In The Time Of The Second Mountain Music Revival- A Song-catcher Classic Song- "Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies"-Maybelle Carter-Style

In The Time Of The Second Mountain Music Revival- A Song-catcher Classic Song- "Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies"-Maybelle Carter-Style

By Alex Radley

Being very new here, brought in the past few months by Greg Green on the recommendation of his Editorial Board, I have nothing to say about the internal wrangling that has roiled this shop over the past several month even after the departure of the previous site manager. I am concerned though at a personal level about the talk, rumor I guess you would call it, ever since Phil Larkin, an older writer here and sort of a funny guy, started talking about purges and changes of direction which has a lot of writers and not just the older ones concerned about what and who will stay and what and who will go. I have heard from Bart Webber, a mainstay of this site from what some guys have told me, there are plans afoot to shut down, or deeply scale back the amount of reviews and reminiscences about the folk scene in the 1960s and the long string of such music prior to that which those folk aficionados gathered up and promoted.

This mountain music which certainly is folk music in an almost literal sense is the music of my grandfather who grew up down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia and attended those Saturday night fiddle, mandolin, mountain harp, red barn dances when he was young which he told me about when I was young. One of the junior editors here who shall remain nameless because as they say on all disclaimers he is not authorized to talk about it but who has been helpful on a couple of other reviews kind of off-handedly told me that this review might very well be the last, or close to the last time, mountain music gets anything but short shrift notice in passing on this site. Damn.         

A YouTube film clip of a classic Song-Catcher-type song from deep in the mountains, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies. According to my sources Cecil Sharpe (a British musicologist in the manner of Francis Child with his ballads back in 1850s Cambridge hanging out with Longfellow and the Brattle Street crowd, Charles Seeger father of Pete Seeger a seminal force in folk music in his own right and key link to the folk music passing on of the 1960s my grandfather keeps telling me about when I go visit him in the nursing home, and the Lomaxes, father and son who whatever the son did to injure the career of a British folksinger of some note with his disregard for her feelings when they were companions did yeoman’s work collecting prison songs, Saturday night red barn hills and hollows song and a lot more)"discovered" the song in 1916 in Kentucky.

Of course my first connection to the song had nothing to do with the mountains, or mountain origins, or so I though at the time but was heard the first time long ago in my grandfather in his ill-spent 1960s youth (that expression his not mine) listening to a late Sunday night folk radio show on WBZ in Boston hosted by Dick Summer (who is now featured on the Tom Rush documentary No Regrets about Tom’s life in the early 1960s Boston folk scene that my grandfather has also gone on and on about) and hearing the late gravelly-voiced folksinger Dave Van Ronk like some latter-day Jehovah doing his version of the song. Quite a bit different from the Maybelle Carter effort here. I'll say.

[By the way that “or so I thought” about mountain music later turned out to be not quite true. My grandfather originally from coal country down in Prestonsburg, Kentucky out by the hills and hollows (I refuse to write “hollas” which is the way grandfather pronounces it and from him it sounds right) and my grandmother left Carville for a time to go back to his growing up home to see if they could make a go of it there after World War II. They could not but while they were there my father was conceived and being carried in my grandmothers’ womb so it turned out the damn stuff was in my DNA going back some distance. Go figure, right.]     

COME ALL YE FAIR AND TENDER LADIES

(A.P. Carter)

The Carter Family - 1932

Come all ye fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court young men

They're like a bright star on a cloudy morning

They will first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story

To make you think that they love you true

Straightway they'll go and court some other

Oh that's the love that they have for you

Do you remember our days of courting

When your head lay upon my breast

You could make me believe with the falling of your arm

That the sun rose in the West

I wish I were some little sparrow

And I had wings and I could fly

I would fly away to my false true lover

And while he'll talk I would sit and cry

But I am not some little sparrow

I have no wings nor can I fly

So I'll sit down here in grief and sorrow

And try to pass my troubles by

I wish I had known before I courted

That love had been so hard to gain

I'd of locked my heart in a box of golden

And fastened it down with a silver chain

Young men never cast your eye on beauty

For beauty is a thing that will decay

For the prettiest flowers that grow in the garden

How soon they'll wither, will wither and fade away

******

ALTERNATE VERSION:

Come all ye fair and tender ladies

Take warning how you court young men

They're like a star on summer morning

They first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story

And make you think they love you so well

Then away they'll go and court some other

And leave you there in grief to dwell

I wish I was on some tall mountain

Where the ivy rocks are black as ink

I'd write a letter to my lost true lover

Whose cheeks are like the morning pink

For love is handsome, love is charming

And love is pretty while it's new

But love grows cold as love grows old

And fades away like the mornin' dew

And fades away like the mornin' dew

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-Every January We Honor Lenin, Luxemburg, And Liebknecht-The Three Ls

By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  


Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me.  

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.


Biography The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of the SPD, Karl Liebknecht trained to be a lawyer and defended many Social Democrats in political trials. He was also a leading figure in the socialist youth movement and thus became a leading figure in the struggle against militarism. As a deputy in the Reichstag he was one of the first SPD representatives to break party discipline and vote against war credits in December 1914. He became a figurehead for the struggle against the war.

His opposition was so successful that his parliamentary immunity was removed and he was improsoned. Freed by the November revolution he immediately threw himself into the struggle and became with Rosa Luxemburg one of the founders of the new Communist Party (KPD). Along with Luxemburg he was murdered by military officers with the tacit approval of the leaders of the SPD after the suppression of the so-called “Spartacist Uprising” in January 1919.

The Main Enemy Is At Home!

(Leaflet, May 1915)

---

Source: Karl Liebknecht, Ausgewählte Reden und Aufsätze (Selected Speeches and Essays), Berlin 1952, pp. 296-301.
Transcription: Einde O’Callaghan for Marxists' Internet Archive
Translation and Markup: John Wagner for Marxists' Internet Archive
Online Version: Karl Liebknecht Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2002

---

What has been expected every day for the past ten months, since the Austrian invasion of Serbia, has come to pass: There is war with Italy.

The masses in the warring countries have begun to free themselves from the official webs of lies. The German people as well have gained insight about the causes and objectives of the world war, about who is directly responsible for its outbreak. The mad delusions about the "holy aims" of the war have given way more and more, the enthusiasm for the war has dwindled, the will for a rapid peace has grown powerfully all over – even in the Army!
This was a difficult problem for the German and Austrian imperialists, who were seeking in vain for salvation. Now it seems they have found it. Italy's intervention in the war should offer them a welcome opportunity to stir up new frenzies of national hatred, to smother the will for peace, and to blur the traces of their own guilt. They are betting on the forgetfulness of the German people, betting on their forbearance which has been tested all too often.
If this plan succeeds, the results of ten months of bloody experience will be made worthless, and the international proletariat will once again be disarmed and completely discarded as an independent political factor.
This plan must be wrecked – provided that the part of the German proletariat which has remained true to international socialism remains mindful and worthy of its historical mission in this monstrous time.
The enemies of the people are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – we counter this with the solution:

Learn everything, don't forget anything!

Don't forget anything!
We have seen how when war broke out, the masses were captured for the capitalist aims of the war with enticing melodies from the ruling classes. We have seen how the shiny bubbles of demagogy burst, how the foolish dreams of August vanished, how, instead of happiness, suffering and misery came over the people; how the tears of war widows and war orphans swelled to great currents; how the maintenance of the three-class disgrace, the unrepentant canonization of the Quadrinity – semi-absolutism, junker rule, militarism, and police despotism – became bitter truth.
Through this experience we have been warned – learn everything, don't forget anything!
Offensive are the tirades with which Italian imperialism glosses over its pillaging; offensive is that roman tragicomedy in which the now-common grimace of the Burgfrieden ("civil truce") is present. More offensive still is that in all of this we can recognize, as if reflected in a mirror, the German and Austrian methods of July and August 1914.
The Italian instigators of war deserve every denunciation. But they are nothing but copies of the German and Austrian instigators, the ones who are chiefly responsible for the outbreak of war. Birds of a feather!

Whom can the German people thank for this new affliction?

From whom can they demand explanation for the new piles of bodies which will tower up?
It is still the case: The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia from July 23, 1914 was the spark that ignited the world, even if the fire was very late in spreading to Italy.
It is still the case: This ultimatum was the signal for the redistribution of the world, and by necessity called on all capitalist pillager-states to participate in the plan.
It is still the case: This ultimatum contained in it the question of the dominance over the Balkans, Asia Minor, and all of the Mediterranean, and therefore contained all the antagonisms between Austria-Germany and Italy in one stroke.
If the German and Austrian imperialists now try to hide themselves behind the scenery of Italian pillaging and the backdrop of Italian disloyalty; when they don on the toga of moral indignation and aggrieved innocence, while in Rome they have found nothing but their equals, then they deserve the cruelest scorn.
The rule "Don't forget anything" applies to how the German people were just manipulated in the Italian question by the very honorable German patriots.
The Triple Alliance treaty wth Italy has always been a farce – you were all deceived about that!
The experts have always known that in the case of war Italy would be a certain opponent of Austria and Germany – you were led to believe it would be a certain confederate!
A good part of Germany's fate in world politics was decided in the Triple Alliance treaty, which was signed and renewed without your consultation – till the present day not one letter of this treaty has been shared with you.
The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, with which a small clique took all of humanity by surprise, broke the treaty between Austria and Italy – you were told nothing of this.
This ultimatum was given with the express condemnation of Italy – that was kept secret from you.
On May 4 of this year Italy dissolved the alliance with Austria – until May 18 this crucial fact was withheld from the German and Austrian people, yes, in spite of the truth it was directly denied by the officials – a parallel to the intentional duping of the German people and the German Reichstag about Germany's ultimatum to Belgium from August 2, 1914.
You were given no influence on Germany and Austria's negotiations with Italy, on which Italy's intervention depended. You were treated as sheep in this vital question, while the war party, the secret diplomacy, a handful of people in Berlin and Vienna rolled the dice about the fate of Germany.
The torpedoing of the Lusitania not only consolidated the power of the English, French, and Russian war parties, it invited a grave conflict with the United States, and set all neutral countries against Germany with passionate indignation; it also facilitated the disastrous work of the Italian war party right in the critical moment – the German people had to be quiet about this as well; the iron fist of the state of siege was held around their throats.
Already in March of this year peace negotiations could have been initiated – the offer was made by England – but the greed for profit of the German imperialists led this to be rejected. Promising peace endeavors were thwarted by German parties interested in colonial conquest on a grand scale and in the annexation of Belgium and French Lorraine, by capitalists of the big German shipping companies, and by the agitators of the German heavy industry.
This was also kept secret from the German people, once again you were not consulted about it.
We ask – whom can the German people thank for the continuation of the horrid war and for the intervention of Italy? Who else but the irresponsible people at home who are responsible.

Learn everything, don't forget anything!

For thinking people, Italy's imitation of Germany's actions from summer of last year cannot be a spur for new war frenzies, just an impetus to scare away the phantom hopes of a new dawn of political and social justice, just a new light for the illumination of the political responsibilities and the exposure of the public danger presented by the Austrian and German pursuers of war, just a new indictment of them.
But the rule "Learn and don't forget" applies most of all to the heroic struggle against the war that our Italian comrades have fought and still fight. Struggles in the press, in meetings, in street demonstrations, struggles with revolutionary energy and boldness, defying with heart and soul the rabid crash of nationalist waves which were whipped up by the authorities. Our most enthusiastic congratulations for their struggle. Let their spirit be our example! Provide that it should be the example of the International!
Had it been since those August days, the world would be better off. The international proletariat would be better off.

But the resolute will to fight cannot come too late!

The absurd slogan "stick it out" has hit rock bottom; it leads only deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of genocide. International proletarian class struggle against international imperialist genocide is the socialist commandment of the hour.

The main enemy of every people is in their own country!

The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war party, German secret diplomacy. This enemy at home must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, cooperating with the proletariat of other countries whose struggle is against their own imperialists.
We think as one with the German people – we have nothing in common with the German Tirpitzes and Falkenhayns, with the German government of political oppression and social enslavement. Nothing for them, everything for the German people. Everything for the international proletariat, for the sake of the German proletariat and downtrodden humanity.
The enemies of the working class are counting on the forgetfulness of the masses – provide that that be a grave miscalculation. They are betting on the forbearance of the masses – but we raise the vehement cry:
How long should the gamblers of imperialism abuse the patience of the people? Enough and more than enough slaughter! Down with the war instigators here and abroad!

An end to genocide!

Proletarians of all countries, follow the heroic example of your Italian brothers! Ally yourselves to the international class struggle against the conspiracies of secret diplomacy, against imperialism, against war, for peace with in the socialist spirit.

The main enemy is at home!

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-In Honor Of Italian Communist Leader Antonio Gramsci-An Introduction to Gramsci's Life and Thought

By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  


Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me.  

Markin comment:



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.
*******
Frank Rosengarten

An Introduction to Gramsci's Life and Thought

Transcribed to www.marxists.org with the kind permission of Frank Rosengarten.

Antonio Gramsci was born on January 22, 1891 in Ales in the province of Cagliari in Sardinia. He was the fourth of seven children born to Francesco Gramsci and Giuseppina Marcias. His relationship with his father was never very close, but he had a strong affection and love for his mother, whose resilience, gift for story-telling and pungent humor made a lasting impression on him. Of his six siblings, Antonio enjoyed a mutual interest in literature with his younger sister Teresina, and seems to have always felt a spiritual kinship with his two brothers, Gennaro, the oldest of the Gramsci children, and Carlo, the youngest. Gennaro's early embrace of socialism contributed significantly to Antonio's political development.

In 1897, Antonio's father was suspended and subsequently arrested and imprisoned for five years for alleged administrative abuses. Shortly thereafter, Giuseppina and her children moved to Ghilarza, where Antonio attended elementary school. Sometime during these years of trial and near poverty, he fell from the arms of a servant, to which his family attributed his hunched back and stunted growth: he was an inch or two short of five feet in height.

At the age of eleven, after completing elementary school, Antonio worked for two years in the tax office in Ghilarza, in order to help his financially strapped family. Because of the five-year absence of Francesco, these were years of bitter struggle. Nevertheless, he continued to study privately and eventually returned to school, where he was judged to be of superior intelligence, as indicated by excellent grades in all subjects.

Antonio continued his education, first in Santu Lussurgiu, about ten miles from Ghilarza, then, after graduating from secondary school, at the Dettori Lyceum in Cagliari, where he shared a room with his brother Gennaro, and where he came into contact for the first time with organized sectors of the working class and with radical and socialist politics. But these were also years of privation, during which Antonio was partially dependent on his father for financial support, which came only rarely. In his letters to his family, he accused his father repeatedly of unpardonable procrastination and neglect. His health deteriorated, and some of the nervous symptoms that were to plague him at a later time were already in evidence.

1911 was an important year in young Gramsci's life. After graduating from the Cagliari lyceum, he applied for and won a scholarship to the University of Turin, an award reserved for needy students from the provinces of the former Kingdom of Sardinia. Among the other young people to compete for this scholarship was Palmiro Togliatti, future general secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and, with Gramsci and several others, among the most capable leaders of that embattled Party. Antonio enrolled in the Faculty of Letters. At the University he met Angelo Tasca and several of the other men with whom he was to share struggles first in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and then, after the split that took place in January 1921, in the PCI.

At the University, despite years of terrible suffering due to inadequate diet, unheated flats, and constant nervous exhaustion, Antonio took a variety of courses, mainly in the humanities but also in the social sciences and in linguistics, to which he was sufficiently attracted to contemplate academic specialization in that subject. Several of his professors, notably Matteo Bartoli, a linguist, and Umberto Cosmo, a Dante scholar, became personal friends.

In 1915, despite great promise as an academic scholar, Gramsci became an active member of the PSI, and began a journalistic career that made him among the most feared critical voices in Italy at that time. His column in the Turin edition of Avanti!, and his theatre reviews were widely read and influential. He regularly spoke at workers' study-circles on various topics, such as the novels of Romain Rolland, for whom he felt a certain affinity, the Paris Commune, the French and Italian revolutions and the writings of Karl Marx. It was at this time, as the war dragged on and as Italian intervention became a bloody reality, Gramsci assumed a somewhat ambivalent stance, although his basic position was that the Italian socialists should use intervention as an occasion to turn Italian national sentiment in a revolutionary rather than a chauvinist direction. It was also at this time, in 1917 and 1918, that he began to see the need for integration of political and economic action with cultural work, which took form as a proletarian cultural association in Turin.

The outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 further stirred his revolutionary ardor, and for the remainder of the war and in the years thereafter Gramsci identified himself closely, although not entirely uncritically, with the methods and aims of the Russian revolutionary leadership and with the cause of socialist transformation throughout the advanced capitalist world.

In the spring of 1919, Gramsci, together with Angelo Tasca, Umberto Terracini and Togliatti, founded L'Ordine Nuovo: Rassegna Settimanale di Cultura Socialista (The New Order: A Weekly Review of Socialist Culture), which became an influential periodical (on a weekly and later on a bi-monthly publishing schedule) for the following five years among the radical and revolutionary Left in Italy. The review gave much attention to political and literary currents in Europe, the USSR, and the United States.

For the next few years, Gramsci devoted most of his time to the development of the factory council movement, and to militant journalism, which led in January 1921 to his siding with the Communist minority within the PSI at the Party's Livorno Congress. He became a member of the PCI's central committee, but did not play a leading role until several years later. He was among the most prescient representatives of the Italian Left at the inception of the fascist movement, and on several occasions predicted that unless unified action were taken against the rise of Mussolini's movement, Italian democracy and Italian socialism would both suffer a disastrous defeat.

The years 1921 to 1926, years "of iron and fire" as he called them, were eventful and productive. They were marked in particular by the year and a half he lived in Moscow as an Italian delegate to the Communist International (May 1922- November 1923), his election to the Chamber of Deputies in April 1924, and his assumption of the position of general secretary of the PCI. His personal life was also filled with significant experiences, the chief one being his meeting with and subsequent marriage to Julka Schucht (1896-1980), a violinist and member of the Russian Communist Party whom he met during his stay in Russia. Antonio and Julka had two sons, Delio (1924-1981), and Giuliano, born in 1926, who lives today in Moscow with his wife.

On the evening of November 8, 1926, Gramsci was arrested in Rome and, in accordance with a series of "Exceptional Laws" enacted by the fascist-dominated Italian legislature, committed to solitary confinement at the Regina Coeli prison. This began a ten-year odyssey, marked by almost constant physical and psychic pain as a result of a prison experience that culminated, on April 27, 1937, in his death from a cerebral hemorrhage. No doubt the stroke that killed him was but the final outcome of years and years of illnesses that were never properly treated in prison.

Yet as everyone familiar with the trajectory of Gramsci's life knows, these prison years were also rich with intellectual achievement, as recorded in the Notebooks he kept in his various cells that eventually saw the light after World War II, and as recorded also in the extraordinary letters he wrote from prison to friends and especially to family members, the most important of whom was not his wife Julka but rather a sister-in-law, Tania Schucht. She was the person most intimately and unceasingly involved in his prison life, since she had resided in Rome for many years and was in a position to provide him not only with a regular exchange of thoughts and feelings in letter form but with articles of clothing and with numerous foods and medicines he sorely needed to survive the grinding daily routine of prison life.

After being sentenced on June 4, 1928, with other Italian Communist leaders, to 20 years, 4 months and 5 days in prison, Gramsci was consigned to a prison in Turi, in the province of Bari, which turned out to be his longest place of detention (June 1928 -- November 1933). Thereafter he was under police guard at a clinic in Formia, from which he was transferred in August 1935, always under guard, to the Quisisana Hospital in Rome. It was there that he spent the last two years of his life. Among the people, in addition to Tania, who helped him either by writing to him or by visiting him when possible, were his mother Giuseppina, who died in 1933, his brother Carlo, his sisters Teresina and Grazietta, and his good friend, the economist Piero Sraffa, who throughout Gramsci's prison ordeal provided a crucial and indispenable service to Gramsci. Sraffa used his personal funds and numerous professional contacts that were necessary in order to obtain the books and periodicals Gramsci needed in prison. Gramsci had a prodigious memory, but it is safe to say that without Sraffa's assistance, and without the intermediary role often played by Tania, the Prison Notebooks as we have them would not have come to fruition.

Gramsci's intellectual work in prison did not emerge in the light of day until several years after World War II, when the PC began publishing scattered sections of the Notebooks and some of the approximately 500 letters he wrote from prison. By the 1950s, and then with increasing frequency and intensity, his prison writings attracted interest and critical commentary in a host of countries, not only in the West but in the so-called third world as well. Some of his terminology became household words on the left, the most important of which, and the most complex, is the term "hegemony" as he used it in his writings and applied to the twin task of understanding the reasons underlying both the successes and the failures of socialism on a global scale, and of elaborating a feasible program for the realization of a socialist vision within the really existing conditions that prevailed in the world. Among these conditions were the rise and triumph of fascism and the disarray on the left that had ensued as a result of that triumph. Also extremely pertinent, both theoretically and practically, were such terms and phrases as "organic intellectual," "national'popular," and "historical bloc" which, even if not coined by Gramsci, acquired such radically new and original implications in his writing as to constitute effectively new formulations in the realm of political philosophy.

*Once Again, On Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno- A "Workers Vanguard" Guest Commentary

Click on the title ot link to the Nestor Makhno Internet Archive copy of his "The Anarchist Revolution".

Anarchist Idol Nestor Makhno and Peasant Counterrevolution

Letter

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 839, 7 January 2005.

19 August 2004

Dear Workers Vanguard,

The leaflet protesting an anarchist attempt to exclude Spartacists from a radical event at the Democratic National Convention, reprinted in the August 6, 2004 issue of Workers Vanguard, contains a historical inaccuracy.

It refers to the "counterrevolutionary exploits of Makhno and others who sided with the imperialist-allied White Guards against the Soviet workers state."

Petrichenko, the leader of the semi-anarchist 1921 mutiny of the Kronstadt sailors, did indeed have connections with White Guards and foreign imperialists, as is documented in anarchist historian Paul Avrich's book, "Kronstadt 1921."

Nestor Makhno certainly perpetrated numerous counter-revolutionary exploits. His secret police tortured and murdered many communists. His Ukrainian peasant followers committed frequent pogroms against Jewish petty shopkeepers and merchants. But his guerilla bands did side with Soviet forces against the landlord-backed White Guards.

Trotsky describes in his "Military Writings" how Makhno's mutiny in the spring of 1919, which reflected Ukrainian peasant antagonism to the overwhelmingly Russian and Jewish working class of the Ukrainian cities, played a major role in the collapse of the Southern front, and led to White Guard commander Denikin's seizure of the Ukraine that summer. But Makhno never sided with Denikin. To the contrary. The Makhnovite insurgency played a major role in the collapse of White rule in the Ukraine that fall. And when Denikin's successor, White Guard commander Wrangel, invaded the Ukraine in 1920, a Bolshevik-Makhnovite alliance was reconstituted, which lasted until Wrangel was driven out.

Makhno did attempt to ally with other anti-Bolshevik forces in the Ukraine. Notably, there was Makhno's attempt to ally with the forces of fellow former Red Army commander Grigorev. Grigorev had the worst record of murder, rape, torture and other atrocities committed against Jews of all the peasant bandit leaders ravaging the Ukrainian country-side during the Russian Civil War.

This alliance ended badly for Grigorev. Makhno murdered him, and Grigorev's peasant followers joined Makhno's rebel army—but continued to commit pogroms.

Makhno himself was not personally anti-Semitic, indeed there were Jews in his "collective." In a sense, it could be said that Makhno was simply following anarchist principle. If his secret policemen were torturing prisoners, and if his peasant followers were committing pogroms, what right did Makhno, as just one member of the "collective," have to object?

Fraternally, John H.

YSp Replies: While it is true that there was no formal military alliance or documented connection between Makhno and the White armies in the Ukraine, these facts do not change the substance of the de facto bloc in action between the two. The formulation on Makhno in the Boston Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth Club leaflet is a part of a polemic against the "anti-authoritarian" Bl(A)ck Tea Society (BTS), for whom "democracy" is a cudgel to wield against communists:

"The BTS follows in the worst of the anarchist tradition, from Prince Kropotkin who preferred the hapless bourgeois politician Kerensky to the Bolsheviks, to the counterrevolutionary exploits of Makhno and others who sided with the imperialist-allied White Guards against the Soviet workers state. At bottom, there isn't much to distinguish the BTS from social democrats and liberals who have and will resort to any means to smear communists as ‘authoritarian,' denouncing the ‘extremism' of right and left, giving oh-so-‘democratic' aid and comfort to the forces of bourgeois repression."

This formulation does not pretend to characterize the nature, extent or evolution of Makhno's relationship with the White forces or the Red Army. We have previously addressed at some length the history of the Makhnoite movement when replying to an anarchist recycling numerous lies and distortions in its defense (see "An Exchange on Nestor Makhno: Peasant ‘Anarchism,' Pogroms and the Russian Revolution," WV No. 656, 22 November 1996).

Especially since the late 1930s—when Trotsky devastatingly exposed the treachery of the Spanish anarchists, who joined in a capitalist government which suppressed workers revolution—anarchists have raised a hue and cry about the fate of the Makhnoite movement (and the Kronstadt mutiny). Today, a popular Anarchist FAQ (3 October 2004) purports to show among other things why the Makhnoite movement was an "alternative" to Bolshevism.

In the section of the FAQ titled "Did the Makhnovists support the Whites?", the authors quote from one of Leon Trotsky's writings on Makhno: "Undoubtedly Makhno actually cooperated with Wrangel, and also with the Polish szlachta, as he fought with them against the Red Army." This translation from the Russian text, taken from Michael Palij's book on the Makhnoite movement, makes it appear that Trotsky—the head of the Red Army—had claimed that Makhno fought directly together with Wrangel and the Polish gentry. In this same piece, Trotsky disavows all rumors of a formal alliance between Makhno and Wrangel. By so rendering Trotsky, the anarchists paint him as purposefully deceitful or woefully ignorant about the relationship between Makhno and the White generals and they dodge the substance of Trotsky's polemic against Makhno. Here is what Trotsky actually wrote: "Without a doubt, Makhno provided de facto aid to Wrangel, as well as to the Polish gentry, since he fought at the same time as they did against the Red Army" (translated from "Makhno and Wrangel," 14 October 1920, Kak vooruzhalas' revolyutsiya [How the Revolution Armed], Vol. 2, Book 2 [1924]).

What was posed in Russia during the Civil War was whether the fledgling workers state would survive or succumb to the organized might of the bosses and landlords. To claim Makhno did not in effect side with the imperialist-allied White Guards against the Soviet workers state for extended periods of time because there was no formal alliance is to accept the alibi for Makhno's counterrevolutionary exploits. The Makhnoite movement showed on the battlefield how there is no "third camp" between the army of the workers state and the military organization of the bourgeoisie.

John H. lists a number of those counterrevolutionary exploits committed by the Makhnoites. The authors of the Anarchist FAQ charge the Bolsheviks with having "engineered" Makhno's outlawing and expulsion from the Red Army. But even when he was a commander in the Red Army, Makhno sabotaged defense of the social revolution, from commandeering supply trains to refusing to collect surplus grain for the Soviet government, while engaging in an anti-Bolshevik ideological campaign. This campaign directed at the Bolsheviks, the lone group in the revolutionary crisis of 1917 to fight for a regime based on soviet power and spearheading its defense, could only serve White Guardism. For example, in May 1919, while still allied with the Red Army, Makhno adopted a neutral position toward Grigorev who was calling for an alliance of all anti-Bolshevik forces, including the White armies.

In writing about the Makhnoite movement, Trotsky recognized that the conflict between the Red Army and Makhno was not one primarily between the ideas of Marxism versus anarchism but rather involved defense of the Soviet workers state against peasant-centered counterrevolution. Many anarchists, e.g., Bill Shatov, a veteran of the American Industrial Workers of the World, actively collaborated with and supported the Bolshevik forces throughout the Civil War. Trotsky later recounted how in 1918 he and Lenin had thought of recognizing an autonomous region for the anarchist peasants of the Ukraine. But this idea was scrapped partially because Makhno's Insurgent Army showed its true loyalties in battle.

In the first instance, these loyalties were dictated not by ideological but by class conflicts. German and Austrian occupation delayed the development of the Russian Revolution in the Ukraine so that the drawing together of the working people and poor peasants against the exploiters and kulaks was incomplete. Makhno's army was drawn from all layers of the peasantry. The fundamental desire of the peasants was not the creation of an anarchist utopia but to possess the land and then to be left alone by gentry, officials, tax collectors, recruiting sergeants and all external agents of authority. The wealthier kulaks in particular did not want the landlords to return but feared above all the rule of the working class and poor peasants.

The anti-state prejudices of the Makhnoite leadership, shared by its peasant base, led them into the camp of enemies of the Soviet state power. But this anti-authoritarian "principle" was one of the few that the Makhnoites respected when confronted by the practical realities of the Civil War. Achieving military success meant forced conscription, summary executions and recruiting anti-Semitic pogromists into their ranks; hostility toward the Bolsheviks meant establishing an alternative government hostile to the central Soviet workers state. As anarchist historian Paul Avrich wrote in his sympathetic account of Makhno (Anarchist Portraits [1988]):

"The Second [Makhnoite Regional] Congress, meeting on February 12, 1919, voted in favor of ‘voluntary mobilization,' which in reality meant outright conscription, as all able-bodied men were required to serve when called up. The delegates also elected a Regional Military Revolutionary Council of Peasants, Workers, and Insurgents to carry out the decisions of the periodic congresses. The new councils encouraged the election of ‘free' soviets in the towns and villages—that is, soviets from which members of political parties were excluded. Although Makhno's aim in setting up these bodies was to do away with political authority, the Military Revolutionary Council, acting in conjunction with the Regional Congresses and the local soviets, in effect formed a loose-knit government in the territory surrounding Gulyai-Polye.

"Like the Military Revolutionary Council, the Insurgent Army of the Ukraine, as the Makhnovist forces were called, was in theory subject to the supervision of the Regional Congresses. In practice, however, the reins of authority rested with Makhno and his staff. Despite his efforts to avoid anything that smacked of regimentation, Makhno appointed his key officers (the rest were elected by the men themselves) and subjected his troops to the stern military discipline traditional among the Cossack legions of the nearby Zaporozhian region."

Since the majority of anarchists in Russia and the Ukraine at the time were generally familiar with the class character and practices of the Makhnoite forces, they did not support the Makhnoites. For this, Voline and Arshinov, the two leading anarchist intellectuals who joined with Makhno, both strongly condemned the anarchist majority. Today, however, almost every anarchist in the world has embraced the Makhnoites as their own. We pointed to this contradiction in concluding our 1996 exchange: "Why is that? Because in their hostility to Leninism, they have bought into the anti-Communist prejudices which pervade the bourgeois society in which they live and which have shaped their political consciousness."

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Folksinger/Song-Writer/Folk Historian Dave Van Ronk’s Time

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Folksinger/Song-Writer/Folk Historian Dave Van Ronk’s Time

By Bart Webber

I have not much to say that already has not already been said by me or others about the recent shake-up and turn-over of regimes at this site. I am sure that most readers would be more than happy not to see a supposedly bright cohort of writers acting like this was electoral politics and a fight over spoils or worse some fight in academic circles  where there really are no holds barred when somebody get their hackles up. However, I, like Jack Callahan, another old-timer who was both friends with the previous site manager whose name I will not use since there had been a recent mandate to be stop doing so further to be commented on in a minute and a big financial backer of this and several other linked sites are concerned about the drift as exemplified by that “notice” and, more importantly, rumors of dramatic changes in the subject matter and emphasis of this blog away from the original purposes also to be commented on below.

Funny democracy, or the democratic façade, works in mysterious ways-or stops working. During the height of the internal fight which as everybody now should know was a knockdown, drag out fight essentially between the younger and older writers concerning who was in charge and what was to be written about everybody for a period was encouraged to freely write about their takes on the situation under some theory that the yakking out loud might be of interest to the readership about the inner workings of social media sites.  When Greg Green took over day to day operations aided by his hand-picked and some say toady Editorial Board he further encouraged such discussion. Until he, they, that supposedly independent and liberal Board didn’t. Put out the word, the “notice” which everybody young and old took as a “warning” to cease and desist using the old site manager’s name (and accomplishments which were many) in the interest  of “moving on.” So much for democracy, or better democratic façade.

More troubling since even a fair number of the younger writers, including a couple who sit on that august Ed Board, are shocked by the rumors that soon there will be dramatic changes in what is presented here and who will present the material. One of the big complaints that the younger writers had, which in truth had some merit, was that the site was too, way too mired in the past. Specifically that the older writers were tending to crawl back into their nostalgic 1960s coming of age roots reflected in the incredible number of old-time films, books, music, political dreams, and cultural events reported on. That the younger writers were forced to write about stuff that didn’t experience or know about and in the words of more than one in the heat of battle didn’t give a f- -k about. That came to a head with the massive coverage of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 which most of them were either too young to remember or were not even born yet.

Now the wheel seems to be turning the other way which I with which have just had some direct experience. When I attempted to submit this piece about Dave Van Ronk, a pivotal figure in the early 1960s folk music world, I was told by Greg (who invoked that flunky Ed Board over-filled with his internal fight supporters) that it might not run since the Board was concerned that there had already been too much on this site about that minor musical genre. Moreover I was told to cut it to about three hundred words if they decided to post the piece. I have refused to cut except for some tightening of a few parts suggested by a helpful junior editor. That refusal bought some space for this piece but also another “notice” about “broadening our horizons.” This is, what did Jack Callahan call it, yeah, the opening shot of my campaign to save this important genre on the American and cultural landscape if not so much now then in earlier times.     

******

      

      

Sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan. About how he, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s, became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, my generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then the master troubadour of the age. (Troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them as well.) So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered. But of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s but was washed by it when he came East into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. And one of the talents who was already there, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who deservedly fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.    

That former role is important because we all know that behind the “king” is the “fixer man,” the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were. Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute.

He told a funny story, actually two funny stories about the folk scene and his part in which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel that got young blood stirring, On The Road, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl  the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom if you can believe that. The crush meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge.

Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate from hunger snarly nasal folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s who probably in that same club played for the “basket.” And so the roots of New York City folk. The second story involved his authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course. Eager young students breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the “skinny”. Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish would then be cited by some other young and eager student complete with the appropriate footnote. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one.       

As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer (who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who is featured on a recent Tom Rush documentary No Regrets) when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which were spoofs on some issue of the day. I saw him perform many times over the years and had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2003. He had died a few weeks before. I would note when I had seen him for what turned out to be my last time he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and his performance was subpar. But that is at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music.                   

On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-In Honor Of The Three L’s-In Honor Of Karl Liebknecht-To the Workers and Soldiers of the Allied Countries(1918)

By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  


Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me.  

Markin comment:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
******
Karl Liebknecht
To the Workers and Soldiers of the Allied Countries

Source: Published in The Communist International, Vol 1, No., 1919
Transcription: Sally Ryan for Marxists Internet Archive
Markup: John Wagner for Marxists Internet Archive
Online Version: Karl Liebknecht Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2002

Friends, Comrades, Brothers! From under the blows of the world war, amidst the ruin which has been created by Tzarist Imperialist society — the Russian Proletariat erected its State — the Socialist Republic of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers. This was created in spite of an attitude of misconception, hatred and calumny. This republic represents the greatest basis for that universal socialist order, the creation of which is at the present time the historic task of the International Proletariat. The Russian revolution was to an unprecedented degree the cause of the proletariat of the whole world becoming more revolutionary. Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary are already in the throes of revolution; revolution is awakening in Germany. But there are obstacles in the way of the victory of the German proletariat. The mass of the German people are with us, the power of the accused enemies of the working class has collapsed; but they are nevertheless making all attempts to deceive the people, with a view of protracting the hour of the liberation of the German people. The robbery and violence of German Imperialism in Russia, as well as the violent Brest-Litovsk peace and the Bucharest peace have consolidated and strengthened the Imperialists of the Allied countries; — and this is the reason why the German Government are endeavouring to utilize the Allied attack upon Socialist Russia for the purpose of retaining power. You have no doubt heard how Willhelm II, who, now that Tzarism has perished, is the representative of the basest form of reaction, — a few days ago made use of intervention in the affairs of proletarian Russia by the Allied Empires for the purpose of raising a new war agitation amongst the working masses. We must not permit our ignoble enemies to make use of any democratic means and institutions for their purpose; the proletariat of the Allied countries must allow no such thing to occur. We know that you have already raised your voice to protest against the machinations of your governments; but the danger is growing ever greater and greater. A united front of world Imperialism against the proletariat is being realised, in the first instance, in the struggle aga inst the Russian Soviet Republic. This is what I warn you against. The proletariat of the world must not allow the flame of the Socialist Revolution to be extinguished, or all its hopes and all its powers will perish. The failure of the Russian Socialist Republic will be the defeat of the proletariat of the whole world. Friends, comrades, brothers arise against your rulers! Long live the Russian workers, soldiers and peasants! Long live the Revolution of the French, English, American proletariat! Long live the liberation of the workers off all countries from the infernal chasm of war, exploitation and slavery!

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Folksinger/Songwriter Dave Van Ronk’s Time

When The Tin Can Bended…. In The Time Of Folksinger/Songwriter Dave Van Ronk’s Time

By Bart Webber

I have not much to say that already has not already been said by me or others about the recent shake-up and turn-over of regimes at this site. I am sure that most readers would be more than happy not to see a supposedly bright cohort of writers acting like this was electoral politics and a fight over spoils or worse some fight in academic circles  where there really are no holds barred when somebody get their hackles up. However, I, like Jack Callahan, another old-timer who was both friends with the previous site manager whose name I will not use since there had been a recent mandate to be stop doing so further to be commented on in a minute and a big financial backer of this and several other linked sites are concerned about the drift as exemplified by that “notice” and, more importantly, rumors of dramatic changes in the subject matter and emphasis of this blog away from the original purposes also to be commented on below.

Funny democracy, or the democratic façade, works in mysterious ways-or stops working. During the height of the internal fight which as everybody now should know was a knockdown, drag out fight essentially between the younger and older writers concerning who was in charge and what was to be written about everybody for a period was encouraged to freely write about their takes on the situation under some theory that the yakking out loud might be of interest to the readership about the inner workings of social media sites.  When Greg Green took over day to day operations aided by his hand-picked and some say toady Editorial Board he further encouraged such discussion. Until he, they, that supposedly independent and liberal Board didn’t. Put out the word, the “notice” which everybody young and old took as a “warning” to cease and desist using the old site manager’s name (and accomplishments which were many) in the interest  of “moving on.” So much for democracy, or better democratic façade.

More troubling since even a fair number of the younger writers, including a couple who sit on that august Ed Board, are shocked by the rumors that soon there will be dramatic changes in what is presented here and who will present the material. One of the big complaints that the younger writers had, which in truth had some merit, was that the site was too, way too mired in the past. Specifically that the older writers were tending to crawl back into their nostalgic 1960s coming of age roots reflected in the incredible number of old-time films, books, music, political dreams, and cultural events reported on. That the younger writers were forced to write about stuff that didn’t experience or know about and in the words of more than one in the heat of battle didn’t give a f- -k about. That came to a head with the massive coverage of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love, 1967 which most of them were either too young to remember or were not even born yet.

Now the wheel seems to be turning the other way which I with which have just had some direct experience. When I attempted to submit this piece about Dave Von Ronk, a pivotal figure in the early 1960s folk music world, I was told by Greg (who invoked that flunky Ed Board over-filled with his internal fight supporters) that it might not run since the Board was concerned that there had already been too much on this site about that minor musical genre. Moreover I was told to cut it to about three hundred words if they decided to post the piece. I have refused to cut except for some tightening of a few parts suggested by a helpful junior editor. That refusal bought some space for this piece but also another “notice” about “broadening our horizons.” This is, what did Jack Callahan call it, yeah, the opening shot of my campaign to save this important genre on the American and cultural landscape if not so much now then in earlier times.     

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Sure everybody, everybody over the age of say fifty to be on the safe side, knows about Bob Dylan. About how he, after serving something like an apprenticeship under the influence of Woody Guthrie in the late 1950s, became if not the voice of the Generation of ’68, my generation, which he probably did not seriously aspire in the final analysis, then the master troubadour of the age. (Troubadour in the medieval sense of bringing news to the people and entertaining them as well.) So, yes, that story has been pretty well covered. But of course that is hardly the end of the story since Dylan did not create that now hallowed folk minute of the early 1960s but was washed by it when he came East into the Village where there was a cauldron of talent trying to make folk the next big thing, big cultural thing for the young and restless of the post-World War II generations. And one of the talents who was already there, lived there, came from around there was the late Dave Van Ronk who deservedly fancied himself a folk historian as well as musician.    

That former role is important because we all know that behind the “king” is the “fixer man,” the guy who knows what is what, the guy who tells one and all what the roots of the matter were. Dave Van Ronk was serious about that part, serious about imparting that knowledge about the little influences that had accumulated during the middle to late 1950s especially around New York which set up that folk minute.

He told a funny story, actually two funny stories about the folk scene and his part in which will give you an idea about his place in the pantheon. During the late 1950s after the publication of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking road wanderlust adventure novel that got young blood stirring, On The Road, the jazz scene, the cool be-bop jazz scene and poetry reading, poems reflecting off of “beat” giant Allen Ginsberg’s Howl  the clubs and coffeehouse of the Village were ablaze with readings and cool jazz, people waiting in line to get in to hear the next big poetic wisdom if you can believe that. The crush meant that there were several shows per evening. But how to get rid of one audience to bring in another in those small quarters was a challenge.

Presto, if you wanted to clear the house just bring in some desperate from hunger snarly nasal folk singer for a couple, maybe three songs, and if that did not clear the high art poetry house then that folk singer was a goner. A goner until the folk minute of the 1960s who probably in that same club played for the “basket.” And so the roots of New York City folk. The second story involved his authoritative role as a folk historian who after the folk minute had passed became the subject matter for, well, for doctoral dissertations of course. Eager young students breaking new ground in folk history who would come to him for the “skinny”. Now Van Ronk had a peculiar if not savage sense of humor and could not abide academia and its’ barren insider language so when those eager young students came a calling he would give them some gibberish which they would duly note and footnote. Here is the funny part. That gibberish would then be cited by some other young and eager student complete with the appropriate footnote. Nice touch, nice touch indeed on that one.       

As for Van Ronk’s music, his musicianship which he cultivated throughout his life, I think the best way to describe that for me is that one Sunday night in the early 1960s I was listening to the local folk program on WBZ hosted by Dick Summer (who was influential in boosting local folk musician Tom Rush’s career and who is featured on a recent Tom Rush documentary No Regrets) when this gravelly-voice guy, sounding like some old mountain pioneer, sang the Kentucky hills classic Fair and Tender Ladies. After that I was hooked on that voice and that depth of feeling that he brought to every song even those of his own creation which were spoofs on some issue of the day. I saw him perform many times over the years and had expected to see him perform as part of Rosalie Sorrels’ farewell concert at Saunders Theater at Harvard in 2003. He had died a few weeks before. I would note when I had seen him for what turned out to be my last time he did not look well and had been, as always, drinking heavily and his performance was subpar. But that is at the end. For a long time he sang well, sang us well with his own troubadour style, and gave us plenty of real information about the history of American folk music.                   

*On The 100th Anniversary Of Their Assassinations- Those Who Honor Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht Are Kindred Spirits

*On The Anniversary Of Their Assassinations-Those Who Honor Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht Are Kindred Spirits. Click on title to link to another kindred spirit, the Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, for an article from the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives entitled "hands Off Rosa Luxemburg".


By Frank Jackman

History in the conditional, what might have happened if this or that thing, event, person had swerved this much or that, is always a tricky proposition. Tricky as reflected in this piece’s commemorative headline. Rosa Luxemburg the acknowledged theoretical wizard of the German Social-Democratic Party, the numero uno party of the Second, Socialist International, which was the logical organization to initiate the socialist revolution before World War II and Karl Liebknecht, the hellfire and brimstone propagandist and public speaker of that same party were assassinated in separate locale on the orders of the then ruling self-same Social-Democratic Party. The chasm between the Social-Democratic leaders trying to save Germany for “Western Civilization” in the wake of the “uncivilized” socialist revolution in Russia in 1917 had grown that wide that it was as if they were on two different planets, and maybe they were.

(By the way I am almost embarrassed to mention the term “socialist revolution” these days when people, especially young people, would be clueless as to what I was talking about or would think that this concept was so hopelessly old-fashioned that it would meet the same blank stares. Let me assure you that back in the day, yes, that back in the day, many a youth had that very term on the tips of their tongues. Could palpably feel it in the air. Hell, just ask your parents, or grandparents.)

Okay here is the conditional and maybe think about it before you dismiss the idea out of hand if only because the whole scheme is very much in the conditional. Rosa and Karl, among others made almost every mistake in the book before and during the Spartacist uprising in some of the main German cities in late 1918 after the German defeat in the war. Their biggest mistake before the uprising was sticking with the Social Democrats, as a left wing, when that party had turned at best reformist and eminently not a vehicle for the socialist revolution, or even a half-assed democratic “revolution” which is what they got with the overthrow of the Kaiser. They broke too late, and subsequently too late from a slightly more left-wing Independent Socialist Party which had split from the S-D when that party became the leading war party in Germany for all intents and purposes and the working class was raising its collective head and asking why. 

The big mistake during the uprising was not taking enough protective cover, not keeping the leadership safe, keeping out of sight like Lenin had in Finland when things were dicey in 1917 Russia and fell easy prey to the Freikorps assassins. Here is the conditional, and as always it can be expanded to some nth degree if you let things get out of hand. What if, as in Russia, Rosa and Karl had broken from that rotten (for socialism) S-D organization and had a more firmly entrenched cadre with some experience in independent existence. What if the Spartacists had protected their acknowledged leaders better. There might have been a different trajectory for the aborted and failed German left-wing revolutionary opportunities over the next several years, there certainly would have been better leadership and perhaps, just perhaps the Nazi onslaught might have been stillborn, might have left Munich 1923 as their “heroic” and last moment.  

Instead we have a still sad 100^th anniversary of the assassination of two great international socialist fighters who headed to the danger not away always worthy of a nod and me left having to face those blank stares who are looking for way forward but might as well be on a different planet-from me. 

Extending Bath Iron Works Tax Break Would Ignore State Consultant’s Review

Extending Bath Iron Works Tax Break Would Ignore State Consultant’s Review

 

As some Maine lawmakers and defense contractor General Dynamics see it, the state needs to continue its Shipbuilding Facility Credit, due to expire this year, if it wants to maintain the competitiveness of subsidiary Bath Iron Works and a crucial part of the state’s economy.

But, if Maine were to keep the multi million-dollar-a-year program going without first making substantial revisions to what some call an obvious sweetheart deal, it would be going against the advice of the very consulting firm it hired to evaluate its tax incentive programs.

In its January 2016 comprehensive evaluation on behalf of the Maine Department of Economic & Community Development, Investment Consulting Associates recommends the following course of action be taken on the tax credit, which was tailored in 1997 to specifically benefit the Bath shipyard:

“Eliminate Program or significantly alter it so that it applies to a broad selection of Maine’s shipbuilding community.”