpose but because Scribe was the key to intelligence about what girls were interested in what guys, who was “going” steady, etc. a human grapevine who nobody crossed without suffering exile. What was “heroic” if that can be used in this context was that as a result of those Birmingham images back then I travelled over to the NAACP office on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston to offer my meager services in the civil rights struggle and headed south to deadly North Carolina one summer on a voting drive. I was scared but that was that. My guys never knew that was where I went until many years later long after we had all gotten a better gripe via the U.S. Army and other situations on the question of race and were amazed that I had done that.
The other recent occurrence that has added fuel to the fire was a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition where they deal with aspects of what amounts to the American Songbook. The segment dealt with the generational influence of folk-singer songwriter Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ as an anthem for our generation (and its revival of late in newer social movements like the kids getting serious about gun control). No question for those who came of political age early in the 1960s before all hell broke loose this was a definitive summing up song for those of us who were seeking what Bobby Kennedy would later quoting a line of poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson call “seeking a newer world.” In one song was summed up what we thought about obtuse indifferent authority figures, the status quo, our clueless parents, the social struggles that were defining us and a certain hurried-ness to get to wherever we thought we were going.
I mentioned in that previous commentary that given his subsequent trajectory while Bob Dylan may have wanted to be the reincarnation Plus of Woody Guthrie (which by his long life he can rightly claim) whether he wanted to be, could be, the voice of the Generation of ’68 was problematic. What drove me, is driving me a little crazy is who or what some fifty plus years after all the explosions represented the best of what we had started out to achieve (and were essentially militarily defeated by the ensuing reaction before we could achieve most of it) in those lonely high school halls and college dormitories staying up late at night worrying about the world and our place in the sun.
For a long time, probably far longer than was sensible I believed that it was somebody like Jim Morrison, shaman-like leader of the Doors, who came out of the West Coast winds and headed to our heads in the East. Not Dylan, although he was harbinger of what was to come later in the decade as rock reassembled itself in new garb after some vanilla music hiatus but somebody who embodied the new sensibility that Dylan had unleashed. The real nut though was that I, and not me alone, and not my communal brethren alone either, was the idea that we possessed again probably way past it use by date was that “music was the revolution” by that meaning nothing but the general lifestyle changes through the decade so that the combination of “dropping out” of nine to five society, dope in its many manifestations, kindnesses, good thought and the rapidly evolving music would carry us over the finish line. Guys like Josh Breslin and the late Pete Markin, hard political guys as well as rabid music lovers and dopers, used to laugh at me when I even mentioned that I was held in that sway especially when ebb tide of the counter-cultural movement hit in Nixon times and the bastinado was as likely to be our home as the new Garden. Still Jim Morrison as the “new man” (new human in today speak) made a lot of sense to me although when he fell down like many others to the lure of the dope I started reappraising some of my ideas -worried about that bastinado fate.
So I’ll be damned right now if I could tell you that we had such a voice, and maybe that was the problem, or a problem which has left us some fifty years later without a good answer. Which only means for others to chime in with their thoughts on this matter.
In Search Of Heroes Of The Great American Hispanic Night-Mi Hombre Senor Zorro-The ‘Z’ Man Of My Youthful Dreams-Antonio Banderas’s “The Mask Of Zorro” (1998)-A
Film Review
DVD Review
By Si Lannon
The Mask Of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anthony Hopkins and assorted sleaze-ball Spanish dons and their senoras and senoritas, 1998
I have made no secret here or in private conversations that in my youth, my childhood really, I was crazy to watch the Zorro half hour on 1950s black and white television. For a reason that only a few people knew then, mostly family, and excluding my corner boys, some of who work for this publication, and whom I grew up with in the heavily working- class Irish and some Italian neighborhood of the Acre in North Adamsville a suburb south of Boston. I suppose every family has its family secrets, its skeletons in the closet like some looney grand aunty up in the batty attic, a brother, a hermano in home speak, who has spent more time in jail for various armed felonies than on the outside, that some cousin was in the vernacular of the day in our family at least was “different” meaning then a “fairy, fag” you know what I mean and today proudly LGBTQ, a young female relative who also in the code words of the day had to travel to “Aunt Emmy” for a while, meaning that she was pregnant out of wedlock and had to leave town to avoid family disgrace and dagger neighborhood dowager grandmother eyes probably never to come back.
In my family the deep dark secret which also reveals in passing why I loved Zorro as my youthful hero was that my mother was a Latina, Hispanic, you know from Mexico whose last name was Juarez, Bonita Juarez. No big deal right, now anyway although in the age of the long knives, in the age of Trump and all the animosities he has helped stir up, bring to the ugly surface of American life, that may no longer be true. But back then, back in 1950s growing up Irish-Italian Acre that was a no-no. The way around it devised by my parents was that sweet Bonita was “passed off” as Italian. An entirely respectable ethic designation in a town that drew Italians back around the turn off the 20th century to work the granite quarries that dominated the topography of the landscape (that work died out with the exhaustion of the quarries to be replaced by a booming shipbuilding industries which by the 1950s has in their turn faded this time by off-shore outsourcing and eventual departure which explained a lot about the wanting habits of we corner boys in the 1950s while other working class towns were observing something of a golden age-also mainly gone now with globalization). While there were names, derogatory names, for Italians in some Irish working-class homes in the neighborhood there was enough intermixing to level things off.
Almost universally though since there were absolutely no Hispanic families in the whole town the normal terms of abuse applies-spics, wetbacks, braceros, and the like. My father could not stand for that and even his relatives in the neighborhood believed my mother was from Italy. She had come up to California from Mexico during World War II with her family to work the grape and melon fields and my father stationed at Fort Ord at the time met her at a USO dance and wooed her after that. Since Bonita’s English was halting she was forbidden to speak Spanish when others were around. The only way any corner boys knew that she was Spanish was in high school when in ninth grade my best friend Jack Callahan had been taking Spanish and had come to the house unannounced and heard her speaking that language and not Italian. Naturally asking what gives and I told him and from there to the rest of the guys who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor. [In the interest of today’s seemingly compulsory transparency statement Jack Callahan has not only occasionally written in this publication but has been a substantial financial backer-Greg Green]
The corner boys when they found out since we were “brothers” today hermanos were pretty cool about the whole thing since she was my mother and that counted a lot even when we were at civil war with them, con madres. In general though it was not until many years later after Bonita passed away that people became aware of her nationality in a time when such things were more openly okay-even in the Acre.
Secrets aside I loved Zorro the same way my corner boys loved say white gringo good guys, avenging angels like Wyatt Earp or the Maverick boys from the television our main source outside of the movies for having characters we could identify with. Swashbuckling Zorro taking on all-comers, bad ass gringos especially but also batos locos paid soldiers and other scumbags and of course the oppressor hombres-the mainly Spanish dons who had the huge land grants from the Spanish kings when California was part of the fading Spanish Empire and later after formal independence and creation of a Mexican state who gouged the peasantry into the ground to maintain their freaking luxurious lifestyles. I would have to keep my devotion something of a secret although in general Zorro was a positive figure among the television-watching corner boys.
I was therefore very interested in doing this review of The Mask of Zorro when site manager Greg Green decided that enough was enough as Mexican Nationals, immigrants, citizens, hard-working peoples were being bashed for no good purpose by the Trump unleashed dark alt-right-Nazi-fascist-white nationalist cabal and had to be defended on all fronts including popular culture-including films. And in a very definitive way-beyond the obvious romance between Zorro, played by a youthful Antonio Banderas and his lovely senorita and soon to be marida and madre of his child, Elena, played by drop-dead beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones-this film shows a heroic and honorable side of the Mexican saga-of cultural super-heroes among the oppressed peoples of the world.
Here is the way the thing worked on this one although one can take the production to task for not have more Hispanics, Latinos, etc. in key roles like Elena, who could have worthily been played by Penelope Lopez, and certainly Zorro, the elder, played by venerable and ubiquitous high-toned Brit actor Anthony Hopkins could have had a better casting. The elder Zorro has a running battle in the Mexican independence struggle with the soon to be departed Spanish viceroy, a real bastard whose name is legion so no need to give him some human surname over the way the peasantry and others were treated by him. More importantly over the elder Zorro’s wife and daughter since that mal hombre viceroy was smitten by her. Eventually the bastard was the cause of the mother’s death and the elder Zorro’s imprisonment leaving the field clear for him to raise that daughter, Elena, when going back to Spain in comfort and culture.
Then fast forward twenty year later and the bastard returned with Elena and with the idea of turning via those well-off land grant Dons California into an independent republic by stealth and cold hard cash to the Mexican leader Santa Ana, known as a villain in U.S. history via the Alamo and Jimmy Polk’s Mexican War adventure. The war guys like young Abe Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau couldn’t stomach. Enter a rejuvenated elder Zorro who nevertheless was too old to go mano a mano with the bastard and his hired thugs. Through serious trial and error he trained a new generation Zorro, played by Banderas, to lead the struggle against the returned kingpin oppressor and let the peasantry live off the their lands in some peace. Once our new Zorro finished his basic training he was off and running to woo the lovely Elena, tweak the bastard, fight a million sword fights, woo the lovely Elena, fight a few million more sword fights, and well you know the “and” part by now. A most satisfying film which only rekindled my love of the sacred youthful character-thanks young and old Zorro.
In Search Of Heroes Of The Great
American Hispanic Night-Mi Hombre Senor Zorro-The ‘Z’ Man Of My Youthful Dreams-Antonio
Banderas’s “The Mask Of Zorro” (1998)-A
Film Review
DVD Review
By Si Lannon
The Mask Of Zorro, starring Antonio
Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anthony Hopkins and assorted sleaze-ball
Spanish dons and their senoras and senoritas, 1998
I have made no secret here or in
private conversations that in my youth, my childhood really, I was crazy to
watch the Zorro half hour on 1950s
black and white television. For a reason that only a few people knew then,
mostly family, and excluding my corner boys, some of who work for this
publication, and whom I grew up with in the heavily working- class Irish and
some Italian neighborhood of the Acre in North Adamsville a suburb south of
Boston. I suppose every family has its family secrets, its skeletons in the
closet like some looney grand aunty up in the batty attic, a brother, a hermano
in home speak, who has spent more time in jail for various armed felonies than
on the outside, that some cousin was in the vernacular of the day in our family
at least was “different” meaning then a “fairy, fag” you know what I mean and
today proudly LGBTQ, a young female relative who also in the code words of the
day had to travel to “Aunt Emmy” for a while, meaning that she was pregnant out
of wedlock and had to leave town to avoid family disgrace and dagger
neighborhood dowager grandmother eyes probably never to come back.
In my family the deep dark secret
which also reveals in passing why I loved Zorro as my youthful hero was that my
mother was a Latina, Hispanic, you know from Mexico whose last name was Juarez,
Bonita Juarez. No big deal right, now anyway although in the age of the long
knives, in the age of Trump and all the animosities he has helped stir up,
bring to the ugly surface of American life, that may no longer be true. But
back then, back in 1950s growing up Irish-Italian Acre that was a no-no. The
way around it devised by my parents was that sweet Bonita was “passed off” as
Italian. An entirely respectable ethic designation in a town that drew Italians
back around the turn off the 20th century to work the granite quarries
that dominated the topography of the landscape (that work died out with the
exhaustion of the quarries to be replaced by a booming shipbuilding industries
which by the 1950s has in their turn faded this time by off-shore outsourcing
and eventual departure which explained a lot about the wanting habits of we
corner boys in the 1950s while other working class towns were observing
something of a golden age-also mainly gone now with globalization). While there
were names, derogatory names, for Italians in some Irish working-class homes in
the neighborhood there was enough intermixing to level things off.
Almost universally though since
there were absolutely no Hispanic families in the whole town the normal terms
of abuse applies-spics, wetbacks, braceros, and the like. My father could not
stand for that and even his relatives in the neighborhood believed my mother
was from Italy. She had come up to California from Mexico during World War II
with her family to work the grape and melon fields and my father stationed at
Fort Ord at the time met her at a USO dance and wooed her after that. Since
Bonita’s English was halting she was forbidden to speak Spanish when others
were around. The only way any corner boys knew that she was Spanish was in high
school when in ninth grade my best friend Jack Callahan had been taking Spanish
and had come to the house unannounced and heard her speaking that language and
not Italian. Naturally asking what gives and I told him and from there to the
rest of the guys who hung around Tonio’s Pizza Parlor. [In the interest of
today’s seemingly compulsory transparency statement Jack Callahan has not only
occasionally written in this publication but has been a substantial financial
backer-Greg Green]
The corner boys when they found out
since we were “brothers” today hermanos were pretty cool about the whole thing
since she was my mother and that counted a lot even when we were at civil war
with them, con madres. In general though it was not until many years later
after Bonita passed away that people became aware of her nationality in a time
when such things were more openly okay-even in the Acre.
Secrets aside I loved Zorro the same
way my corner boys loved say white gringo good guys, avenging angels like Wyatt
Earp or the Maverick boys from the television our main source outside of the
movies for having characters we could identify with. Swashbuckling Zorro taking
on all-comers, bad ass gringos especially but also batos locos paid soldiers
and other scumbags and of course the oppressor hombres-the mainly Spanish dons
who had the huge land grants from the Spanish kings when California was part of
the fading Spanish Empire and later after formal independence and creation of a
Mexican state who gouged the peasantry into the ground to maintain their
freaking luxurious lifestyles. I would have to keep my devotion something of a
secret although in general Zorro was a positive figure among the
television-watching corner boys.
I was therefore very interested in
doing this review of The Mask of Zorro
when site manager Greg Green decided that enough was enough as Mexican
Nationals, immigrants, citizens, hard-working peoples were being bashed for no
good purpose by the Trump unleashed dark alt-right-Nazi-fascist-white
nationalist cabal and had to be defended on all fronts including popular
culture-including films. And in a very definitive way-beyond the obvious
romance between Zorro, played by a youthful Antonio Banderas and his lovely
senorita and soon to be marida and madre of his child, Elena, played by
drop-dead beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones-this film shows a heroic and honorable
side of the Mexican saga-of cultural super-heroes among the oppressed peoples
of the world.
Here is the way the thing worked on
this one although one can take the production to task for not have more
Hispanics, Latinos, etc. in key roles like Elena, who could have worthily been
played by Penelope Lopez, and certainly Zorro, the elder, played by venerable
and ubiquitous high-toned Brit actor Anthony Hopkins could have had a better
casting. The elder Zorro has a running battle in the Mexican independence
struggle with the soon to be departed Spanish viceroy, a real bastard whose
name is legion so no need to give him some human surname over the way the peasantry
and others were treated by him. More importantly over the elder Zorro’s wife
and daughter since that mal hombre viceroy was smitten by her. Eventually the
bastard was the cause of the mother’s death and the elder Zorro’s imprisonment
leaving the field clear for him to raise that daughter, Elena, when going back
to Spain in comfort and culture.
Then fast forward twenty year later
and the bastard returned with Elena and with the idea of turning via those
well-off land grant Dons California into an independent republic by stealth and
cold hard cash to the Mexican leader Santa Ana, known as a villain in U.S.
history via the Alamo and Jimmy Polk’s Mexican War adventure. The war guys like
young Abe Lincoln and Henry avid Thoreau couldn’t stomach. Enter a rejuvenated
elder Zorro who nevertheless was too old to go mano a mano with the bastard and
his hired thugs. Through serious trial and error he trained a new generation
Zorro, played by Banderas, to lead the struggle against the returned kingpin oppressor
and let the peasantry live off the their lands in some peace. Once our new
Zorro finished his basic training he was off and running to woo the lovely
Elena, tweak the bastard, fight a million sword fights, woo the lovely Elena,
fight a few million more sword fights, and well you know the “and” part by now.
A most satisfying film which only rekindled my love of the sacred youthful
character-thanks young and old Zorro.
%2C_oil_on_canvas%2C_71.1_x_55.9_cm%2C_Tate_Modern%2C_London.jpg)
