*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-In Honor Of The Three L’s-In Honor Of Karl Liebknecht-The Anti-militarist Tasks of German Social-Democracy(1907)

Markin comment:

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

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

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

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

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

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*********
Karl Liebknecht
Militarism & Anti-Militarism
II. Anti-Militarism

7. The Anti-militarist Tasks of German Social-Democracy


The anti-patriotic form of anti-militarism has not been and will not be able to take root in German conditions. But Social-Democratic propaganda will have to be filled to a much greater degree with the spirit of international working-class solidarity and with the appeal for peace between nations as one of the goals of the proletarian struggle for liberation. The demands set out in the anti-militarist programme mentioned above form a suitable and unobjectionable basis for this task.

From a general point of view militarism in its internal form, together with all its evil manifestations (more evident in normal times), will in the future find itself in a rather more difficult position, and its role in the class war will become more evident. Where the main attack is to be launched is something that will be determined at the time by the national and international situation.

Whatever forms and methods of propaganda we have to introduce or adapt in Germany, we can of course assume that we shall have to keep within legal limits. The question of carrying out propaganda inside the army is therefore ruled out in advance.

German Social-Democracy has not even done enough work in collecting documentary evidence against militarism. Details are normally available only of the military budget and the growth in indirect military burdens and the peace-time strength of the army. But the connection between these military burdens and the customs and taxation policy awaits closer examination. What is notably lacking is information on the illl-treatment of soldiers, on the exploits of military justice, on cases of suicide among soldiers, on health conditions in the army, on injuries suffered on active service, on conditions of pay and pensions, together with an account of the use of soldiers to force down wages and of related army decrees and their use (with men on the point of being disbanded) to break strikes, of intervention by the army and armed police forces in strike situations, of the victims of such actions, of the system of military boycott, of military intervention in politics, of the use of the military societies in the social and political struggle, and of such exploits of militarism in other countries, especially in the economic and political struggle. A special account therefore has to be opened for militarism, naval militarism and colonial militarism. We have insufficient knowledge and material relating to the militarist youth societies of our opponents, as well as to the and-militarist movement and its struggles.

The regular collection, sifting and study of all this material must be systematically taken in hand. It cannot be treated as a task secondary to the general agitation.

This material would of course first have to be put to use in our general agitational work, in parliament, in the press and in general leaflets and meetings. But it must be directed to specific objectives, into specific channels, in order to penetrate and take effect among those strata of the population which are especially important to the anti-militarist movement. We have to consider first of all not only the young people liable for military service but also theft parents, and especially their mothers, who can render especially valuable service in educating their children in anti-militarism. There are also the older workers, whose influence on their younger comrades and the apprentices has to be put to the best possible use. And finally we have to step up the struggle, in terms of energy and method, against the military societies.

The agitation must never directly or indirectly incite to military disobedience. It will have attained its goal if it shows up the essence of militarism and its role in the class struggle, if it raises indignation and disgust in response to its exposure of the real character of militarism, its function as an enemy of the people.

Wherever the law permits, the chief agent of this propaganda must be the youth organizations, which already by awakening class consciousness are tending to weaken militarism and the militarist spirit. These youth organizations must make use of the press, of pamphlets, of leaflets, of lecture courses and education in order to spread the anti-militarist word as widely as possible in the form most acceptable to young people. Festivals and cultural events must be used to the same end. The members of the associations must in turn be educated in order to become propagandists of anti-militarism. By personal contact between friends of the same class and age, together with the circulation of literature, by these means the family, relations and friends, the workshop and factory will be transformed through the work of the youth organizations into centres of recruitment for anti-militarism.

The youth organization itself must not limit its agitation to its own members, but continually widen its audience. It must address the whole of the class of young workers. It must also, in the way described above, win over the older workers. It must make systematic use of the press, leaflets, pamphlets, public meetings, lectures, galas, festivals and so on, attractive to young and old. Meetings organized on the occasion of the departure of the recruits as well as demonstrations of all kinds must serve the same goal.

The Party too must take up in press and parliament and in a systematic way – as it has already done, but more energetically – the material and social interests of the soldiers and non-commissioned officers. [1] Thus, in a quite irreproachable way, it can ensure the sympathy of these groups.

The foundation of special associations of ex-soldiers, as in Belgium and Holland, with the special task of opposing the military societies, is not to be recommended in Germany – the general political and trade union organizations are sufficient.

If we examine what has been done in other countries, we get an idea of what remains to be done. And if we take a glance at the programme set out above, we recognize that the Party, in spite of all that it has done in the field of anti-militarism, has only begun to fulfil its task. It is, so to speak, at the kindergarten stage as far as anti-militarist propaganda is concerned.

These multiple activities obviously cannot all be carried out by one central organization, but they can and must be centrally directed and controlled. The necessity of the establishment of such a centre is already evident, because only thus can the most careful use be made of all the legal possibilities of action. Like a net cast into the distance, anti-militarist propaganda must reach out to the whole people. The proletarian youth must be systematically inflamed with class consciousness and hate against militarism. Youthful enthusiasm will take hold of the hearts of the young workers inspired by such agitation. These young workers belong to Social-Democracy, to Social-Democratic anti-militarism. If everyone carries out his task, they must and will be won. He who has the young people has the army.

Footnote
1. Improvement in pay, food, clothing, housing, treatment, lightening of the service, suppression of ill-treatment, reform of the system of complaints, of discipline and of punishment, as well as of military justice, etc.

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Love’s Labors Lost -With The Tune Weavers’ Happy, Happy Birthday Baby In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Love’s Labors Lost -With The Tune Weavers’ Happy, Happy Birthday Baby In Mind  

THE TUNE WEAVERS

"Happy, Happy Birthday Baby"

Happy, happy birthday, baby

Although you're with somebody new

Thought I'd drop a line to say

That I wish this happy day

Would find me beside you

Happy, happy birthday, baby

No I can't call you my baby

Seems like years ago we met

On a day I can't forget

'Cause that's when we fell in love

Do you remember the names we had for each other

I was your pretty, you were my baby

How could we say goodbye

Hope I didn't spoil your birthday

I'm not acting like a lady

So I'll close this note to you

With good luck and wishes too

Happy, happy birthday, baby

**********

…damn he never should have sent that note, that short, silly, puffed-up cry-baby note trying to worm his way back into Lucy’s arms with memory thoughts about this kiss, or that embrace, about that night down at the beach searching for those elusive “submarines” in the back seat of Jimmy Jenkin’s car or this funny moment at the Fall Frolics dance when they first started taking furtive glances at each other. Worse, going chapter and verse, getting all gooey bringing up old seawall sugar shack beach nights before the step up to back seats of ocean view cars holding hands against the splashed tides, against full moons (which actually impeded any serious fooling around since even some old blind lady could see what they were up to in that light), against tomorrow coming too soon on those submarine nights; double date drive-in movies, speakers on low, deep-breathing car fog-ups on cold October nights, embarrassed, way embarrassed, when they surfaced for intermission's stale popcorn or reheated hot dogs; and, that last dance school dance holding tight, tight as hell, to each other as the DJ, pretending to be radio jockey Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg, played Could This Be Magic? on that creaky record player used at North Adamsville High School dances since his mother’s time, maybe hers too since they had been classmates in their time, ancient Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday times.

Damn, a scratchy, scribbly note, a note written on serious stationary and with a real fountain pen to show his sincerity, and not the usual half- lined sheet, pulled out a three-ring subject notebook, and passed to Lucy during their common study class. Notes the passing of which sometimes got them severe looks from the study monitor, Miss Green, and giggles and taunts, usually some lewd or luscious remarks fraught with sexual innuendo about “doing the do” or what exactly was she doing with her head on his lap from their fellow students, boys and girls alike, about fogged-up cars and trash talk like that who also tried to intercept those precious notes without success. Yah, “the note heard round the world” that would expose him to all kinds of ridicule, endless be-bop jive patter, and snide questions about his manhood from guys, and probably girls too, around the school, hell, all around North Adamsville and maybe already had if Lucy decided to cut his heart out and tell one and all what a square he, Luke Jackson, was when all was said and done.

He could hear it now, and could hear the words ringing in his ears. What a soft guy Luke Jackson really was, a guy known to be a love ‘em and leave ‘em guy, what did he call it, oh yeah, “doing the Eddie,” moving on with no forwarding address and no regrets like his Eddie hero of the Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love, before Lucy. A guy, a used to be sharp guy who shrugged off more things that you could shake a stick at, not just girls, but guys from other corners who he had, or they had, beefs about, some crazed teacher who thought he had promise yakking about him applying himself, some cop trying to meet his mother quota giving him a ration of crap about his speed, stuff like that, and came back swinging. But who now was getting all misty-eyed and cry-baby just because some dame, a good looking dame in all the right places, yes, a dame all the guys were ready to pursue once he was out of the picture, but still a dame, a young high school dame, when all was said and done, got under his skin, like they were married or something.

Hell, he thought, thought now too late, to himself, that he would have been better off, much better off, if he had just left it at calling Lucy on the telephone every few hours and either hanging up before she answered or when she did answer freezing up. She knew who it was after a while, or should have, but at least he would not have left a paper trail and be the upcoming subject of locker room and lavatory snickers. But that was costing money, serious add up money, since he had had to use a public pay telephone up the street from his house because the telephone service had been turned off for non-payment as his family could not afford to pay the bill the past few months.

Besides it had been getting kind of creepy going in and out of the house at all hours, midnight by the telephone waiting like some lonely, awkward girl, walking up the street like a zombie, half mope, half dope, then hesitating before deciding to make the call, making it, or not, and then scurrying like a rat from the public glare of the booth. Christ, one time the cops looked at him funny, real funny, when he was calling at about midnight. And he had to admit that he might have called the police station a few times too after he looked at himself in the mirror upon returning home.

That note, sent the day before and probably in Lucy’s plotting hands right now, was a minute, a quick minute, brain-storm that he had thought up when he was just plain miserable, just plain midnight telephone tired too, and anyone could make such a rash decision under love’s duress, teenage love’s duress. Right then though all he could think of was all the notes, the cutesy, lined-sheet paper school-boyish notes, that he had sent her when love was in full blossom, full blossom before Jamie Lee Johnson came on the scene, came on the scene with his big old ’59 Chevy Impala, his money in his pocket, and his line of patter and stole his “Sweet Pea” Lucy away from her “Sugar Plum” Luke. And that picture sent him back to thoughts of when he and Lucy first met, when their eyes first met.

“Let’s see,” Luke said to himself it was probably at Chrissie McNamara’s sweet sixteen birthday party that he first laid eyes on her. Hell, who was he kidding, he knew that it was exactly at 8:32 PM on the night of April 25, 1962 that he first laid eyes on her, big almost star-struck staring eyes. Or maybe it was a few seconds before because, to break the ice, he had gone up to her and asked her for the time, asked in his then bolder manner if she had time for him, asked her to dance, she said yes, and that was that. Oh, yah, there was more to it than that but both of them knew at that moment, knew somewhere deep down in their teenage hearts, they were going to be an “item,” for a while. And they were indeed sweet pea and sugar plum, for a while. Although Luke would get mad sometimes, fighting mad, fighting break-up mad, when Lucy teased, no, more than teased, him about his not having a car so that they could go “parking” by themselves and not always be on some clowny double-date down at the seashore on Saturday night (or any night in the summer). And Luke would reply that he was saving money for college, and besides sitting on the seawall (and sometimes in love’s heat down beneath its height), their usual habit, was okay, wasn’t it.

That simmer, that somehow unarticulated simmer, went on for a while, a long while. But Luke had noticed a few months back, or rather Lucy had made her Sugar Plum notice, that now that they were high school seniors sitting on the seawall was nothing but nowhere kids’ stuff and why did he want to go to college anyway, and wasn’t going to work down at the shipyard where he could earn some real dough and get a car a better idea. 

The real clincher though, the one that telegraphed to him that the heavens were frowning on him, was the night she, no bones, stated that she had no plans for college and was going right to work after graduation, and maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t be able to wait for him, wait for him to finish college and maybe he would find some slow-slung college girl who might “curl his toes” like she had been doing, Lucy chancing that she might get in the family way and have to go off to some faked Midwestern aunt and then where would she have been. Even if that had not happened then what about her needs, her need to get out from under her own “from hunger” family household complete with drunken slob father, her need to have a few things before it was too late to appreciate such things. So most recent date nights had been spent not in her “curling his toes” but in arguing the finer point of their collective future. And after a succession of such nights that’s where things started to really break down between them.

Enter one Jamie Lee Johnson, a friend of Lucy’s older brother Kenny, already graduated from North Adamsville two years before and working, working steady with advancement possibilities according to the talk, as a junior welder down at the shipyard making good dough. Making drive-in movies and even drive-in restaurants good time dough, and driving that souped-up, retro-fitted, dual-carbed, ’59 Chevy, jet black and hung to the gills with chrome to make a girl breathless. And before Luke knew it Lucy’s mother was answering the phone calls for Lucy from Luke saying that she wasn’t in, wasn’t expected in, and that she, Lucy’s mother, would tell Lucy that he had called. The runaround, the classic runaround since boy meets girl time began, except not always done over the telephone. And while Lucy never said word one about breaking it off between them, not even a “so long, we had fun,” Luke, although not smart enough to not write that sappy note, knew she was gone, and gone for good. But see she had gotten under his skin, way under, and well, and that was that.

Just as Luke was thinking about that last thought, that heart-tearing thought, he decided, wait a minute, maybe she didn’t get the note, maybe he had forgotten to put a stamp on it and as a result of those maybes he fished around his pocket to see if he had some coins, some telephone coins, and started out of the house prison to make that late night pilgrimage creep, that midnight waiting by the telephone creep. Walking up the street, walking up the now familiar night street-lighted against the deathless shadows Hancock Street he noticed a jet black ’59 Impala coming his way, coming his way with Jamie Lee and Lucy sitting so close together that they could not be pried apart with a crowbar. Luke thought about that scene for a minute, steeled himself with new-found resolve against the love hurts like in the old love 'em and leave ‘em days, threw the coins on the ground without anger but rather with relief, turned back to his house wondering, seriously wondering like the fate of the world depended on it, what pet names they, Jimmy and Lucy, had for each other.

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- Betty’s Tale -With The Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night- Betty’s Tale -With The Teen Queens’ Eddie, My Love In Mind  

EDDIE MY LOVE

(Aaron Collins / Maxwell Davis / Sam Ling)The Teen Queens - 1956

The Fontane Sisters - 1956

The Chordettes - 1956

Dee Dee Sharp - 1962

Also recorded by:

Lillian Briggs; Jo Ann Campbell; The Sweethearts.

Eddie, my love, I love you so

How I wanted for you, you'll never know

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Eddie, please write me one line

Tell me your love is still only mine

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

You left me last September

To return to me before long

But all I do is cry myself to sleep

Eddie, since you've been gone

Eddie, my love, I'm sinking fast

The very next day might be my last

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

Please, Eddie, don't make me wait too long

(Transcribed from the Teen Queens

recording by Mel Priddle - May 2006)

*********

…come closer, will you, because I have got a story to tell. Come on over here, here nearer me and get away from that midnight phone waiting, that eternal waiting. Waiting now in vain because if he or she has not called by this hour, nine, on a school night they are not going to call and anyway you don’t need Ma to yell at you about wasting your time waiting for that call when you could be doing homework or something. Yeah, like you could do homework with your head filled with anxiety about that call. What do parents know anyway never having been young, never having been in love. Hey, while I am talking maybe you should put on The Teen Queens’ Eddie My Love like I have on right now or some other teen trauma tune, sad, sad tune to help drown your sorrows while I’m telling the story,

Yes, get away from that midnight telephone call wait by your bedside table and listen up a minute or two because I’ve got a story to tell, a 1950s teen story to tell, or let’s make it a 1950s teen story, and if it works out for 1960s, 1970s, or 2000s teens except for the newer techno-gadgets cellphone, iPhone, smart phone ways to wait, to wait that midnight call that are different, well, well this waiting by the phone hasn’t changed that much since the 1950s when this trend started or reached a certain plateau where waiting became one of the ways that you knew you were a forlorn teen-ager, knew that life was going to be filled with ups and downs and so there you have it.

And let’s make it a boy-girl story, although I know, and you know I know, that it could have been a boy-boy, girl-girl, whatever story and that’s okay by me, except that it wouldn’t be okay, okay as a public prints 1950s story since those kinds of relationships had not been deemed okay to tell except maybe in some North Beach, Greenwich Village, Hollywood hills small print, exotic, erotic small press back door scenario. Mainly those kinds of relationships would be gist for the mill in the snicker of boys’ sports after school gym locker room faggot-dyke baiting and well beyond the sad tale I have to tell.

And let’s make it a Saturday night, a hard by the phone, waiting Saturday night, maybe midnight, maybe not, maybe you cried or brooded yourself to sleep before that hour, that teen dread hour when all dreams came crashing to the floor, like a million guys and girls know about, and if you don’t then, maybe move on, but I think I know who I’m talking to.

And let’s make it a winter night to kind of fit your mood, kind of make you realize that you are totally alone against the elements, yes, a long hard winter night, wind maybe blowing up a little, maybe a little dusting of snow, and just that many more dark hours until the dawn and facing another day without…

And let’s make it, oh the hell with that, let’s make it get to the story and we’ll work out the scenic details as we go along…

I’ll tell you, Betty’s got it bad, yes, Betty from across the way, from the house across the way where right now I can see her in her midnight waiting bedroom window, staring off, staring off somewhere but I know, I know, what ‘s wrong with her. No, not that, no she is not in the “family way,” I don’t think, I hope not, hope not because then she will have to suddenly go out of town to visit some ailing aunt, or something like that. What is wrong with Betty is simpler. Her Eddie has flown the coop, and has not been heard from for a while.

Yes, Betty’s got it bad, and it’s too bad because she deserves better. Let me tell you the story behind the story, although I can already see that you might know what’s coming. I had noticed Betty’s change of behavior but was not sure what it meant. It first started when she did not return my wave when I waved across the street to her, then she would hang her head down walking like some zombie in the movies. So one day I asked her about what was up and she said she did not want to talk about it, made a serious point to me that she did not want to talk about it when I pressed the issue so I let it drop. Yes, so the way I know the story is because Betty’s best friend, Sue, gave me the details when I saw Betty continue moping around, moping around day after day like there was going to be no tomorrow, especially after leaving school with her head down, arriving home with her head moping down even more after the mailman came. I contacted Sue to see what she knew, knew from those little afternoon girl chatting calls or maybe from that mandatory Monday morning before school in the girls’ “lav” talkfest. 

Yes, I know, I know Sue, old best friend Sue, is nothing but a man-trap and has flirted with more guys in this town than you could shake a stick at, including Eddie a couple of times when Betty had to go out of town with her parents (keep that between us, please). Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll get this thing all balled up if I tell it my way what with what I know, or people have told me about Sue and I want you to get the straight dope.  Let Betty, old true to Eddie, Betty tell her story herself, or at least through Sue, and I’ll just write it down my way, and you be the judge:

“Last summer, oh sweet sixteen last summer, old innocent girlish sweet paper dream last summer, Eddie, Eddie Cooper, Eddie with the hot cherry red, dual exhaust, heavy silver chrome, radio- blasting, ’55 Chevy (my brother Timmy told me about cars and their doo-dads, I just like to look good in them and the ’55 is the “boss”), that I knew I would be just crazy to sit in, and give the “look”, the superior “I’m with a hot guy, and sitting in a hot car , bow down peasants look,” came rumbling and tumbling into town.

Summer beach time, soaking up the sun down between the yacht clubs beach time, summer not a care in the world time , Sue, my best friend Sue, my best friend Sue and all that stuff they say about her and the boys is just fantasy, male fantasy, and I were sitting just talking about this and that, oh well, about boys, and I was telling her the latest about Billy, Billy from the neighborhood, who I had been going out with for ages, more or less, Billy with the reading too many books and wanting to talk poetry or “beat” stuff, Billy, Billy with the no car, or sometimes with car, father’s old run-down jalopy which might or might not work like happened one night and it was a close thing that I was not grounded for coming in so late, but no “boss” car, never, when Eddie, Eddie, Edward John Cooper, parked his honey Chevy and came over to us, through all that sand and all,

Eddie gave Sue the “once over,” like guys will do automatically with any girl something about their genetic make-up drives them that way and Sue adds her part by always looking like she has either just finished a roll in the hay or would not mind being talked into it but that is just her come-hither “style” and like I said before don’t make too much of it. Yeah, she knows sex stuff, a lot from what she tells me but mostly it’s to aid that come-hither thing she has with guys.  Besides whatever Sue has, or thinks she has in the guy department I secretly thrill to know that that “once over” is just a game because even as he came over the sand I could see he had eyes, big blue eyes, for me, only me, We talked, idle talk, sex in the air flirty talk, don’t talk sex straight out but weave all around it talk, the mating ritual I guess they call it, still a lot of talk for a summer beach day, and I knew, I swear I knew he wanted to ask me out for later, or maybe right there to ride in his car but three’s company, and for once I couldn’t shake Sue, my best friend Sue, Sue with the million boyfriends so she says, who I could see was taken in by his big blued-eyed, black haired, tight tee-shirt, blue jean charm too.

Truce, Sue truce, as we walked home, Eddie-less, a few blocks away. I left Sue at her house. Truce still, except that I heard a big engine, a big “boss” car engine, coming up behind me as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house, and dream, dream wake me up, it was Eddie, Edward  John Cooper and that cherry ’55 Chevy. He said, and I will never forget this, “Hop in,” and opened the door. I was supposed to have a “date,” some dreary poetry reading date with Billy, ah, Billy who. We were off as soon as I closed that cherry red door.

And we were off, off for a sweet summer of love, ’55 Chevy love and okay, truth, because I know that Sue probably blabbed it around but I let Eddie take me to the back seat of that warm-bodied Chevy one night, and some nights after that. But let me just tell you this about Sue, my best friend Sue, honest, she’s the one who told me what to do with a boy, yah, she told me everything.

Late August came as summer beach love drew to an end and those damn school bells seemed ready to ring, Eddie, out of school Eddie my love, told me he had a job offer in another state and he needed to take the job to support his mother and his ’55 Chevy.

I started crying; crying like crazy, trying to make him stay, stay with his ever-lovin’ Betty but no he had to go. He didn’t know about a phone, or a phone call, but he said he would write and I haven’t heard from him since even though I wear out the mailman every day”…

Christ my heart bleeds for Betty every time I think about what Eddie had done, and see, I know Eddie, no I don’t know Eddie personally but I know Eddie stuff, stuff that has been going on since Adam and Eve, hell, probably before that. I know Eddie stuff from the days a few years ago when I used to hang around with junior Eddies, car-less Eddies who only dreamed of foxy Chevys then being underage, at Jack Slack’s bowling alleys over on Thornton Street heading toward the beach. 

Those were my corner boy days before I got into more serious stuff, my poetry readings that Betty sniffed her nose at for her Eddie. And those junior Eddies, and me too, once we got started on the subject of girls which we were clueless about but which began every lonely hearts Friday night holding up the wall conversation, were pretty raw about what we would, or would not, do with girls, mostly the unattainable ones at school, and then move on like the wind. And some of my corner boys like Frankie Riley and Jimmy Jenkins to name names actually proceeded to do just that once they got their wheels.  Yeah, so I know the Eddies of this teenage world and this is the hard truth I would tell Betty if she would listen for one second:

Betty, Betty, sweet Betty, I hate to break it to you but Eddie, Edward John Cooper ain’t coming back. And old Eddie ain’t writing and it ain’t because he doesn’t have the three cents for a stamp, or cannot write more than a few simple lines even in the best of times, or is not near some desolate mail box, or, well enough of that for Eddie excuses because that is all the gaff. No, Eddie, let's just say Eddie’s moved on to greener pastures like every other Eddie who did only what he was capable of doing- love ‘em and leave ‘em. Not because he intentionally started out that way with you but because that is his take on the world, the girl world. These guys, even ugly guys like “Whiskey” Pete who you probably have heard of and who lives a few streets over from us, who have “boss” cars operate in the world like that because they know that front passenger seat will not be vacate long when mating season comes ago.  

(I heard later after Sue filled me in and I was curious, but don’t tell Betty because she is weepy enough, when I asked around about it, asked some guys who had known Eddie when he worked at Smitty’s Garage last summer while he was with Betty that Eddie had left for Florida, had a new girl there, or maybe an old girlfriend who had some kind of spell over him but all of that, that last part about some forlorn Eddie love was just guys talking one night. Eddie guys are more in the first category, the new girl and move on claiming that some mother needed desperate support in some other state and they would write. But you never know with Eddie guys on that last part.) 

Betty, Betty hold onto your Eddie, My Love dream for a moment. But Betty, tomorrow, not tomorrow tomorrow but some tomorrow you‘ve got to move on. Betty then why don’t you call up your Billy. I’ll be here by the phone, the midnight phone…

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Itch- With Elvis’ One Night Of Sin In Mind

The Roots Is The Toots: The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-The Itch- With Elvis’ One Night Of Sin In Mind  

Sketches From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

"One Night Of Sin" was written by Bartholomew, Dave / King, Pearl / Steiman, Anita.

One night of sin, yeah
Is what I'm now paying for
The things I did and I saw
Would make the earth stand still

Don't call my name
It makes me feel so ashamed
I lost my sweet helping hand
I got myself to blame

Always lived very quiet life
Ain't never did no wrong
Now I know that very quiet life
Has cost me nothing but harm

One night of sin, yeah
Is what I'm now paying for
The things I did and I saw
Would make the earth stand still

Always lived very quiet life
Ain't never did no wrong
But now I know that very quiet life
Has cost me nothing but harm

One night of sin
Is what I'm now paying for
The things I did and I saw
Would make the earth stand still

*********A lot of boy-girl things didn’t make sense in the mad world of the iced down 1950s (we will keep ourselves to the boy-girl thing here recognizing except in exotic Hollywood/ North Beach/Village outposts that other now acceptable same-sex relationships were below the radar, below the radar in North Adamsville anyway, except in a titter of faggot/dyke-baiting in the boys’ gym locker room after school). Nobody, or almost nobody, talked about sex in any but very hushed tones except maybe the school tramps and whoremongers who were more than happy to explain the facts of life to innocent youth who got it wrong almost as much as any kid who was clueless except their mistakes wound up in girls going to see faraway “Aunt Ella” for a few months or some irate father ordered up a shot-gun wedding, worse some judge ordered up a hitch in the Army to some hellhole frozen tundra or sweated jungle for the errant guy.  But they, tramps and whoremongers both, were not listened to as a rule even in braggart lavatory between classes time, so that it was up to you to ask your older brother or sister in order to get some information they picked up from the streets. Information to fill in the yawning missing gaps in for you where parents, who after all “did it” and should have been forthcoming with some details but who turned out to be just like their parents leaving them to find out from the street as much misinformation as they could find, with their birds and bees silliness, the church (you name the denomination at your leisure, they were all even the U-Us and Quakers all locked-down on the subject) banned the words and talk of such words as if such acts were done by osmosis or tarot cards as one guy actually explained to one gal one night and she believed him although they backed off after a time worrying about that trip to Aunt Ella or that shot-gun wedding her father would have insisted on, Jesus, or school, locus parentis school and thus as clueless as parents about their charges, came up nada. Empty. 

Of course half, maybe more, of that street talk was wrong, dead-ass wrong coming from sources that barely knew more than those asking the questions. And so there was an epidemic of young women being plucked out of school for a time to visit some forlorn aunt in Topeka (sorry, Topeka).The whole wide world had never known such devotion of wayward young nieces for out-of-town aunts during those times. So when boys and girls started getting attracted to each other, when they touched, when they danced swaying with the big new beat, the rock and roll beat coming out of about twelve sources in the unkempt American Songbook, coming up to grab them out in that red scare cold war night sure they were confused, sure they wanted to know what those tingles were all about up in their night-less bedrooms–and do something about it just like the “he” and “she” of this sketch…     

…she was not exactly sure why she felt that way, felt warm in what all the girls in the before school “lav” called their “honey pot.”  Honey pot a term picked up from some older guys they dated who got it from around jazz clubs, hipster talk from the cool water be-bop boys who blew the high white notes, blew mary jane smoke, reefer, blew away their honey’s honey pot, or who talked fresh to them trying to pick them up around town, yelling stuff out of open air convertibles or two-toned hardback Chevys, and who had picked it up from who knows where, maybe sailors in Scollay Square in  Boston who got it in every port of call, or those older brothers trying to be hip. Some of the rougher girls, the girls who smoked in the “lav” against school rules, drank cheapjack liquor, mainly whiskey, on dates and “did the deed” as some modest girls called the sexual act and they called it “fucking” called that spot other things, pussy/ cunt kind of things which she did not find out until later, much later, and not much before she got married that guys called that spot those words too but she modest then stuck to the euphemism and even saying that term out loud made her blush crimson red.

That warm feeling had come over her lately, since turning sixteen  lately,  whenever she heard the local radio station, WJDA, the station teenagers were now tuned into since the station manager bowing to demographic shifts changed the format from pretty rarified cool water Charlie/Dizzy/ The Monk jazz to what the station called popular music. Or when the kids at Sal’s Pizza Parlor up in Adamsville Center were on the juke-box endlessly playing Elvis’ suggestive One Night With You (suggestive of what she would not find out until later, until Tommy one night tried to have his way with her and she kind of let him, kind of, kind of also did not let him, which she would not explain at the Monday morning before school “lav” talk about what went on over everybody’s weekend except to say they were finished, done as an “item,” no further explanation given).

Someone, Betty Arlen, she thought, one time said it was just her coming into “her time,” although she did not know what to make of that idea since she had that same feeling before and after she came into her time. She had thought Betty meant “got her friend” (translation: began to have her period, her cycle, which was late since at least most of the girls she knew had gotten their “friend” a year or two before her). Betty had giggled and said she did not mean that, that thing every girl had, her “friend” but the time when everything was confused and when a teenager did, or did not, know which way to jump. (Jesus, would no one but tramps and whoremongers use anything but prissy words when speaking of sex and its functions.) A time of teen angst and alienation which created sullen jack-rolling corner boys (guys in white tee-shirts and denims hanging their feet against storefront walls daring said walls to object, formally called juvenile delinquents, or slang JDs), made heroes of hot-rodding “chicken run” kings out on Thunder Road, and icons of “cool” actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean.

Betty said the stuff was news in all the newspapers and her father had mentioned it to her and asked her if she felt alienated. Betty said “no” quickly under the circumstances since “yes” would have probably kept her in the house until her father determined that the epidemic had run its course. All distraught all she knew was she like Betty had turned away from the old songs on the jukebox or radio, the ones that she loved to listen to last year (on that same WJDA that now was formatted for popular music meaning not her parents’ music) Frank, Bing, Patti, Rosemary, did not make her feel that way anymore. Didn’t make her feel that she wanted to jump out of her skin.

One night as she thought wistfully back to when her urges had all began, thought about her now seemingly girlish silliness since she had moved on in her big beat tastes, when Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll came on the radio and she swaying to the beat at Doc’s or up in her room dancing by herself would get warm in her “honey pot.” She also gave a thought about Tommy Murphy from school, from North Adamsville High, from her class, her Problems in Democracy class, whom she had thought might have had a better handle on it, have had a better sense of what turbulence was going on inside her when he told the whole class in Current Events that there were some new songs coming out of the radio, some stuff from down south, some negro guys sound from out of Mississippi plantations heading North, from down in Memphis somewhere, some white hillbilly guys sound from the farms and small towns from that same town, that he would listen to late at night on WJKA from Chicago when the air was just right. Sounds that made him want to jump right out of his skin. (She never dared to ask whether it made him feel warm in his “honey pot” since she didn’t know much then about whether boys had such pots, or got even warm there like she did when the beat jumped). When he said that, said it was about the music, she knew that she was not alone, not alone in feeling that a fresh breeze was coming over the land, although she, confused as she was would not have articulated it that way (that would come later).

As she continued to muse she remembered that she had asked Tommy about it after class and talking awhile both getting animated on the subject agreed to let him walk her home after school. One thing led to another as they found that they had so much in common, and then a few weeks later they had their first date, first date to go to the Surf Ballroom down at Adamsville Beach and listen to some guys, a band,  The Ready Rockers, play the new music. She had wondered to herself before he picked her up at her house whether she would feel warm again in her honey pot when they danced (she could not speak of such things to Tommy), she had hoped so.

Later, not that night but a few weeks later, when they skipped the dance part and just went to the far end of Adamsville Beach in his father’s car and they listened to the radio and the song that got her going, going strong as Tommy made his moves, was Elvis’ One Night With You which got her fantasizing about him all swaying hips, snapping be-bop fingers, snarl and slicked-back hair and between the beat and Tommy’s hands she let him have his way with her, kind of. The kind of part being that while she let him undress her, partially anyway, she was not sure what he did, not sure if they had done the deed. In any case she got angry at Tommy, got angry assuming that he had had his way with her and that he should have stopped. That night was the beginning of the end of their short romance especially after she had heard at the Monday morning before school “lav” talkfest some girls mention that they had successfully held off their boyfriends who wanted to “go all the way” and she was doubly furious. (Later, much later, she found out that one of those girls who had claimed to have fended off her boyfriend suddenly announced she had to go see an ailing aunt in Topeka or some place like that. More importantly Tommy, as inexperienced as her, had not really done anything, any penetration anyway. Poor Tommy).  

After giving Tommy his walking papers she still got those urges and still wanted to try to figure out what to do about them when Elvis or Jerry Lee came on the radio (and, truth, had secretly thrilled when she thought Tommy had done the deed, had made her a woman, although she believed he really should have stopped and thus the break-up). One night, one Friday night she went with Betty and another girl to the Surf Ballroom to hear the Ready Rockers play. And maybe find another guy, a guy who would respect her. Then she saw Lance, Lance all black hair and brown eyes, slim, dancing up a storm to Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love. Later she went over to see if she could talk to him, to see if the music hit him the same way as it did her and they talked.

Later, not that night, they had their first date and after he picked her up in his ’55 Chevy he suggested they skip the dance and go to the far end of Adamsville Beach. She said she really wanted to but told him he should stop before things got out of hand. Once they got there Lance turned on the radio and turned on his hands. She didn’t resist and while she was not sure which song got her going that night between Lance’s quick moving hands, the moon, the sound of the ocean roar and her own desire Lance had his way with her. And she knew this time from her aching hips and other stuff that he had “done the deed.” Come Monday morning before school girls’ “lav” talkfest she was the first girl to tell the group how she had successfully fended Lance off that weekend. 

Let’s tune into Tommy Murphy’s take on the situation now that he is single and lonely.      

… he could hardly wait until the weekend, wait to hear the new sounds coming out of the south, rhythm and blues stuff, rockabilly stuff, that he could hear on his transistor radio up in his room coming on clear nights out of WJKA in Chicago, stuff called rock and roll. It didn’t come in clear every week but when it did he would start snapping his fingers to the beat, the swinging beat that “spoke” to him somehow. He could not explain it but it made him feel good when he was down, was confused about life, okay, okay, about girls, school, and that getting ahead in the world that his parents, his mother especially, kept harping on. Made him think that maybe he would be a musician and play that stuff, play and make all the girls wet. Yeah, as little as he knew, he knew all of that part about girls, about how this music was making them get warm, warm in all the right places, in their “honey pots,” according to George his older brother who knew all about girls and had explained what that term meant (and who really knew all he knew like everybody else from the streets). Make that new girl of his, Susie, warm too. He hoped.

Funny how they met, he and Susie met, or not really met but started out, started out in school of all places, in class. Jesus. In Current Events one week when it was his turn to make a presentation and he chose to talk about that radio station in Chicago and about the sounds he heard that made him want to jump out of his skin. He couldn’t exactly explain why when Mr. Merritt asked about why he felt that way except to say that it made him feel good, made him less angry, less confused. After class Susie had come up to him and practically begged him to tell her his feelings because she had said when she heard Big Joe Turner coming all snapping fingers on the radio on Shake, Rattle and Roll, she felt funny inside. (He knew what kind of funny but he knew, knew because George had told him, not to say that to girls.) That had started it since he walked her home a few times and he found that she was easy to talk to. So before he knew it he had asked her to go see the Ready Rockers at the Surf Ballroom down at Adamsville Beach who were playing the new sounds.


He didn’t know what would happen but he hoped that she would get that funny feeling inside when they danced, he sure hoped so. And she did, but nothing happened that night. A few weeks later, when he had his father’s car and suggested that they skip the dance and head straight down to the far end of Adamsville Beach, he had turned on the radio while they were “making out” (kissing and some fondling of her breasts with his hands moving nervously all over the place and she sighing at the touch) when Elvis came on with his One Night With You and she did not stop him when he took off her underpants and he got on top. He made a bunch of moves but she was not paying any particular attention. Fact was he did not know what to do so he just rubbed his “thing” against her “honey pot” but did not go inside. At least he thought he had not gone inside. After he was done she asked him whether he had “done the deed.” In a panic and not wanting to show his inexperience he said yes. 
She got furious, said he should have stopped and what if she got pregnant and had go visit an aunt. That, in any case, was the beginning of the end of their short romance. She gave him his walking papers that next Monday afternoon saying that he should have been like other girls said their boyfriends did and stopped before anything happened. Tommy had no comeback that would work and so he just walked away, forlorn…                 

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Revolutionary Abolitionist Frederick Douglass

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Revolutionary Abolitionist Frederick Douglass



Click on the title to link to an "American Left History" blog entry reviewing the autobiography of Frederick Douglass.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

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

From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.)-“A Propos of ‘Trade-Union Control of National Defense’ ”(1941)

Markin comment:

In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.

After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.

I am continuing today  what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.

However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
*********

Markin comment on this series of Proletarian Military Policy (PMP) articles:

Coming out of the radical wing of the Vietnam War anti-war movement in the early 1970s, and having done military service as well, I was intrigued when I first read about the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP-U.S.) Proletarian Military Policy (PMP) as propounded by that party just before and during World War II. The intriguing part, initially at least, was the notion that radicals could have a democratic propaganda platform to work off of in bringing their fellow soldiers around to an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist by proposing to control the then much less powerful American military through democratic methods like election of officers, etc..

And then life intruded. Or rather I reflected on my own somewhat eclectic anti-war military work and, as well, of various schemes by reformists to “control” various aspects of bourgeois society without having to take power and replace those institutions. In short, take political responsibility for the current regime. In the year 2010 we, after years of defeat and decline, are quite used to reformists and others putting forth all kinds of nice schemes for turning swords into plowshares by asking the bourgeois state to take the war budget and create jobs, better educational opportunities, provide better health care, you name it all without, seemingly, positing the need to change the state.

A classic and fairly recent example of that, in the aftermath of the Professor Henry Louis Gates arrest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the renewed call for “community control of the police.” And of course, come election time, the willingness, sometimes without even the caveat of refusal to take office if elected, of all and sundry leftists to run from the executive offices of the bourgeois state. Thus, by standing for those offices, exhibiting a touching “innocence” on the question of responsibility for the administration of the capitalist state. To my mind, the PMP is on that order. The idea, the utopian idea, when you talk about the central organs of bourgeois state power, the armed forces, the police, the courts and the prisons that something short of the struggle for power will do the trick. The hard, hard reality is otherwise, as we are also too well aware of every time we get a little uppity.

Reflecting on my own military experience about what can and cannot be done in order to influence soldiers and sailors and fight for an anti-war perspective military does not mean that nothing can be done short of taking take power to do so. The real problem with the PMP, and it may have reflected a lack of knowledge of wartime military possibilities, cadre familiar with the then peacetime volunteer military, and the “weak” military presence in pre-World War II America was that it was trying to project a positive program where what was called for, and is usually called for in war time conditions, were defensive measures such as creation of rank and file servicemen’s unions that fight for democratic right for soldiers, essentially the right to organize, and against victimizations of both radicals and others that get into the military’s cross hairs. The other key policy was to link up the civilian political anti-war opposition with the soldiers through the vehicle of coffeehouses or other off base places and soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. Late in the Vietnam War period those effects were beginning to have effect as rank and file disaffection with that war almost split the soldiery. Certainly it was a factor in Vietnamization of the war as the American army became more unreliable as a tool to carry out imperial policy.

As the material presented notes, especially in the introduction, the SWP never, as far as I know, repudiated the PMP (it kind of drifted away as World War II entered its final phases.) This, perhaps, reflected a certain “softness” as also noted on the question of running for executive offices of the bourgeois state which that party did after the war and revolutionaries’ relationship to that state in the struggle for power. As well it is not clear how much Leon Trotsky’s posthumous residual authority, who pushed the PMP as much as anybody else, played in this whole mess. Read this material as a modern Marxist primer on the bourgeois state.

******

A Propos of ‘Trade-Union Control of National Defense’ ”
(Letter sent to the Committee by Comrade C.)

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Written: 1941
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.


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The French text of this letter was taken from Bulletin Mensuel de la IVe Internationale (zone libre), No. 2, April 1941. The translation is by the Prometheus Research Library. Quotations from the SWP resolution have been changed to conform to the English original.

The army plays an important role in the capitalist system: one can say that it forms the backbone of the state. For the bourgeoisie, the army has a dual role: it serves as an instrument to conquer new territories—this inevitable law of the system is the reason the army exists—and at the same time it is a means of coercion against the working class when capitalism comes up against its own internal problems.

Recognizing that the army is the clearest expression of the class division of society means admitting that the highest levels of the capitalist state direct its organization and functioning toward the dual goal we mentioned. Military discipline is merely subservience fabricated by the bourgeoisie to serve its interests and requirements.

In every case, whatever the state of demoralization in the army may be, in order to find a solution to a revolutionary situation the working class must win over this instrument which will facilitate its seizure of power. The proletariat should never even think that the capitalist army can evolve, can be transformed, into an army of the working class.

There is no doubt that we are at a stage preparatory to the revolution. In such a stage, the orientation that should be adopted by a party claiming to be working-class and revolutionary, to be advocated by militants claiming to be Marxists, is to make the proletariat see clearly the contradictions of the capitalist regime, to sharpen those contradictions to the point of creating a situation that impels the masses to fight for power.

And that is where we, as Marxists, find reason to confront the SWP leadership, which says: “We fight against sending worker-soldiers into battle without proper training and without equipment. We oppose the military direction of worker-soldiers by bourgeois officers who have no regard for their treatment, their protection or their lives. We demand federal funds for the military training of workers and worker-officers under the control of the trade unions. Military appropriations? Yes—but only for the establishment and equipment of worker training camps! Compulsory training of workers? Yes—but only under the control of the trade unions!”

American capitalism is working feverishly to enter the war under the best circumstances. What it lacks is not just stockpiles of arms and equipment, but also pro-war hysteria among the masses. What prevents this hysteria from being created is formal democracy in the USA (as in France and England)—that is why, as events unfold, the American bourgeoisie will gradually have to rid itself of democratic impediments. So it cannot grant relative control of the workers by trade-union tops. Supposing, however, that the American bourgeoisie did decide to make this concession, the “management” of the working class would have a corporatist, fascist character.

In the area of production in general, in certain situations the workers movement has demanded control of production. It goes without saying that the revolutionary vanguard never viewed this control as a way to help capitalism to resolve its crisis, but as a way to deepen it even more and to demonstrate and expose to the working class how the surplus value is allocated. Fascism has been able to heighten its demagogy by granting the workers not “control” but “direct participation” in running the factories. One must not, of course, confuse a factory with a regiment and the army with the capitalist regime as a whole, but the control the American comrades demand does not go in the direction of exposing the very purpose of the army, nor does it further the disintegration of the army. Rather it results in maintaining the cohesiveness of this powerful instrument of the capitalist state whose goal is to resolve the crisis of the system.

Classical “soldiers’ committees” are the instruments to fight for the democratic demands that soldiers can and should always raise. To concede this mission to the American trade unions means reverting to the position of “parity committees” that we have seen in the area of production. Experience has proven that this path leads not toward intervention by the working class into the affairs of the state, but on the contrary state intervention into the affairs of the working class. Is the SWP giving Roosevelt the chance to form some sort of “parity committees” within the army, that is, to drag the working class into war? In that case, Roosevelt himself, not the SWP, would be the one most concerned with ensuring that soldiers have good material conditions and are well equipped (look at the example of the German army).

The strikes taking place in the United States demonstrate the existence of a working class fighting for transitional demands, which for the moment distance it from the union sacrée with its bourgeoisie. So these strikes are political in character and the role of a true vanguard party must be to push the movement toward a revolutionary outcome. There is a sharp contradiction between the fact of the strikes and the slogan advanced by the SWP leadership.

Here in Europe, lacking detailed and precise information, we are not very well able to measure the workers’ resistance to the bourgeoisie and to the trade-union bureaucracy. We know the dangers that such a conflict entails, but once it is begun—and we should push to begin it—the revolutionary party must fight to win political leadership of it. The workers’ independence from the interests of their own bourgeoisie underscores the contradictions—which at that point can be resolved only by extreme solutions. At this time, we do not know what the practical result will be. Either we will be faced with favorable prospects or subjected to severe restrictions on the possibilities for struggle. In any case, the position of the SWP will prove wrong, whatever the result of the current strikes.

Revolutionary policy should always be clearly defined for the working class which is waiting for an orientation. If the American comrades agree with us on the characterization of the imperialist war, we ask them: what interests of the working class does the militarization of that class correspond to? Especially considering that militarization corresponds precisely to preparation for participation in the war. Such a position does not go beyond that of social democracy which exposes the working class to the warmongering demands of capitalism—which during a period of crisis can resolve matters only by imperialist war.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks taught us that situations change and tactics change with them, but they taught us fidelity to principles, including always steadfastly opposing intervention in an imperialist war. The ideological future and historical prospects that the convulsions of capitalism promise the proletariat are well beyond those offered by the most carefully elaborated opportunism.

The current strikes have a clear class content, as does the imperialist war. The American workers will not avoid being dragged into the slaughter and the SWP’s current line (trade-union control of national defense after the “Referendum on War”) does not assist them in setting out on a path other than the one that leads to the battlefield.

The revolutionary possibilities for the world proletariat will arise when the consequences of the conflict begin to become clear. The means to bring forth and ripen these possibilities have been defined by Marxist revolutionaries on many occasions: first, explain the class character of the imperialist war, then total independence of the working class taken to its most extreme conclusions (revolutionary defeatism).

The opportunism we are condemning here is the reflection the masses produce in a small group. Being enmeshed in trade-union activity has led the American comrades to put tactics appropriate to a simple demand and the conquest of power in the same bag.

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Our local Committee published the SWP’s position without giving its opinion, since we don’t think the remark that it represents a new sort of tactical tendency which is “original” constitutes an opinion. We won’t discuss the question of “originality,” for us it is quite relative (Jaurès talked a lot about a certain “New Army,” etc.), but we do accuse the local Committee of aiding in sowing confusion, of not opposing something that is contrary to the principled positions of Bolshevism.

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The Committee's Reply to Comrade C.

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Written: 1941
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York. Published in Prometheus Research Series 2, 1989.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: David Walters, John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.


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The French text of this document was taken from Bulletin Mensuel de la IVe Internationale (zone libre), No. 2, April 1941. The translation is by the Prometheus Research Library.

It is true that the Committee has not yet written down its opinion in black and white concerning the SWP’s position. It felt, perhaps wrongly, that first the discussion should be started on the American documents, which already happened a few months ago. In cell meetings, comrades were unanimous in condemning the famous phrases: “We fight against sending into battle...” etc. And for the benefit of comrade C. we would point out that it was members of the Committee who were the first to stress the inappropriateness, the unfortunate nature of these phrases, to point out the more or less utopian character of the slogan “trade-union control of the army,” the all-too-obvious contradiction between the first part of the Manifesto (“not one man, not one penny, not one rifle for the bourgeois army”) and the second part, which was the “original” contribution (we maintain the epithet: everyone is free to interpret it as he wishes). It was our intention to subject this document to the most searching criticism—so much so that we didn’t include this first part in the Bulletin, since it merely confirmed our traditional position on war and the bourgeois army.

Once this critical assessment had been made—an assessment which C.’s informant R. did not contribute to—it seemed to us wise to await new information and documents. It was all the more wise in that the SWP seems to us to still have a clearly BL [Bolshevik-Leninist] position: genuine opposition to the war, anti-Anglophilia (but also clearly setting themselves off from the pacifists and isolationists), in a word an independent class policy. To date there has been no trace of union sacrée. And that is why their position on the army seems to us—pending further information—to be a gross tactical error if you will, but nothing more, at least for the moment.

In addition, this position seems to us sufficiently open to criticism as it is, without having to find ways to distort it or even make it say what it doesn’t say. Don’t forget (and what follows is not written with the intention of making excuses for the American position, but to clarify matters) that for our comrades it is a question of transitional slogans. C. counterposes trade-union control over the army to “Soldiers’ Committees.” That’s wrong! Control is only a slogan for an immediate demand, like our “Down with two years” [length of army service] or “Five francs pay” [for soldiers]. We say this, to reiterate, without calling into question the incorrectness of the slogan “trade-union control of the army.” But if the first two slogans are agitational, all the more so should the latter one be agitational. Comrade C. sees a “sharp contradiction” between the fact that there are strikes and the slogan put forward by the SWP leadership. Now the CIO (headed by Lewis) generally supported the strike movement. Well, it is that same CIO which would probably be named by the SWP to “control” the army—because the union remains a union, even if its leader supports a reactionary candidate in the elections. So where is the contradiction between strikes and “control”?

Finally, we would point out that although trade-union “control” of the army seems to us a utopian slogan, without practical application and as such wrong (even isolated from its dubious context), we also know that for the last few months the American fraternal party has been at the cutting edge of the strike wave, and that it has been doing nothing but “pushing this movement toward a revolutionary outcome.”

—The Committee

On The 120th Anniversary Of His Birthday- Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- With Serge Eisenstein’s “Strike” (1925) In Mind

On The 120th Anniversary Of His Birthday-  Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- With Serge Eisenstein’s “Strike” (1925) In Mind

Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- With Serge Eisenstein’s “Strike” (1925) In Mind

DVD Review  

By Political Commentator  Frank Jackman

Strike, starring a cast of hundreds of working people and others, directed by Serge Eisenstein, 1925

No question, no question at all that some political films whether they were intended as propaganda for a certain viewpoint as with the film under review, Russian mad man filmmaker Serge Eisenstein’s 1925 classic Strike, or because as the story line developed everybody was compelled to think through the implications of the cover-up and preclude to coup in a film like Costa-Garvas’ Z remain in our consciousness long after mere entertainment films have faded from view. Here is the beauty of Eisenstein’s work whether with Strike or in an effort like Potemkin, the one with the famous baby carriage scene on the Odessa Steps. The medium is the message to steal a phrase from an old-time social media commentator like Marshall McLuhan. The whole thing is done, powerfully done, with nothing but absolutely stunning cinematography, a few signboards (in Russian with English subtitles), and some very interesting and varied mood music which if I am not mistaken included some jazz theme stuff from Duke Ellington, and if not him then definitely some jazz riffs along with that inevitable classical music that one would have expected from a Russian filmmaker who grabbed what he could from the Russian Five.        

Now the question of who a film is directed at is usually pretty much just to lure in general audiences, maybe if it is cartoonish then kids but usually general audiences. Eisenstein in this film though is directing his efforts to working people in order for them to draw some important lessons about the class struggle. Of course Eisenstein was working shortly after the October Revolution of 1917 in his country and so he probably was more or less committed to this type of film in the interests of the Soviet government and of the world revolution that was still formally what the Bolsheviks and their international allies were all about. (I might add though that a later film about Ivan the Terrible had the same fine cinematic qualities and that was not particularly directed at the world’s working classes but to ancient Russian patriotic fervor as the smell of war, war on the doorstep became apparent.) That drawing of lessons about what happened during the strike is the force that drives the film.

Here is how this one played out in all its glory and infamy. The workers at a Russian factory of unknown location and for that matter of unknown production had been beaten down by the greedy capitalists and stockholders, had had no say in what they made and how much dough they made. (The scenes with the greedy capitalists are a treasure, something out of any leftist’s caricature of the old time robber barons complete with fat bellies, cigars and top hats). Like any situation where tensions are strung out to the limit it did not take a lot to produce a reason for a strike for a better shake in this wicked old world. Here it was an honest workman’s being accused of a theft which he couldn’t defend himself against and so in shame he committed suicide. After have previously spent several weeks talking about taking an action to better their conditions the leaders of the underground “strike committee” decided to have everybody “down tools.” (The scene of this action with a rolling shutdown as section after section left their benches was breathtaking.)      

Of course in turn of the century (20^th century) Russia (and elsewhere) the capitalists were as vicious as one would expect of a new class of exploiters dealing here with people, men and women, just off the farm and so in no mood to grant such things as an eight-hour day (a struggle that we in America are very familiar with from the Haymarket Martyrs whose chief demand a couple of decades before the time of this film was for that same eight hour day) and a big wage increase. So the committee of capitalists and their hangers-on gave a blanket “no.” Said the hell with you to the strikers.

The aftermath of this refusal is where the real lessons of this film are to drawn. Needless to say the capitalists were willing, more than willing to starve the workers into submission (the scenes of some workers pawning off their worldly possession for food for the kids, for themselves are quite moving).But not only were they willing to starve the mass of workers back to the factory but did everything in their power to break the strike by other means. First and foremost to send spies out to stir up trouble in order to get the class unity broken, then tried to get some weak-links to betray the movement from within, and if that didn’t work then try might and main to round up by any way possible the leaders of the strike in order to behead the movement. In the end though they were not above using their “Pharaohs,” their mounted cops and troops to suppress the whole thing. In the final scene after the cops and troops have done their murderous assaults on unarmed strikers the corpses spread out widely on the massacre field tell anybody who wasn’t sure about the role of the cops and troops in preserving the social order of the rulers all they need to know about the way the strike was defeated. 

From what I could gather from the last signboard (one which mentioned the Lena gold strike which was I believe was suppressed in 1912) the time period of this strike was between the 1905 revolution that went down in flames and the victorious revolution in 1917. The implications of the failure of the strike, of the need to take the state power, were thus through Eisenstein’s big lenses there for all to see. Hey, even if you don’t draw any political conclusions from this film just watch to see what they mean they say a picture sometimes is worth a thousand words. Eisenstein has a thousand such pictures that will fascinate and repel you.