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Wednesday, January 16, 2019
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On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg!
On The
100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa
Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-
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 100th 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:
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 928
16 January 2009
For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg!
In the tradition of the early Communist International, this month we commemorate the “Three L’s”: Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, who died on 21 January 1924, and revolutionary Marxists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were assassinated 90 years ago on 15 January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps as part of the Social Democratic government’s suppression of the Spartakist uprising. Lenin’s determined struggle to forge a revolutionary vanguard party was key to the victory of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. In contrast, the German Communist Party was founded only over New Year’s 1919—two weeks before its principal cadres were murdered—with slim roots within the proletariat. The murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht deprived the young, inexperienced Communist Party of its authoritative revolutionary leadership, helping to shipwreck the 1918-19 German Revolution and weakening the party when it faced later upheavals, such as the aborted 1923 German Revolution.
We reprint below a 13 January 1945 article from the Militant, newspaper of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, titled: “Liebknecht and Luxemburg—Heroic Martyrs in the Workers Struggle for Socialism.” The mention of the burial of the Third International at the end of the article refers to its formal dissolution by Stalin in 1943; it had become an agency for promoting the Stalinist bureaucracy’s class-collaborationist treachery long before.
* * *
On January 15, 1919—twenty five years ago—the German proletariat was robbed of two of its greatest revolutionary fighters, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. They were assassinated in the streets of Berlin by Junker hirelings of the Social-Democracy. But neither the ideas nor the tradition of personal heroism bequeathed by these Marxists of the First World War could be slain. Their names will be inscribed in flaming letters when the mighty German working class again rises against its oppressors to find the path to peace and security under the red banner of international socialism.
Intransigent opponents of capitalist war, both Liebknecht and Luxemburg fought persecution and imprisonment to lead the workers of Germany in the struggle for socialist liberation. Son of the founder of the German Social-Democracy, Karl Liebknecht first proved his stature as early as 1906 when he delivered a series of lectures against capitalist militarism to a Socialist Youth organization. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for their subsequent publication.
When World War I broke out, Liebknecht was a member of the Reichstag. The Social-Democratic party to which he belonged opportunistically swung over to support of the war. But Liebknecht adhered to the principles of Marxism. At the December 2, 1914 session he broke the discipline of the Social-Democratic Reichstag group and voted against war credits, thereby taking his place amongst the leaders of international socialism. With Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, he founded “Die Internationale,” first illegal organ of the German revolutionists.
At the magnificent May Day demonstration he organized in Berlin in 1916, Liebknecht denounced the imperialists and called upon the German working class to intensify the fight against its main enemy—the capitalist class—at home. He was arrested, secretly tried, and sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment.
“Red Rosa”
Rosa Luxemburg, fiery orator, gifted writer, theoretician and activist, conquered physical frailty to become one of the most eminent of revolutionists. Born in Czarist Poland, a political refugee at the age of 18, she devoted all her tremendous talents to the cause of socialism. She secured German citizenship and fought the growing reformist tendencies and the revision of Marxism promoted by the Bernsteinists in the German Social-Democracy. Understanding the problems and strategy of the workers’ movement, she saw in the Russian revolution of 1905 the vitality and strength of the masses. She met the outbreak of war in 1914 by calling upon the German workers to refuse to shoot down their French brothers. Like Liebknecht, she was imprisoned.
Tireless and undaunted, Rosa was able even in prison to smuggle out articles for “Die Internationale.” She also wrote the famous “Junius” pamphlet, circulated throughout Germany, explaining that the victory of either side—German or Allied—would necessarily lead to another world slaughter, and urging the masses to end the scourge of war by taking power from the plutocrats and organizing a workers’ republic.
In prison Rosa received the great news of the Russian Revolution. She burned with indignation over the Brest-Litovsk peace forced by Germany upon the Bolsheviks. She accused the pro-war “socialists” of responsibility for this crime because of their degrading submission to the Junkers. The Russian Revolution deeply inspired her. Enemies of the October Revolution have tried to construe her criticism of the Bolsheviks as an opposition to the Russian Revolution. This is false. It was as one of them that she criticized some of their tactics.
In 1918 came the revolt of the Kiel sailors and soldiers of Berlin. One of the very first acts of the revolutionary workers and soldiers was to throw open the prison gates to free Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The Social-Democratic traitors strove to persuade the Kaiser to remain. Failing to save the monarchy, hating and fearing Bolshevism above everything else, they then strained all their efforts to establish a bourgeois republic and prevent the workers from taking power. The Social-Democracy particularly feared the Spartakus Bund, organized in 1918 by Liebknecht and Luxemburg, which came out as an independent party with the slogan “All Power to the Workers’ Councils.”
Organize for Power
Conscious of their tasks and the pressure of time, Liebknecht and Luxemburg began to organize the German Communist Party with haste. Rosa edited “Rote Fahne” (Red Banner) and wrote the program for the party in complete agreement with the program of Lenin and Trotsky. But events moved too rapidly. The advanced workers were pressing forward. The German Communist Party, just emerging from the Spartakus group, was still too weak to take power.
The leadership of the Social-Democracy, holding the reins of government, did everything in its power to crush the revolution in its infancy. Leaflets were circulated demanding the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Large rewards were offered for their capture. On Jan. 15, 1919, they were arrested and murdered.
In his call for the formation of the Third International to carry out the socialist tasks betrayed by the Social-Democracy (April 23, 1917), Lenin singled out for praise the handful of internationalists who upheld the banner of Marxism through the storm of the First World War.
“The most outstanding representatives of this trend in Germany,” wrote Lenin, “is the Spartakus Group or the Group of the International to which Karl Liebknecht belongs. Karl Liebknecht is one of the most celebrated representatives of this trend and of the new and genuine proletarian international...Liebknecht alone represents socialism, the proletarian cause, the proletarian revolution. All the rest of German Social-Democracy, to quote the apt words of Rosa Luxemburg (also a member and one of the leaders of the Spartakus Group) is a ‘stinking corpse’.” After their martyrdom Lenin acclaimed Liebknecht and Luxemburg as “the best representatives of the Third International.”
Last year the Third International which had likewise degenerated into “a stinking corpse” was formally buried by its executioner, the counterrevolutionary Stalin. Today only the Fourth International founded by Trotsky carries on the struggle for international socialism in the revolutionary spirit of Lenin, Liebknecht and 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 100th 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:
As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.
Workers Vanguard No. 928
16 January 2009
For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg!
In the tradition of the early Communist International, this month we commemorate the “Three L’s”: Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, who died on 21 January 1924, and revolutionary Marxists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were assassinated 90 years ago on 15 January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps as part of the Social Democratic government’s suppression of the Spartakist uprising. Lenin’s determined struggle to forge a revolutionary vanguard party was key to the victory of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. In contrast, the German Communist Party was founded only over New Year’s 1919—two weeks before its principal cadres were murdered—with slim roots within the proletariat. The murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht deprived the young, inexperienced Communist Party of its authoritative revolutionary leadership, helping to shipwreck the 1918-19 German Revolution and weakening the party when it faced later upheavals, such as the aborted 1923 German Revolution.
We reprint below a 13 January 1945 article from the Militant, newspaper of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, titled: “Liebknecht and Luxemburg—Heroic Martyrs in the Workers Struggle for Socialism.” The mention of the burial of the Third International at the end of the article refers to its formal dissolution by Stalin in 1943; it had become an agency for promoting the Stalinist bureaucracy’s class-collaborationist treachery long before.
* * *
On January 15, 1919—twenty five years ago—the German proletariat was robbed of two of its greatest revolutionary fighters, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. They were assassinated in the streets of Berlin by Junker hirelings of the Social-Democracy. But neither the ideas nor the tradition of personal heroism bequeathed by these Marxists of the First World War could be slain. Their names will be inscribed in flaming letters when the mighty German working class again rises against its oppressors to find the path to peace and security under the red banner of international socialism.
Intransigent opponents of capitalist war, both Liebknecht and Luxemburg fought persecution and imprisonment to lead the workers of Germany in the struggle for socialist liberation. Son of the founder of the German Social-Democracy, Karl Liebknecht first proved his stature as early as 1906 when he delivered a series of lectures against capitalist militarism to a Socialist Youth organization. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for their subsequent publication.
When World War I broke out, Liebknecht was a member of the Reichstag. The Social-Democratic party to which he belonged opportunistically swung over to support of the war. But Liebknecht adhered to the principles of Marxism. At the December 2, 1914 session he broke the discipline of the Social-Democratic Reichstag group and voted against war credits, thereby taking his place amongst the leaders of international socialism. With Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, he founded “Die Internationale,” first illegal organ of the German revolutionists.
At the magnificent May Day demonstration he organized in Berlin in 1916, Liebknecht denounced the imperialists and called upon the German working class to intensify the fight against its main enemy—the capitalist class—at home. He was arrested, secretly tried, and sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment.
“Red Rosa”
Rosa Luxemburg, fiery orator, gifted writer, theoretician and activist, conquered physical frailty to become one of the most eminent of revolutionists. Born in Czarist Poland, a political refugee at the age of 18, she devoted all her tremendous talents to the cause of socialism. She secured German citizenship and fought the growing reformist tendencies and the revision of Marxism promoted by the Bernsteinists in the German Social-Democracy. Understanding the problems and strategy of the workers’ movement, she saw in the Russian revolution of 1905 the vitality and strength of the masses. She met the outbreak of war in 1914 by calling upon the German workers to refuse to shoot down their French brothers. Like Liebknecht, she was imprisoned.
Tireless and undaunted, Rosa was able even in prison to smuggle out articles for “Die Internationale.” She also wrote the famous “Junius” pamphlet, circulated throughout Germany, explaining that the victory of either side—German or Allied—would necessarily lead to another world slaughter, and urging the masses to end the scourge of war by taking power from the plutocrats and organizing a workers’ republic.
In prison Rosa received the great news of the Russian Revolution. She burned with indignation over the Brest-Litovsk peace forced by Germany upon the Bolsheviks. She accused the pro-war “socialists” of responsibility for this crime because of their degrading submission to the Junkers. The Russian Revolution deeply inspired her. Enemies of the October Revolution have tried to construe her criticism of the Bolsheviks as an opposition to the Russian Revolution. This is false. It was as one of them that she criticized some of their tactics.
In 1918 came the revolt of the Kiel sailors and soldiers of Berlin. One of the very first acts of the revolutionary workers and soldiers was to throw open the prison gates to free Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The Social-Democratic traitors strove to persuade the Kaiser to remain. Failing to save the monarchy, hating and fearing Bolshevism above everything else, they then strained all their efforts to establish a bourgeois republic and prevent the workers from taking power. The Social-Democracy particularly feared the Spartakus Bund, organized in 1918 by Liebknecht and Luxemburg, which came out as an independent party with the slogan “All Power to the Workers’ Councils.”
Organize for Power
Conscious of their tasks and the pressure of time, Liebknecht and Luxemburg began to organize the German Communist Party with haste. Rosa edited “Rote Fahne” (Red Banner) and wrote the program for the party in complete agreement with the program of Lenin and Trotsky. But events moved too rapidly. The advanced workers were pressing forward. The German Communist Party, just emerging from the Spartakus group, was still too weak to take power.
The leadership of the Social-Democracy, holding the reins of government, did everything in its power to crush the revolution in its infancy. Leaflets were circulated demanding the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Large rewards were offered for their capture. On Jan. 15, 1919, they were arrested and murdered.
In his call for the formation of the Third International to carry out the socialist tasks betrayed by the Social-Democracy (April 23, 1917), Lenin singled out for praise the handful of internationalists who upheld the banner of Marxism through the storm of the First World War.
“The most outstanding representatives of this trend in Germany,” wrote Lenin, “is the Spartakus Group or the Group of the International to which Karl Liebknecht belongs. Karl Liebknecht is one of the most celebrated representatives of this trend and of the new and genuine proletarian international...Liebknecht alone represents socialism, the proletarian cause, the proletarian revolution. All the rest of German Social-Democracy, to quote the apt words of Rosa Luxemburg (also a member and one of the leaders of the Spartakus Group) is a ‘stinking corpse’.” After their martyrdom Lenin acclaimed Liebknecht and Luxemburg as “the best representatives of the Third International.”
Last year the Third International which had likewise degenerated into “a stinking corpse” was formally buried by its executioner, the counterrevolutionary Stalin. Today only the Fourth International founded by Trotsky carries on the struggle for international socialism in the revolutionary spirit of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg.
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- Liebknecht’s’” The Future Belongs to the People-(Speeches made since the beginning of the World War I)”
On The
100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa
Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-
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 100th 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.
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.
Look at what is happening in Germany to-day and test, as best we may, these two confronting theories concerning the influence of great men upon history. As I write Germany is in the throes of revolution. The immensely powerful Hohenzollern monarchy has fallen, the brave, stubborn, modernwitted, money-bolstered aristocracy is shattered, and a proscribed poor man, Karl Liebknecht, is loudly acclaimed. Was it one man, a Foch, a Wilson, a Lenin or a Liebknecht that overturned this mighty structure, or was it the movement of a hundred million men and women, armed and unarmed, on the battle-field and in the factory, in France and England and Russia and Germany? What could Liebknecht alone have done with all his ringing eloquence and all his superb, I almost said, sublime heroism? Clearly we must rule Carlyle out of the controversy and agree with Liebknecht, the Socialist, that Liebknecht, the hero, had little to do with this vast subversion.
Yet, as Carlyle says, "One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon any great man, without gaining something by him."
At this safe distance no one could be more "profitable company" than Karl Liebknecht as he stands up boldly against all that is powerful, respectable and formidable in Germany and challenges it at the utter risk of life and reputation. Such courage as his is almost inconceivable; for us poor conforming or at best feebly protesting little people it is quite impossible. To die among thousands, even to die alone, if you think you hear the plaudits of your nation or your class, is a thing many of us have learned to do, but to stand up against a vindictive irrational war spirit, such as ruled Germany, to stand up alone, to be contemned not only by your enemies but by those who called themselves your comrades and friends, to be met by polite derision and by actual threats of violence, to be called a madman, to be called a traitor, to be misunderstood and doubted; to be met in occasional moments of dejection even by doubts in your own mind, and still to hold your own bravely and with cool passion, day after day and day after day, in circumstances growing daily more difficult, and finally to go to prison gladly, triumphantly – that is courage surpassing the courage of the rest of us. It is easier to die even by torture than to persist in this opposition to forces physical and mental not only confronting but surrounding and even permeating us.
We have agreed with Liebknecht that great events are not the doings of great men but merely the large theater in which these great men play their little parts. And yet, does not the hero, subordinate as he is to the wider movement of the play, exert a somewhat stronger influence than many followers of Marx seem willing to admit? Masses of men are moved to vital historic decisions in part by economic motives, but these motives must first be converted into emotion, and the hero, however his own actions are motived, is one of the vital factors producing that emotion. We shall perhaps never know to what extent the present rising of the German people against their once invincible rulers was occasioned, though not caused, by their vision of Karl Liebknecht, standing there alone against all the judges, rulers, legislators and respectables of Germany, and even against his fellow socialists. The heroism of Liebknecht was at least a point and center of coalescence.
The course of events has vindicated Karl Liebknecht. But it might well have been otherwise. Had Germany won the war and established a clanging pax Germanica through the ruin of Europe, Liebknecht's heroism might never have been recognized. He might have rusted in prison and been released to obscurity and thereafter lived a futile life derided as a blind fanatic. The force of circumstances, the obscure action of the hundreds of millions, rescued Liebknecht and raised him to the highest pinnacle of heroism. It stamped upon our minds for all time the picture of this brave man standing alone surrounded by cruel, confidently smiling foes.
I said "alone." Yet this is not fair to a very small group of German minority socialists, who stood by Liebknecht and by whom Liebknecht stood. Among them were Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Hugo Haase, George Ledebour, and others, to whom, were real heroism always decorated, would be given a higher order of "Pour le Mérite." But among all these Karl Liebknecht stands preëminent.
"And for all that mind you," concludes the French soldier Bertrand, in "Under Fire," "there is one figure that has risen above the war and will blaze with the beauty and strength of his courage."
Barbusse continues: "I listened leaning on a stick towards him, drinking in the voice that came in the twilight silence from the lips that so rarely spoke. He cried with a clear voice, 'Liebknecht.' "
From the earliest days of its organization, soon after the middle of the nineteenth century, the German Social Democracy had taken a stand against militarism. During the Franco-Prussian War, two of its chief representatives, Wilhelm Liebknecht (the father of Karl Liebknecht) and August Bebel, had refused to vote for the war budget. In 1912, during the Balkan crisis, the German Socialists had attended in force the great gathering of the International Socialist Conference at Basle, protesting in vigorous tones against the war, and many there were on that occasion who declared that even if danger of world war had not been entirely eliminated, the Social Democrats of Germany, the strongest of the International movement, were prepared to meet any emergency that might arise. In the Reichstag elections, these Social Democrats had cast four and a quarter millions of votes, while the labor unions, which in Germany worked hand and hand with the Social-Democratic Party, numbered no less than two and a half millions. The Socialist movement had the support of hundreds of newspapers, possessed a strong and well-disciplined organization and large financial resources, and was remarkably rich in political experience. In efficiency of organization it ranked second only to the Catholic Church.
It was true that the German Social Democrats as yet had gained little real influence on the international policy of the Empire, and despite their powerful organization and their influence, they were in a position before the war to use only moral pressure on the government. Yet to many it seemed extremely unlikely that the German government would dare instigate a world conflagration when opposed at home by this powerful "internal enemy."
The war came. Immediately after war's declaration, the Imperial Chancellor called a meeting of the Reichstag on August 5, 1914, for the purpose of approving the war budget. The day before this gathering was held, he called together the leaders of the various parties, so the story runs, among them the Social Democrats, and transmitted to them a confidential communication. He had from a reliable source, he declared, information that a secret understanding existed between the French and the Belgian governments whereby the latter government had agreed, in case of emergency, that it would give the French army passage through Belgium for the purpose of invading Germany. It was because of this agreement, the Chancellor declared, that the neutrality of Belgium had to be violated. In addition to this information, the Chancellor told the assembled legislators that the Russian army had invaded German soil and had even then overrun two of the Prussian provinces.
These statements produced the desired effect, convincing the majority of the Social Democratic leaders that their only course was to support the Kaiser and his government. The government knew how to fool them, knew what to use in order to get their support, and the Kaiser and his government were victorious.
Every cable message during those days that reached America from Germany emphasized the thought that there were no longer any parties in Germany, that the Social Democrats had decided to give up their agitation and work only for victory. To many radicals in America who had pinned their faith to the internationalism of the German Social Democracy, these reports seemed well-nigh unbelievable. The Socialist leaders must have been put in jail, some argued.
Then more news came to confirm the reports, and the papers came, Socialist papers, and Socialist papers even of Germany, and all contained the same unbelievable truth. Some said then, "Well, the Government has taken over their papers and that is how this news can be explained." But fact after fact came out which made even the most doubtful admit that the cables had been based on truth. The strong and great structure built by a generation lay prostrate on the ground.
In those days of disillusion, I remember well a conversation among a few of us concerning the plight of the Social Democracy. "The German government knew their Socialists well, and knew how best to reach them," declared one of our group. "There is one man in Germany, however, whom we shouldn't despair of, even now. If he is still alive, I cannot but believe that he will soon raise his voice against the course pursued by the German government and by his own party, and show the world that even in the land of utter darkness there still shines one light."
Liebknecht's record was open. For a score of years he had fought militarism tooth and nail. Could he now embrace it? Temporarily, it seemed that he had. He opposed the majority of his fellow-Socialists in the early days of August when they voted to support the war budget. But his efforts were unsuccessful. The majority decreed that the Social Democrats must support the war, and party discipline demanded that the minority abide by the decision of the majority. Party discipline was strong, at first too strong for Liebknecht. He yielded. Against his better judgment he voted, on August 5, for the budget. He voted, but he rebelled in spirit, and the next month, both at the home of a Socialist Alderman, F. M. Wibaut, of Amsterdam, and at the residence of Lieutenant Henry DeMan, in Brussels, he declared that he could not himself understand what had possessed him when he gave his vote in the Reichstag to the war budget.
He soon extricated himself from his former allegiances, however, and the noble spirit of courage which he afterwards displayed has but few precedents in modern history. In order to portray to the reader the real picture of the seemingly insurpassable obstacles against which he fought, and the courage and idealism which he displayed, I have collected and translated his speeches and his important utterances since the beginning of the war and here present them in detail for the first time to American readers.
Liebknecht had many opportunities for making himself heard. He was a Deputy of the Reichstag from Potsdam-Osthavelland, an assemblyman to the Prussian Landtag from Berlin and Councilman to the Stadverordneten Versammlung of Berlin. Within and without these assemblies he used his pen and his voice alike. It was in the Prussian Assembly, where from the very begining he had four companions who shared his point of view, that he delivered his longer addresses.
His tactics in the Reichstag, where for some time he stood almost alone, were somewhat different. Here, instead of delivering speeches, he used the question with telling effect, as a means of bringing out the truth on his side and of showing the emptiness of his opponents' claims. The government resorted to every conceivable means to silence him, but without success. Failing, they called him to military service, and put him in the uniform of a German soldier. This act put a temporary end to his outside public addresses, but he could still deliver his scathing indictments in the Reichstag and in the Prussian Assembly.
On May 1, 1916, he appeared at a public gathering in Berlin in civilian dress, and delivered the speech which sent him to jail. Why did he deliver that May Day address? Why did he not continue to reach the public over the heads of the legislators from his seats in the two Parliaments? It is indeed possible that he thought that the moment for the Revolution had struck. For it is an address of revolution, and seemed calculated to bring about an uprising of the workers. Perhaps he was under the impression that his addresses and the terrible pressure outside Germany had sufficiently awakened the German people, and that they needed but a word to bring them into action. Whatever the reason, the speech was a magnificent one; it required a courage which only a Liebknecht possessed.
When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Henry Thoreau in his prison cell and asked, "What are you doing here, Henry?" Thoreau replied, "What are you doing outside when all people with ideals are inside?" That sentence well describes the Germany of yesterday. Liebknecht was in prison, but even in his lonesome cell he still inspired the "gathering hosts and helped to make men free."
I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to my friends, Bertram Benedict and Dr. Wm. E. Bohn, for help and criticism.
Liebknecht studied first at Leipzig and then in Berlin, attending the university in each city. As a student he began his career of social enlightenment by organizing literary societies for the study of social problems. Liebknecht got his doctor's degree in Political Economy and Law at the University of Würzburg. From 1889 he practised law in Berlin. Later he became active in the Socialist movement in Berlin. In 1902 he was elected Councilman to the Stadverordneten Versammlung (Common Council) of Berlin. In October, 1907, he was tried for high treason before the Imperial Court of Germany at Leipzig for his book on "Militarism & Anti-Militarism." The substance of this book which aroused the ire of the German authorities was first set forth in a lecture before a group of young people in 1906, for it is Liebknecht's belief that in the hands of the younger generation of Germany lies the hope of salvation; let them be impregnated, he would say, with the right social ideals before militaristic training has an opportunity to do its work, and there will be little danger of domination by the war lords, or of the fruition of the war lords' aims.
His trial was most interesting. It was said upon excellent authority that the Kaiser himself was connected by secret wire with the court room. Liebknecht bore himself triumphantly throughout; there was never a moment of wavering, never any evidence of any quality contrary to the gigantic and fearless strength which characterizes the man. Liebknecht is himself a very able lawyer, and though he had noted lawyers to represent him (including Hugo Haase, at present a leader of the Minority Socialist Party in the Reichstag), he supplemented their speeches with additional analyses of his own.
Liebknecht took up the question, "What is high treason?" He turned the tables upon Olshausen, who was conducting the trial against him, by a quotation from a work of Olshausen himself which contradicted the stand the latter was taking in the Liebknecht trial. The Socialist leader's address to the judges was one of the boldest attacks ever made, either up to that time or up to the present, against German militarism. "The aim of my life," he declared, "is the overthrow of monarchy. As my father, who appeared before this court exactly thirty-five years ago to defend himself against the charge of treason, was ultimately pronounced victor, so I believe the day is not far distant when the principles which I represent will be recognized as patriotic, as honorable, as true."
Liebknecht's brave stand on this occasion was rewarded by a sentence of a year and a half in a military prison. While serving his sentence he was elected by the people of Berlin to represent them in the assembly of Prussia. In the Landtag Liebknecht recommenced his fight against militarism. It was there that he prophetically pronounced the word "Republic" for the first time. On one occasion there was a debate upon the building of a new opera house. "The opera house for which we are asked to vote the necessary funds," he exclaimed, "should last for many generations. We trust that it will last long after it has lost its character as a Royal Opera House."
In 1910 Liebknecht visited America to give a series of lectures, and the United States made a strong impression upon him. He used to tell me that he felt truly homesick for America and had a genuine desire to repeat the visit.
In 1912 he was elected representative to the Reichstag by the people of Potsdam-Osthavelland, under the very window of the Kaiser. The announcement of his success was met with wild demonstrations of delight. The sentiments of the surging crowds before the office of the Berlin Vorwärts when the result of the election was made public were voiced by a young workingman, when he exclaimed, "The new voice of freedom will be heard from now on in the Reichstag." In the Reichstag Liebknecht hurled with renewed zeal his invectives against the huge armaments and militarism of Germany.
Liebknecht the man is of the kindest nature and frankest personality. There is to be seen in his make-up no grain of pretentiousness, of false pride – indeed, he usually lunches quite happily upon a sandwich in the train, too busy to find any other time for his meal. His home life is ideal. His present wife – his first died in 1912 – is a Russian by birth, a graduate of the University of Heidelberg, and an ideal companion and helpmate.
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 100th 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:
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.
***********Preface
by Walter E. Weyl
THE philosophy of Karl Liebknecht as revealed in these pages leaves but a narrow ledge for heroes to stand on. To him the significant thing in history is, and has always been, the stirring of the masses of men at the bottom, their unconscious writhings, their awakenings, their conscious struggles and finally their gigantic, fearsome upthrust, which overturns all the little groups of clever men who have lived by holding these masses down. In these conflicts, kings, priests, leaders, heroes count for no more than flags or flying pennants. All great leaders, Caesar, Mahomet, Luther, Napoleon, are instruments of popular movements, or at best manuscripts upon which the messages of their class and age have been written.
To Liebknecht all that Carlyle has said about heroes is contrary to ideology and inversion of the truth. "As I take it," writes Carlyle, "Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked there. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing and accomplished in the world are properly the outward material result, the practical realization and embodiment of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these."Look at what is happening in Germany to-day and test, as best we may, these two confronting theories concerning the influence of great men upon history. As I write Germany is in the throes of revolution. The immensely powerful Hohenzollern monarchy has fallen, the brave, stubborn, modernwitted, money-bolstered aristocracy is shattered, and a proscribed poor man, Karl Liebknecht, is loudly acclaimed. Was it one man, a Foch, a Wilson, a Lenin or a Liebknecht that overturned this mighty structure, or was it the movement of a hundred million men and women, armed and unarmed, on the battle-field and in the factory, in France and England and Russia and Germany? What could Liebknecht alone have done with all his ringing eloquence and all his superb, I almost said, sublime heroism? Clearly we must rule Carlyle out of the controversy and agree with Liebknecht, the Socialist, that Liebknecht, the hero, had little to do with this vast subversion.
Yet, as Carlyle says, "One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon any great man, without gaining something by him."
At this safe distance no one could be more "profitable company" than Karl Liebknecht as he stands up boldly against all that is powerful, respectable and formidable in Germany and challenges it at the utter risk of life and reputation. Such courage as his is almost inconceivable; for us poor conforming or at best feebly protesting little people it is quite impossible. To die among thousands, even to die alone, if you think you hear the plaudits of your nation or your class, is a thing many of us have learned to do, but to stand up against a vindictive irrational war spirit, such as ruled Germany, to stand up alone, to be contemned not only by your enemies but by those who called themselves your comrades and friends, to be met by polite derision and by actual threats of violence, to be called a madman, to be called a traitor, to be misunderstood and doubted; to be met in occasional moments of dejection even by doubts in your own mind, and still to hold your own bravely and with cool passion, day after day and day after day, in circumstances growing daily more difficult, and finally to go to prison gladly, triumphantly – that is courage surpassing the courage of the rest of us. It is easier to die even by torture than to persist in this opposition to forces physical and mental not only confronting but surrounding and even permeating us.
We have agreed with Liebknecht that great events are not the doings of great men but merely the large theater in which these great men play their little parts. And yet, does not the hero, subordinate as he is to the wider movement of the play, exert a somewhat stronger influence than many followers of Marx seem willing to admit? Masses of men are moved to vital historic decisions in part by economic motives, but these motives must first be converted into emotion, and the hero, however his own actions are motived, is one of the vital factors producing that emotion. We shall perhaps never know to what extent the present rising of the German people against their once invincible rulers was occasioned, though not caused, by their vision of Karl Liebknecht, standing there alone against all the judges, rulers, legislators and respectables of Germany, and even against his fellow socialists. The heroism of Liebknecht was at least a point and center of coalescence.
The course of events has vindicated Karl Liebknecht. But it might well have been otherwise. Had Germany won the war and established a clanging pax Germanica through the ruin of Europe, Liebknecht's heroism might never have been recognized. He might have rusted in prison and been released to obscurity and thereafter lived a futile life derided as a blind fanatic. The force of circumstances, the obscure action of the hundreds of millions, rescued Liebknecht and raised him to the highest pinnacle of heroism. It stamped upon our minds for all time the picture of this brave man standing alone surrounded by cruel, confidently smiling foes.
I said "alone." Yet this is not fair to a very small group of German minority socialists, who stood by Liebknecht and by whom Liebknecht stood. Among them were Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Hugo Haase, George Ledebour, and others, to whom, were real heroism always decorated, would be given a higher order of "Pour le Mérite." But among all these Karl Liebknecht stands preëminent.
"And for all that mind you," concludes the French soldier Bertrand, in "Under Fire," "there is one figure that has risen above the war and will blaze with the beauty and strength of his courage."
Barbusse continues: "I listened leaning on a stick towards him, drinking in the voice that came in the twilight silence from the lips that so rarely spoke. He cried with a clear voice, 'Liebknecht.' "
WALTER WEYL.
Translator's Preface
"The future belongs to the people." The time was October 24, 1918; the place, Berlin, the center of Germany; the speaker, Doctor Karl Liebknecht. A remarkable change had indeed come over the Empire. As far as the eye could reach, a great shouting, surging crowd had gathered before the Reichstag buildings, a crowd such as might have foregathered in times past on almost any day of national festivity, to do honor to his Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm. They were indeed shouting frantically on this occasion, but with other sentiments, shouting not for the Kaiser, but for abdication, while applauding frantically for another, a bitter foe of the Kaiser, a man who had been sent to jail for high treason, had been deprived of his seat in the Reichstag, had been dubbed, even by those in his own party, an enemy of his kind – Karl Liebknecht. And who, witnessing the flower-laden carriage of the great popular hero, but would admit that a new day was at last dawning in that land of autocracy, a day ushered in by the guns and men of Foch?
The events leading to that ovation of the twenty-fourth of October are of interest.From the earliest days of its organization, soon after the middle of the nineteenth century, the German Social Democracy had taken a stand against militarism. During the Franco-Prussian War, two of its chief representatives, Wilhelm Liebknecht (the father of Karl Liebknecht) and August Bebel, had refused to vote for the war budget. In 1912, during the Balkan crisis, the German Socialists had attended in force the great gathering of the International Socialist Conference at Basle, protesting in vigorous tones against the war, and many there were on that occasion who declared that even if danger of world war had not been entirely eliminated, the Social Democrats of Germany, the strongest of the International movement, were prepared to meet any emergency that might arise. In the Reichstag elections, these Social Democrats had cast four and a quarter millions of votes, while the labor unions, which in Germany worked hand and hand with the Social-Democratic Party, numbered no less than two and a half millions. The Socialist movement had the support of hundreds of newspapers, possessed a strong and well-disciplined organization and large financial resources, and was remarkably rich in political experience. In efficiency of organization it ranked second only to the Catholic Church.
It was true that the German Social Democrats as yet had gained little real influence on the international policy of the Empire, and despite their powerful organization and their influence, they were in a position before the war to use only moral pressure on the government. Yet to many it seemed extremely unlikely that the German government would dare instigate a world conflagration when opposed at home by this powerful "internal enemy."
The war came. Immediately after war's declaration, the Imperial Chancellor called a meeting of the Reichstag on August 5, 1914, for the purpose of approving the war budget. The day before this gathering was held, he called together the leaders of the various parties, so the story runs, among them the Social Democrats, and transmitted to them a confidential communication. He had from a reliable source, he declared, information that a secret understanding existed between the French and the Belgian governments whereby the latter government had agreed, in case of emergency, that it would give the French army passage through Belgium for the purpose of invading Germany. It was because of this agreement, the Chancellor declared, that the neutrality of Belgium had to be violated. In addition to this information, the Chancellor told the assembled legislators that the Russian army had invaded German soil and had even then overrun two of the Prussian provinces.
These statements produced the desired effect, convincing the majority of the Social Democratic leaders that their only course was to support the Kaiser and his government. The government knew how to fool them, knew what to use in order to get their support, and the Kaiser and his government were victorious.
Every cable message during those days that reached America from Germany emphasized the thought that there were no longer any parties in Germany, that the Social Democrats had decided to give up their agitation and work only for victory. To many radicals in America who had pinned their faith to the internationalism of the German Social Democracy, these reports seemed well-nigh unbelievable. The Socialist leaders must have been put in jail, some argued.
Then more news came to confirm the reports, and the papers came, Socialist papers, and Socialist papers even of Germany, and all contained the same unbelievable truth. Some said then, "Well, the Government has taken over their papers and that is how this news can be explained." But fact after fact came out which made even the most doubtful admit that the cables had been based on truth. The strong and great structure built by a generation lay prostrate on the ground.
In those days of disillusion, I remember well a conversation among a few of us concerning the plight of the Social Democracy. "The German government knew their Socialists well, and knew how best to reach them," declared one of our group. "There is one man in Germany, however, whom we shouldn't despair of, even now. If he is still alive, I cannot but believe that he will soon raise his voice against the course pursued by the German government and by his own party, and show the world that even in the land of utter darkness there still shines one light."
Liebknecht's record was open. For a score of years he had fought militarism tooth and nail. Could he now embrace it? Temporarily, it seemed that he had. He opposed the majority of his fellow-Socialists in the early days of August when they voted to support the war budget. But his efforts were unsuccessful. The majority decreed that the Social Democrats must support the war, and party discipline demanded that the minority abide by the decision of the majority. Party discipline was strong, at first too strong for Liebknecht. He yielded. Against his better judgment he voted, on August 5, for the budget. He voted, but he rebelled in spirit, and the next month, both at the home of a Socialist Alderman, F. M. Wibaut, of Amsterdam, and at the residence of Lieutenant Henry DeMan, in Brussels, he declared that he could not himself understand what had possessed him when he gave his vote in the Reichstag to the war budget.
He soon extricated himself from his former allegiances, however, and the noble spirit of courage which he afterwards displayed has but few precedents in modern history. In order to portray to the reader the real picture of the seemingly insurpassable obstacles against which he fought, and the courage and idealism which he displayed, I have collected and translated his speeches and his important utterances since the beginning of the war and here present them in detail for the first time to American readers.
Liebknecht had many opportunities for making himself heard. He was a Deputy of the Reichstag from Potsdam-Osthavelland, an assemblyman to the Prussian Landtag from Berlin and Councilman to the Stadverordneten Versammlung of Berlin. Within and without these assemblies he used his pen and his voice alike. It was in the Prussian Assembly, where from the very begining he had four companions who shared his point of view, that he delivered his longer addresses.
His tactics in the Reichstag, where for some time he stood almost alone, were somewhat different. Here, instead of delivering speeches, he used the question with telling effect, as a means of bringing out the truth on his side and of showing the emptiness of his opponents' claims. The government resorted to every conceivable means to silence him, but without success. Failing, they called him to military service, and put him in the uniform of a German soldier. This act put a temporary end to his outside public addresses, but he could still deliver his scathing indictments in the Reichstag and in the Prussian Assembly.
On May 1, 1916, he appeared at a public gathering in Berlin in civilian dress, and delivered the speech which sent him to jail. Why did he deliver that May Day address? Why did he not continue to reach the public over the heads of the legislators from his seats in the two Parliaments? It is indeed possible that he thought that the moment for the Revolution had struck. For it is an address of revolution, and seemed calculated to bring about an uprising of the workers. Perhaps he was under the impression that his addresses and the terrible pressure outside Germany had sufficiently awakened the German people, and that they needed but a word to bring them into action. Whatever the reason, the speech was a magnificent one; it required a courage which only a Liebknecht possessed.
When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Henry Thoreau in his prison cell and asked, "What are you doing here, Henry?" Thoreau replied, "What are you doing outside when all people with ideals are inside?" That sentence well describes the Germany of yesterday. Liebknecht was in prison, but even in his lonesome cell he still inspired the "gathering hosts and helped to make men free."
I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to my friends, Bertram Benedict and Dr. Wm. E. Bohn, for help and criticism.
S. ZIMAND.
November 3, 1918
November 3, 1918
The Man Liebknecht
KARL LIEBKNECHT is a worthy son of a great sire. His father, Wilhelm Liebknecht, for years a member of the Reichstag, was the author of numerous pamphlets on Socialism and economics and was one of the first founders of the Socialist Party in Germany. Karl Liebknecht was born in Leipzig on August 13th, 1871, the same year in which his father was arrested on the charge of high treason. His mother was wont to say that she bequeathed to her son all the sorrow that was hers during that period, all the courage and all the strength which she had to summon to her aid to live through those days; and with her bequest went all the sorrow for the sufferings of humanity, and all the courage and the strength to battle for the cause of the people, which were back of the father's trial.
And thirty-five years later, Karl Liebknecht underwent the same ordeal as his father – himself faced the accusation of high treason in the highest courts of his native land.Liebknecht studied first at Leipzig and then in Berlin, attending the university in each city. As a student he began his career of social enlightenment by organizing literary societies for the study of social problems. Liebknecht got his doctor's degree in Political Economy and Law at the University of Würzburg. From 1889 he practised law in Berlin. Later he became active in the Socialist movement in Berlin. In 1902 he was elected Councilman to the Stadverordneten Versammlung (Common Council) of Berlin. In October, 1907, he was tried for high treason before the Imperial Court of Germany at Leipzig for his book on "Militarism & Anti-Militarism." The substance of this book which aroused the ire of the German authorities was first set forth in a lecture before a group of young people in 1906, for it is Liebknecht's belief that in the hands of the younger generation of Germany lies the hope of salvation; let them be impregnated, he would say, with the right social ideals before militaristic training has an opportunity to do its work, and there will be little danger of domination by the war lords, or of the fruition of the war lords' aims.
His trial was most interesting. It was said upon excellent authority that the Kaiser himself was connected by secret wire with the court room. Liebknecht bore himself triumphantly throughout; there was never a moment of wavering, never any evidence of any quality contrary to the gigantic and fearless strength which characterizes the man. Liebknecht is himself a very able lawyer, and though he had noted lawyers to represent him (including Hugo Haase, at present a leader of the Minority Socialist Party in the Reichstag), he supplemented their speeches with additional analyses of his own.
Liebknecht took up the question, "What is high treason?" He turned the tables upon Olshausen, who was conducting the trial against him, by a quotation from a work of Olshausen himself which contradicted the stand the latter was taking in the Liebknecht trial. The Socialist leader's address to the judges was one of the boldest attacks ever made, either up to that time or up to the present, against German militarism. "The aim of my life," he declared, "is the overthrow of monarchy. As my father, who appeared before this court exactly thirty-five years ago to defend himself against the charge of treason, was ultimately pronounced victor, so I believe the day is not far distant when the principles which I represent will be recognized as patriotic, as honorable, as true."
Liebknecht's brave stand on this occasion was rewarded by a sentence of a year and a half in a military prison. While serving his sentence he was elected by the people of Berlin to represent them in the assembly of Prussia. In the Landtag Liebknecht recommenced his fight against militarism. It was there that he prophetically pronounced the word "Republic" for the first time. On one occasion there was a debate upon the building of a new opera house. "The opera house for which we are asked to vote the necessary funds," he exclaimed, "should last for many generations. We trust that it will last long after it has lost its character as a Royal Opera House."
In 1910 Liebknecht visited America to give a series of lectures, and the United States made a strong impression upon him. He used to tell me that he felt truly homesick for America and had a genuine desire to repeat the visit.
In 1912 he was elected representative to the Reichstag by the people of Potsdam-Osthavelland, under the very window of the Kaiser. The announcement of his success was met with wild demonstrations of delight. The sentiments of the surging crowds before the office of the Berlin Vorwärts when the result of the election was made public were voiced by a young workingman, when he exclaimed, "The new voice of freedom will be heard from now on in the Reichstag." In the Reichstag Liebknecht hurled with renewed zeal his invectives against the huge armaments and militarism of Germany.
Liebknecht the man is of the kindest nature and frankest personality. There is to be seen in his make-up no grain of pretentiousness, of false pride – indeed, he usually lunches quite happily upon a sandwich in the train, too busy to find any other time for his meal. His home life is ideal. His present wife – his first died in 1912 – is a Russian by birth, a graduate of the University of Heidelberg, and an ideal companion and helpmate.
On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-From The American Left History Blog Archives (2007-08) - In January Honor The Three Ls- A Model Anti-Warrior-Karl Liebknecht of World War I Germany (2007)
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.
In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on if you like
************A Model Anti-Warrior
I recently received a comment from someone whom I took earnestly to be perplexed by a section of a commentary that I had written where I stated that the minimum necessary for any anti-war politician was to vote against the Iraq war budget in a principled manner. Not the way former Democratic presidential candidate Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s (and others) dipsy-doodled votes for and against various war budgetary requests in 2004. And certainly not the other variations on this theme performed recently by aspiring Democratic presidential candidates Senators Obama and Clinton in the lead-up to 2008. Nor, for that matter, the way of those who oppose the Iraq war budget but have no problems if those funds were diverted to wars in Afghanistan, Iran , North Korea, China or their favorite‘evil state’ of the month. What really drew the commenter up short was that I stated this was only the beginning political wisdom and then proceeded to explain that even that would not be enough to render the politician political support if his or her other politics were weak. The commenter then plaintively begged me to describe what politician would qualify for such support. Although I have noted elsewhere that some politicians, Democratic Congressman James McGovern of Massachusetts and presidential candidate Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich stand out from the pack, the real anti-war hero on principle we should look at is long dead-Karl Liebknecht, the German Social-Democratic leader from World War I. Wherever anyone fights against unjust wars Liebknecht’s spirit hovers over those efforts.
Below is a commentary (edited) written last year that relates to this same subject and does not do nearly enough justice to the figure of Karl Liebknecht.
Hold Their Feet to the Fire
The election cycle of 2006-2008 has started, a time for all militants to run for cover. It will not be pretty and certainly is not for the faint-hearted. The Democrats smell blood in the water. The Greens smell that the Democrats smell blood. Various parliamentary leftists and some ostensible socialists smell that the Greens smell blood. You get the drift. Before we go to ground let me make a point.
The central issue in the 2006 elections is the Iraq quagmire. As we enter the fourth year in the bloody war in Iraq many liberals, and some not so liberal, in Congress and elsewhere are looking to rehabilitate their sorry records on Iraq and are having a cheap field day. As militants we know that the only serious call is- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal of all U.S. and Allied Forces. Many politicians have supported a pale imitation of this slogan-now that it safe to do so. These courageous positions range from immediate withdrawal in six months, one year, six years, etc. My personal favorite is withdrawal when the situation in Iraq stabilizes. Compared to that position, Mr. Bush’s statement in May, 2003 that the mission in Iraq was accomplished seems the height of political realism. Hold on though.
After the last slogan has faded from the last mass anti-war demonstration, after the last e-mail has been sent to the last unresponsive Congressman, after the last petition signed on behalf of the fellowship of humankind has been signed where do we stand in 2006. When the vast majority of Americans (and the world) are against the Iraq war and it still goes on and yet the “masses” are not ready for more drastic action we need some immediate leverage.
The only material way to end the war on the parliamentary level is opposition to the continued funding for the occupation. For that, however, you need votes in Congress. Here is my proposal. Make a N0 vote on the war budget a condition for your vote. When the Democrats, Republicans, Greens, or whoever, come to your door, your mailbox , your computer or calls you on the telephone or cell phone ask this simple question-YES or NO on the war budget.
Now, lest I be accused of being an ultra-left let me make this clear. I am talking about the supplementary budget for Iraq. Heaven forbid that I mean the real war budget, you know, the 400 billion plus one. No, we are reasonable people and until we get universal health care we do not want these “leaders” to suffer heart attacks. And being reasonable people we can be proper parliamentarians when the occasion requires it. If the answer is YES, then we ask YES or NO on the appropriations for bombs in the war budget. And if the answer is still YES, then we ask YES or NO on the appropriations for gold-plated kitchen sinks in the war budget. If to your utter surprise any politician says NO here’s your comeback- Since you have approximated the beginning of wisdom, get the hell out of the party you represent. You are in the wrong place. Come down here in the mud and fight for a party working people can call their own. Then, maybe, just maybe, I can support you.
I do not believe we are lacking in physical courage. What has declined is political courage, and this seems in irreversible decline on the part of parliamentary politicians. That said, I want to finish up with a woefully inadequate political appreciation of Karl Liebknecht, member of the German Social Democratic faction in the Reichstag in the early 1900’s. Karl was also a son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, friend of Karl Marx and founder of the German Social Democratic Party in the 1860’s. On August 4, 1914, at the start of World War I the German Social Democratic Party voted YES on the war budget of the Kaiser against all its previous historic positions on German militarism. This vote was rightly seen as a betrayal of socialist principles. Due to a policy of parliamentary solidarity Karl Liebknecht also voted for this budget, or at least felt he had to go along with his faction. Shortly thereafter, he broke ranks and voted NO against the war appropriations. As pointed out below Karl Liebknecht did much more than that to oppose the German side in the First World War. THAT , MY FRIENDS, IS THE KIND OF POLITICAN I CAN SUPPORT. AS FOR THE REST- HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE.
One of the problems with being the son of a famous politician is that as founder of the early German Social Democratic Party Wilhelm Liebknecht's son much was expected of Karl, especially on the question of leading the German working class against German militarism. Wilhelm had done a prison term (with August Bebel) for opposition to the Franco-Prussian War. As for Karl I have always admired that famous picture of him walking across the Potsdam Plaza in uniform, subject to imprisonment after lost of his parliamentary immunity, with briefcase under arm ready to go in and do battle with the parliamentary cretins of the Social Democratic Party over support for the war budget. That is the kind of leadership cadre we desperately need now. REMEMBER HIS FAMOUS SLOGANS- ‘THE MAIN ENEMY IS AT HOME’-‘NOT ONE PENNY, NOT ONE PERSON (updated by writer to reflect the changed status of increasing numbers of women in the military) FOR THE WAR’. Wilhelm would have been proud.
Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac- In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)- “The Drugstore Cowboy”, William Burroughs’-“Naked Lunch”
Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of The "King
Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-
“Advertisements for Myself”-Introduction by Allan Jackson, a founding member of the American Left History publication back in 1974 when it was a hard copy journal and until 2017 site manager of the on-line edition.
[He’s back. Jack Kerouac, as described in the headline, “the king of the beats” and maybe the last true beat standing. That is the basis of this introduction by me as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of his untimely death at 47. But before we go down and dirty with the legendary writer I stand before you, the regular reader, and those who have not been around for a while to know that I was relieved of my site manage duties in 2017 in what amounted to a coup by the younger writers who resented the direction I was taking the publication in and replaced me with Greg Green who I had brought on board from American Film Gazette to run the day to day operations while I oversaw the whole operation and planned my retirement. Over the past year or so a million rumors have, had mostly now, swirled around this publication and the industry in general about what had happened and I will get to that in a minute before dealing with Jack Kerouac’s role in the whole mess.
What you need to know first, if you don’t know already is that Greg Green took me back to do the introductions to an encore presentation of a long-term history of rock and roll series that I edited and essentially created after an unnamed older writer who had not been part of the project balled it all up, got catch flat-footed talking bullshit and other assorted nonsense since he knew nada, nada nunca and, about the subject having been apparently asleep when the late Peter Markin “took us to school” that history. Since then Greg and I have had an “armed truce,” meaning I could contribute as here to introductions of some encore and some origin material as long as I didn’t go crazy, his term, for what he called so-called nostalgia stuff from the 1950s and 1960s and meaning as well that Greg will not go crazy, my term, and will refrain from his ill-advised attempt to reach a younger audience by “dumbing down” the publication with odd-ball comic book character reviews of films, graphic novels and strange musical interludes. Fair is fair.
What I need to mention, alluded to above, is those rumors that ran amok while I was on the ropes, when I had lost that decisive vote of no confidence by one sullen vote. People here, and my enemies in the industry as well, seeing a wounded Allan Jackson went for the kill, went for the jugular that the seedy always thrive on and began a raggedy-ass trail on noise you would not believe. In the interest of elementary hygiene, and to frankly clear the air, a little, since there will always be those who have evil, and worse in their hearts when “the mighty have fallen.” Kick when somebody is down their main interest in life.
I won’t go through the horrible rumors like I was panhandling down in Washington, D.C., I was homeless in Olde Saco, Maine (how could that be when old friend and writer here Josh Breslin lives there and would have provided alms to me so at least get an approximation of the facts before spinning the wild woolly tale), I had become a male prostitute in New York City (presumably after forces here and in that city hostile to me put in the fatal “hard to work with” tag on me ruining any chances on the East Coast of getting work, getting enough dough to keep the wolves from my door, my three ex-wives and that bevy of kids, nice kids, who nevertheless were sucking me dry with alimony and college tuitions), writing press releases under the name Leonard Bloom for a Madison Avenue ad agency. On a lesser scale of disbelief I had taken a job as a ticket-taker in a multi-plex in Nashua, New Hampshire, had been a line dishwasher at the Ritz in Philadelphia when they needed day labor for parties and convention banquets, had been kicking kids out of their newspaper routes and taking that task on myself, and to finish off although I have not given a complete rundown rummaging through trash barrels looking for bottles with deposits. Christ.
Needless to say, how does one actually answer such idiocies, and why. A couple of others stick out about me and some surfer girl out in Carlsbad in California who I was pimping while getting my sack time with her and this one hurt because it hurt a dear friend and former “hippie girl” lover of mine, Madame La Rue, back in the day that I was running a whorehouse with her in Luna Bay for rich Asian businessmen with a taste for kinky stuff. I did stop off there and Madame does run a high-end brothel in Luna Bay but I had nothing to do with it. The reason Madame was hurt was because I had lent her the money to buy the place when it was a rundown hotel and built it up from there with periodic additional funds from me so she could not understand why my act of kindness would create such degenerate noise from my enemies who were clueless about the relationship between us.
I will, must deal with two big lies which also
center of my reluctant journey west (caused remember by that smear campaign
which ruined by job opportunities in the East, particularly New York City. The
first which is really unbelievable on its face is that I hightailed it directly
to Utah, to Salt Lake City, when I busted out in NYC looking for one Mitt
Romney, “Mr. Flip-Flop,” former Governor of Massachusetts, Presidential
candidate against Barack Obama then planning on running for U.S. Senator from
Utah (now successful ready to take office in January) to “get well.” The
premise for this big lie was supposedly that since I have skewered the guy
while he was governor and running for president with stuff like the Mormon
fetish for white underwear and the old time polygamy of his great-grand-father
who had five wives (and who showed great executive skill I think in keeping the
peace in that extended family situation. The unbelievable part is that those
Mormon folk, who have long memories and have pitchforks at the ready to rumble
with the damned, would let a sinner like me, a non-Mormon for one thing
anywhere the Romney press operation. Christ, I must be some part latter day
saint since I barely got out of that damn state alive if the real truth were
known after I applied for a job with the Salt Lake Sentinel not knowing the
rag was totally linked to the Mormons. Pitchforks,
indeed.
The biggest lie though is the one that had me as the M.C. in complete “drag” as Elsa Maxwell at the “notorious” KitKat Club in San Francisco which has been run for about the past thirty years or so by Miss Judy Garland, at one time and maybe still is in some quarters the “drag queen” Queen of that city. This will show you how ignorant, or blinded by hate, some people are. Miss Judy Garland is none other that one of our old corner boys from the Acre section of North Adamsville, Timmy Riley. Timmy who like the rest of us on the corner used to “fag bait” and beat up anybody, any guy who seemed effeminate, at what cost to Timmy’s real feelings we will never really know although he was always the leader in the gay-bashing orgy. Finally between his own feeling and Stonewall in New York in 1969 which did a great deal to make gays, with or with the drag queen orientation, a little less timid Timmy fled the Acre (and his hateful family and friends) to go to friendlier Frisco. He was in deep personal financial trouble before I was able to arrange some loans from myself and some of his other old corner boys (a few still hate Timmy for what he has become, his true self) to buy the El Lobo Club, his first drag queen club, and when that went under, the now thriving tourist trap KitKat Club. So yes, yes, indeed, I stayed with my old friend at his place and that was that. Nothing more than I had done many times before while I ran the publication.
But enough of this tiresome business because I want to introduce this series dedicated to the memory of Jack Kerouac who had a lot of influence on me for a long time, mostly after he died in 1969
******
All roads about Jack Kerouac, about who was the
king of the beats, about what were the “beats” lead back to the late Pete
Markin who, one way or another, taught the working poor Acre neighborhood of
North Adamsville corner boys what was up with that movement. Funny, because we
young guys were a serious generation removed from that scene, really our
fathers’ contemporaries and you know how far removed fathers were from kids in
those days especially among the working poor trying to avoid
going “under water” and not just about mortgages but food on tables
and clothing on backs, were children of rock and roll, not jazz, the beat
musical medium, and later the core of the “Generation of ‘68” which took off,
at least partially, with the “hippie” scene, where the dying embers of the beat
scene left off. Those dying embers exactly the way to put it since most of our
knowledge or interest came from the stereotypes-beards before beards were cool
and before grandfather times -for guys, okay, berets, black and beaten down
looks. Ditto on black for the gals, including black nylons which no Acre girl
would have dreamed of wearing, not in the early 1960s anyway. Our “model”
beatnik really came, as we were also children of television, from sitcom
stories like Dobie Gillis with stick character Maynard G. Krebs
standing in for all be-bop-dom.
So it is easy to see where except to ostracize, meaning harass, maybe beat up if that was our wont that day, we would have passed by the “beat” scene, passed by Jack Kerouac too without the good offices, not a term we would have used then, if not for nerdish, goof, wild and woolly in the idea world Markin (always called Scribe for obvious reasons but we will keep with Markin here). He was the guy who always looked for some secret meaning to the universe, that certain breezes, winds, metaphorical breezes and winds, were going to turn things around, were going to make the world a place where Markin could thrive. Markin was the one who first read Kerouac’s breakthrough travelogue of a different sort novel On The Road.
Now Markin was the kind of guy, and sometimes we
let him go on and sometimes stopped him in his tracks, who when he was on to
something would bear down on us to pay attention. Christ some weekend nights he
would read passages from the book like it was the Bible (which it turned out to
be in a way later) when all we basically cared about is which girls were going
to show up at our hang-out spot, the well-known Tonio’s Pizza Parlor and play
the jukebox and we would go from there. Most of us, including me, kind of yawned
at the whole thing even when Markin made a big deal that Kerouac was a
working-class guy like us from up in Lowell cut right along the Merrimac River.
The whole thing seemed way too exotic and moreover there was too much
homosexual stuff implied which in our strict Irish-Italian Catholic
neighborhood did not go down well at all -made us dismiss the whole thing and
want to if I recall correctly “beat up” that Allan Ginsberg character. Even
Dean Moriarty, the Neal Cassidy character, didn’t move us since although we
were as larcenous and “clip” crazy as any character in that book we kind of
took Dean as a tough car crazy guide like Sonny Jones from our neighborhood who
was nothing but a hood in Red Riley’s bad ass motorcycle gang which hung out at
Harry’s Variety Store. We avoided him and more so Red like the plague. Both
wound up dead, very dead, in separate attempted armed robberies in broad
daylight if you can believe that.
Our first run through of our experiences with Kerouac and through him the beat movement was therefore kind of marginal-even as Markin touted for a while that whole scene he agreed with us that jazz-be-bop jazz always associated with the beat-ness was not our music, was grating to our rock and roll-refined and defined ears. Here is where Markin was always on to something though, always had some idea percolating in his head. There was a point where he, we as well I think, got tired of rock and roll, a time when it had run out of steam for a while and along with his crazy home life which really was bad drove him to go to Harvard Square and check out what he had heard was a lot of stuff going on. Harvard Square was, is still to the extent that any have survived like Club Passim, the home of the coffeehouse. A place that kind of went with the times first as the extension of the beat generation hang-out where poetry and jazz would be read and played. But in Markin’s time, our time there was the beginnings of a switch because when he went to the old long gone Café Nana he heard folk music and not jazz, although some poetry was still being read. I remember Markin telling me how he figured the change when I think it was the late Dave Von Ronk performed at some club and mentioned that when he started out in the mid-1950s in the heat of beat time folk singers were hired at the coffeehouses in Greenwich Village to “clear the house” for the next set of poetry performers but that now folk-singing eclipsed poetry in the clubs. Markin loved it, loved the whole scene of which he was an early devotee. Me, well, strangely considering where I wound up and what I did as a career, I always, still do, hated the music. Thought it was too whinny and boring. Enough said though.
Let’s fast forward to see where Kerouac really affected us in a way that when Markin was spouting forth early on we could not appreciate. As Markin sensed in his own otherworldly way a new breeze was coming down the cultural highway, a breeze push forward by the beats I will confess, by the folk music scene, by the search for roots which the previous generation, our parents’ generation, spent their adulthoods attempting to banish and become part of the great American vanilla melt, and by a struggling desire to question everything that had come before, had been part of what we had had no say in creating, weren’t even asked about. Heady stuff and Markin before he made a very bad decision to quit college in his sophomore years and “find himself,” my expression not his, spent many of his waking hours figuring out how to make his world a place where he could thrive.
That is when one night, this is when we were well out of high school, some of us corner boys had gone our separate ways and those who remained in contact with the brethren spent less time hanging out at Tonio’s, Markin once again pulled out On The Road, pulled out Jack’s exotic travelogue. The difference is we were all ears then and some of us after that night brought our own copies or went to the Thomas Murphy Public Library and took out the book. This was the spring of the historic year 1967 when the first buds of the Summer of Love which wracked San Francisco and the Bay Area to its core and once Markin started working on us, started to make us see his vision of what he would later called, culling from Tennyson if I am not mistaken a “newer world.” Pulling us all in his train, even as with Bart Webber and if I recall Si Lannon a little, he had to pull out all the stops to have them, us, join him in the Summer of Love experience. Maybe the whole thing with Jack Kerouac was a pipe dream I remember reading about him in the Literary Gazette when he was down in Florida living with his ancient mother and he was seriously critical of the “hippies,” kind of banged on his own beat roots explaining that he was talking about something almost Catholic beatitude spiritual and not personal freedom, of the road or anything else. A lot of guys and not just writing junkies looking for some way to alleviate their inner pains have repudiated their pasts but all I know is that when Jack was king of the hill, when he spoke to us those were the days all roads to Kerouac were led by Markin. Got it. Allan Jackson
In Honor Of Jean Bon Kerouac On The 60th Anniversary Of “On The Road” (1957)-“The Drugstore Cowboy”, William Burroughs’-“Naked Lunch”
By Book Critic Zack James
To be honest I know about On The Road Jack Kerouac’s epic tale of his generation’s search for
something, maybe the truth, maybe just kicks, stuff, important stuff has
happened or some such happening strictly second-hand. His generation’s search
looking for a name, found what he, or someone associated with him, maybe the
bandit poet Gregory Corso, king of the mean New York streets, mean, very mean
indeed in a junkie-hang-out world around Times Square when that place was up to
its neck in flea-bit hotels, all night Joe and Nemo’s and the trail of the
“fixer” man on every corner, con men coming out your ass too, called the “beat”
generation. Beat, beat of the jazzed up
drum line backing some sax player searching for the high white note, what
somebody told me, maybe my older brother Alex thy called “blowing to the China
seas” out in West Coast jazz and blues circles, dead beat, run out on money,
women, life, leaving, and this is important no forwarding address for the
desolate repo man to hang onto, dread beat, nine to five, 24/7/365 that you
will get caught back up in the spire wind up like your freaking staid, stay at
home parents, beaten down, ground down like dust puffed away just for being, hell,
let’s just call it being, beatified beat like saintly and all high holy
Catholic incense and a story goes with it about a young man caught up in a
dream, like there were not ten thousand other religions in the world to feast
on- you can take your pick of the meanings, beat time meanings. Hell, join the
club they all did, the guys, and it was mostly guys who hung out on the mean
streets of New York, Chi town, North Beach in Frisco town cadging twenty-five
cents a night flea-bag sleeps, half stirred left on corner coffees and
cigarette stubs when the Bull Durham ran out).
I was too young to have had anything but a vague passing
reference to the thing, to that “beat” thing since I was probably just pulling
out of diapers then, maybe a shade bit older but not much. I got my fill, my
brim fill later through my oldest brother Alex. Alex, and his crowd, more about
that in a minute, but even he was only washed clean by the “beat” experiment at
a very low level, mostly through reading the book (need I say the book was On The Road) and having his mandatory
two years of living on the road around the time of the Summer of Love, 1967 an
event whose 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year as
well. So even Alex and his crowd were really too young to have been washed by
the beat wave that crashed the continent toward the end of the 1950s on the
wings of Allan Ginsburg’s Howl and
Jack’s travel book of a different kind. The kind that moves generations, or I
like to think the best parts of those cohorts. These were the creation
documents the latter which would drive Alex west before he finally settled down
to his career life (and to my sorrow and anger never looked back).
Of course anytime you talk about books and poetry and then
add my brother Alex’s name into the mix that automatically brings up memories
of another name, the name of the late Peter Paul Markin. Markin, for whom Alex
and the rest of the North Adamsville corner boys, Jack, Jimmy, Si, Josh, and a
few others still alive recently had me put together a tribute book for in
connection with that Summer of Love, 1967 just mentioned. Markin was the vanguard guy, the volunteer
odd-ball unkempt mad monk seeker who got several of them off their asses and
out to the West Coast to see what there was to see. To see some stuff that
Markin had been speaking of for a number of years before (and which nobody in
the crowd paid attention to, or dismissed out of hand what they called “could
give a rat’s ass” about in the local jargon which I also inherited in those
cold, hungry bleak 1950s cultural days in America) and which can be indirectly
attributed to the activities of Jack, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, that
aforementioned bandit poet who ran wild on the mean streets among the hustlers,
conmen and whores of the major towns of the continent, William Burroughs, the
Harvard-trained junkie and a bunch of
other guys who took a very different route for our parents who were of the same
generation as them but of a very different world.
But it was above all Jack’s book, Jack’s book which had
caused a big splash in 1957, and had ripple effects into the early 1960s (and
even now certain “hip” kids acknowledge the power of attraction that book had
for their own developments, especially that living simple, fast and hard part).
Made the young, some of them anyway have to spend some time thinking through
the path of life ahead by hitting the vagrant dusty sweaty road. Maybe not
hitchhiking, maybe not going high speed high through the ocean, plains,
mountain desert night but staying unsettled for a while anyway.
Like I said above Alex was out two years and other guys,
other corner boys for whatever else you wanted to call them that was their
niche back in those days and were recognized as such in the town not always to
their benefit, from a few months to a few years. Markin started first back in
the spring of 1967 but was interrupted by his fateful induction into the Army
and service, if you can call it that, in Vietnam and then several more years
upon his return before his untimely end. With maybe this difference from
today’s young who are seeking alternative roads away from what is frankly
bourgeois society and was when Jack wrote although nobody except commies and
pinkos called it that. Alex, Frankie Riley the acknowledged leader, Jack
Callahan and the rest, Markin included, were strictly from hunger working class
kids who when they hung around Tonio Pizza Parlor were as likely to be thinking
up ways to grab money fast any way they could or of getting into some hot chick’s pants as anything else. Down at
the base of society when you don’t have enough of life’s goods or have to
struggle too much to get even that little “from hunger” takes a big toll on
your life. I can testify to that part because Alex was not the only one in the
James family to go toe to toe with the law, it was a close thing for all us
boys as it had been with Jack when all is said and done. But back then dough
and sex after all was what was what for corner boys, maybe now too although you
don’t see many guys hanging on forlorn Friday night corners anymore.
What made this tribe different, the Tonio Pizza Parlor
corner boys, was mad monk Markin. Markin called by Frankie Riley the “Scribe”
from the time he came to North Adamsville from across town in junior high
school and that stuck all through high school. The name stuck because although
Markin was as larcenous and lovesick as the rest of them he was also crazy for
books and poetry. Christ according to Alex, Markin was the guy who planned most
of the “midnight creeps” they called then. Although nobody in their right minds
would have the inept Markin actually execute the plan that was for smooth as
silk Frankie to lead. That operational sense was why Frankie was the leader
then (and maybe why he was a locally famous lawyer later who you definitely did
not want to be on the other side against him). Markin was also the guy who all
the girls for some strange reason would confide in and thus was the source of
intelligence about who was who in the social pecking order, in other words, who
was available, sexually or otherwise. That sexually much more important than
otherwise. See Markin always had about ten billion facts running around his
head in case anybody, boy or girl, asked him about anything so he was ready to
do battle, for or against take your pick.
The books and the poetry is where Jack Kerouac and On The Road come into the corner boy
life of the Tonio’s Pizza Parlor life. Markin was something like an antennae
for anything that seemed like it might help create a jailbreak, help them get
out from under. Later he would be the guy who introduced some of the guys to
folk music when that was a big thing. (Alex never bought into that genre, still
doesn’t, despite Markin’s desperate pleas for him to check it out. Hated whinny
Dylan above all else) Others too like Kerouac’s friend Allen Ginsburg and his
wooly homo poem Howl from 1956 which
Markin would read sections out loud from on lowdown dough-less, girl-less
Friday nights. And drive the strictly hetero guys crazy when he insisted that
they read the poem, read what he called a new breeze was coming down the road.
They could, using that term from the times again, have given a rat’s ass about
some fucking homo faggot poem from some whacko Jewish guy who belonged in a
mental hospital. (That is a direct quote from Frankie Riley at the time via my
brother Alex’s memory bank.)
Markin flipped out when he found out that Kerouac had grown
up in Lowell, a working class town very much like North Adamsville, and that he
had broken out of the mold that had been set for him and gave the world some
grand literature and something to spark the imagination of guys down at the
base of society like his crowd with little chance of grabbing the brass ring.
So Markin force-marched the crowd to read the book, especially putting pressure
on my brother who was his closest friend then. Alex read it, read it several
times and left the dog- eared copy around which I picked up one day when I was
having one of my high school summertime blues. Read it through without stopping
almost like he wrote the final version of the thing on a damn newspaper scroll.
So it was through Markin via Alex that I got the Kerouac bug. And now on the 60th
anniversary I am passing on the bug to you.
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs, Olympia Press, 1959
As I have explained in another entry in this space in reviewing the DVD of “The Life And Times Of Allen Ginsberg”, recently I have been in a “beat” generation literary frame of mind. I mentioned there, as well, and I think it helps to set the mood for commenting on Jack Kerouac’s ‘mentor’ William S. Burroughs and his famous (or infamous) work “Naked Lunch”, that it all started last summer when I happened to be in Lowell, Massachusetts on some personal business. Although I have more than a few old time connections with that now worn out mill town I had not been there for some time. While walking in the downtown area I found myself crossing a small park adjacent to the site of a well-known mill museum and restored textile factory space.
Needless to say, at least for any reader with a sense of literary history, at that park I found some very interesting memorial stones inscribed with excerpts from a number of his better known works dedicated to Lowell’s “bad boy”, the “king of the 1950s beat writers”, Jack Kerouac. And, just as naturally, when one thinks of Kerouac then Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady and a whole ragtag assortment of poets, hangers-on, groupies and genuine madmen and madwomen come to mind. They all showed up, one way or another (under fictional names of course- Burroughs as Bull Lee), in Kerouac’s “On The Road”. So that is why we today, fifty years after its original publication (and only after much literary and governmental controversy), are under the sign of Burroughs’ minor classic “Naked Lunch”.
Minor classic? Well, yes. The various sketches, pieces and partials that make up the commentary in this science fiction-like exposition is filled with “weird " characters and likewise is filled with future prophecies that became, in some cases like AIDS-type diseases, realities at a later time. No question this is a difficult book to get through cold sober. In fact I put it down a few times before I completed it back in the days. But look at it this way, if Kerouac represented a different way of telling a story through his use of spontaneous writing Burroughs also showed innovation by taking the haphazard, the derelict and the off-beat and made literary music out of it.
Maybe not your music, or for that matter mine, but surely music nevertheless. This “novel”, moreover, extols thing that today are rather taken for granted like personal (and in the book and in Burroughs personal seemingly excessive) drug use, homosexuality, the use of ‘obscene language’, the dehumanization of modern society. Sound familiar? Of course, but Burroughs said it when it was not fashionable to do so. No wonder he was the ‘mentor’ for those young kids, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, etc. when they hit New York in the mid-1940s looking for “something”.
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