Monday, March 11, 2019

In The Glory Days Of The Cold War Night-Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up –Timothy Dalton’s “The Living Daylights” (1987)-A Film Review

In The Glory Days Of The Cold War Night-Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up –Timothy Dalton’s “The Living Daylights” (1987)-A Film Review




DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton, Maryam d’Abo, 1987

No question guys like John LeCarre, Tom Clancy and the creator of the Bond, James Bond series Ian Fleming although not all the storylines in the long-running series have had tough sailing since the demise of the arch-villain Soviet Union back in 1991-92. Sure there has been plenty of international dramatic tension possibility since, the “war on terror,” the drug trade, cyber-theft but nothing like those glory days when the smooth as silk and just as deadly good guys wore white hats if only metaphorically and the ham-fisted, can’t shoot straight bad guys wore black, no. red and you had something like the world on the edge with every action-and reaction.

Just look at the difference let us say with a non-descript plot against some holy goof outfit (which also cannot shoot straight) in a post-Soviet demise Bond flick like 2015s Spectre and the action in the film under review, The Living Daylight with late Soviet era-Afghan War as a backdrop. You knew who to root for, or thought you did when the action turned to the Afghan situation later in the story. (That “thought you did” courtesy of the hard fact that those “allies” the mujahedeen turned out to be some nasty Taliban guys when the dust settled later in the beginning of the 21st century).                  

Of course the attentive reader is wondering not so much about plotline as the burning question of the day-who is the real James Bond. Much cyber-ink has been spilled in this space between the lovely Phil Larkin and the pretty boy youngster William Bradley as they have gone into hand to hand combat over whether their respective choices ruggedly handsome Sean Connery for the former and pretty boy Pierce Brosnan for the latter. Here we have another entrant Timothy Dalton who I would while I don’t want to get in an ambush by either partisan does not measure up to their respective choices. Doesn’t portray the rugged individualism of Connery or the charm the pants off you of Brosnan.

But to the story as Sam Lowell always liked us to get to before the reader wondered why he or she spent their precious time reading a film review like this. This is straight up KGB (even those initials today sent shivers up and down the spine thinking about Siberian exiles or being shot in Lybinaka dungeons) versus M-led MI6 and James Bond agent stuff. Seems the bad ass KGB’s new leader is reviving the old policy of death to spies when caught. Meaning some MI6 agents have been wasted forthwith. his though is just a ruse for a corrupt Soviet general “on the take” to whoever will pay the graft in money, dope or armaments to work his plan to make huge profits off the Afghan opium trade and buy arms to supply whoever has the dough and need for such arms.

This Soviet general is really kind of clever, for a while, as he fakes a defection to the West to put the whammy on the new KGB leader who is actually a reformer of sorts maligned by that renegade general. Has the help of his angel-faced girlfriend Kara, played by Maryam d’ Abo (nice name) who also plays a mean classical cello. This is the ruse Timmy, oops, James must breakup at whatever costs. First he has to realize, which he does in short order, that this general’s flight is bogus. Second he has to gain the confidence of Kara to set the trap to grab this bad ass general who is ready to do business with a don’t give a damn American arms dealer who will sell anything from firecrackers to nuclear weapons to whoever has the dough.

Naturally in these thrillers we see the latest in what Q-MI6s master technie has put together, see whatever three hundred actions per minute put Bond (and Kara) in harm’s way across Vienna, the Alps, Tangiers, Afghanistan and who knows where else before that bad ass general and that amoral arms dealer bite the dust. Naturally as well there has to be the little dance between Bond and Kara before they go under the sheets that everybody knows from the minute she shows up on screen is going to happen. Well at least unlike in the past where the women who fall all over whatever Bond is in play are strictly eye candy Kara can play that mean cello too.             

*From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin- 'The Draft Resolution Of The Left Wing At Zimmerwald

Click on the headline to link to a "Lenin Internet Archive" online copy of his important anti-World War I contribution, "The Draft Resolution Of The Left Wing At Zimmerwald.

Markin comment:

Lenin had to confront the pacifists, passive do-gooders and other confused elements within the generic anti-war movement of his time. Sound familiar? Read on.


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. 

From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-For Free, Safe Abortion on Demand!

Workers Vanguard No. 975
4 March 2011

Democrats, Republicans Attack Women’s Rights

For Free, Safe Abortion on Demand!

For decades Democrats, liberals and feminists have offered up one concession after another that have whittled away abortion rights and emboldened the anti-abortion bigots, who have in turn launched a renewed legislative offensive. In state after state, Republican politicians have introduced bills aiming to eliminate abortion rights, while reactionary “right to life” outfits have launched a vicious campaign against Planned Parenthood to further limit access to abortion.

The attacks have not just come from crazed right-wing Republican politicians intent on reversing the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. Not long after Roe, the Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976 under Democratic Party president Jimmy Carter, excluded abortion from federal health care services provided to low-income people. Obama’s health care “reform” was in line with the Hyde Amendment, which eliminated abortion coverage from Medicaid. Many often vote for the Democratic Party largely on the basis that it would defend Roe v. Wade in the courts. But, as one concession after another has been made, including restricting late-term abortions, pro-Democratic outfits such as the National Organization for Women have limited their actions to “fight the right” electoral tactics even as abortion rights continue to be axed.

Already, at least 38 states have “fetal homicide” laws. In Utah, women can be charged with criminal homicide for obtaining an illegal abortion or inducing a miscarriage, including through “reckless” behavior. The law was prompted by the tragic case of a desperate 17-year-old who paid a man to beat her in the hopes of inducing a miscarriage. Anti-abortion bigots are now looking to replicate a Nebraska law that virtually bans all abortions at 20 weeks after conception. Across the country, bills are being introduced to force women seeking abortions to view ultrasounds of the fetus—as is already the law in Oklahoma—and to ban any abortion coverage by private insurance companies. In Georgia, a Republican state legislator has introduced a bill that would make abortion the legal equivalent of murder and force the criminal investigation of women who suffer miscarriages. In South Dakota and Nebraska bills were introduced to allow the use of “justifiable homicide” as a defense for the murder of abortion providers.

Through violence, intimidation and bipartisan legal assaults, the legal right to abortion in the U.S. is severely constricted. If you live in one of the many areas where no providers exist, you have little “choice,” unless you have the time and money to travel. Some 87 percent of U.S. counties and 31 percent of metropolitan areas have no abortion services. The panoply of anti-abortion laws and restrictions on birth control particularly targets young, working-class and poor women. The wealthy will always get their medical care, including abortions, whether legal or not.

Seeking to further curtail access to abortion, anti-woman bigots are now targeting Planned Parenthood, which provides essential medical services of all kinds especially to young, working-class and minority women; one in five women will use Planned Parenthood sometime in her life. Scandal-mongering videotapes made by “Live Action,” a reactionary anti-abortion outfit, portrayed a man and woman posing as a pimp and young prostitute seeking health services including abortion, showing them receiving advice from Planned Parenthood workers in various locations. Stirring up the sex panic ever roiling the surface of American politics, the videos set off a wave of Puritanical vapors and hand-wringing, as intended, including among supposed defenders of women’s rights.

Planned Parenthood’s response to this sting operation was cringing. Amy Woodruff, manager of their Perth Amboy, New Jersey, clinic, did her job, giving common-sense advice to the people in the video. This included reassurances of confidentiality, how to evade legal complications and useful health tips (like only “waist up” sexual activity for two weeks after an abortion). But amid the furor, Planned Parenthood fired her, setting a dangerous precedent for others who may need such advice in the future. There is now at least one bill before Congress calling to bar government funding to Planned Parenthood. For our part, we agree with the gossip Web site Gawker’s February 4 headline: “Even Teen Hookers Need Abortions.” We call for the abolition of all laws against “crimes without victims,” which include drug use and prostitution. We oppose “squeal rules” and all other restrictions on abortion directed at minors.

The anti-Planned Parenthood scam recalls the operation launched by right-wing yahoos against the liberal community organizing group ACORN, whose main “crime” was to register poor people and minorities to vote. Despite its close ties to the Democratic Party, Democrats joined with Republicans in voting to defund it, leading to its dissolution.

At its most extreme, bloody and reactionary, the anti-abortion campaign has meant the murder of abortion providers, such as Dr. George Tiller in 2009. Dr. Tiller’s clinic in Wichita, Kansas, now closed, was one of only three in the entire country that provided late-term abortions. Between 1993 and 1998 anti-abortion terrorists murdered seven people for providing abortions: Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida, in 1993; Dr. John Britton, along with a clinic escort, in Pensacola a year later; Lee Ann Nichols and Shannon Lowney at a clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1994; a security guard in a 1998 Birmingham, Alabama, firebombing that also severely wounded a nurse; and Dr. Barnett Slepian in Buffalo, New York, killed by a sniper outside his home in 1998.

The organized labor movement has every interest in fighting for the rights of women. Such a struggle must be waged independently of all capitalist parties as part of the fight for free, quality health care for all, as well as for free, 24-hour childcare, which would address the deep class and racial oppression of poor and minority women. For free abortion on demand!

War on Women, War on Workers

It is no accident that anti-woman attacks have escalated at the same time that the ruling class has undertaken a vicious union-busting offensive, seeking to get rid of nearly every “overhead” associated with the most minimal social safety net. Not only abortion rights, but also funding for medical research, family planning and reproductive health care services for women are being slashed to the bone. This includes the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers and infants each month. Likewise, there are proposals to slash grants for prenatal heath care to low-income women—cuts proposed in various degrees by both capitalist parties. The late, great comedian George Carlin, who famously quipped that “not every ejaculation deserves a name,” caught the hypocrisy of abortion opponents: “They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own.”

In such a climate, the recent scandal over a West Philadelphia clinic throws a light on the wretched “services,” such as they exist, that many poor people get. Two women died and many more were mutilated in botched abortion procedures by one Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his ill-trained staff, according to a January Philadelphia grand jury report. Officials had ignored medical complaints about the clinic since at least 1993, and it hadn’t been inspected by health officials for 16 years. Filthy and dangerous, the clinic was, according to the grand jury report, responsible for many injuries to women, including infections and perforated bowels and uteruses.

The state, of course, has gone after Gosnell for performing late-term abortions—abortion after 24 weeks is a crime in Pennsylvania. He is being charged with eight counts of murder, seven of them for aborting late-term fetuses, which should be no crime. It is the anti-woman laws and desperate conditions that force poor, black and immigrant women into such squalid back-alley operations. In the Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia, where Gosnell’s operation was located, over 16,000 people live below the poverty line. In all of West Philadelphia, the infant mortality rate resembles that of a Third World country: 15 per 1,000 live births. This is more than double the national rate, which is itself the highest rate of the 33 countries that the New York Times (26 February) described as having “advanced economies.” In West Philly, low birth weight is a major problem. For the women living there, abortion—normally a simple procedure that is safer than childbirth—is not always safe, not always legal and certainly not affordable. Many women have trouble getting the money together quickly, and young women especially are often pounded with guilt by repressive parents, violent boyfriends or hellfire preachers, so they end up having their abortions only at the last moment.

Religious scam artists ply their trade not only in the evangelical Christian bible belt. In Manhattan recently, a Texas-based group called “Life Always” put up a billboard about a half-mile from a Planned Parenthood facility. As part of its national campaign targeting minority neighborhoods, the billboard showed the picture of a little black girl with the grotesque message: “The most dangerous place for African Americans is in the womb.” The billboard went up on February 22; two days later, it was taken down, having outraged much of the city, not least the black populace. Life Always’ pastor, Stephen Broden, ranted: “The survival of our country, our nation is tied to the woman’s womb! And if we are assaulting that womb, if we are attacking that womb, we are on a path to self-destruction!” Such is the repulsive pathology of these bigots, to whom women are destined to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen forever.

Lord knows that Obama rarely passes up the opportunity to reaffirm his credentials as a true believer in the Christian faith. Covering for him, the reformist International Socialist Organization wrote an article on the West Philly case, “Like Roe Never Happened” (Socialist Worker, 25 January), that roundly denounced the right for its attacks on abortion rights but made not one mention of President Obama or the Democratic Party.

For Women’s Liberation Through International Socialist Revolution!

Tens of thousands of women across the world die each year from illegal abortions. Some researchers estimate that in Latin America and the Caribbean the primary cause of death for women between the ages of 15 and 39 is complications from illegal abortions. Poverty and backwardness, enforced around the globe by imperialist domination, mean that the infrastructure necessary to bring basic medical care, contraception and abortion to Third World women is simply not there. Nor will it ever be, short of the destruction of the capitalist system by victorious working-class revolution and the establishment of proletarian state rule. It is precisely the hold of religious obscurantism, anti-homosexual bigotry and the treatment of women as simply the bearers of—and those responsible for rearing—the next generation that must be eradicated by laying the material basis for the full equality of the sexes.

The fight for women’s liberation is a necessary part of the struggle for the emancipation of all the exploited and oppressed masses throughout the world. The main source of women’s oppression is the institution of the family. As we noted in our article, “Fifty Years After the Pill: Still a Long Way to Go” (WV No. 968, 5 November 2010):

“The war on abortion rights has become a spearhead for social and political reaction because at its heart lies the question of legal and social equality for women. Providing women with some control over whether or not to have children, abortion is viewed as a threat to the institution of the family….

“The capitalist class seeks to buttress the family, which, along with organized religion and the state, form a triad that props up the exploitation of labor. To free women from their deeply entrenched special oppression will take a workers revolution to rip this system of exploitation out by the roots and replace it with a workers government to begin the construction of a socialist world.”

Referring to the early Soviet workers republic, Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 October Revolution, wrote in The Revolution Betrayed (1936): “The revolutionary power gave women the right to abortion, which in conditions of want and family distress, whatever may be said upon this subject by the eunuchs and old maids of both sexes, is one of her most important civil, political and cultural rights.” It is this vision of socialist freedom that we continue to stand on today.

From The Marxist Archives-On Communist Work Among Women in Soviet Central Asia

March Is Women's History Month- Every Month Is Communist History Month

Workers Vanguard No. 975
4 March 2011

On Communist Work Among Women in Soviet Central Asia

From the Archives of Marxism

March 8 marks International Women’s Day. In honor of that proletarian holiday, we print below excerpts from a report by Varsenika Kasparova titled “Forms and Methods of Work Among the Women of the Soviet East.” The report was published in a 1924 Communist Party of Great Britain pamphlet called Work Among Women.

By sweeping away the capitalist order throughout the tsarist empire, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution drastically changed the lives of women. In overwhelmingly Muslim Soviet Central Asia, the Bolsheviks faced the enormous task of overthrowing pre-feudal and tribal social and economic relations that were inextricably linked to the virtual enslavement of women. Bringing the peoples from these backward regions over to the side of revolution could only happen to the extent that they understood that the transformation of society—to which they themselves would contribute—was in their own interest.

The Zhenotdel (the Bolshevik Party’s Department of Working Women and Peasant Women) sent Bolshevik cadre across the Steppe to bring the vision of socialist emancipation to Muslim women and draw them actively into the work. Zhenotdel organizers and educators at times even donned the paranja (head-to-toe veil) in order to meet with these women. They faced threats from every sort of counterrevolutionary tendency, and both they and the brave women they worked with faced violence and death. By 1924, Zhenotdel organizations existed in many areas.

The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution began to lay the material foundations for the liberation of women. But without the international extension of the revolution, especially to the advanced capitalist countries, the material basis for the elimination of scarcity and its attendant oppressions could not be realized. The pressure of imperialist encirclement, the devastation of the working class during the Civil War and the lengthy isolation of the Russian Revolution enabled a bureaucratic layer headed by Stalin to usurp political power in a political counterrevolution in 1923-24. Beginning then, the people who ruled the USSR, the way the USSR was ruled and the purposes for which the USSR was ruled all changed. In 1930, the Soviet government liquidated the Zhenotdel. After decades of Stalinist misrule, capitalist counterrevolution triumphed in 1991-92, a world-historic defeat for the international working class and for the women of the former Soviet Union.

Varsenika Kasparova was co-director of the Zhenotdel with longtime Bolshevik cadre Alexandra Kollontai. She also headed the Agitational Department of the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars, whose teams she deployed throughout Trotsky’s Red Army. Of Tatar origin, Kasparova was responsible for the countries of the East in the Communist International’s International Women’s Secretariat (IWS). She was prominent in Trotsky’s Left Opposition, which fought the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union, including while she held her post in the IWS. In 1941, she was executed in a Stalinist prison.

* * *

THE Soviet Government, having announced the most complete and thorough-going programme the world has ever known for the abolition of all forms of oppression of man by man, was not content with mere formal proclamations, but took immediate measures for their execution. Thus, in dealing with the question of nationalities, the Soviet Government not only proclaimed the equality of all nationalities living within the Soviet borders, but took practical steps to make them equal in fact. Since equality is only possible among nations which have attained the same level of economic, cultural and political development, the first step along this line was, of necessity, immediate assistance to the most backward nations in order to raise them to the level of development that had been attained by the more progressive peoples. Under the special conditions of the Soviet Union, particular attention had to be paid to the people living in the Eastern border countries where the colonial policy of the Tsar, resulting in the artificial retention of whole nations in a primitive state, had brought about the most disastrous results. The main forces had, therefore, to be diverted to the Eastern borders—the weakest section of the national front. The Soviet Government was faced with a great historical task in the East. First there was the problem of developing and quickening the economic life, of replacing the prevailing primitive forms of agriculture and cattle-breeding with more modern methods, and of building up local industrial centres capable of quickly shaking off the survivals of feudalism. Then came the problem of raising the cultural level of the working masses, of waging an energetic campaign against such relics of barbarism as polygamy, religious prejudices, ancient customs, and the purchasing of wives. Parallel with this, it was necessary to familiarise the population with the elements of culture, to abolish illiteracy, to reform their social life and finally to undertake the task of the Communist education of the workers.

But the execution of all these measures, leading to the complete liberation of the backward peoples of the East, is inextricably bound up with the question of the liberation of the Oriental women who are still incomparably more enslaved and oppressed than men. The debased position of the women of the East, which is an outrage to human dignity, is directly due to the fact that the Eastern women take no part in productive labour and are confined entirely to the subsidiary labour of the home and the care of the family. Economically helpless, the Eastern woman is completely at the mercy of her husband or her father, who are the absolute masters of her fate. Her world is limited to the bedroom, the kitchen, and the children, and thus the woman becomes sluggish and passive, a drag on every forward movement.

The backwardness of the women of the Eastern countries is the main obstacle in the road not only of the reorganisation of family and social relationships, but of the economic structure. And without that fundamental change there can be no thought of the awakening of the East. In view of these conditions, the first task is to release the suffering women of the East from the grip of ancient social forms and religious prejudices in which she is held, and help her to stand on her feet and enjoy those rights guaranteed to her by Soviet law. No matter how difficult this task appears, we cannot wave it aside or put it off until tomorrow, for without the liberation of the women, the abolition of national oppression is impossible. Moreover, the emancipation of Eastern women will mean an increase in the productivity of labour in Russia as well as the broadening and reinforcing of the social basis on which the Communist Party depends in its constructive work. Although incapable of grasping the meaning and substance of Bolshevism mentally, the toiling women of the East, awakening to the new life, cannot but instinctively sympathise with the Communists for the very reason that they belong to the most oppressed class of society and they are drawn involuntarily into the struggle for liberation, carrying with them all the passion of one who but yesterday was a slave. For all these reasons the work among the Eastern women occupies a unique position, and the question of the apparatus directing the work, the conditions under which it is carried on, and the forms and methods employed, require particular attention. The Working Women’s Department serves as the apparatus for organising the toiling women of the East on the basis of their economic interests, aiding in their cultural development and attracting them into Soviet and party life....

With all the heroic efforts of the Women’s Department, it is impossible as yet to train a sufficient number of workers from among the masses of working women to carry on all the work that is necessary among the hundreds of thousands of unenlightened women of the East. Only if the work among the Eastern women is recognised as the problem of the party as a whole, and if the working women’s department is able, through the Press and special reports at non-party peasant conferences, to develop sufficiently widespread agitation among the male population of the East, shall we have the required conditions for developing the work, or, more exactly, an apparatus capable of directing the work.

But the mere presence of a working apparatus does not necessarily ensure the success of its activities. This depends on whether the task is approached correctly, and whether the forms and methods chosen are practicable.

A certain amount of experience has already been accumulated, in relation to both these particular questions, enabling us to select those ways and means which have already been proved applicable to the unique conditions we have in the East. The first thing to bear in mind is that the work of the Women’s Department must not be confined to working women employed in the factories, but should be carried on among women engaged in home industries, women peasants and housekeepers. And in every case special attention should be paid to young girls, for they are especially good material both for educational propaganda work and as prospective members of various kinds of organisations....

In organising work in the Eastern borderlands we must not for one moment forget that every one of these national republics and regions represents a separate world, with its own customs and habits determined by its isolated economic life. In adapting themselves to these special conditions, the Women’s Department workers must avoid equally any survival of the imperialistic attitude toward the border regions, with its contempt for special national needs and mistrust of the native workers, and any tendencies in the direction of local Chauvinism, finding expression in an exaggeration of local needs to the detriment of the interest of the Union of Soviet Republics as a whole....

First of all, we shall consider those methods directed toward the economic liberation of women. In this sphere measures must be used for raising the qualifications of women’s labour, for combating unemployment and for the organisation of industrial artels [cooperative associations]. With the aim of acquainting the working women of the East with industrial methods, special trade and factory schools have been organised. In certain cases these schools are conducted with women’s clubs and schools....

But the measures described represent only one side of the activities of the Women’s Department. Side by side with its efforts to raise the cultural level of the women of the East, the Women’s Department is carrying on the extensive work of implanting the elements of culture in the minds of the Eastern Women, and attracting them into community work. The methods used in this work are many and various. First of all, as a means of combating the high mortality and social diseases so prevalent in the national republics, and the various ancient customs physically disabling women and children, the Women’s Department has organised a chain of medical stations, maternity homes, children’s consultations, creches, etc., and is carrying on a wide propaganda of sanitation and hygienic information. Special attention is also directed to such survivals of barbarism as the marriage of minors, the wearing of veils, the binding of women in childbirth, etc. In addition to these forms of direct help to the backward population of the Eastern borderlands, instituted by the organs of the Commissariat of Health, the Department for the Protection of Mothers and Infants, and the Commissariat of Social Insurance, the Women’s Department has devoted no less attention to the combating of national ignorance. Along with the various medical and children’s institutions, the Women’s Department has tried to develop a chain of educational institutions. Special efforts have been made in the direction of liquidating illiteracy and in increasing the attendance of girls at the Soviet schools....

As experience has proved in Azerbaidjan, the women’s clubs attain great popularity and hold great promise for development among the Eastern women. One inestimable advantage of the clubs is that they attract even the most backward and apathetic women, who are unconsciously drawn into community work, and thus the influence of the club is extended far beyond its circle of membership....

No small part in supporting the work of the educational institutions is played by the Press. Nine newspapers are published in the Soviet East which contain special pages devoted to the needs of the working women of the East. In Turkestan a special paper for women is published, and in Azerbaidjan and Georgia there are two women’s journals, Jenshina Na Vostok (The Woman of the East) and Nash Put (Our Path). All of these organs are printed in the native language so that the local women may understand them.

Another form of cultural activity which should be noted is the question of women’s rights. The first task of the Women’s Department in this field is to inform the native population of the decrees of the Soviet Government establishing complete equality of the sexes, the protection of mothers and infants, and the protection of women in industry. The second task is to stimulate the women to make use of the rights which have been secured to them and to draw them into work in the capacity of assessors, advocates, judges, etc., with the aim of doing away with all the barbaric survivals in the realm of women’s rights and position. The best means of attaining this, in addition to widespread propaganda through the Press and platform, is through the organisation of a series of legal bureaux connected with the clubs or the Women’s Department, to which women may turn for advice and protection in cases of infringement of their rights by their husbands or fathers; the arrangement of special public trials from time to time and the staging of mock trials for the consideration of matters connected with the local convention of marriage and family relations.... This work must, however, be preceded by a certain amount of political education. The institution of delegates is the instrument for carrying on political education among the wide non-party masses of women. The women delegate meetings should bring together the working women, the peasant women and the housekeepers, and at the present time when the solution of the national question requires the forming of ties with the peasants of the national minorities, the work among the peasant women of the countries of the East must be given first consideration....

The chief task of the delegate meetings both in the separate political campaigns and in the general non-party conferences is to draw the women into the government, trade union, co-operative and party structure. The Women’s Department endeavours to have women included on the election tickets to all Soviet organs, and particularly to the village Soviets, the volost Congresses, the Volost Central Executive Committees, and the town Soviets. With the aim of increasing the activities of the members elected to the Soviets the Women’s Department should bring up at their meetings questions having to do with the family, and the social and economic position of the Oriental women. Those delegates who are not members of the Soviet must be urged to participate in the discussions on these questions.

In addition to drawing the women of the East into government organs, it is also necessary to increase the activities of women in trade unions, and to attract the peasant and proletarian women into consumers’ co-operatives.

It is difficult to over-estimate the importance of the phase of the work of the Women’s Department that has just been indicated. The participation of Oriental women in active, constructive work will advance the Communist movement just as far as their backwardness and apathy have held it back. Furthermore, the practical work in Soviet institutions and social organisations means the gradual separation of the most conscious and dependable women from among the backward women of the East, and these women swell the ranks of the Communist Party and increase the number of active builders of the new life. And among the remaining masses, the work in the capacity of delegates or practical workers serves to awaken them to the decrepit condition of the Oriental social forms and customs, which is the first step to their complete support of the activities of the Soviet government. Not until all the hundreds of thousands of women in the East have been thus awakened, can our work among them be considered successful. Under present conditions the work among the Eastern women occupies a very prominent place. The attention of all the enemies and friends of Soviet Russia in other countries is rivetted on this work. The former observe the awakening of the East with alarm, but the latter are carefully noting the ways and means applied by the Communist Party in order to make use of the experience of the Russian Communist Party in their own countries, after the imperialistic and colonial system has been brought to an end.

Traipsing Through The Arts-With The Ghost of Novelist John Updike And His Three Books On His Travails Through The Art World In Mind- “Still Looking” (2005)-A Book Review Of Number Volume Two And More


Traipsing Through The Arts-With The Ghost of Novelist John Updike And His Three Books On His Travails Through The Art World In Mind- “Still Looking” (2005)-A Book Review Of Number Volume Two And More

Book Review

By Laura Perkins

Still Looking, John Updike, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2005


[I originally presented this disclaimer I guess that is what it is called but you would have to contact my “ghost” in the shadows helper in this series Sam Lowell’s old hometown corner boy leader Frankie Riley now a very successful high-powered lawyer in downtown Boston wearing the title of “of counsel” meaning plenty of dough and no heavy-lifting leaving that for some hard-pressed intern clerks to see what the legal term is in the first book I reviewed in this three book series by John Updike. (See Archives dated February 23, 2019.) I presented this second review without the former notice of transparency (check with Frankie again for the right legal term) and site manager Greg Green, after consulting the legal department kicked it back to me for inclusion. Since I am essentially a free-lancer I am complying. If parts of the statement sound very familiar then just head right down to the review section which is what you want to do anyway unless you are a budding legal eagle and read about the stuff, the sex stuff, that Updike missed as good a writer as he was if not the most careful viewer of art when he traipsed the museum world like some holy monk searching, searching for the sublime, searching in the wrong places as this irreverent series has proclaimed more than once.
*****
Since we live in the age of transparency probably honored more in the breach that the observance what with everybody telling only what they need to tell and keep the rest as secret and silent as the grave unless some moneybags publisher comes hither with filthy lucre to loosen up tongues I should mention here that my “ghost” in this Traipsing Through The Arts on-going series Sam Lowell played in several charity golf tournaments in Ipswich and other North Shore of Massachusetts venues with the author under review, John Updike. Despite both being golf nuts, and believe me that description is accurate on both counts as both have written extensively about their trials and tribulations “on the links,” whenever there was a chance to talk say at the after round of golf banquet Sam and Updike would go round and round about art which both were crazy about although I would not use the word ‘nut” on that interest.

[Although it is not strictly germane I will, at Sam’s badgering, say that while the term “golf nut” may apply to these two late bloomers to the game that compared to the 24/7/265 crowd that haunts golf courses all over the world to satisfy their addictions that John and Sam were only mildly addicted which showed in their respective scores against the ringers brought in by those basket case world-trotters. Both agreed that bringing in “ringers,” good golfers who can hit the ball long and accurate for a charity scramble event just to add another driver or iron to their overstuffed collection of golf clubs was, is ludicrous. Beyond that John and Sam agreed that John was the better putter on the green and Sam was a better pitching wedge artist from some yards from the green. Beyond this I will not speak. If you don’t know such terms as scramble, driver, irons, putters and wedges be my guest and look on Wikipedia to sharpen up your knowledge of this frankly arcane venture.]       

Back to art which is what this piece is about although I don’t know after fighting over disclaimers and bogies (look it up) I am not sure what this is about except I am trying to honor and show weaknesses in John Updike’s looks at art works. Come peaceful banquet tiem they would get in a dither especially if Sam had read one of Updike’s hot museum exhibition reviews in The New York Review Of Books which is where a good number of the reviews in the book under review got their first breath of life. The majority of the art reviews in all three volumes come from that source because he was something like their free-lance agent in the art world once he decided that the angst and alienation of suburban middle age crisis men and golfing were not all there was to a creative life. Done until the third book review where you will see the same disclaimer okay. Laura Perkins]

*********
What I had to say in the first Updike review Just Looking still stands. Since the beginning of an on-line series titled Traipsing Through The Arts series published in Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s and its sister and associated publication of, hopefully, off-beat AND irreverent personal takes on works of art that have interested me I have railed against  what I call the art cabal, what in an earlier time I might have scornfully called the academy. (The academy in various guises what the “Young Turks” of the art world rebelled against once enough of them were rejected and set up their own exhibitions, most famously the Impressionists in Paris and by extension the famous 1913 New York Armory show that brought that breathe of fresh air and other trends like Cubism and the wild boys, forgive me, the Fauvists into America.

The art world like any other subset of society has historically has its favored art forms and artists, what like I said in the old days would be the academy, run by the self-selected grandees, almost exclusively male at the grandee level, and not much different today although the infrastructure is increasingly female. If your particular type of art was not accepted by the cabal then you would wind up peddling your works out of carts in the streets or today at your local flea market, or God forbid, a farmer’s market.   

That cabal for your inspection includes the usual suspects, I could name names and I will in my third Updike review where Updike has given us a complete dossier on the Clark Brothers, yes those Singer sewing machine magnates, or rather more like coupon-clippers, one of whom put a whole museum of great art together out in God forsaken Williamstown which is a serious hassle to get to, as a classic example of the way the cabal operated in the earlier parts of the 20th century. Guess what things have not changed all that much except this mania for mega-exhibition retrospectives (their term). Today let us just scorn the generic universe, the up-ward striving art directors staging improbable mega-exhibitions filled with loads of hype not so much in the interest of art as expanding their revenue flows via outrageous ticket price sales, souvenir sales, and 24/7/365 (or however long the exhibition goes for) drumbeats about not missing the work of the latest previously correctly neglected artist, ancient or modern.

To continue with this rogues’ gallery the press agents and flak-catchers who protect their turf by merely re-writing the releases somebody in the art director’s office threw together.* The upward striving curators hoping against hope that they will get to move up the ladder, what Sam always and maybe correctly calls the food chain, after curating some exhibition including the obligatory five-thousand-word essay about the meaning of whoever they are touting that day work not knowing that this profession is almost as cutthroat as the film review profession. The art patron/ donors whose only part in the drama is to pony up serious cash, look good at cocktail parties and make sure their names are etched correctly on whatever museum room, wall, cafeteria, elevator, restroom, janitorial closet they ponied up for. The poor sappy hedge fund manager art collectors whose only knowledge of art is how much their agents bid at auction driving up the prices beyond any rational number, more importantly tucking those works away from public view for who knows how long.           

*(The press agents and flak-catchers, mostly free-lance, and mostly underpaid at least earn an honest living merely repeating in their own words the morsels provided by the art directors’ offices who in turn have been given their takes from the various kept art critics. The so-called arts journalists for the glossy magazines and nationally-known major newspapers are the worst not even re-writing this palaver but sending it straight in to the editor unedited maybe clipping the title off but usually not even then. Sam Lowell already mentioned in his personal take published a while back (see Archives, February 18, 2019) all you ever need to know including his own similar slimy outrages in the days before he went into a twelve- step program. Of course Sam was in the cutthroat film reviewing business and not up in the rarified airs of high-end art and would have some young intern re-write or write a review for him. When he was on a three or five-day bender he would just take the studio copy maybe rewrite the first sentence, throw his name on it and sent the damn thing in. And the editor(s) knowing he was on a bender took the stuff like it was manna from heaven especially after Sam got wise to the publishing schedules and space requirements and would send the material long in just a nick of time before the editor(s) started pulling their hair out.

Once Sam dried out, recovered from both drug and alcohol abuse, he moved up the publishing ladder and wound up as film editor at various publishing houses, most notably the American Film Gazette which published other types of reviews on the arts and culture as well as films despite its name. While there, now having gotten religion about what was right and wrong with sending in bogus copy, he had a run in, had to fire one Clarence Dewar. Dewar now the chief art critic for Art Today was then a groupie of famous art critic Clement Greenberg and being essentially flak-catcher then, maybe now too, he would just send Greenberg’s columns in with his name on the piece. (It is still unclear whether this was with Greenberg’s blessing or just the clumsiness and immaturity of young free-lancer.) Busy Sam did not notice anything until one of his writers pointed out that they had seen the same piece in Art News under Greenberg’s by-line. Adios Dewar, although the attentive reader will not that he has resurfaced as the main opponent of our sex and sensuality theory about 20th century art.)        


Worst, worst of all warranting their own separate paragraph the vaunted art gallery owners, I won’t name names here since this is a book review of sorts, who without the infrastructure mentioned above to cater to the average collector off the street since most of the other stuff is at auction or private, very private sale, would be stuck with plenty of unsaleable merchandise. I made Sam laugh one time when I mentioned that these gallery owners without that backup from all the nefarious sources would have stiff competition with your off-hand priceless Velvet Elvis hangings at the local flea markets and God forbid farmers’ markets which they would be reduced to for hawking their wares, their various bricks and tiles thrown hither and yon and declared art.

On second thought under art gallery owners I should mentioned right now Monet Plus Gallery owner one Allan Dallas, the now imprisoned ex-owner who had until he was caught red-handed after many years of working the scam of having his still at large master forger, Claude Le Blanc, do a reproduction of say a Renoir or whoever the greedy little hustler art collectors were directed to outbid each other on and “sell” that at a public auction using his acknowledged say so as providence for the work and then the real one to some superrich and discreet private collector or keep it for his own stash. (Dallas held about seventy such paintings in a private room in the basement of his Hudson River mansion which after the police raid were estimated to be worth about two hundred million dollars on today’s open market.) Who knows Dallas may have had a hand in the infamous mass art thefts at the Isabella Gardner Stewart Museum in Boston. Certainly, Dallas could not be discounted any more than anybody else since the merchandise has not reappeared for many years. None of the paintings found in his basement room were from that heist but he could have been the so-called fence with his extensive networks of private collectors and hustlers.

Now that I have my blood up in the future when my backlog of art works to review settles a little I will scorch earth this art cabal with plenty of names and their evil deeds beyond the seemingly benign Clark churning over the art works operation and the discredited Dallas (now serving a nickel to a dime, Sam’s expression not mine, in some federal country club from which he has been recently changed so I am not sure where he is today). 


The only ones connected with the cabal, if marginally, that have my sympathies are the poor, totally bored security guards who these days have all matter of device sticking out of their ears whether to keep eternal vigilance or to hear whatever music they have tapped into I don’t know. Oh, and the average museum-goer cum non-art critic writer like the author under review novelist John Updike and his travelling museum exhibition road show put in book form, non-coffee table book form Still Looking. Updike (see above in the brackets for his “relationship” with Sam Lowell) has loved art and going to art museums since he was a kid in Pennsylvania and his dusty backwater local art museum drew him in to create his forever attitude toward art. He had something in common with me, and more generally Sam, in that he was an art aficionado, a self-described artist, without having the wherewithal to pursue that as a profession. Writing about art turned out to be his later in life métier. Join the amateur junior league club brother and welcome.

I have (along with my “ghost” Sam) as I have alluded to above staked out a certain way to look at art, especially the art of the 20th century which is the period of art that “speaks” to me these days around the search, although that is not exactly the right word and I hate it as well, for sexual awakening and eroticism in the post-Freudian world. (I will provide a provisional disclaimer that Updike has never been associated with that theory of art despite his sex-driven angst novels) Not the only theme but the central one for which I, we, have decided to take on all comers to defend. And we have had to so far in the birthing process beat off self-serving Brahmin reputation protectors, and here I will mention the name of one dowdy Arthur Gilmore Doyle who seems to have been left adrift in social consciousness around 1898, irate evangelicals who could care less about art, hate it, would not let their kids go to an art museum for love nor money but are worried that their kids might read that art and sex are not mutually exclusive, and a hoary professional art critic who is fixated on the search for the sublime, for pure abstraction, art for art’s sake and maybe art to cure headaches and gout for all I know. He has a name already mentioned in connection seedy doings among the denizens of the art cabal Clarence Dewar from Art Today who as noted Sam long ago exposed as a toady and sycophant. Updike’s beauty beyond the casual way he leads the reader to his insights is exactly that. Unlike the finicky Doyle, or the rabid Dewar he has no axe to grind, he has no monstrous and ever-hungry cabal to protect and although he would by no stretch of the imagination subscribe to the sex theory of modern art, along with a couple of other flaky but true observations not directly related to defending the thesis, he has some interesting things to say. I can understand why Sam and he went round and round after a round of golf. 

As noted in the first review Just Looking and continues to be true here Updike is as eclectic in his wanderings, observations and “takes” on his assignments as I am, (as Sam would be as well if he ever had taken the on-going series when he was offered it on a plate). A quick run-through of this the second of three books (the third one published posthumously in 2012) going through Updike’s keen-eyed writerly paces. Maybe not so strangely I have been able to “steal” a few ideas he has presented to go off on my own quirky tangent which I will mention as I detail his experiences at the world’s major art museums, and a couple of minor ones as well.

This volume is exclusively Updike’s take on American art since colonial times, maybe before so some of the paintings from the early days can be dismissed out of hand since it is well known that the Puritan ethic frowned upon sex, sexual expression and naked bodies except for the ministers who preached the so-called good word who kept what passed for sexually provocative paintings in their private chambers. (one of the male Mather clan, Pericaval, the preacher crowd, had quite a cache when they opened his private closet about thirty years ago blowing the ethic, if not Max Weber, out of the water). Naturally if you deal with the long history of American art then the first serious name, a name well-known in Boston art circles, is the Tory traitor and rat John Singleton Copley who fled America for the sweet bosom of Mother England and some well-paid assignments painting risqué portraits of upper- class women showing plenty of shoulder and for the times that sweet bosom everybody thought was reserved for Mother England. Fortunately I, we don’t have to spent much time on this since we only claim our theory for the 20th century. Praise be.

We can easily pass over the Hudson River School boys like Cole and Church and their wide-eyed visions of the American pastoral and their Garden of Eden predilections. As with botanist and proto-flower child Martin Johnson Heade he of hummingbirds and lush flower fame since I will be damned if I can link him with Georgia O’Keeffe’s sensual, fleshy florals. The long and varied career of Winslow Homer is another story if you look beyond the famous farm and field material with two-wayward boys trying to figure out the meaning of life, his serious illustrations during and after the American Civil War and some seaside scenes. A strong argument can be made for the homo-erotic nature of his famous Undertow. Nobody has claimed, and I have asked Sam who uses the English poet W.H. Auden who kept close tabs on the matter of who belonged in what Auden called the “Homintern,” that Homer’s proclivities headed in that direction but in the closed world, read closet, that gays and lesbians were confined in the matter is hardly closed. Especially when you factor in Homer’s close relationship with the acknowledged gay poet Walt Whitman and his rough trade crowd. In any case this is the time for another provisional disclaimer that art, some art, some serious art was driven by sex and sensuality before the 20th century it just generally in the case of painters like Homer very subtle, and very driven by coded symbols like flowers and stormy seas in lieu of pressed together bodies.

We can put Thomas Eakins in the same boat, or should in his case, scull, as Homer as a guy who was disturbed by his times but not quite sure of what he wanted to paint except graphic scenes in what passed for medical schools in those days. James Abbott McNeil Whistler though is another matter and it seems to me to not be merely coincidental that Updike has taken up Whistler cudgels, as much of a rogue as he was. Whistler can clearly, in fact must be clearly tagged along with a few others before the 20th century by sex. In his case not only on the canvas. I have already, thanks in part to Sam and his arcane knowledge of ancient history, written Whistler off as a pimp when reviewing his The White Girl with its deeply symbolic wolf’s head and fur which has been an “advertisement” for availability since the days of the Whole of Babylon. This time out Updike wants to garner in some observations about Whistler’s long series of paintings dubbed with color names and centered, appropriately, on the night as an early devotee of “the night time is the right time” which was shorthand for art for art’s sake in his book. Of course we, Sam and I, and couple of the interns had a big laugh over that one since every lame artist and art critic has used that as a back-up to the search for the sublime as their working theory of what drove a painter to paint what he or she painted. Updike’s main contention though is that Whistler couldn’t make it to the modern since his palette was limited (limited by his pressing dough question when he didn’t have enough for paints even on credit and had to send some mistress of the time out onto the streets or castles to hustle up some business. The night time is the right time is right. 
          
On to the 20th century. We can dismiss Albert Pinkham Ryder out of hand since who knows what he was trying to do now that most of his works have self-destructed just because he was clueless about what paints and other products would survive on the canvass. He night have been a serious artist and maybe a contrary example to my theory but who knows. Childe Hassam is another matter although it is tight and requires a certain amount of knowledge that say his famous painting of the Boston Common in the old horse and buggy days was a coded piece of work since one of the townhouses on the left was infamous as a high-end brothel. Moreover if you look closely at the actual Common part you will see in the distance what looks like a young women soliciting a gentleman in a top hat. Beyond that I am not willing to comment on Hassam’s work except there is definitely something erotic in all those flag-waving paintings he did to great effect.

We can pass the piece on Stieglitz since he is famous for bringing modern art to the American shores and pushing wife-to -be Georgia O’Keeffe into the limelight but is known personally for his photography, his attempts which only in the past couple of decades have beeb bearing fruit of having high-end photography accepted as a fine arts form. In that regard it is interesting that the National Gallery of Art in Washington has only in the recent past been displaying it huge treasure trove of photographs from the 1800s to present with retrospectives down on the ground floor of the West wing which seems to have been set aside to accommodate those works. I might add that the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has been doing the same in a couple of it galleries dedicated to photography. Finally it is not clear to me and therefore not worth speculating on in regard my general theory how much Stieglitz contributed, if anything to Ms. O’Keeffe’s sexually symbolic works from flowers to skyscrapers to those sensual mountains in New Mexico.    
       
Homoerotic art has a long and honored history going back to the Greeks and their full display jugs and vases if not before (some of the earlier cave art has some such displays). Although I have not commented on explicitly homoerotic art work before what will be so comments on the work of Marsden Hartley, a gay man early in the 20th century I have worked on the idea that such art is fully in accord with my general theory about sex and eroticism in serious 20th century art. On occasion, and since this is a fairly new on-going series, not many I have alluded to the homosexual proclivities of artists like closeted John Singer Sargent and openly gay Grady Lamont but that sexual preference was not openly professed in their works. Marsden Hartley thus is the first to have painted openly homoerotic works like Sustained Comedy and Christ Held By Half-Naked Men which might have been somewhat scandalous (and brave) at the time but now are rightly seen as classics of the genre. Having brought this art into the discussion we have come full circle about the various forms of sexual expression presented in this series

While Marsden Hartley in his later career was able to “come out” in his art the legendary Arthur Dove started out practically from day one dealing with the sexual nature of his art, his heterosexual art as far as I can tell in paintings like Silver Sun and That Red One where instead of Georgia O’Keeffe vaginal flowers, penis skyscrapers and bosom mountains he using moons and sun to make his erotic substitute statements. I will be doing a separate piece on his work so I will leave the bulk of what I say for that (and Hartley’s also since Sam Lowell has something he wants to have me present about his role as a vanguard gay artist). Updike has declared him on the cutting edge of modern and that seems about right although as usual Updike shies away from drawing sexual implications from works that scream of such expression.     

I have already commented on dirty old man Edward Hopper, the king of mopes, and his leering at nubile young women who are unaware that he is painting them (and who knows what else with the young women who consented to be painted by the famous allegedly modest painter and got much more than they bargained for. In the #MeToo age it is not clear whether his modest reputation would save him from scandal, and maybe the law but nothing has surfaced yet. Jackson Pollack also has been the subject of a recent piece and needs no further comment other than somebody tried to defend him by claiming that when he was working his wore loose-fitting pants and so he had zipper problems. (Sir, check the famous videos of him working and you will see some very tight dungarees or jeans if you want to call them that so much for your vaunted defense.) In finish off Pop Arts’ Andy Warhol, king of the hill back when they counted before everything turned minimalist galore will also get a future gloss and it only needs to be said here that he was artist first and performer and showman second. I remember somebody saying that they could “do” soup cans. Sure but who though of the idea and who actually thought to paint common everyday items and make them works of art. Enough for now.    
  

The Fire This Time-The Cold Civil War Cometh-Who Will Go Down In The Mud (And Win) Against The Trump Machine-Channeling Bobby Kennedy, 1968-The Times Call For A Street Fighter-Bernie Sanders’ Time Has Come


The Fire This Time-The Cold Civil War Cometh-Who Will Go Down In The Mud (And Win) Against The Trump Machine-Channeling Bobby Kennedy, 1968-The Times Call For A Street Fighter-Bernie Sanders’ Time Has Come       


Lithograph of Robert F. Kennedy on Time magazine


By Frank Jackman

Last year well before the presidential candidates as least publicly started putting their eggs in their respective baskets I made a big deal, a big splash out of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, our beloved Bobby who I have shed more than one cyber-tear over just saying his name (and some misty moments off computer). Like many past events in this publication that death required some commentary as a watershed moment not just for me personally but as a point where things could have gone the other way in a perhaps dramatic fashion. So beyond a tear for my (and Bobby’s) youthful idealism gone awry it was also a “what might have been” moment. History in the conditional is always problematic but there you have it.  

A great part of why I, a senior in college who had basically completed his course work, worked like seven dervishes as a youth organizer all along the Eastern part of the country for Bobby was that I feared for the fate of the country if one Richard Milhous Nixon had been elected POTUS (Twitter speak). That prospect in the wake of the disastrous Goldwater campaign in 1964 against Lyndon Baines Johnson which had opened the floodgates to get the Republican back somewhere off the edge of the cliff made Nixon and his henchmen the “chosen” choice early on. As it turned out my “prophecy” turned out to be correct as Nixon’s presidency brought us to the brink of the breakdown of republican rule (small “r” let’s be clear).         
Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and the subsequent Nixon victory over Humbert H. Humphrey also had personal consequences since I had projected, not without reason, that if Bobby had gone on to be nominated by the Democrats (which seemed more certain after the fateful California primary victory over tough opponent Senator Eugene McCarthy, the Irish poet-politician) and finished off Nixon’s so crooked he needed a corkscrew for his valet to fit him into his pants every morning I would be in line for a political job most likely in Washington which would have gone a long way toward my childhood dream of being a political make and shaker in the traditional sense. Without a doubt part of that whirling dervish Spring of 1968 was the threat of the draft hanging over my head without some kind of political pull. (I have come to realize through many, many conversations with the male segment of my “Generation of ‘68” that every guy had that Vietnam War decision with no good choices hanging over his head one way or another).

The lasting memory though was of fear for the fate of the country for a man who truly believed in a modern-day version of the “divine right of kings,” that he was above the law. You can see where this is leading. As I have written and others like my old friend Seth Garth from my growing up Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville I was drafted, was trained as an 11 Bravo, an infantryman, at a time when the only place that skill was needed just then was in Vietnam. After much anguish and confusion, I would refuse the orders to go and wound up in an Army stockade and a long legal battle to get my freedom. The long and short of that experience was that my personal political perspective changed from concern over becoming a maker and shaker to being concerned more about issues like war and peace, social justice and being a thorn in the side of whatever government was in power. From the outside. I have kept that perspective for the past fifty years being involved in many issue campaigns, some successful others like the struggle against the endless wars and bloated military budgets not so.       

Back to Bobby Kennedy. Everybody knows what trouble, serious trouble, what I have called in the title to this piece and elsewhere for the past few years “the cold civil war” we are in now (this predated the Trump presidency which has only put the push toward hot civil war on steroids). Now when another POTUS, Donald J. Trump, really believes in the modern-day version of the “divine right of kings” and has upped the ante some old-time feelings have reemerged. In other words, conditions (although I would not have called it cold civil war then) looked very much like what drove me to “seek a newer world” Bobby Kennedy’s camp.
Naturally, or maybe not so naturally, but out of necessity that means at this time “stooping” (and I used that expression in a jovial way) to get involved in presidential politics, to get “down in the mud,” to join what will be come 2020 an old-fashioned take no prisoners “street fight.” To be part of what was called in the early stages of Senator McCarthy’s seemingly quixotic challenge to a sitting president a “children’s crusade.” To support someone who can speak to the better angels of our natures and WIN. That candidate for many reasons, but mainly because he has been down in the mud many times and can keep pace with the treacherous stuff that will come out of the Trump campaign is Bernie Sanders.       

Bernie is no Bobby from looks to style. Also as far as I know he never had nor now has that ruthlessness Bobby had combined with that that “seek a newer world” drive which I have always loved in a politician (and with Jack and Bobby Irish politicians, those who wrote the book on ruthlessness and vision). But Bernie has the kids eating out of his hand and that is exactly what we need right now. So for better or worse I am with Bernie, willing to work like seven dervishes to get him over the finish line. Channeling Bobby Kennedy every misty-eyed moment.  

Sunday, March 10, 2019

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International-Take Seven-The Long Road Home

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International-Take Seven-The Long Road Home



From The Pen Of Frank Jackman                  

Jack Smithfield (party name, real name James Gladstone, originally from old Chi town) sat in his little closet of an office at American Communist Party headquarters just outside of Union Square in old haunted New York City and declared himself tired (that declared part was something of an inside joke of late what with all the squabbles and everybody declaring, or being forced to declare for or against something, so he was declaring himself tired). Not that he would publicly declare such a condition, not these days, not being sure which way the winds were blowing in the party. Who knows maybe being tired, or the declaration of such tiredness, was in fact creating an unauthorized faction and thus anathema and no paycheck.

All Jack knew was that he was beginning to rue the day ten years before that he had taken up a friend’s friendly offer to come to New York City and become a trade union organizer for the party (and the just-formed  Communist International that was providing the funding at that point) at a time when in, association with the big-time organizer William Z. Foster, they had lost some Chi town strikes as the bosses dug in their heels, dug them in deep and he was in need, desperately in need of a job. Funny that friend, Jake Armor (party name), had left the party a couple of years later when the big to-do over whether to be an underground or aboveground party was a big deal and he had sided with the under-grounders and headed to Mexico. (He had heard later that Jake had surfaced around Diego Rivera and his arty crowd a couple of years back, so much for underground conspiracies around those Mexican flame-throwers).

Moreover he had grabbed that train to New York and a job with the specific idea of making enough dough to marry Anna, his hometown high school sweetheart from back in the Division Street cold-water flat tenements. And he had. She had come to New York with him as he began to organize the New York garment workers. Moreover she had fallen in love with New York, the Village (Greenwich Village for those not in the know), and with some foul Trotskyite painter a couple of years back and had taken little Sarah and left him high and dry in order to “find herself.” (The last he had heard, via Sarah, was that she was with some Dadaist, whatever that was, poet, and at least not a known Trotskyite which, who knows might get him into trouble since they had just expelled Jim Cannon and his counter-revolutionary crowd).

Yes, Jack was beginning to rue that day as he sat in that cubbyhole office trying to figure out what had happened to Jim Gladstone turned Jack Smithfield since that fateful day in 1919. Some of it was fun, at least at first anyway, the travelling part, going here and there for the party up and down the East Coast. That Paterson textile strike was a beauty, great guns blazing, although he was not really sure whether they had won or lost it in the long haul (in the short haul, yes, they had won). And getting to go to the first international conference of the Red International of Trade Unions in Moscow where he met lots of other trade union organizers and found out that they all had the same basic problems as he did in organizing the masses. Even some of the whacky party fights around that previously mentioned underground-aboveground battle, the fight over the labor party and who to endorse, sending the party headquarters to Chicago to get out of stuffy New York (ho, ho, what a laugh) and even the name of the party (there had actually been two parties at one point, with crazy factions lined up to decide who was king of the hill. The Comintern had to figure it out for them, jesus. But lately, the last couple years the thing had kind of spiraled out of control.

Here’s the funny part. When Jack had mentioned his job offer to William Z. (nobody ever called him Bill, not even his drinking buddies) back in 1919 he had nixed it for himself saying that he publicly didn’t want to get mixed up with radicals and reds. Well that was just a ruse. William Z. had already been in contact with the party discreetly and had been using Jack as a “stalking horse.” When William Z. did finally come out and join the party Jack and others became part of his faction, gladly. And things went along okay for a while, especially when Jim Cannon and his old Wobblie boys came along with the faction (factions made necessary by all those fights in the party mentioned before).

But then, Jack was not sure when, things changed. Maybe when Lenin died and Stalin took over in Russia and more Russian emissaries were showing up at party headquarters with directions on what to do, or not to do. Maybe when the old-time leaders like Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev started wilting and falling out of favor. Or maybe it was more recently when Jim Cannon and his crowd got booted out for being damn Trotskyites (and good riddance since one of them was that bastard painter who “stole” Anna from him) and then the next thing you knew Jay Lovestone and his crowd were taking the same boot leaving Earl Browder, Christ, Earl Browder, William Z.’s assistant as party leader. All Jack knew was that he was tired, undeclared tired in case anybody from the party was asking, but he also knew times were tough and that he needed that damn paycheck …