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 American Communist Leader James P. Cannon -Lenin, Trotsky and the First World War (1940)

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Honor American Communist Leader James P. Cannon

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to American Communist party founder and later Trotskyist leader, James P. Cannon, Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and German Left Communist Karl Korsch.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
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James P. Cannon
The Socialist Appeal
December 7, 1940

Lenin, Trotsky and the First World War


Written: 1940
Source: The Socialist Appeal
Transcription\HTML Markup:Andrew Pollack
Third of three articles in the Socialist Appeal on SWP military policy.


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In advancing our military transitional program, we proceed from the point of view that permanent war and universal militarism have become the dominant characteristics of our epoch, and we visualize the social revolution as the immediate outcome of the imperialist war. We begin, as did Lenin, with a declaration of irreconcilable class opposition to the imperialists and their war. It is only by means of this principled standpoint of class opposition that the cadres of modem Bolshevism are formed and clearly delimited from all other parties, groups, and tendencies, which to one degree or another, tend toward conci1iation or collaboration with their national ruling class in the war.

But the situation which confronts us today is not an exact duplication of that which confronted the revolutionary Marxists at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. For one thing, the capitalist order has reached a far more advanced stage of decay and is more susceptible to revolutionary overthrow. In addition, we have the benefit of twenty-six years of the richest historical experiences which have been generalized by the great Marxist Trotsky. These circumstances enable us to go farther, with more concretely worked out slogans of agitation to advance the class struggle under conditions of war and militarism, than was possible for the revolutionary Marxist at the beginning of the First World War.

Trotsky, the author of our program, contributed extremely important thoughts to the workers’ vanguard facing the Second World War: the immediacy of the revolutionary perspective in connection with the present war, and the necessity for transitional slogans which can serve to mobilize the masses for independent class action leading up to it. It is precisely this immediacy of the revolutionary perspective that makes the transitional program a burning necessity. “Our policy,” Trotsky wrote, “the policy of the revolutionary proletariat toward the second imperialist war, is a continuation of the policy elaborated during the last imperialist war, primarily under Lenin’s leadership. But a continuation does not signify a repetition. In this case too, continuation signifies a development, a deepening and a sharpening.” (Fourth International, October 1940.) He reminded us, and we repeated after him, that not even Lenin had visualized the victory of the proletarian revolution as the immediate outcome of the First World War.

At this point Lenin suddenly acquired an advocate in a c amp which hitherto has not been distinguished by its fidelity to Leninism. Shachtman, comrade-in-arms of the avowed anti-Bolshevik Burnham, and the present leader of the “Workers Party” (the Burnham group minus Burnham), comes to the defense of Lenin against us. The “floating kidney,” as Trotsky denominated Shachtman, bobs up in the most unexpected places!

However, we have committed no assault on Lenin, and he is in no way in need of the dubious “defense” of this attorney. It is necessary to take a little time out to prove this, because the authority of Lenin is one of the greatest treasures of the revolutionary movement. His name is written beside that of Trotsky on the banner of the Russian Revolution. We proclaim the extension of this revolution throughout the world in the name of Lenin-Trotsky. We must not permit the slightest confusion as to how we regard Lenin; and it is a matter of simple respect to his memory to protect him from the hypocritical support of an advocate who is known among Leninists only as a betrayer of Leninism.

It will take a little time and space, but this can’t be helped. It is a simple task—mainly work with a shovel. His own confusion and instinct to sow confusion—two qualities always happily married in Shachtman’s factional “polemics”—plus his unfailing twisting, falsifying, and misrepresenting the words of others and the events of the past are all piled together here also. It is simply necessary to dig this stuff away, and then to unwind the quotations and replace the historical incidents in their true position. Then nothing will be left of the dirty mess that Shachtman has made of our alleged attack on Lenin and Shachtman’s “brief” as attorney for the defense.

The defense of Lenin is the second “point” in Shachtman’s indictment of our military policy. The occasion for it was the publication of my speech to our Chicago conference which adopted our resolution. Shachtman made a big “case” out of what I said about Lenin, or rather, what I didn’t say. Here are the sentences which Shachtman quoted from my speech: “We said and those before us said that capitalism had outlived its usefulness. World economy is ready for socialism. But when the world war started in 1914 none of the parties had the idea that on the agenda stood the struggle for power. The stand of the best of them was essentially a protest against the war. It did not occur even to the best Marxists that the time had come when the power must be seized by the workers in order to save civilization from degeneration. Even Lenin did not visualize the victory of the proletarian revolution as the immediate outcome of the war.”

Shachtman characterized this as a “monstrous falsehood,” and as a “complete misrepresentation of the views and traditions of the Bolsheviks in the last war.” He offers a number of “quotations” to prove that Lenin and the Bolsheviks advocated revolution during the war, he implies that Lenin expected revolution as the war’s immediate outcome, and finally asks: “And above all, what in heaven’s name was the meaning of Lenin’s slogan, repeated a thousand times during the last war, ’Turn the imperialist war into a civil war’?”

Our quoter undoubtedly establishes the fact that Lenin was in favor of revolution, that he had a program of revolution. And he tries to make it appear that I denied it, or didn’t know it. Shachtman’s whole case rests upon this false construction. Lenin advocated the “program of revolution” not only during the world war but before it, before 1905, from the very beginning of his activity as a revolutionary Marxist. Shachtman’s entire argument is directed against a contention which I did not make.

He makes his argument appear superficially plausible by the use of two well-known devices of literary charlatans. First, he mutilated the quotation from my speech, breaking it off short and eliminating immediately following sentences in the same paragraph which made my meaning more clear and precise. I wrote: “Even Lenin did not visualize the victory of the proletarian revolution as the immediate outcome of the war.” Shachtman twisted it and distorted it into a denial that Lenin had “a program of revolution” during the war. But I think it is thoroughly clear to a disinterested reader that I was speaking of something else, namely, Lenin’s expectations as to the immediate outcome of the war, and not at all of what he wanted and what he advocated.

My meaning was made more precise by the sentence which immediately followed: “Just a short time before the outbreak of the February revolution in Russia, Lenin wrote in Switzerland that his generation would most probably not see the socialist revolution. Even Lenin had postponed the revolution to the future, to a later decade.” The context of my published speech, from which the sentences were extracted, makes it even clearer that the references to Lenin were concerned not at all with differences of program, but only with the immediate perspectives of the revolutionary Marxists in this war and in the First World War. I don’t see how anyone can seriously dispute our contentions on this point because the words of Lenin himself constitute the basis for the reference. The October Fourth International cites two exact quotations on the point to which I referred without directly quoting.

“It is possible, however, that five, ten, and even more years will pass before the beginning of the socialist revolution.” (From an article written in March 1916, Lenin’s Collected Works, vol. XIX, p. 45, third Russian edition.) “We, the older men, will perhaps not live long enough to see the decisive battles of the impending revolution.” (Report on 1905 Revolution delivered to Swiss students, January 1917, idem, p. 357.)

That is not all. The main quotation from Lenin which Shachtman cites in his polemic against us—a quotation which he also mutilates to twist the meaning—shows that Lenin was not speaking of the revolution as an immediate perspective; that is, the quotation will show it when we restore the words which Shachtman cut off in the middle of a sentence. He quotes from the article of October 11, 1915, which appears on page 347 of the English edition of Lenin’s works, volume XVIII: “. . . It is our bounden duty to explain to the masses the necessity of a revolution, to appeal for it, to create the fitting organizations, to speak fearlessly and in the most concrete manner of the various methods of forceful struggle and of its ’technique’. . .” There Shachtman ended the quotation, breaking Lenin’s sentence off at a comma.

Here are the immediately following words which he left out: “This bounden duty of ours being independent of whether the revolution will be strong enough and whether it will come in connection with the first or second imperialist war, etc.” Lenin obviously was not arguing about the immediacy of the revolution as we visualize it in connection with the present war, but about the necessity of advocating it and preparing for it.

If any further proof is needed one only has to read the rest of Lenin’s article! In the very same article, on page 349 of the same volume, Lenin continued: “As to the untimeliness of preaching revolution, this objection rests on a confusion of terms customary with the Romance Socialists: They confuse the beginning of a revolution with its open and direct propaganda. In Russia, nobody places the beginning of the 1905 Revolution before January 22, 1905, whereas the revolutionary propaganda, in the narrow sense of the word, the propaganda and the preparation of mass action, demonstrations, strikes, barricades, had been conducted for years before that. The old Iskra, for instance, preached this from the end of 1900, as did Marx from 1847 when there could have been no thought as yet about the beginning of a revolution in Europe.”

Shachtman took my remarks about the immediate perspectives of Lenin during the First World War, lifted them out of their context, mutilated the paragraph from which they were extracted, twisted them into an attack on the program and traditions of the Bolsheviks which was not intended or implied in any way by me, and then Shachtman attempted to bolster his thesis by quotations from Lenin which in reality prove the opposite—when they are honestly quoted without breaking off sentences in the middle, (and without suppressing other sentences in the same article which make Lenin’s real meaning even clearer.

To top off his exercise in literary skullduggery Shachtman refers to the “outlived” Lenin, using quotation marks to convey the impression that he is quoting me. That is an outright literary forgery. I never used such an expression and could not do so; it is not my opinion.

All this literary fakery and forgery in “defense” of Lenin has a fundamental aim which is not frankly avowed, but only thinly disguised. Against whom is Shachtman really defending Lenin? To be sure, he mentions only “Cannon,” but it is perfectly obvious that Cannon in this case is only serving Shachtman as a pseudonym for the real target of his attack. My remarks about Lenin’s perspective during the First World War were no more and no less than a simple repetition of what Trotsky said on the subject. It was he who called our attention to the relevant quotations and explained their precise significance.

In the October number of our magazine Fourth International which Shachtman had at hand when he wrote his article in Labor Action of November 4—he refers to the Goldman-Trotsky correspondence contained therein—Trotsky wrote: “Prior to the February revolution and even afterwards, the revolutionary elements felt themselves to be not contenders for power, but the extreme left opposition. Even Lenin relegated the socialist revolution to a more or less distant future. . . . If that is how Lenin viewed the situation, then there is hardly any need of talking about the others.”

Here is the real nub of the matter. Shachtman’s attack on “Cannon” in behalf of Lenin is in reality aimed against Trotsky in a cowardly and indirect manner. He wants to set Lenin against Trotsky, to make a division in the minds of the radical workers between Lenin and Trotsky, to set himself up as a “Leninist” with the sly intimation that Leninism is not the same thing as Trotskyism. There is a monstrous criminality in this procedure. The names of Lenin and Trotsky are inseparably united in the Russian Revolution, its achievements, its doctrines and traditions, and in the great struggle for Bolshevism waged by Trotsky since the death of Lenin. “Lenin-Trotsky”—those two immortal names are one. Nobody yet has tried to separate them; that is, nobody but scoundrels and traitors.

Shachtman’s article in Labor Action serves the same aim as the special “Trotsky Memorial Issue” of their magazine which was published only to defame the memory of Trotsky, to belittle him, to justify themselves against him, and at the same time—like any shopkeeper looking for a little extra profit—to claim his “heritage.”

Trotsky, as if anticipating such attempts, gave this answer in advance. Here is what he wrote in the Socialist Appeal: “Only the other day Shachtman referred to himself in the press as a ’Trotskyist.’ If this be Trotskyism then I at least am no Trotskyist. With the present ideas of Shachtman, not to mention Burnham, I have nothing in common. . . . Towards their new magazine my attitude can only be the same as toward all other petty-bourgeois counterfeits of Marxism. As for their ’organizational methods’ and political ’morality,’ these evoke in me nothing but contempt.”

The literary manners and morals of petty-bourgeois dabblers in politics are no better than their theses. With such people, as Trotsky once remarked, it is not sufficient to check their theses; it is necessary to watch their fingers too! If we keep this salutary warning in mind the “theses” of Shachtman directed against our military transitional program can be disposed of without difficulty. As I said before, it is mainly work with a shovel.

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 Karl Liebknecht! -Liebknecht Disapproves of the Majority Socialists of Germany

Markin comment

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 KARL LIEBKNECHT
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Karl Liebknecht

The Future Belongs to the People

Liebknecht Disapproves of the Majority Socialists of Germany


THE Swiss Socialist paper Volksrecht published in November, 1914, the following statement, signed by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin.

"In the Socialist press of the neutral countries of Sweden, Italy and Switzerland, Comrades Dr. Suedekum and Richard Fischer have attempted to portray the attitude of the German Social-Democrats towards the present War in the light of their own ideas. We feel ourselves forced therefore to explain through the same mediums that we, and certainly many other German Social-Democrats, look on the War, its causes and its character, as well as on the rôle of the Social-Democrats at the present time, from a standpoint which in no way corresponds to that of Dr. Suedekum and Herr Fischer. At the present time the state of martial law makes it impossible for us to give public expression to our views."


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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 Russian Bolshevik Leader Vladimir Lenin! -Imperialism and the Split in Socialism (1916)

Markin comment

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 VLADIMIR LENIN
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V. I. Lenin

Imperialism and the Split in Socialism


Written: Written in October 1916
Published: Published in Sbornik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 2, December 1916. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the Sbornik text.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 23, pages 105-120.
Translated: M. S. Levin, The Late Joe Fineberg and and Others
Transcription: Zodiac
HTML Markup: B. Baggins and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 1996(z), 2000(bb,dw), 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README


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Is there any connection between imperialism and the monstrous and disgusting victory opportunism (in the form of social-chauvinism) has gained over the labour movement in Europe?

This is the fundamental question of modern socialism. And having in our Party literature fully established, first, the imperialist character of our era and of the present war[1] , and, second, the inseparable historical connection between social-chauvinism and opportunism, as well as the intrinsic similarity of their political ideology, we can and must proceed to analyse this fundamental question.

We have to begin with as precise and full a definition of imperialism as possible. Imperialism is a specific historical stage of capitalism. Its specific character is threefold: imperialism is monopoly capitalism; parasitic, or decaying capitalism; moribund capitalism. The supplanting of free competition by monopoly is the fundamental economic feature, the quintessence of imperialism. Monopoly manifests itself in five principal forms: (1) cartels, syndicates and trusts—the concentration of production has reached a degree which gives rise to these monopolistic associations of capitalists; (2) the monopolistic position of the big banks—three, four or five giant banks manipulate the whole economic life of America, France, Germany; (3) seizure of the sources of raw material by the trusts and the financial oligarchy (finance capital is monopoly industrial capital merged with bank capital); (4) the (economic) partition of the world by the international cartels has begun. There are already over one hundred such international cartels, which command the entire world market and divide it “amicably” among themselves—until war redivides it. The export of capital, as distinct from the export of commodities under non-monopoly capitalism, is a highly characteristic phenomenon and is closely linked with the economic and territorial-political partition of the world; (5) the territorial partition of the world (colonies) is completed.

Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism in America and Europe, and later in Asia, took final shape in the period 1898–1914. The Spanish-American War (1898), the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and the economic crisis in Europe in 1900 are the chief historical landmarks in the new era of world history.

The fact that imperialism is parasitic or decaying capitalism is manifested first of all in the tendency to decay, which is characteristic of every monopoly under the system of private ownership of the means of production. The difference between the democratic-republican and the reactionary-monarchist imperialist bourgeoisie is obliterated precisely because they are both rotting alive (which by no means precludes an extraordinarily rapid development of capitalism in individual branches of industry, in individual countries, and in individual periods). Secondly, the decay of capitalism is manifested in the creation of a huge stratum of rentiers, capitalists who live by “clipping coupons”. In each of the four leading imperialist countries—England, U.S.A., France and Germany—capital in securities amounts to 100,000 or 150,000 million francs, from which each country derives an annual income of no less than five to eight thousand million. Thirdly, export of capital is parasitism raised to a high pitch. Fourthly, “finance capital strives for domination, not freedom”. Political reaction all along the line is a characteristic feature of imperialism. Corruption, bribery on a huge scale and all kinds of fraud. Fifthly, the exploitation of oppressed nations—which is inseparably connected with annexations—and especially the exploitation of colonies by a handful of “Great” Powers, increasingly transforms the “civilised” world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations. The Roman proletarian lived at the expense of society. Modern society lives at the expense of the modern proletarian. Marx specially stressed this profound observation of Sismondi.[7] Imperialism somewhat changes the situation. A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations.

It is clear why imperialism is moribund capitalism, capitalism in transition to socialism: monopoly, which grows out of capitalism, is already dying capitalism, the beginning of its transition to socialism. The tremendous socialisation of labour by imperialism (what its apologists-the bourgeois economists-call “interlocking”) produces the same result.

Advancing this definition of imperialism brings us into complete contradiction to K. Kautsky, who refuses to regard imperialism as a “phase of capitalism” and defines it as a policy “preferred” by finance capital, a tendency of “industrial” countries to annex “agrarian” countries.[2] Kautsky’s definition is thoroughly false from the theoretical standpoint. What distinguishes imperialism is the rule not of industrial capital, but of finance capital, the striving to annex not agrarian countries, particularly, but every kind of country. Kautsky divorces imperialist politics from imperialist economics, he divorces monopoly in politics from monopoly in economics in order to pave the way for his vulgar bourgeois reformism, such as “disarmament”, “ultraimperialism” and similar nonsense. The whole purpose and significance of this theoretical falsity is to obscure the most profound contradictions of imperialism and thus justify the theory of “unity” with the apologists of imperialism, the outright social-chauvinists and opportunists.

We have dealt at sufficient length with Kautsky’s break with Marxism on this point in Sotsial-Demokrat and Kommunist.[8] Our Russian Kautskyites, the supporters of the Organising Committee[3] (O.C.), headed by Axelrod and Spectator, including even Martov, and to a large degree Trotsky, preferred to maintain a discreet silence on the question of Kautskyism as a trend. They did not dare defend Kautsky’s war-time writings, confining themselves simply to praising Kautsky (Axelrod in his German pamphlet, which the Organising Committee has promised to publish in Russian) or to quoting Kautsky’s private letters (Spectator), in which he says he belongs to the opposition and jesuitically tries to nullify his chauvinist declarations.

It should be noted that Kautsky’s “conception” of imperialism—which is tantamount to embellishing imperialism—is a retrogression not only compared with Hilferding’s Finance Capital (no matter how assiduously Hilferding now defends Kautsky and “unity” with the social-chauvinists!) but also compared with the social-liberal J. A. Hobson. This English economist, who in no way claims to be a Marxist, defines imperialism, and reveals its contradictions, much more profoundly in a book published in 1902[4] . This is what Hobson (in whose book may be found nearly all Kautsky’s pacifist and “conciliatory” banalities) wrote on the highly important question of the parasitic nature of imperialism:

Two sets of circumstances, in Hobson’s opinion, weakened the power of the old empires: (1) “economic parasitism”, and (2) formation of armies from dependent peoples. “There is first the habit of economic parasitism, by which the ruling state has used its provinces, colonies, and dependencies in order to enrich its ruling class and to bribe its lower classes into acquiescence.” Concerning the second circumstance, Hobson writes:

“One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of imperialism [this song about the “blindness” of imperialists comes more appropriately from the social-liberal Hobson than from the “Marxist” Kautsky] is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France, and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighting by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great standing armies are placed under British commanders; almost all the fighting associated with our African dominions, except in the southern part, has been done for us by natives.”

The prospect of partitioning China elicited from Hobson the following economic appraisal: “The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country in the South of England, in the Riviera, and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger body of personal servants and workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods: all the main arterial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and semi-manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa.... We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western states, a European federation of Great Powers which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilisation, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory [he should have said: prospect] as undeserving of consideration examine the economic and social condition of districts in Southern England today which are already reduced to this condition, and reflect upon the vast extension of such a system which might be rendered feasible by the subjection of China to the economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors [rentiers] and political and business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume it in Europe. The situation is far too complex, the play of world forces far too incalculable, to render this or any other single interpretation of the future very probable; but the influences which govern the imperialism of Western Europe today are moving in this direction, and, unless counteracted or diverted, make towards such a consummation.”

Hobson, the social-liberal, fails to see that this “counteraction” can be offered only by the revolutionary proletariat and only in the form of a social revolution. But then he is a social-liberal! Nevertheless, as early as 1902 he had an excellent insight into the meaning and significance of a “United States of Europe” (be it said for the benefit of Trotsky the Kautskyite!) and of all that is now being glossed over by the hypocritical Kautskyites of various countries, namely, that the opportunists (social-chauvinists) are working hand in glove with the imperialist bourgeoisie precisely towards creating an imperialist Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa, and that objectively the opportunists are a section of the petty bourgeoisie and of a certain strata of the working class who have been bribed out of imperialist superprofits and converted to watchdogs of capitalism and corruptors of the labour movement.

Both in articles and in the resolutions of our Party, we have repeatedly pointed to this most profound connection, the economic connection, between the imperialist bourgeoisie and the opportunism which has triumphed (for long?) in the labour movement. And from this, incidentally, we concluded that a split with the social-chauvinists was inevitable. Our Kautskyites preferred to evade the question! Martov, for instance, uttered in his lectures a sophistry which in the Bulletin of the Organising Committee, Secretariat Abroad[9] (No. 4, April 10, 1916) is expressed as follows:

“...The cause of revolutionary Social-Democracy would be in a sad, indeed hopeless, plight if those groups of workers who in mental development approach most closely to the ‘intelligentsia’ and who are the most highly skilled fatally drifted away from it towards opportunism....”

By means of the silly word “fatally” and a certain sleight-of-hand, the fact is evaded that certain groups of workers have already drifted away to opportunism and to the imperialist bourgeoisie! And that is the very fact the sophists of the O.C. want to evade! They confine themselves to the “official optimism” the Kautskyite Hilferding and many others now flaunt: objective conditions guarantee the unity of the proletariat and the victory of the revolutionary trend! We, forsooth, are “optimists” with regard to the proletariat!

But in reality all these Kautskyites—Hilferding, the O.C. supporters, Martov and Co.—are optimists... with regard to opportunism. That is the whole point!

The proletariat is the child of capitalism—of world capitalism, and not only of European capitalism, or of imperialist capitalism. On a world scale, fifty years sooner or fifty years later—measured on a world scale, this is a minor point—the “proletariat” of course “will be” united, and revolutionary Social-Democracy will “inevitably” be victorious within it. But that is not the point, Messrs. Kautskyites. The point is that at the present time, in the imperialist countries of Europe, you are fawning on the opportunists, who are alien to the proletariat as a class, who are the servants, the agents of the bourgeoisie and the vehicles of its influence, and unless the labour movement rids itself of them, it will remain a bourgeois labour movement. By advocating “unity” with the opportunists, with the Legiens and Davids, the Plekhanovs, the Chkhenkelis and Potresovs, etc., you are, objectively, defending the enslavement of the workers by the imperialist bourgeoisie with the aid of its best agents in the labour movement. The victory of revolutionary Social-Democracy on a world scale is absolutely inevitable, only it is moving and will move, is proceeding and will proceed, against you, it will be a victory over you.

These two trends, one might even say two parties, in the present-day labour movement, which in 1914–16 so obviously parted ways all over the world, were traced by Engels and Marx in England throughout the course of decades, roughly from 1858 to 1892.

Neither Marx nor Engels lived to see the imperialist epoch of world capitalism, which began not earlier than 1898–1900. But it has been a peculiar feature of England that even in the middle of the nineteenth century she already revealed at least two major distinguishing features of imperialism: (1) vast colonies, and (2) monopoly profit (due to her monopoly position in the world market). In both respects England at that time was an exception among capitalist countries, and Engels and Marx, analysing this exception, quite clearly and definitely indicated its connection with the (temporary) victory of opportunism in the English labour movement.

In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: “...The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.” In a letter to Sorge, dated September 21, 1872, Engels informs him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council of the International and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that “the English labour leaders had sold themselves”. Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4, 1874: “As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot.” In a letter to Marx, dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks about “those very worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.” In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”

On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: “The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois ‘respectability’, which has grown deep into the bones of the workers.... Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all.”[10] In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: “But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest [Engels’s italics] strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion.” On March 4, 1891: “The failure of the collapsed Dockers’ Union; the ‘old’ conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field....” September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated “and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party” (Engels’s italics throughout)....

That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an “aristocracy among the working class”, of a “privileged minority of the workers”, in contradistinction to the “great mass of working people”. “A small, privileged, protected minority” of the working class alone was “permanently benefited” by the privileged position of England in 1848–68, whereas “the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement”.... “With the break-down of that [England’s industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position...” The members of the “new” unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, “had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old unionists’” .... “The so-called workers’ representatives” in England are people “who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism...”

We have deliberately quoted the direct statements of Marx and Engels at rather great length in order that the reader may study them as a whole. And they should be studied, they are worth carefully pondering over. For they are the pivot of the tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions of the imperialist era.

Here, too, Kautsky has tried to “befog the issue” and substitute for Marxism sentimental conciliation with the opportunists. Arguing against the avowed and naive social-imperialists (men like Lensch) who justify Germany’s participation in the war as a means of destroying England’s monopoly, Kautsky “corrects” this obvious falsehood by another equally obvious falsehood. Instead of a cynical falsehood he employs a suave falsehood! The industrial monopoly of England, he says, has long ago been broken, has long ago been destroyed, and there is nothing left to destroy.

Why is this argument false?

Because, firstly, it overlooks England’s colonial monopoly. Yet Engels, as we have seen, pointed to this very clearly as early as 1882, thirty-four years ago! Although England’s industrial monopoly may have been destroyed, her colonial monopoly not only remains, but has become extremely accentuated, for the whole world is already divided up! By means of this suave lie Kautsky smuggles in the bourgeois-pacifist and opportunist-philistine idea that “there is nothing to fight about”. On the contrary, not only have the capitalists something to fight about now, but they cannot help fighting if they want to preserve capitalism, for without a forcible redivision of colonies the new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges enjoyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers.

Secondly, why does England’s monopoly explain the (temporary) victory of opportunism in England? Because monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world. The capitalists can devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance (recall the celebrated “alliances” described by the Webbs of English trade unions and employers) between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries. England’s industrial monopoly was already destroyed by the end of the nineteenth century. That is beyond dispute. But how did this destruction take place? Did all monopoly disappear?

If that were so, Kautsky’s “theory” of conciliation (with the opportunists) would to a certain extent be justified. But it is not so, and that is just the point. Imperialism is monopoly capitalism. Every cartel, trust, syndicate, every giant bank is a monopoly Superprofits have not disappeared; they still remain. The exploitation of all other countries by one privileged, financially wealthy country remains and has become more intense. A handful of wealthy countries—there are only four of them, if we mean independent, really gigantic, “modern” wealth: England, France, the United States and Germany—have developed monopoly to vast proportions, they obtain superprofits running into hundreds, if not thousands, of millions, they “ride on the backs” of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in other countries and fight among themselves for the division of the particularly rich, particularly fat and particularly easy spoils.

This, in fact, is the economic and political essence of imperialism, the profound contradictions of which Kautsky glosses over instead of exposing.

The bourgeoisie of an imperialist “Great” Power can economically bribe the upper strata of “its” workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, “labour representatives” (remember Engels’s splendid analysis of the term), labour members of War Industries Committees,[5] labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question.

Between 1848 and 1868, and to a certain extent even later, only England enjoyed a monopoly: that is why opportunism could prevail there for decades. No other countries possessed either very rich colonies or an industrial monopoly.

The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.) This difference explains why England’s monopoly position could remain unchallenged for decades. The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun. It was possible in those days to bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every imperialist “Great” Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in England in 1848–68) of the “labour aristocracy”. Formerly a “bourgeois labour party”, to use Engels’s remarkably profound expression, could arise only in one country, because it alone enjoyed a monopoly, but, on the other hand, it could exist for a long time. Now a “bourgeois labour party” is inevitable and typical in all imperialist countries; but in view of the desperate struggle they are waging for the division of spoils it is improbable that such a party can prevail for long in a number of countries. For the trusts, the financial oligarchy, high prices, etc., while enabling the bribery of a handful in the top layers, are increasingly oppressing, crushing, ruining and torturing the mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat.

On the one hand, there is the tendency of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists to convert a handful of very rich and privileged nations into “eternal” parasites on the body of the rest of mankind, to “rest on the laurels” of the exploitation of Negroes, Indians, etc., keeping them in subjection with the aid of the excellent weapons of extermination provided by modern militarism. On the other hand, there is the tendency of the masses, who are more oppressed than before and who bear the whole brunt of imperialist wars, to cast off this yoke and to overthrow the bourgeoisie. It is in the struggle between these two tendencies that the history of the labour movement will now inevitably develop. For the first tendency is not accidental; it is “substantiated” economically. In all countries the bourgeoisie has already begotten, fostered and secured for itself “bourgeois labour parties” of social-chauvinists. The difference between a definitely formed party, like Bissolati’s in Italy, for example, which is fully social-imperialist, and, say, the semi-formed near-party of the Potresovs, Gvozdyovs, Bulkins, Chkheidzes, Skobelevs and Co., is an immaterial difference. The important thing is that, economically, the desertion of a stratum of the labour aristocracy to the bourgeoisie has matured and become an accomplished fact; and this economic fact, this shift in class relations, will find political form, in one shape or another, without any particular “difficulty”.

On the economic basis referred to above, the political institutions of modern capitalism—press, parliament associations, congresses etc.—have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops. Lucrative an soft jobs in the government or on the war industries committees, in parliament and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of “respectable”, legally published newspapers or on the management councils of no less respectable and “bourgeois law-abiding” trade unions—this is the bait by which the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the representatives and supporters of the “bourgeois labour parties”.

The mechanics of political democracy works in the same direction. Nothing in our times can be done without elections; nothing can be done without the masses. And in this era of printing and parliamentarism it is impossible to gain the following of the masses without a widely ramified, systematically managed, well-equipped system of flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable and popular catchwords, and promising all manner of reforms and blessings to the workers right and left—as long as they renounce the revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of bourgeoisie. I would call this system Lloyd-Georgism, after the English Minister Lloyd George, one of the foremost and most dexterous representatives of this system in the classic land of the “bourgeois labour party”. A first-class bourgeois manipulator, an astute politician, a popular orator who will deliver any speeches you like even r-r-revolutionary ones, to a labour audience, and a man who is capable of obtaining sizable sops for docile workers in the shape of social reforms (insurance, etc.), Lloyd George serves the bourgeoisie splendidly,[6] and serves it precisely among the workers, brings its influence precisely to the proletariat, to where the bourgeoisie needs it most and where it finds it most difficult to subject the masses morally.

And is there such a great difference between Lloyd George and the Scheidemanns, Legiens, Hendersons and Hyndmans, Plekhanovs, Renaudels and Co.? Of the latter, it may be objected, some will return to the revolutionary socialism of Marx. This is possible, but it is an insignificant difference in degree, if the question is regarded from its political, i.e., its mass aspect. Certain individuals among the present social-chauvinist leaders may return to the proletariat. But the social-chauvinist or (what is the same thing) opportunist trend can neither disappear nor “return” to the revolutionary proletariat. Wherever Marxism is popular among the workers, this political trend, this “bourgeois labour party”, will swear by the name of Marx. It cannot be prohibited from doing this, just as a trading firm cannot be prohibited from using any particular label, sign or advertisement. It has always been the case in history that after the death of revolutionary leaders who were popular among the oppressed classes, their enemies have attempted to appropriate their names so as to deceive the oppressed classes.

The fact that is that “bourgeois labour parties,” as a political phenomenon, have already been formed in all the foremost capitalist countries, and that unless determined and relentless struggle is waged all along the line against these parties—or groups, trends, etc., it is all the same—there can be no question of a struggle against imperialism, or of Marxism, or of a socialist labour movement. The Chkheidze faction,[11] Nashe Dyelo and Golos Truda[12] in Russia, and the O.C. supporters abroad are nothing but varieties of one such party. There is not the slightest reason for thinking that these parties will disappear before the social revolution. On the contrary, the nearer the revolution approaches, the more strongly it flares up and the more sudden and violent the transitions and leaps in its progress, the greater will be the part the struggle of the revolutionary mass stream against the opportunist petty-bourgeois stream will play in the labour movement. Kautskyism is not an independent trend, because it has no roots either in the masses or in the privileged stratum which has deserted to the bourgeoisie. But the danger of Kautskyism lies in the fact that, utilising the ideology of the past, it endeavours to reconcile the proletariat with the “bourgeois labour party”, to preserve the unity of the proletariat with that party and thereby enhance the latter’s prestige. The masses no longer follow the avowed social-chauvinists: Lloyd George has been hissed down at workers’ meetings in England; Hyndman has left the party; the Renaudels and Scheidemanns, the Potresovs and Gvozdyovs are protected by the police. The Kautskyites’ masked defence of the social-chauvinists is much more dangerous.

One of the most common sophistries of Kautskyism is its reference to the “masses”. We do not want, they say, to break away from the masses and mass organisations! But just think how Engels put the question. In the nineteenth century the “mass organisations” of the English trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour party. Marx and Engels did not reconcile themselves to it on this ground; they exposed it. They did not forget, firstly, that the trade union organisations directly embraced a minority of the proletariat. In England then, as in Germany now, not more than one-fifth of the proletariat was organised. No one can seriously think it possible to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism. Secondly—and this is the main point—it is not so much a question of the size of an organisation, as of the real, objective significance of its policy: does its policy represent the masses, does it serve them, i.e., does it aim at their liberation from capitalism, or does it represent the interests of the minority, the minority’s reconciliation with capitalism? The latter was true of England in the nineteenth century, and it is true of Germany, etc., now.

Engels draws a distinction between the “bourgeois labour party” of the old trade unions—the privileged minority—and the “lowest mass”, the real majority, and appeals to the latter, who are not infected by “bourgeois respectability”. This is the essence of Marxist tactics!

Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the “defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.

The only Marxist line in the world labour movement is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for revolution by waging a relentless struggle against opportunism, to utilise the experience of the war to expose, not conceal, the utter vileness of national-liberal labour politics.

In the next article, we shall try to sum up the principal features that distinguish this line from Kautskyism.


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Notes
[1] The reference is to the First World War of 1914–18. p.5 —Lenin

[2] “Imperialism is a product of highly developed industrial capitalism. It consists in the striving of every industrial capitalist nation to subjugate and annex ever larger agrarian territories irrespective of the nations that inhabit them” (Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit; September 11, 1914). —Lenin

[3] Organising Committee (O.C.)—the leading centre of the Mensheviks, supporters of the petty-bourgeois, opportunist trend in the Russian Social-Democratic Party. It was formed in 1912; during the world imperialist war it took a social-chauvinist stand, justifying the war led by the tsarist government and preaching nationalistic and chauvinistic ideas. p.7 —Lenin

[4] J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, London, 1902. —Lenin

[5] War Industries Committees were set up in Russia in May 1915 by the big imperialist bourgeoisie for aiding tsarism in conducting the war. In an attempt to bring the workers under its influence and instil defencist sentiments into them, the bourgeoisie decided to form “Workers’ Groups” of the War Industries Committees, thereby showing that a “class truce” between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was established in Russia. The Bolsheviks advocated a boycott of the War Industries Committees and were successful in securing this boycott with the support of the majority of the workers. p. 4 —Lenin

[6] I recently read an article in an English magazine by a Tory, a political opponent of Lloyd George, entitled “Lloyd George from the Standpoint of a Tory”. The war opened the eyes of this opponent and made him realise what an excellent servant of the bourgeoisie this Lloyd George is! The Tories have made peace with him! —Lenin

[7] See Karl Marx, Preface to the second edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. p.6

Die Neue Zeit (New Times)—the theoretical journal of the German Social-Democratic Party, published in Stuttgart from 1883 to 1923. Up to October 1917 it was edited by Karl Kautsky, later by Heinrich Cunow. Some of the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were first published in Die Neue Zeit. Engels gave regular advice to the editors and frequently criticised them for permitting deviations from Marxism in the journal. In the late nineties, after the death of Engels, the journal regularly carried articles by revisionists. During the First World War (1914–18) the journal occupied a Centrist position, in reality supporting the social-chauvinists. p. 7

[8] Sotsial-Demokrat—Central Organ of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, published as an illegal newspaper from February 1908 to January 1917. p.7

Kommunist—a journal started by Lenin; published in Geneva in 1915 by the editorial board of the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat. Only one (double) issue appeared. p.7

[9] Bulletin of the R.S.D.L.P. Organising Committee, Secretariat Abroad—a Menshevik Centrist organ, published in Geneva from February 1915 to March 1917. Altogether ten issues appeared.
[10] [PLACEHOLDER ENDNOTE.]

[11] Chkheidze faction—the Menshevik group in the Fourth Duma led by N. S. Chkheidze. Officially followed a Centrist policy in the First World War, but factually supported the Russian social-chauvinists. In 1916 the group was composed of M. I. Skobelev, I. N. Tulyakov, V. I. Khaustov, N. S. Chkheidze and A. I. Chkhenkeli. Lenin criticises their opportunist policy in several articles, including “The Chkheidze Faction and Its Role”, “Have the Organising Committee and the Chkheidze Group a Policy of Their Own?”

[12] Nashe Dyelo (Our Cause)—a Menshevik monthly, chief mouthpiece of the liquidators and Russian social-chauvinists. Published in Petrograd in \thinspace1915 in place of Nasha Zarya (Our Dawn) which was closed in October 1914. Contributors included Y. Mayevsky, P. P. Maslov, A. N. Potresov and N. Cherevanin. Six issues appeared altogether.

Golos Truda (Voice of Labour)—a legal Menshevik paper published in Samara in 1916, after the closure of Nash Golos (Our Voice). Three issues appeared.

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]