On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-HONOR LENIN, LUXEMBURG AND LIEBKNECHT- THE THREE L’S-Honor Rosa Luxemburg- The Rose of The Revolution! -Social Democracy and Parliamentarism(1904)

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EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. HERE’S WHY WE HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG
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Rosa Luxemburg-Social Democracy and Parliamentarism(1904)


Written: June 1904.
Source: Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung, June 5-6, 1904.
Transcription/Markup: Dario Romeo and Brian Baggins.
Online Version: Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000.

Once again the Reichstag has convened under very characteristic circumstances. On the one hand there are renewed and brazed attacks by the reactionary press –of the calibre of the Post – against the universal franchise, and on the other, clear signs of a ‘parliamentary weariness’ in the bourgeois circles themselves; together with this, there is the government’s evident intention to defer the convocation of the Reichstag until shortly before the Christmas holiday – all this presents a crass picture of a rapid decline of the supreme German parliament, and of its political significance. It is now obvious that in the main the Reichstag convenes only to endorse the budget, a new army bill, new credits for the colonial war in Africa, the inevitable new naval demands beckoning in the background, and the trade treaties – nothing but faits accomplis, the results of the extra-parliamentary influence of political managers on the Reichstag which then acts as an automatic rubber stamp to approve the recovery of the expenses incurred by these extra-parliamentary political groups. A classic demonstration of the extent to which the bourgeoisie consciously and devoutly acquiesces in the deplorable role assigned to its parliament is given in a statement made by Left-liberal Berlin paper. In view of the exorbitant new military requisitions, which mean an increase in its size of more than 10.000 men and in its expenditure of 74 million marks in the coming quinquennial [one-fifth of a year], and which are accompanied with the usual threat, field like a pistol on the Reichstag’s head, to re-introduce the three-year term of service, this newspapers predicts with a resigned sign that since the representatives of the people cannot desire [the three-year term of service], one might as well already regard the army bill ‘as approved’. And this heroic liberal prophecy will be as outstandingly correct as any account that takes as its starting-point the disgraceful self-renunciation of the bourgeois Reichstag majority.

In the fate if the German Reichstag we seen an important episode in the history of the bourgeois parliamentarism in general, and it is entirely in the interests of the proletariat to understand thoroughly its tendencies and inner connections. The illusion held by a bourgeoisie struggling for power (and even more by a bourgeoisie in power), namely the its parliament is the central axis of social life and the driving force of world history, is not only historically explicable but also necessary. This is a notion which naturally flowers in the splendid ‘parliamentary cretinism’ which cannot see beyond the complacent speechification of a few hundred parliamentary deputies in a bourgeois legislative chamber, to the gigantic forces of world history, forces which are at work on the outside, in the bosom of social development, and which are quite unconcerned with their parliamentary law-making. However, it is this very play of the blind elementary forces of social development toward which the bourgeois classes themselves unknowingly and unwillingly contribute, which leads to the inexorable undermining not only of the imagined, but also of the real significance of bourgeois parliamentarism.

For here – and this can be examined more conclusively in the fate of the German Reichstag than in any other country – it is the twofold effect of the international and the domestic developments which is bringing about the decline of the bourgeois parliament. On the one hand global politics, which in the past ten years have become increasingly powerful, are forcing the entire and economic and social life of the capitalist countries into a vortex of incalculable, uncontrollable international actions, conflict and transformations, in which bourgeois parliaments are tossed about powerlessly like logs in a stormy sea.

On the other hand, the internal development of classes and parties in capitalist society is paving the way for and bringing to maturity the pliancy and impotence of the bourgeois parliament vis-à-vis this destructive clash of global politics, of militarism, of naval growth, of colonial politics.

Parliamentarism is far from being an absolute product of democratic development, of the progress of the human species, and of such nice things. It is, rather, the historically determined form of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and – what is only the reverse of this rule – of its struggle against feudalism. Bourgeois parliamentary will stay alive only so long as the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the feudalism lasts. If the stimulating fire of this struggle should go out, then from the bourgeois standpoint parliamentary would lose its historical purpose. For the past quarter-century, however, the universal feature of political development in the capitalistic countries has been a compromise between the bourgeoisie and feudalism. The obliteration of the difference between the Whigs and Tories in England, between the republicans and the clerical-monarchist nobility in France, is the product and manifestation of this compromise. In Germany this compromise stunted the growth of the emancipation of the nascent bourgeois class, choked its starting-point – the March Revolution – and left German parliamentarism with the crippled figure of a misfit hovering constantly between death and life. The Prussian constitutional conflict was the last time the class struggle of the German bourgeoisie flared up against the feudal monarchy. Since then, the foundations of parliamentarism has not been, as in England, France, Italy and United States, the congruity of popular representation with governmental power in such a way that the government is drawn from the current parliamentary majority. Instead, parliamentarism has been founded on the opposite method, one which correspond with the special Prussian-German wretchedness: every bourgeois party that achieves power in the Reichstag becomes, eo ipso, the governing party, that is, the instrument of feudal reaction. Consider only the fate of the National Liberals and the Centre Party.

The perfected feudal-bourgeois compromise has, even from the historical standpoint, made parliamentarism into a rudiment, an organ deprived of all function, and, with compelling logic, has also produced all the streaking features of parliamentary decline today. So long as the class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the feudal monarchy lasts, its natural expression is the open party struggle in parliament. But when the compromise has been perfected, bourgeois party struggles in parliament are useless. The conflict of interest among the various groups of the dominant bourgeois-feudal reaction are no longer settled in parliamentary trials of strength, but in the form of string-pulling in the parliamentary back-rooms. What remains of open bourgeois parliamentary struggles is no longer class and party conflicts, but at most, in backward countries such as Austria, brawls between nationalities, i.e. between cliques; their appropriate parliamentary form is the scuffle, the scandal. The dying out of bourgeois party struggles also means the disappearance of their natural adjuncts: the prominent parliamentary personalities, the famous orators and the powerful speeches. The battle of speeches is useful as a parliamentary method only to a fighting party which is seeking popular support. To give a speech in parliament, essentially, is always to ‘talk through the window’. From the standpoint of the string-pullers in the back-rooms – whose method is the normal way of setting conflicts of interest on the basis of the bourgeois-feudal compromise – speech-making is futile, indeed it only defeats their purpose. Hence the bourgeois parties’ indignation at ‘to much talking’ in Reichstag; hence the crippling, exhausted sense of their own uselessness which encumbers the speech-making campaigns of the bourgeois parties like a leaden blanket and which transform the Reichstag into a house of lethal intellectual desolation.

And finally, the bourgeois-feudal compromise has called into question the cornerstone of parliamentarism – universal suffrage itself. But from the bourgeois point of view, this too is significant historically only as a weapon in the struggle between the two great factions of the propertied classes. The bourgeoisie needed the universal suffrage in order to lead ‘the people’ into the battle against feudalism. And feudalism needed it to mobilize the countryside against the industrial city. After the conflict itself had ended in compromise, and a third force – neither liberal nor agrarian troops but Social Democracy – arose from the two attempts, universal suffrage became senseless from the viewpoint of the ruling bourgeois-feudal interests.

Bourgeois parliamentarism has thus completed the cycle of its historical development and has arrived at the point of self-negation. Social Democracy, however, has taken up its post in the country and in parliament as, simultaneously, the cause and effect of this fate of the bourgeoisie. If parliamentarism has lost all significance for capitalist society, it is for the rising working class one of the most powerful and indispensable means of carrying on the class struggle. To save bourgeois parliamentarism from the bourgeoisie and use it against the bourgeoisie is one of Social Democracy’s most urgent political tasks.

Thus formulated, the task seems to be intrinsically contradictory. But, says Hegel, ‘contradictions leads to progress’. The contradictory task of Social Democracy vis-à-vis parliamentarism gives rise to the party’s duty of protecting and supporting this ruinous decay of bourgeois-democratic splendour, a duty which at the same time accelerates the ultimate decline of the whole bourgeois order and the seizure of power by the socialist proletariat.


II
In our own ranks one frequently hears the predominant view that a candid description of the inner decay of bourgeois parliamentarism and an open and severe criticism of it is a politically dangerous beginning, since in this way one disillusions the people in their belief in parliamentarism and thus facilitates reactionary efforts to undermine universal suffrage.

The error of such an approach will be immediately obvious to everyone who is inwardly sympathetic toward and engrossed in Social Democracy’s ideas. The real interests of Social Democracy – indeed those of democracy in general – can never be furthered by concealing the actual relationship from the great masses of the people. Artful diplomatic dodges might well be of value here and there for the petty parliamentary chess moves of bourgeois clique. The great historical movement of Social Democracy can practise only the most ruthless frankness and sincerity toward the working masses. After all, Social Democracy’s real nature, its historical calling, is to impart to the proletariat a clear consciousness of the social and political motive forces of bourgeois development, both as a whole and in all their details.

Especially with regard to parliamentarism, it is absolutely necessary to recognize as clearly as possible the real causes of its decline, as they follow from the logic of the bourgeois development, in order to warn the class-conscious workers against the destructive illusion that any moderation of Social-Democratic class struggle could artificially breathe new life into bourgeois democracy and into the bourgeois opposition in parliament.

We are witness to the most extreme consequences of applying this method of salvaging parliamentarism in Jaurès’s ministerial tactics in France. These tactics rest on a twofold artifice. On the one hand the workers are given the most exaggerated hopes and illusions regarding the positive achievements the might expect from parliament in general. The bourgeois parliament is praised not merely as the competent instrument of social progress and justice, of the elevation of the working class, of world peace and of such wondrous things; it is even represented as the agent competent to realize the ultimate goal of socialism. Thus all the expectations, all the efforts, all the attention of the working class, are concentrated on parliament.

On the other hand, the behavior of the socialist ministers in parliament itself is directed exclusively at bringing about the rule of, and keeping alive, the sad and inwardly lifeless remnants of bourgeois democracy. For this purpose the class conflict between proletariat and bourgeois-democratic policy is completely disavowed and socialist opposition abandoned; ultimately the Jaurès socialists’ own parliamentary tactics resemble those of the purely bourgeois democrats. These disguised democrats are distinguishable from the genuine thing only by their socialist label – and their grater moderation.

More cannot be done, it would seem, toward self-renunciation, toward sacrificing socialism upon the altar of bourgeois parliamentarism. And the results?

The disastrous effect of Jaurès’s tactic on the class movement of the French proletariat is well known: the dissolution of the labour movement, the confusion of ideas, the demoralization of the party deputies. But this is not what concerns us here, for we are interested in the consequences to parliamentarism itself of the tactics described, and these are fatal in the extreme. Not only were the policies of the bourgeois democrats, the republicans, the ‘radicals’, not strengthened and regenerated, but, on the contrary, these parties lost all the respect and fear for socialism that had once, as it were, stiffened their backbones. Much more dangerous, however, is another symptom which has made its appearance in the recent days: the increasing disillusionment of the French worker concerning parliamentarism. The exaggerated illusions of the proletariat, fed by Jaurès’s phrase-making policy, had to lead to a violent reaction; and indeed they have led to a situation in which today a large number of French workers no longer want to know anything not only of Jaurèsism but also of parliament and politics in general.

The organ of the young French Marxists, the Mouvement Socialiste, which is usually so intelligent and useful, has just published a surprising series of articles preaching a rejection of parliamentarism in favour of a return to pure trade unionism, and seeing the ‘true revolutionism’ in the purely economic struggle of the of the worker. At the same time, one provincial socialist paper, the Travailleur de l’Yonne, puts forward an even more original idea when it explains that for the proletariat, parliamentary action is completely unproductive and that it corrupts us – which is why it would be better to forgo the election of socialist deputies from now on and to send only, say, bourgeois radicals into parliament.

These then are the beautiful fruits of Jaurès’s attempts to rescue parliamentarism: an increasing popular aversion to every parliamentary action and a revision to anarchism – which, in a word, is the greatest real danger to the existence of parliament and even of the republic in general.

In Germany, under existing conditions, such deviations in socialist practice from the basis of the class struggle are of course unthinkable. However, the extreme consequences of this tactic in France serve as a clear warning to the entire international movement of the proletariat that this is not the way to pursue its task of supporting a declining bourgeois parliamentarism. The real way is not to conceal and abandon the proletarian class struggle, but the very reverse: to emphasize strongly and develop this struggle both within and without parliament. This includes strengthening the extra-parliamentary action of the proletariat as well as a certain organization of the parliamentary action of our deputies.

In direct contrast to the erroneous assumptions on which Jaurès’s tactics are based, the foundations of parliamentarism are better and more securely protected in proportion as our tactics are tailored not to parliament alone, but also to the direct action of the proletarian masses. The danger to universal suffrage will be lessened to the degree that we can make the ruling classes clearly aware that the real power of Social Democracy by no means rests on the influence of its deputies in the Reichstag, but that it lies outside, in the people themselves, ‘in the streets’, and that if the need arise Social Democracy is able and willing to mobilize the people directly for the protection of their political rights. This does not mean that, for example, it is sufficient to keep the general strike, as it were, at the ready, up our sleeves in order to believe ourselves equipped for any political eventuality. The political general strike is surely one of the more important manifestation of the mass action of the proletariat, and it is entirely necessary that the German working class accustom itself to regarding this method (which until now has been tested only in the Latin countries), without any arrogance or doctrinaire preconceptions, as one of the forms of the struggle which might possibly be attempted in Germany. More important, however, is to organize our agitation and our press in such a general way as to make the working masses increasingly aware of their own power, their own action, and not to consider parliamentary struggle as the central axis of political life.

Very closely connected with this are our tactics in the Reichstag itself. That which always so facilitates our deputies’ lustrous campaigns and outstanding role is – and we must be completely aware of this – the absence in the German Reichstag of any bourgeois democracy and opposition worthy of the name. Social Democracy has an easy time of it vis-à-vis the reactionary majority, since the party is the sole consistent and reliable advocate of the interests of the people’s prosperity and of progress in all areas of public life.

This same unique situation, however, give rise to the difficult task for the Social-Democratic parliamentary party of appearing not merely as the representative of an oppositional party, but also as the representative of a revolutionary class. In other words, the task that arises is not merely to criticize the policy of the ruling classes from the standpoint of the people’s present interests, that is, from the standpoint of the existing society itself, but also to contrast existing society as its every move with the socialist ideal of society, a ideal which goes beyond the most progressive bourgeois policy. And if the people can convince themselves at each Reichstag debate of how much more intelligently, more progressively, economically more advantageously the conditions in the present State would be arranged if the wishes and proposal of Social Democracy were met each time, then the Reichstag debates should now convince them more then ever how necessary it is to overthrow the whole order in order to realize socialism.

Discussing the Italian election in an article in the latest issue of the Sozialistiche Monatshefte, the leader of the Italian opportunists, Bissolati, writes, ‘In my opinion, one indication of the backwardness of political life is when the struggle between individual parties revolves around basic tendencies instead of around individual questions which originate in the reality of daily life and through which these tendencies can be articulated.’ It is obvious that this typical opportunistic line of reasoning turns the truth upside down. As Social Democracy develops and grows stronger, it becomes increasingly necessary, especially in parliament, that it is not submerged in individual questions of daily life and thus only carries on political opposition. Instead, Social Democracy must stress ever more energetically its ‘basic tendency’: the endeavour to seize political power with the help of the proletariat, for the purpose of achieving the socialist revolution.

The more the fresh and bold agitation of Social Democracy resound in the Reichstag in extreme dissonance to the trivial-insipid tone and the dull, business-like mediocrity of all the bourgeois parties, advocating not only its minimal programme but also its ultimate socialist goal, then the more will be the great masses’ respect for the Reichstag increase. And the more secure will be the guarantee that the masses of the people will not stand idly by and allow the reaction to snatch this tribune and the universal suffrage from them.

On The 80th Anniversary- On The Great White Way-Broadway-Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers’ “Stage Door” (1937)-A Film Review

On The 80^th Anniversary- On The Great White Way-Broadway-Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers’ “Stage Door” (1937)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

[This review was in the pipeline in 2017 but due to some internal problems kind of got lost in shuffle so 80^th anniversary is still appropriate. Greg Green]  

Stage Door, starring Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, 1937  

Sometimes we of the later feminist-friendly generations are clueless by means or happenstance about the efforts of earlier generations of women to get ahead in this man’s world (less so that before but as the recent sexual harassment scandals of 2016 point out this bad ass stuff runs deep among important segments of the male population). Still it was nice to have Greg Green the new site manager call me up to do this review since the previous site manager, Allan Jackson, who I had known for years refused to do so. Even when one of his best friends, Josh Breslin, from back in the 1960s in California was my companion for many years (and we still talk now more frequently since we are both working at this site). Refreshing too to do basically an all women film like Stage Door at a time when such efforts were rare, certainly rare than today and where for the most part men take the background although always have a lingering presence.

The beauty of this one is that a number of then well-known women actresses like Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers work the crowd with up and coming types like Lucille Ball and Eve Arden. Of course the story-line is important here as well since well know Algonquin Roundtable writers Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman provided the original premise if not the bulk of the screenplay dialogue. Moreover it is very good that this ensemble do their thing not in glamour puss Hollywood but in the Great White Way, Broadway, which used to be called, and maybe still is by some, the legitimate theater. Of course the backdrop of stuck on stardom and its pitfalls is the same in both locations with the same failure rates and broken dreams of the thousands who headed either East or West to get themselves noticed.

The set-up, a great idea used many times to good effect in ensemble efforts, of this one is that all the main female actors reside in one lunatic asylum of a women’s hotel, famous lodgings near good old Broadway. The banter thus is close in and sharp. In the old days some would say catty particularly when Katharine Hepburn’s haughty character charges through the door. You have the whole range of experiences from last year’s up and coming star who is now on the road to bust to a bright-eyed novice dilettante who wants to make the big show on her own terms. The central action though is between Terry, played by poor little rich girl out slumming (at some level) and Jean, played by Ginger Rogers who will take whatever she can get from some two-bit dance routine to the boss’ bed if necessary. Those are the poles and all the others from that last year’s fallen wonder to truly second-rate talents who should think about a career change (fat chance) run the string out.      

We see it all, all the back story of the uphill battle the average woman faced to get her foot in the door, from the cancelled appointments to don’t call us, we’ll call you to the infamous, and in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein line of sexual harassment and other sexual crimes, insidious casting couch which beckoned to Jean by the main male figure, Anthony Powell, played by Adolphe Menjou whose way of operating seemed eerily portentous. Not to worry though Terry, after a traumatic experience, finds her voice-she despite, or because of, that good breeding has star quality-that certain “it.” (Of course figuring that out was a no-brainer since almost all these actresses had that star quality). The only discordant note, a note which I am not sure rung true and certainly broke away from the wit and sarcasm that drove the film was the suicide of that last years’ star when she was on the way to down and out. How many wannabe actors wind up in that extreme situation I am not sure of but it did throw me off a bit as the key event to get Terry to emote like crazy in the play she was starring in and show that “it.”     

Tell Me Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?-In Honor Of The Late Rosalie Sorrels

Tell Me Rosalie Sorrels Have You Seen Starlight On The Rails?-In Honor Of The Late Rosalie Sorrels  

By Fritz Taylor

[This piece was written and in the pipeline before the recent (2016) internal wrangle at this site about who would write what and what kind of material would survive the posting wars so I asked new site manager not to put the now familiar notice about job titles and specialties beneath my by-line as he has done on most pieces submitted of late. He has honored my request and this may yet lead to a cessation of the practice since unless the reader has been privy to the vast inside information about the replacement of old-time manager Allan Jackson (and in the interest of transparency my old friend going back to Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) by former American Film Gazette editor Greg Green it poses more questions than it answers. In any case I will keep my opinions to myself for now about whether we have just gone through a purge and attempt to write Allan out of blogosphere history somewhat reminiscent of the old Stalinist tricks trying to write (and airbrush) Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky out of history or a simple retirement of an eligible candidate. Fritz Taylor           

Every hobo, tramp, and bum and there are social distinctions between each cohort recognized among themselves if not quite so definitely by rump sociologists who lump them all together but that is a story for another day has seen starlight on the rails. Has found him or herself (mainly hims though out on the “jungle” roads) flat up against some railroad siding at midnight having exhausted every civilized way to spent the night. Has seen the stars out where the spots are darkest and the brilliance of the sparkle makes one think of heaven for those so inclined, think of the void for the heathen among them. Has dreamed dreams of shelter against life’s storms.

But not everybody has the ability to sing to those heavens (or void) about the hard night of starlight on the rails and that is where Rosalie Sorrels, a woman of the American West out in the Idahos, out where, as is said in the introduction to the song, the states are square (and at one time the people, travelling west people and so inured to hardship, played it square, or else), sings old crusty Utah Phillips’ song to those hobo, tramp, bum heavens. Did it while old Utah was alive to teach the song (and the story behind the song) to her and later after he passed on in a singular tribute album to his life’s work as singer/songwriter/story-teller/ troubadour.         

Now, for a fact, I do not know if Rosalie in her time, her early struggling time when she was trying to make a living singing and telling Western childhood stories had ever along with her brood of kids been reduced by circumstances up against that endless steel highway but I do know that she had her share of hard times. Know that through her friendship with Utah she wound up bus-ridden to Saratoga Springs in the un-squared state of New York where she performed and got taken under the wing of Lena from the legendary Café Lena during some trying times. And so she flourished, flourished as well as any folk-singer could once the folk minute burst it bubble and places like Café Lena, Club Passim (formerly Club 47), a few places in the Village in New York City and Frisco town became safe havens to flower and grow some songs, grow songs from the American folk songbooks and from her own expansive political commentator songbook. And some covers too as her rendition of Starlight on the Rails attests to as she worked her way across the continent. Worked her way to a big night at Saunders Theater at Harvard too when she called the road quits a decade or so ago. So listen up, okay.            

Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Short Film Review Series

Not Ready For Prime Time But Ready For Some Freaking Kind Of Review Film Reviews To Keep The Writers Busy And Not Plotting Cabals Against The Site Manager-Introduction To The New Short Film Review Series

Recently I wrote a short, well maybe not short when the thing got finished, summary of my “take” on this American Left History publication that I have been the site manager of since the fall of 2017. Took over full time after the variously called “purge,” “exile”, “retirement,” forced or otherwise of the previous site manager Allan Jackson who had actually hired me to run the day to day operations before the “internal rebellion” of the younger writers against his regime knocked him out of the box. I stood on the side-lines then since taking sides would have hurt my chances of taking full command and also I didn’t have an opinion one way or the other although I cringed when Seth Garth who I respect started talking about Stalinist purges, Siberia and written out of history photographs like this was the second coming of the Leon Trotsky-Joe Stalin fight back in ancient history early Soviet Union days.

I also cringed when the younger writers who obviously had never known privation or hard times started taking Allan to task for glorifying his hometown high school junkie corner boy, a guy called the Scribe, who got himself killed for some stupid reason down in Mexico over a busted drug deal. Hated   Allan’s incessant nostalgia for the 1960s, especially the Summer of Love, 1967 which they knew nothing about, didn’t want to write about and could have given a fuck about except to placate him (and move up the food chain which some did even in opposition). I now, now that the dust has settled, and I have taken firm control of the operations do have an opinion that indeed Allan was unceremoniously purged and found himself in exile although not to Ata Alma or deep Siberia but sunny California, via a short stop in Utah. Needless to say the same fate will not await me as long as I can keep young and old writers too busy to waste time plotting around the office water cooler.

(Needless to say I have in the back of my mind thought many times that I should just get rid of the damn water cooler and let the employees find their own water sources just like in most offices. Maybe I am making a mistake putting this in print will be seen by somebody who will then get all protective and defend keeping the thing as some democratic right or something grandfathered in since it was here before I was but so be it. My real problem is that this illustrious water cooler is the place where many a plot against recently exiled Allan Jackson were hatched and where, according to Sam Lowell’s own words, he “got religion” about the need to “pass the torch” and along the way put the knife deeply into the misbegotten body of his oldest friend by casting the decisive vote for Allan’s ouster. So you can see where things stand with these wild cowboys and the cohort of women writers I have brought in, or in the case of Leslie Dumont brought back spend even more time there so who knows what they are talking about).

Yeah, Allan took it on the chin, didn’t see it coming when the younger writers led by Will Bradley who when not conniving with others who harbor some kind of grievous hurts from those in charge, whoever is in charge, is an up and coming writer who now has courtesy of my good offices a by-line, if he can keep it, took a vote of no confidence and Allan took the sack, hit the skids. Some of his detractors wanted him escorted from the office under guard like they do in the high tech and finance fields throwing his boxes of stuff out the window or something like that but cooler heads prevails. Meaning this silly Editorial Board which needs to rubber stamp my decisions-nixed the idea since maybe he still had some friends from the old days who might take umbrage at the idea-and come in and do bodily harm to whoever proposed the crazy idea. Worse of all his longtime old-time high school corner boy Sam Lowell under the guise of passing the torch gave him the coup de grace giving the kids the deciding “no” vote. With friends like that I said at the time although not to Sam who now heads the Ed Board and is technically my “boss” who needs enemies. Sam I am sure in true hard-ass Acre neighborhood form will say all is fair in love and war and that Allan had done much worse to him over the years including sleeping with his, Sam’s, third wife.

Adding insult to injury the conspirators, Sam in good corner boy form included at first before he got elevated to the Ed Board and so had to be “neutral” or nice I forget which he claimed he was doing to back out of the battle, to slander and libel Allan when he was down, kicked him in the metaphorical groin. Maybe not court-worthy, not money damages worthy but it made it extremely hard for him to find work on the East Coast, in New York City particularly.  Put the hex on him like he had been some kind of monomaniacal tyrant when they put the kiss of death “hard to work with,” tag which gets your resume to the shedder faster than you can walk there. Publishers who a few years ago would have paid big money to Allan just to sit in the office when important advertisers came by now wouldn’t offer him a cup of coffee, would make him wait all day in the foyer and then  tell the front office that the big boys had gone home for the day and could you come back tomorrow like he was just out of journalism school. 

Those young writers as if to bury the dead deeply or perform some exotic exorcism to insure that Allan would not come back zombie-like from the dead like you see in the current wave of dystopic films or if you are old enough or have access to a Netflix account some films from the heyday of zombie films-the 1950s spread the rumors far and wide. As far as I can tell they made the stuff up. Or they had so-called “third parties” do their dirty work a trick I too learned long ago when you wanted to rake somebody over the coals but wanted to pretend you were just reporting some facts you had picked up along the way. Either way they had a field day once Allan left the office, left without giving a forwarding address (although Seth Garth his main old-time hometown neighborhood supporter knew where he was part of the time, knew at least that when he tapped out in New York that he headed West, not just any West but purely West Coast California west, to get clean, to get washed over by some fresh Pacific breeze in along the Pacific Coast Highway near Todo el  Mundo scene of many early fresh breathes when he and that crowd were young and filled to the brim with Summer of Love, 1967 dreams and visions).       

Some of the stuff really was unbelievable although as long as it didn’t impinge on the operations here or diminish my authority starting out trying to fill some pretty big shoes in the industry after Allan’s demise, I tucked my head in. A couple of things I tried to check out, stuff like he was selling encyclopedias door to door out in Westchester County when Readers Digest turned him down for an office boy’s job. (Does anybody still use a hard copy set of encyclopedias in the age of Internet anyway which is what made the story seem fishy to me.) Was working in a fish factory for wages down in North Carolina. Nothing to it. Had gotten a job as a bellhop at the Ritz. (Maybe but I could never get anybody to follow up on the story). Had been washing dishes when the Ritz had banquets and needed extra day labor help. Nothing.    

The three that did keep coming up and which had an aura of possibility since he had been seen in the West (which is how we were able to discount the North Carolina fish factory story since he was in either Utah or California by then confirmed by Seth) are worth noting. Let me put it this way I hope the next generation that rebels, assumed to be against me, will just shoot me and get it over with rather than run my reputation into the ground.

According to the most prevalent rumors Allan had variously been “seen” running a high-end West Coast whorehouse with his old flame Madame LaRue, acting as stage manager for the  famous Miss Judy Garland “drag queen” Queen of  the notorious KitKat Club in San Francisco or more improbably “selling out “ to the Mormons via attempting to get a press agent’s job during Mitt’s now successful U.S. Senate campaign out in the wilds of Utah. The first one was totally wrong although Allan did stay at Madame’s place, not the whorehouse, on Luna Bay for a while and who knows what they did or did not do together but it was not running the whorehouse since Madame according to Seth was very touchy about anybody running her place since she dealt almost exclusively with rich Asian businessmen with a taste for the wild side. Still even spreading such a rumor was just another nail in Allan’s coffin in a profession where things at least had to look aboveboard.

The KitKat Club rumor was really a vicious one and I was kind shocked when young Sarah Lemoyne, who was hired by me after the Allan dust-up so had no reason to seek some silly revenge, told me in all good faith and naivete that Allan had come out of some “closet” and was MC-ing the nightly shows at that establishment in full drag regalia. When I asked Seth about it, actually ordered him to find out what was happening, he laughed and said that yes Allan was out in Frisco town, all these older writers love to call it Frisco town like they were just slumming wherever else they landed in life. What the younger writers didn’t know, maybe couldn’t know, or didn’t give a damn about just so they could throw some mud was that Miss Judy Garland, the owner of the club and the Queen of the “drag” set out there was none other than their old-time corner boy Timmy Riley who after years in the closet, after years of being abused, mentally and physically by everybody in their old home town from immediate family to some Acre young toughs had drifted West to a friendlier environment. The real deal was that Allan had staked Timmy to the money to buy the club and so was only staying in one of the apartments above the club (which Timmy also owned) while in town to see if he could catch on in the publishing industry out there far from the East where he really had tapped out. End of story.       

I would not ordinarily in a publication dedicated to the left side of society, politically and every other way although some of the writers, especially the younger ones, are either pretty wide-world politically indifferent or just slightly to the left of say the Democratic Party, give two words to the Romney slur. But maybe, just maybe although none of this ever surfaced in any piece submitted to me except maybe a vague reference in a film review about Utah, whoever surfaced this one will learn a small political lesson, or at least get the facts right before running to the water cooler all heated up. What that rumor did not recognize was that Allan had skewered Mitt Romney for years when he was governor of Massachusetts all the way to his failed Republican Party presidential bid in 2012. Had particularly honed in on counting his inadequacies as a executive against his Mormon pioneer great-grandfather who had five wives in the days when that religion went in for polygamy. The guys here from what I have been told had great admiration for the old man. Nevertheless no way was Allan going to get any job with the long-memory Mormons hovering around Romney, or even anything in the whole state of Utah for that matter. End of story although I hope not end of lesson.   

I noted above that I had been looking over the on-line archives since this publication went to a totally on-line format in 2006 and offered some observations about what way the winds were blowing and which way they should blow in the future. (See From The Archives Of “American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site Manager Greg Green, date November 18, 2018) One key observation, especially since I was brought over from American Film Gazette by Allan Jackson (who by the way now writes an occasional contributing editor piece here belying all those rumors mentioned above except as I have also mentioned that he did wind in Frisco will old friend Miss Judy Garland when he was broke and needed a place to stay before heading back East) where I had spent many years editing some 40,000 film reviews of varying lengths and by everybody with any pretentions to film reviewing expertise from long time film editor Sam Lowell of this publication to the legendary Janie Dove and Jack Cummings was the yearly decline in the number of film, book and music reviews.

I wondered why given the sparse political environment, the general decline of street politics which animated a lot of the early work and decline in end-around cultural and social material to report on, to spent money sending people to cover. I have since his return talked to Allan, we have exchanged e-mails since he is now up in Maine, about the matter and gotten some other feedback. Allan had insisted that each review had to be full-blown “think piece” style contribution or else forget it apparently. (He denied this originally when he resurfaced to edit a rock and roll anthology which I thought needed his touch, but most senior older writers have testified under oath and a couple before God for balance that anything less than three thousand words and worthy of print in some academic cinematic journal went into the ashcan and I accept their takes on this.) Frankly, many of the films that I have seen come to my desk or have reviewed personally are not worth more than about three or five hundred words, maybe less, maybe just a thumb up or down is plenty.

To bring more balance, to get better into the film review business which is what many people who don’t have time to read endless reviews expect of a publication like ours I have started this new series of short movie reviews which has the dual purposes of giving today’s busy world a quick but incisive opinion. And keep these monstrous writers who are hanging around the “water cooler” plotting against the “boss,” me, occupied. Greg Green]  

          

Looking for a few good… people who want to defend the American Republic against the Greed-heads and Con Men-You have allies-Vietnam Veterans Seth Garth And Ralph Morris Are Afraid For The Fate Of The Republic And If They Are I Am Too-Count Us In

Looking for a few good… people who want to defend the American Republic against the Greed-heads and Con Men-You have allies-Vietnam Veterans Seth Garth And Ralph Morris Are Afraid For The Fate Of The Republic And If They Are I Am Too-Count Us In       

By Frank Jackman

Politics and our relatively new site manager Greg Green are hard task-masters. The politics part is simple or relatively simple since the Republic is in some danger these days starting right at the top with the POTUS, his hangers-on and his assorted lackeys and enablers which I will go into detail more below. But first to the “why” of why I am I am writing this screed at this time a couple of years before the 2020 Presidential elections (if it was merely the Congress that was the problem, which it is, then we could comfortably wait until 2020 but these are urgent times so now is the time to wade into this mess). Recently Greg wrote a short, well maybe not short if you had to read the damn thing, piece in this publication summing up his take on what had happened after the first year of his regime. (See From The Archives Of “American Left History”-An Analysis And A Summing Up After His First Year By Site Manager Greg Green, dated November 18, 2018) In that piece Greg noted that he had perused the publication archives since 2006, since the operation went totally on-line for financial reasons after many years as a hard copy then hard copy and on-line combined.

After spending some time on the mistakes he had made, notably his hare-brained attempt to draw a younger demographic by catering to film, book, music reviews lite, he drew two major conclusions about the drift of the on-line publication under long-time former site manager Allan Jackson. The first was the joined tendencies to move away from film, book and music reviews that had animated the early days of the operation and rely more on what Greg called “nostalgia” pieces about coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s by the older writers, Allan’s contemporaries,  and some of the younger writers called “prison” since they were either too young had not even been born when all of this happened and  when they dragooned into the work they had to ask parents, grandparents and those older writers about what had happened back then. Under the old regime I had the official designation “political commentator” since abolished so l rarely delved into reviews except when some political angle came up and it made sense for me to put my two cents in.       

The second major comment, which very much concerned me, was his surprise that since 2006 the amount of primary political commentary, meaning original articles and not material grabbed “off the wire” as we call it from other sources making us more of a clearing house for generally progressive and left-wing groups and individual views. He particularly noted the still-born series that I had started in about 2007 as I was getting ready to comment on the forces gathering for the 2008 presidential elections. (See Rolling The Rock Up Just To Have It Come Tumbling Down-Prometheus Chained, dated March 8, 2008) I had assumed since 2008, like 2016 and unlike the upcoming 2016 elections that with no incumbent that the fireworks would be worthy of serious commentary. And for a while it was until early 2008 when, despite a heated contest between Hillary Clinton and the successful Barack Obama and a fistful of candidates on the Republican side, particularly one Mitt Romney who I has skewered endlessly when he was Massachusetts governor and more after when he became “Mr. Flip-flop” when he got the fire in the belly to be POSTUS, tweet speak if you must know, and realized he was out of step with the reactionaries in the Republican Party that the whole thing evaporated in thin air. That any time spent on the ins and out of what I call, and more and more others do as well, bourgeois politics was so much wasted space, so much as some young radicals would say back in the 1960s when the idea of voting only meant encouragement to those evil forces that what they said had meaning.

Greg cornered me at the water cooler one day and mentioned that he thought the series had even if truncated been some of the best , and funniest, political writing he had seen from me and wished me to take another stab at it for 2020 since a big part of what is coming up will be who will wind up facing the wicked witch of the West, the senile old hag Trump if he goes the distance and is not wearing some form of prison garb for high crimes and high misdemeanors come that November. I gave him several very valid reasons for not doing so from that old-time theory of not feeding the animals, trolls in modern speak, not encouraging what will be by any standard, any modern standard an undignified street fight. If I wanted that I would have long ago continued on my youthful dream of being a power before the throne after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy threw me for a loop rather than move away, way away with my nose covered from that kind of politics. (The being dragooned into the Vietnam War against people I had no quarrel with also helped in that decision no question.) So for a while I was able to hold Greg off on any commitment to the kind of reportage that ruined Theodore White and subsequently Doctor Hunter S Thompson’s careers when they got catch in the whirlwind trap of every four years having to debase themselves by giving, for serious pay granted as against the pittance received here, their pithy remarks about the progress of such vapid campaigns.

Enter Ralph Morris, of the famed Ralph and Sam Stories which were recently given an encore presentation by Greg with introductory remarks by the slightly “rehabilitated” back from Siberian exile, Babylonian captivity or whatever you would like to call his purge and its aftermath former site manager Allan Jackson as editor. Ralph, a much-decorated fellow Vietnam War veteran who like me went over to the anti-war side as a result of what he did, what he saw others do and most importantly what his government made him do to those benighted people in Southeast Asia. Ralph along with Sam Eaton are both members of the “street cred” wise Veterans for Peace  organization and men ready at the drop of a dime to march against war and any number of social justice issues cornered me one day at Jimmy’s Grille in downtown Boston and asked me whether it was true or not that I had turned down Greg’s idea of starting up another series on the election campaigns. I said yes. He came storming back first saying hey the 2020 campaign had already started the night the midterms were over, maybe before for some like Elizabeth Warren who already had “the fire in her belly” for a while and was just pacing the floor for now. Started telling me to get in on the ground floor of what will be something not seen in this country since the time of blessed Robert F. Kennedy and his vision-and bag of dirty tricks which is why I loved the guy when the deal went down in 1968 even if that Irish poet bastard McCarthy from Minnesota led the fight before Bobbie got his courage up.   

More importantly, and in this Ralph, Sam, me, and maybe everybody east of the Mississippi and not a few west of that tidal pool as well know we are living in the secular version of end times these days. The times of cold civil war ready at the drop of a hat, ready at will be some seemingly obscure event, ready to turn hot and nasty like the brothers and cousins war of the 1860s. This is the way Ralph put the matter to me, with Sam backing him up which surprised me a bit because of the pair Sam always seemed a little more radical, a little readier to bring fire and brimstone down on any sitting government in Washington. Ralph said that he too was as ready on any given day to call for bringing the sitting government down as not and gave the classic example of that first effort on May Day, 1971 to end the Vietnam by attempting, unsuccessfully attempting to bring the Nixon government down. Now, 2018 now, after two years and more of flame-throwing by those who would close the door on the Republic he was fearful, as fearful as he, they had been back in 1971 when the Republic was in the balance that once again that awful end time kind of thing was in the wind. Practically that meant that he was ready to unite with anybody, including the devil, Jimmy Higgins, Johnny King and whoever else was ready, to defend the Republic. By any means necessary even jumping into some presidential campaign like I had back in 1968. Whee!

Thus who am I to say as I did in 2008 a pox on both, on all, of your houses and will for Ralph and Sam’s sake try to revive that commentary which I had begged off of from Greg. Enough said.   

Soldiers, you are not alone! a message from Veterans For Peace You are not alone if you are thinking WTF am I doing on the U.S. border with Mexico?

Soldiers, you are not alone!
a message from Veterans For Peace

You are not alone if you are thinking WTF am I doing on the U.S. border with Mexico?

You are not alone if you are thinking WTF am I doing on the U.S. border with Mexico?

You are not alone if you are asking if this is some kind of political stunt.

You are not alone if you wonder what all this concertina wire is for.

Is it even legal to deploy troops on U.S. soil?  Against desperate asylum seekers?

You are not alone if you are re-thinking your role in the U.S. military.

No, you are not alone.  Many people, in and out of the military, have these very same concerns. 
Veterans For Peace certainly does.  We believe the deployment of U.S. troops to the border is an illegitimate use of the U.S. military.  We believe the Central America caravan poses no threat whatsoever to anyone.

This is no “invasion.”  The asylum seekers are traveling in a caravan for their safety from criminal gangs.  With their babies and young children, they are fleeing from extreme violence and poverty. They are desperate to keep their families alive.  They have every right under both U.S. and international law to seek asylum in the U.S.  In fact, we have a special responsibility to help them. For decades the U.S. has been supporting corrupt dictators throughout Latin America, creating the conditions from which these poor people are fleeing. We should be meeting the asylum seekers at the border with open arms, not with concertina wire.

If you decide to follow your conscience and refuse to obey orders that you believe are illegal or immoral, you will not be alone. Veterans For Peace will support you, along with other organizations who have legal resources and know how to organize political support.  See below.

If you decide it is time for you to get out of the military, we can put you in touch with counselors who can help you to be honorably discharged.

Most of all, as veterans of multiple wars, we strongly advise you not to do anything that you might regret for the rest of your life, just because you were “following orders.” It is much better to follow your conscience, and do what you know deep down is right.

Veterans For Peace is responsible for this message.  The other organizations listed are valuable resources.

VETERANS FOR PEACE
www.veteransforpeace.org

COURAGE TO RESIST
www.couragetoresist.org

MILITARY LAW TASK FORCE, www.nlgmltf.org

CENTER ON CONSCIENCE & WAR
www.centeronconscience.org

GI RIGHTS HOTLINE, 877-447-4487

Veterans For Peace works to educate the public about the true costs of war. We want peace at home and peace abroad.  We are committed to acting nonviolently.  We welcome active duty members.

DoD Instruction 1325.06 allows GI’s to read and keep one copy of the leaflet.

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac- On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" (1957) Beat Writers' Corner- John Clennon Holmes' Famous Article -"This Is The Beat Generation"

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac- On The 60th Anniversary Of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" (1957) Beat Writers'  Corner- John Clennon Holmes' Famous Article -"This Is The Beat Generation"

“Advertisements for Myself”-Introduction by Allan Jackson, a founding member of the American Left History publication back in 1974 when it was a hard copy journal and until 2017 site manager of the on-line edition.      

[He’s back. Jack Kerouac, as described in the headline, “the king of the beats” and maybe the last true beat standing. That is the basis of this introduction by me as we commemorate the 50^th anniversary of his untimely death at 47. But before we go down and dirty with the legendary writer I stand before you, the regular reader, and those who have not been around for a while to know that I was relieved of my site manage duties in 2017 in what amounted to a coup by the younger writers who resented the direction I was taking the publication in and replaced me with Greg Green who I had brought on board from American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations while I oversaw the whole operation and planned my retirement. Over the past year or so a million rumors have, had mostly now, swirled around this publication and the industry in general about what had happened and I will get to that in a minute before dealing with Jack Kerouac’s role in the whole mess.

What you need to know first, if you don’t know already is that Greg Green took me back to do the introductions to an encore presentation of a long-term history of rock and roll series that I edited and essentially created after an unnamed older writer who had not been part of the project balled it all up, got catch flat-footed talking bullshit and other assorted nonsense since he knew nada, nada nunca and, about the subject having been apparently asleep when the late Peter Markin “took us to school” that history. Since then Greg and I have had an “armed truce,” meaning I could contribute as here to introductions of some encore and some origin material as long as I didn’t go crazy, his term, for what he called so-called nostalgia stuff from the 1950s and 1960s and meaning as well that Greg will not go crazy, my term, and will refrain from his ill-advised attempt to reach a younger audience by “dumbing down” the publication with odd-ball comic book character reviews of films, graphic novels and strange musical interludes. Fair is fair.

What I need to mention, alluded to above, is those rumors that ran amok while I was on the ropes, when I had lost that decisive vote of no confidence by one sullen vote. People here, and my enemies in the industry as well, seeing a wounded Allan Jackson went for the kill, went for the jugular that the seedy always thrive on and began a raggedy-ass trail on noise you would not believe. In the interest of elementary hygiene, and to frankly clear the air, a little, since there will always be those who have evil, and worse in their hearts when “the mighty have fallen.”  Kick when somebody is down their main interest in life.

I won’t go through the horrible rumors like I was panhandling down in Washington, D.C., I was homeless in Olde Saco, Maine (how could that be when old friend and writer here Josh Breslin lives there and would have provided alms to me so at least get an approximation of the facts before spinning the wild woolly tale), I had become a male prostitute in New York City (presumably after forces here and in that city hostile to me put in the fatal “hard to work with” tag on me ruining any chances on the East Coast of getting work, getting enough dough to keep the wolves from my door, my three ex-wives and that bevy of kids, nice kids, who nevertheless were sucking me dry with alimony and college tuitions), writing press releases under the name Leonard Bloom for a Madison Avenue ad agency. On a lesser scale of disbelief I had taken a job as a ticket-taker in a multi-plex in Nashua, New Hampshire, had been a line dishwasher at the Ritz in Philadelphia when they needed day labor for parties and convention banquets, had been kicking kids out of their newspaper routes and taking that task on myself, and to finish off although I have not given a complete rundown rummaging through trash barrels looking for bottles with deposits. Christ.

Needless to say, how does one actually answer such idiocies, and why. A couple of others stick out about me and some surfer girl out in Carlsbad in California who I was pimping while getting my sack time with her and  this one hurt because it hurt a dear friend and former “hippie girl” lover of mine, Madame La Rue, back in the day that I was running a whorehouse with her in Luna Bay for rich Asian businessmen with a taste for kinky stuff. I did stop off there and Madame does run a high-end brothel in Luna Bay but I had nothing to do with it. The reason Madame was hurt was because I had lent her the money to buy the place when it was a rundown hotel and built it up from there with periodic additional funds from me so she could not understand why my act of kindness would create such degenerate noise from my enemies who were clueless about the relationship between us.

I will, must deal with two big lies which also center of my reluctant journey west (caused remember by that smear campaign which ruined by job opportunities in the East, particularly New York City. The first which is really unbelievable on its face is that I hightailed it directly to Utah, to Salt Lake City, when I busted out in NYC looking for one Mitt Romney, “Mr. Flip-Flop,” former Governor of Massachusetts, Presidential candidate against Barack Obama then planning on running for U.S. Senator from Utah (now successful ready to take office in January) to “get well.” The premise for this big lie was supposedly that since I have skewered the guy while he was governor and running for president with stuff like the Mormon fetish for white underwear and the old time polygamy of his great-grand-father who had five wives (and who showed great executive skill I think in keeping the peace in that extended family situation. The unbelievable part is that those Mormon folk, who have long memories and have pitchforks at the ready to rumble with the damned, would let a sinner like me, a non-Mormon for one thing anywhere the Romney press operation. Christ, I must be some part latter day saint since I barely got out of that damn state alive if the real truth were known after I applied for a job with the Salt Lake Sentinel not knowing the rag was totally linked to the Mormons. Pitchforks, indeed.    

The biggest lie though is the one that had me as the M.C. in complete “drag” as Elsa Maxwell at the “notorious” KitKat Club in San Francisco which has been run for about the past thirty years or so by Miss Judy Garland, at one time and maybe still is in some quarters the “drag queen” Queen of that city. This will show you how ignorant, or blinded by hate, some people are. Miss Judy Garland is none other that one of our old corner boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville, Timmy Riley. Timmy who like the rest of us on the corner used to “fag bait” and beat up anybody, any guy who seemed effeminate, at what cost to Timmy’s real feelings we will never really know although he was always the leader in the gay-bashing orgy. Finally between his own feeling and Stonewall in New York in 1969 which did a great deal to make gays, with or with the drag queen orientation, a little less timid Timmy fled the Acre (and his hateful family and friends) to go to friendlier Frisco. He was in deep personal financial trouble before I was able to arrange some loans from myself and some of his other old corner boys (a few still hate Timmy for what he has become, his true self) to buy the El Lobo Club, his first drag queen club, and when that went under, the now thriving tourist trap KitKat Club. So yes, yes, indeed, I stayed with my old friend at his place and that was that. Nothing more than I had done many times before while I ran the publication.                   

But enough of this tiresome business because I want to introduce this series dedicated to the memory of Jack Kerouac who had a lot of influence on me for a long time, mostly after he died in 1969 

******

All roads about Jack Kerouac, about who was the king of the beats, about what were the “beats” lead back to the late Pete Markin who, one way or another, taught the working poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville corner boys what was up with that movement. Funny, because we young guys were a serious generation removed from that scene, really our fathers’ contemporaries and you know how far removed fathers were from kids in those days especially among the working poor trying to avoid going  “under water” and not just about mortgages but food on tables and clothing on backs, were children of rock and roll, not jazz, the beat musical medium, and later the core of the “Generation of ‘68” which took off, at least partially, with the “hippie” scene, where the dying embers of the beat scene left off. Those dying embers exactly the way to put it since most of our knowledge or interest came from the stereotypes-beards before beards were cool and before grandfather times -for guys, okay, berets, black and beaten down looks. Ditto on black for the gals, including black nylons which no Acre girl would have dreamed of wearing, not in the early 1960s anyway. Our “model” beatnik really came, as we were also children of television, from sitcom stories like Dobie Gillis with stick character Maynard G. Krebs standing in for all be-bop-dom.        

So it is easy to see where except to ostracize, meaning harass, maybe beat up if that was our wont that day, we would have passed by the “beat” scene, passed by Jack Kerouac too without the good offices, not a term we would have used then, if not for nerdish, goof, wild and woolly in the idea world Markin (always called Scribe for obvious reasons but we will keep with Markin here). He was the guy who always looked for some secret meaning to the universe, that certain breezes, winds, metaphorical breezes and winds, were going to turn things around, were going to make the world a place where Markin could thrive. Markin was the one who first read Kerouac’s breakthrough travelogue of a different sort novel On The Road.

Now Markin was the kind of guy, and sometimes we let him go on and sometimes stopped him in his tracks, who when he was on to something would bear down on us to pay attention. Christ some weekend nights he would read passages from the book like it was the Bible (which it turned out to be in a way later) when all we basically cared about is which girls were going to show up at our hang-out spot, the well-known Tonio’s Pizza Parlor and play the jukebox and we would go from there. Most of us, including me, kind of yawned at the whole thing even when Markin made a big deal that Kerouac was a working-class guy like us from up in Lowell cut right along the Merrimac River. The whole thing seemed way too exotic and moreover there was too much homosexual stuff implied which in our strict Irish-Italian Catholic neighborhood did not go down well at all -made us dismiss the whole thing and want to if I recall correctly “beat up” that Allan Ginsberg character. Even Dean Moriarty, the Neal Cassidy character, didn’t move us since although we were as larcenous and “clip” crazy as any character in that book we kind of took Dean as a tough car crazy guide like Sonny Jones from our neighborhood who was nothing but a hood in Red Riley’s bad ass motorcycle gang which hung out at Harry’s Variety Store. We avoided him and more so Red like the plague. Both wound up dead, very dead, in separate attempted armed robberies in broad daylight if you can believe that.    

Our first run through of our experiences with Kerouac and through him the beat movement was therefore kind of marginal-even as Markin touted for a while that whole scene he agreed with us that jazz-be-bop jazz always associated with the beat-ness was not our music, was grating to our rock and roll-refined and defined ears. Here is where Markin was always on to something though, always had some idea percolating in his head. There was a point where he, we as well I think, got tired of rock and roll, a time when it had run out of steam for a while and along with his crazy home life which really was bad drove him to go to Harvard Square and check out what he had heard was a lot of stuff going on. Harvard Square was, is still to the extent that any have survived like Club Passim, the home of the coffeehouse. A place that kind of went with the times first as the extension of the beat generation hang-out where poetry and jazz would be read and played. But in Markin’s time, our time there was the beginnings of a switch because when he went to the old long gone Café Nana he heard folk music and not jazz, although some poetry was still being read. I remember Markin telling me how he figured the change when I think it was the late Dave Von Ronk performed at some club and mentioned that when he started out in the mid-1950s in the heat of beat time folk singers were hired at the coffeehouses in Greenwich Village to “clear the house” for the next set of poetry performers but that now folk-singing eclipsed poetry in the clubs. Markin loved it, loved the whole scene of which he was an early devotee. Me, well, strangely considering where I wound up and what I did as a career, I always, still do, hated the music. Thought it was too whinny and boring. Enough said though.                   

Let’s fast forward to see where Kerouac really affected us in a way that when Markin was spouting forth early on we could not appreciate. As Markin sensed in his own otherworldly way a new breeze was coming down the cultural highway, a breeze push forward by the beats I will confess, by the folk music scene, by the search for roots which the previous generation, our parents’ generation, spent their adulthoods attempting to banish and become part of the great American vanilla melt, and by a struggling desire to question everything that had come before, had been part of what we had had no say in creating, weren’t even asked about. Heady stuff and Markin before he made a very bad decision to quit college in his sophomore years and “find himself,” my expression not his, spent many of his waking hours figuring out how to make his world a place where he could thrive.

That is when one night, this is when we were well out of high school, some of us corner boys had gone our separate ways and those who remained in contact with the brethren spent less time hanging out at Tonio’s, Markin once again pulled out On The Road, pulled out Jack’s exotic travelogue. The difference is we were all ears then and some of us after that night brought our own copies or went to the Thomas Murphy Public Library and took out the book. This was the spring of the historic year 1967 when the first buds of the Summer of Love which wracked San Francisco and the Bay Area to its core and once Markin started working on us, started to make us see his vision of what he would later called, culling from Tennyson if I am not mistaken a “newer world.” Pulling us all in his train, even as with Bart Webber and if I recall Si Lannon a little, he had to pull out all the stops to have them, us, join him in the Summer of Love experience. Maybe the whole thing with Jack Kerouac was a pipe dream I remember reading about him in the Literary Gazette when he was down in Florida living with his ancient mother and he was seriously critical of the “hippies,” kind of banged on his own beat roots explaining that he was talking about something almost Catholic beatitude spiritual and not personal freedom, of the road or anything else. A lot of guys and not just writing junkies looking for some way to alleviate their inner pains have repudiated their pasts but all I know is that when Jack was king of the hill, when he spoke to us those were the days all roads to Kerouac were led by Markin. Got it. Allan Jackson    

 ***********

 I culled this from a Google search. The "my commentary" is from the person who placed it on the website.

'This Is The Beat Generation' by John Clellon Holmes

This is the complete text of the article by John Clellon Holmes that ran in the New York Times Magazine on November 16, 1952. This article introduced the phrase 'beat generation' to the world, although the writers who would come to personify this generation would not be published for several years more. For more on the origin of the term 'beat', click here.

My commentary : There are some interesting points in this article, but I can't help feeling annoyed at the idea of categorizing an entire generation. I don't believe any true statement can be made about a million or more people, except statements that are so general they are true for all times. So, for the hipster and the Young Republican here, substitute the hippie and the straight of twenty years ago, or the slacker and the yuppie today. Newspapers and magazines love to get excited about how 'different' each new generation is, but each new generation is just going through the same crisis the one before it went through. It's called 'growing up.'

In saying this, I don't mean to 'flame' John Clellon Holmes, a good writer who recognized the inanity of labelling a generation and even alluded to it in this article. Furthermore, I'm sure the idea of defining a generation was nowhere near as played out in the early 50's as it is now.

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This Is The Beat Generation
by John Clellon Holmes
The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 1952

Several months ago, a national magazine ran a story under the heading 'Youth' and the subhead 'Mother Is Bugged At Me.' It concerned an eighteen-year-old California girl who had been picked up for smoking marijuana and wanted to talk about it. While a reporter took down her ideas in the uptempo language of 'tea,' someone snapped a picture. In view of her contention that she was part of a whole new culture where one out of every five people you meet is a user, it was an arresting photograph. In the pale, attentive face, with its soft eyes and intelligent mouth, there was no hint of corruption. It was a face which could only be deemed criminal through an enormous effort of reighteousness. Its only complaint seemed to be: 'Why don't people leave us alone?' It was the face of a beat generation.

That clean young face has been making the newspapers steadily since the war. Standing before a judge in a Bronx courthouse, being arraigned for stealing a car, it looked up into the camera with curious laughter and no guilt. The same face, with a more serious bent, stared from the pages of Life magazine, representing a graduating class of ex-GI's, and said that as it believed small business to be dead, it intended to become a comfortable cog in the largest corporation it could find. A little younger, a little more bewildered, it was this same face that the photographers caught in Illinois when the first non-virgin club was uncovered. The young copywriter, leaning down the bar on Third Avenue, quietly drinking himself into relaxation, and the energetic hotrod driver of Los Angeles, who plays Russian Roulette with a jalopy, are separated only by a continent and a few years. They are the extremes. In between them fall the secretaries wondering whether to sleep with their boyfriends now or wait; the mechanic berring up with the guys and driving off to Detroit on a whim; the models studiously name-dropping at a cocktail party. But the face is the same. Bright, level, realistic, challenging.

Any attempt to label an entire generation is unrewarding, and yet the generation which went through the last war, or at least could get a drink easily once it was over, seems to possess a uniform, general quality which demands an adjective ... The origins of the word 'beat' are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done that continually from early youth.

Its members have an instinctive individuality, needing no bohemianism or imposed eccentricity to express it. Brought up during the collective bad circumstances of a dreary depression, weaned during the collective uprooting of a global war, they distrust collectivity. But they have never been able to keep the world out of their dreams. The fancies of their childhood inhabited the half-light of Munich, the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the eventual blackout. Their adolescence was spent in a topsy-turvy world of war bonds, swing shifts, and troop movements. They grew to independent mind on beachheads, in gin mills and USO's, in past-midnight arrivals and pre-dawn departures. Their brothers, husbands, fathers or boy friends turned up dead one day at the other end of a telegram. At the four trembling corners of the world, or in the home town invaded by factories or lonely servicemen, they had intimate experience with the nadir and the zenith of human conduct, and little time for much that came between. The peace they inherited was only as secure as the next headline. It was a cold peace. Their own lust for freedon, and the ability to live at a pace that kills (to which the war had adjusted them), led to black markets, bebop, narcotics, sexual promiscuity, hucksterism, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The beatness set in later.

It is a postwar generation, and, in a world which seems to mark its cycles by its wars, it is already being compared to that other postwar generation, which dubbed itself 'lost'. The Roaring Twenties, and the generation that made them roar, are going through a sentimental revival, and the comparison is valuable. The Lost Generation was discovered in a roadster, laughing hysterically because nothing meant anything anymore. It migrated to Europe, unsure whether it was looking for the 'orgiastic future' or escaping from the 'puritanical past.' Its symbols were the flapper, the flask of bootleg whiskey, and an attitude of desparate frivolity best expressed by the line: 'Tennis, anyone?' It was caught up in the romance of disillusionment, until even that became an illusion. Every act in its drama of lostness was a tragic or ironic third act, and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land was more than the dead-end statement of a perceptive poet. The pervading atmosphere of that poem was an almost objectless sense of loss, through which the reader felt immediately that the cohesion of things had disappeared. It was, for an entire generation, an image which expressed, with dreadful accuracy, its own spiritual condition.

But the wild boys of today are not lost. Their flushed, often scoffing, always intent faces elude the word, and it would sound phony to them. For this generation lacks that eloquent air of bereavement which made so many of the exploits of the Lost Generation symbolic actions. Furthermore, the repeatedinventory of shattered ideals, and the laments about the mud in moral currents, which so obsessed the Lost Generation, do not concern young people today. They take these things frighteningly for granted. They were brought up in these ruins and no longer notice them. They drink to 'come down' or to 'get high,' not to illustrate anything. Their excursions into drugs or promiscuity come out of curiousity, not disillusionment.

Only the most bitter among them would call their reality a nightmare and protest that they have indeed lost something, the future. For ever since they were old enough to imagine one, that has been in jeapordy anyway. The absence of personal and social values is to them, not a revelation shaking the ground beneath them, but a problem demanding a day-to-day solution. How to live seems to them much more crucial than why. And it is precisely at this point that the copywriter and the hotrod driver meet and their identical beatness becomes significant, for, unlike the Lost Generation, which was occupied with the loss of faith, the Beat Generation is becoming more and more occupied with the need for it. As such, it is a disturbing illustration of Voltaire's reliable old joke: 'If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.' Not content to bemoan his absence, they are busily and haphazardly inventing totems for him on all sides.

For the giggling nihilist, eating up the highway at ninety miles an hour and steering with his feet, is no Harry Crosby, the poet of the Lost Generation who planned to fly his plane into the sun one day because he could no longer accept the modern world. On the contrary, the hotrod driver invites death only to outwit it. He is affirming the life within him in the only way he knows how, at the extreme. The eager-faced girl, picked up on a dope charge, is not one of those 'women and girls carried screaming with drink or drugs from public places,' of whom Fitzgerald wrote. Instead, with persuasive seriousness, she describes the sense of community she has found in marijuana, which society never gave her. The copywriter, just as drunk by midnight as his Lost Generation counterpart, probably reads God and Man at Yale during his Sunday afternoon hangover. The difference is this almost exaggerated will to believe in something, if only in themselves. It is a will to believe, even in the face of an inability to do so in conventional terms. And that is bound to lead to excesses in one direction or another.

The shock that older people feel at the sight of this Beat Generation is, at its deepest level, not so much repugnance at the facts, as it is distress at the attitudes which move it. Though worried by this distress, they most often argue or legislate in terms of the facts rather than the attitudes. The newspaper reader, studying the eyes of young dope addicts, can only find an outlet for his horror and bewilderment in demands that passers be given the electric chair. Sociologists, with a more academic concern, are just as troubled by the legions of young men whose topmost ambition seems to be to find a secure birth in a monolithic corporation. Contemporary historians express mild surprise at the lack of organized movements, political, religous, or otherwise, among the young. The articles they write remind us that being one's own boss and being a natural joiner are two of our most cherished national traits. Everywhere people with tidy moralities shake their heads and wonder what is happening to the younger generation.

Perhaps they have not noticed that, behind the excess on the one hand, and the conformity on the other, lies that wait-and-see detachment that results from having to fall back for support more on one's capacity for human endurance than on one's philosophy of life. Not that the Beat Generation is immune to ideas; they fascinate it. Its wars, both past and future, were and will be wars of ideas. It knows, however, that in the final, private moment of conflict a man is really fighting another man, and not an idea. And that the same goes for love. So it is a generation with a greater facility for entertaining ideas than for believing in them. But it is also the first generation in several centuries for which the act of faith has been an obsessive problem, quite aside from the reasons for having a particular faith or not having it. It exhibits on every side, and in a bewildering number of facets, a perfect craving to believe.

Though it is certainly a generation of extremes, including both the hipster and the radical young Republican in its ranks, it renders unto Caesar (i.e, society) what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. For the wildest hipster, making a mystique of bop, drugs and the night life, there is no desire to shatter the 'square' society in which he lives, only to elude it. To get on a soapbox or write a manifesto would seem to him absurd. Looking at the normal world, where most everything is a 'drag' for him, he nevertheless says: 'Well, that's the Forest of Arden after all. And even it jumps if you look at it right.' Equally, the young Republican, though often seeming to hold up Babbitt as his culture hero, is neither vulgar nor materialistic, as Babbitt was. He conforms because he believes it is socially practical, not necessarily virtuous. Both positions, however, are the result of more or less the same conviction -- namely that the valueless abyss of modern life is unbearable.


For beneath the excess and the conformity, there is something other than detachment. There are the stirrings of a quest. What the hipster is looking for in his 'coolness' (withdrawal) or 'flipness' (ecstasy) is, after all, a feeling on somewhereness, not just another diversion. The young Republican feels that there is a point beyond which change becomes chaos, and what he wants is not simply privelege or wealth, but a stable position from which to operate. Both have had enough of homelessness, valuelessness, faithlessnes.

The variety and the extremity of their solutions are only a final indication that for today's young people there is not as yet a single external pivot around which they can, as a generation, group their observations and their aspirations. There is no single philosophy, no single party, no single attitude. The failure of most orthodox moral and social concepts to reflect fully the life they have known is probably the reason for this, but because of it each person becomes a walking, self-contained unit, compelled to meet, or at least endure, the problem of being young in a seemingly helpless world in his own way.

More than anything else, this is what is responsible for this generation's reluctance to name itself, its reluctance to discuss itself as a group, sometimes its reluctance to be itself. For invented gods invariably disappoint those who worship them. Only the need for them goes on, and it is this need, exhausting one object after another, which projects the Beat Generation forward into the future and will one day deprive it of its beatness.

Dostoyevski wrote in the early 1880's that 'Young Russia is talking of nothing but the eternal questions now.' With appropriate changes, something very like this is beginning to happen in America, in an American way; a re-evaluation of which the exploits and attitudes of this generation are only symptoms. No single comparison of one generation against another can accurately measure effects, but it seems obvious that a lost generation, occupied with disillusionment and trying to keep busy among the broken stones, is poetically moving, but not very dangerous. But a beat generation, driven by a desparate craving for belief and as yet unable to accept the moderations which are offered it, is quite another matter. Thirty years later, after all, the generation of which Dostoyevski wrote was meeting in cellars and making bombs.

This generation may make no bombs; it will probably be asked to drop some, and have some dropped on it, however, and this fact is never far from its mind. It is one of the pressures which created it and will play a large part in what will happen to it. There are those who believe that in generations such as this there is always the constant possibility of a great new moral idea, conceived in desparation, coming to life. Others note the self-indulgence, the waste, the apparent social irresponsibility, and disagree.

But its ability to keep its eyes open, and yet avoid cynicism; its ever-increasing conviction that the problem of modern life is essentially a spiritual problem; and that capacity for sudden wisdom which people who live hard and go far possess, are assets and bear watching. And, anyway, the clear, challenging faces are worth it.