On The 150th Anniversary Of The Beginning Of The American Civil War – Karl Marx On The American Civil War-In Honor Of The Union Side

Markin comment:

I am always amazed when I run into some younger leftists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. In the age of advanced imperialism, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we are almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And are always harping on the need to overthrow the system in order to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress. Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in our eyes. Read on.
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Articles by Karl Marx in Die Presse 1862

A Pro-America Meeting

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Source: MECW Volume 19, p. 134;
Written: on January 1, 1862;
First published: in Die Presse, January 5, 1862.


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London, January 1 1862
The anti-war movement among the English people gains from day, to day in energy, and extent. Public meetings in the most diverse Parts of the country insist on settlement by arbitration of the dispute between England and America. Memoranda in this sense rain on the chief of the Cabinet,. and the independent provincial press is almost unanimous in its opposition to the war-cry of the London press.

Subjoined is a detailed report of the meeting held last Monday in Brighton, since it emanated from the working class, and the two principal speakers, Messrs. Coningham and White, are influential members of Parliament who both sit on the ministerial side of the House.

Mr. Wood (a worker) proposed the first motion, to the effect

“that the dispute between England and America arose out of a misinterpretation of international law, but riot out of an intentional insult to the British flag; that accordingly this meeting is of the opinion that the whole question in dispute should be referred to a neutral power for decision by arbitration; that under the existing circumstances a war with America is not justifiable, but rather merits the condemnation of the English people”.

In support of his motion Mr. Wood, among other things, remarked:

“It is said that this new insult is merely the last lick in a chain of insults that America has offered to England. Suppose this to be true, what would it prove in regard to the cry for war at the present moment? It would prove that so long as America was undivided and strong. we submitted quietly to her insults; but now, in the hour of her peril, we take advantage of a position favourable to [is, to revenge the insult. Would not such a procedure brand us as cowards in the eyes of the civilised world?”

Mr. Coningham:

“...At this moment there is developing in the midst of the Union art avowed policy of emancipation (Applause), and I express the earnest hope that no intervention on the part of the English government will be permitted (Applause).... Will you, freeborn Englishmen, allow. y ourselves to be embroiled in an anti-republican war? For that is the intention of The Times and of the party that stands behind it.... I appeal to the workers of England, who have the greatest interest in the preservation of peace, to raise their voices and, in case of need, their hands for the prevention of so great a crime (Loud applause)... The Times has exerted every endeavour to excite the warlike spirit of the land and by bitter scorn and slanders to engender a hostile mood among the Americans.... I do not belong to the so-called peace party. The Times favoured the policy, of Russia and put forth (in 1853) all its powers to mislead our country into looking on calmly at the military encroachments of Russian barbarism in the East. I was amongst those who raised their voices against this false policy. At the time of the introduction of the Conspiracy Bill, whose object was to facilitate the extradition of political refugees, no expenditure of effort seemed too great to The Times, to force this Bill through the Lower House. I was one of the 99 members of the House who withstood this encroachment on the liberties of the English people and brought about the minister’s downfall (applause). This minister is now at the head of the Cabinet. I prophesy to him that should he seek to embroil our country, in a war with America without good and sufficient reasons, his plan will fail ignominiously. I promise him a fresh ignominious defeat, a worse defeat than was his lot on the occasion of the Conspiracy Bill (Loud applause).... I do not know the official communication that has gone to Washington; but the opinion prevails that the Crown lawyers have recommended the government to take its stand on the quite narrow legal ground that the Southern commissioners might not be seized without the ship that carried them. Consequently the handing over of Slidell and Mason is to be demanded as the conditio sine qua non.

“Suppose the people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean does not permit its government to hand them over. Will you go to war for the bodies of these two envoys of the slavedrivers?... There exists in this country an anti-republican war party. Remember the last Russian war. Front the secret dispatches published in Petersburg it was clear beyond all doubt that the articles published by The Times in 1855 were written by, a person who had access to the secret Russian state papers and documents. At that time Mr. Layard read the striking passages in the Lower House,” and The Times. in its consternation, immediately changed its tone and blew the war-trumpet next morning, ... The Times has repeatedly attacked the Emperor Napoleon and supported our government in its demand for unlimited credits for land fortifications and floating batteries. Having done this and raised the alarm cry against France, does The Times now wish to leave out. coast exposed to the French emperor by embroiling our country in a trans-Atlantic war ... ? It is to be feared that the present great preparations are intended by no means only for the Trent case but for the eventuality of a recognition of the government of the slave states. If England does this, then she will cover herself with everlasting shame.”

Mr. White:

“It is due to the working class to mention that they are the originators of this meeting and that all the expenses of organising it are borne by their committee.... The present government never had the good judgment to deal honestly and frankly with the people.... I have never for a moment believed that there was the remotest possibility of a war developing out of the Trent case. I have said to the face of more than one member of the government that not a single member of the government believed in the possibility of a war on account of the Trent case. Why, then, these massive preparations? I believe that England and France have reached an understanding to recognise the independence of the Southern states next spring. By then Great Britain would have a fleet of superior strength in American waters. Canada would be completely equipped for defence. If the Northern states are then inclined to make a casus belli out of the recognition of the Southern states, Great Britain will then be prepared ...”

The speaker then went on to develop the dangers of a war with the United States, called to mind the sympathy that America showed on the death of General Havelock, the assistance that the American sailors rendered to the English ships in the unlucky Peiho engagement, etc. He closed with the remark that the Civil War would end with the abolition of slavery and England must therefore stand unconditionally on the side of the North.

The original motion having been unanimously adopted, a memorandum for Palmerston was submitted to the meeting, debated and adopted.

On The 150th Anniversary - In Honor of The Union Side In The American Civil War- John Brown's Body

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of a performance of John Brown's Body.

Markin comment on this entry:

Okay, just for contingent historical purposes lets say Captain John Brown had been able to pull off his raid on Harper's Ferry and successfully call the slaves to insurrection. Was that idea, or that possibility, as it turns out, so crazy when a little over a year later the American Civil War would start, which would have over 600,000 killed, and countless wounded and maimed, in order to achieve the same righteous results. That is why this song resonated as the 6th Massachusetts headed south in 1861, and, later, the 54th Massachusetts marched through the streets of Charleston, South Carolina in 1865.

Markin comment:In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist. Sadly though, hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground and have rather more often than not been fellow-travelers. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.
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John Brown's Body
Download Midi File
Mark R. Weston

Information Lyrics
The tune was originally a camp-meeting hymn Oh brothers, will you meet us on Canaan's happy shore? It evolved into this tune. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic. The music may be by William Steffe. John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave
His soul goes marching on

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on

He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled
through and through
They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew
His soul is marching on


Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

His soul is marching on
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
John Brown died that the slave might be free,
But his soul is marching on!


Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on

The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on

Information and lyrics from
Best Loved Songs of the American People
See Bibliography for full information.

Midi File From
Lance Corporal Robert Kent Mattson, USMC, Memorial Page which is no longer active.

*Ya, Let’s Hang Around Mama And Put A Good Buzz On- The Music Of Jonathan Edwards

*Ya, Let’s Hang Around Mama And Put A Good Buzz On- The Music Of Jonathan Edwards

CD Review

Jonathan Edwards, Atlantic Records, 1971


Over the past several years I have spent some time working around the idea of why certain folk revival performers of the early 1960s, or later folk rock artists either never made it big and stayed big (relatively) as with the obvious case of the staying power of Bob Dylan, or were more one-hit wonders who faded from the scene quickly, if not quietly. I have mentioned names like Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Rush and Jesse Winchester who made their names in that era. Singer/songwriters of immense talent yet except among the ever dwindling core of aficionados have faded from any spotlight. With the artist under review, Jonathan Edwards, who came a little later and can be more rightly classified under the folk rock genre, I find myself asking the same question.

Now in this case I am not asking merely an academic question. I recently attended a performance of the very much alive Mr. Edwards at a local folk club in Cambridge, Ma. and came away from the very up tempo performance of his, mainly, older work scratching my head. The man and his band (including a couple of his old band members on this CD, Bill Elliot and Stuart Schulman) have, if anything, more energy that in the old days and certainly more stage presence. The versions of the tunes played were perhaps more clearly done in bluegrass/country tempo which always helps. But that does not solve the question. Of course sometimes one's personal life, for good or evil, sets you on a different path. Or one gets tired of the road. Or one runs out of musical energy and thoughts but I am still, nevertheless, scratching my head on this one.

That said, in his prime Jonathan Edwards had a number of minor classics of the folk rock genre, all of which he played at that local club. The highlight, as to be expected, is the song, some of whose lyrics form part of the headline of this entry, “Shanty”. Others include a tribute song going back to his roots in Ohio, “Athens County”, “Everybody Knows Her”, “Don’t Cry Blue”, “Sunshine”, and one of my favorites, “Emma”. Not bad for a “minor” light in the folk firmament.

JONATHAN EDWARDS EMMA LYRICS

The first time I saw Emma
She was above me in a dream
And she throwed her arms around me
And off we flew, it seemed
Like an airplane
Moving up and down
Through the country town
Passing oe'r the cities so slow
Slowly...

But Emma comes to see me
About 8 o'clock each night
And she throws her arms around me
And off we go in flight
Like an airplane
Moving up and down
Through the country town
Passing over the cites so slow
Slowly...

But Emma's late
Emma's late
Oooh and I
I can't wait
My dinners served by half past eight and
I can't wait
Can't wait 'til 9

The last time I saw my Emma
She made me love her 'til I died
And we walked through clouds together
Searching open skies
fFr airplane
Moving up and down though the country town
Passing over the cites so slow
Slowly

But Emma's late, Emma's late, Emma's late
and I
I can't wait
My dinner's served by half past 8 and
I can't wait
I can't wait 'til 9 oooh no no noooo

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Coming Of Age, Period-The Rock Music Of The 1950s

In Honor Of The Late Rocker Chuck Berry Who Helped Make It All Possible-Coming Of Age, Period-The Rock Music Of The 1950s

CD Review

Oldies But Goodies, Volume One, Original Sound Record Co., 1987


I have been doing a series of commentaries elsewhere on another site on my coming of political age in the early 1960s, but now when I am writing about musical influences I am just speaking of my coming of age, period, which was not necessarily the same thing. No question those of us who came of age in the 1950s are truly children of rock and roll. We were there, whether we appreciated it or not at the time, when the first, sputtering, moves away from ballady show tunes, rhymey Tin Pan Alley tunes and, most importantly, any and all music that your parents might have approved of, even liked, or at least left you alone to play in peace up in your room hit post World War II America like, well, like an atomic bomb.

Now, not all of the material was good, nor was all of it destined to be playable fifty or sixty years later on some “greatest hits” compilation but some of them had enough chordal energy, lyrical sense, and sheer danceability to make any Jack or Jill jump then, or now. And, here is the good part, especially for painfully shy guys like me, or those who had two left feet on the dance floor. You didn’t need to dance toe to toe with that certain she (or he for shes). Ah, to be very young then was very heaven.

So what still sounds good on this CD compilation to a current AARPer and some of his fellows who comprise the demographic that such 1950s compilations “speak” to. “Earth Angel”, no question. Also, of course, Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” but other things of his like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Back In The U.S.A. are more rock anthem-worthy. Etta James still rocks. And the under-appreciated Lloyd Price on his version of the old standard, “Stagger Lee”. But for my money the best here musically are the great harmonics on “Eddy My Love” by the Teen Queens and the smooth sound of Sonny Knight on “Confidential”. Yes, I know, these are slow ones that you had to dance close on. And just hope, hope to high heaven that you didn’t destroy your partner's shoes and feet. But there you are.

Sonny Knight
Confidential lyrics

Confidential as a church at twilight
Sentimental as a rose in the moonlight
My love for you will always be
Confidential to me

Confidential as a mothers prayer
Too beautiful for other hearts to share
My love for you will always be
Confidential to me

CHORUS
Our loves our precious secret
A beautiful thing apart
There's no need for prying eyes
To look into my heart

Confidential as a babys cry
Sacred and holy as a lovers sigh
My love for you will always be
Confidential to me

Confidential as a babys cry
Sacred and holy as a lovers sigh
My love for you will always be
Confidential to me

*****From #Un-Occupied Boston-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions!

*****From #Un-Occupied Boston-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! 

Leon Trotsky -Lessons Of The Paris Commune-Listen Up

Defend The Working Class! Take The Offensive! - A Five Point Program For Discussion

Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

Ralph Morris and Sam Lowell a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions but anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011.  (That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight it was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”).

Although Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy.” Ralph having gone back to work in his father's electrical shop in Troy, New York and which he took over when Ralph, Senior retired and Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s after serving an apprenticeship with the main printer in town before he went out on his own. Having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns though, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, they had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it.

Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time, especially after May Day 1971 where they first met in the bastinado at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium after being arrested  with their respective collectives and where they got a full dose what the American imperial state could when it pulled the hammer down on dissent, as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.    

So Ralph and Sam would during most of the fall of 2011 meet in Springfield and travel down to the Wall Street plaza which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity for them personally and for their kind of eclectic left-wing politics (they had gotten more active in the wake of Bush-led Iraq invasion of 2003 when the seemingly endless wars first took hold of day to day American foreign policy but nowhere near the 24/7 efforts back in the Vietnam days when every minute seemed to desperately count against the monster).  They were crestfallen to say the least when the movement exploded (or maybe better imploded, turned in on itself and wound up after a couple of years being just another cheap vehicle for left Democratic Party politicians on the make) after the then reigning mayor and the NYPD  pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments did likewise in what was determined later when it was too late that had been coordinated efforts across the board to shut everything down, shut it down tight).

Of more concern at the time since unlike the good-hearted but naïve younger people since they had already known from too many uneven battles (remember that May Day 1971 baptism of fire) about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer was in the aftermath when the movement imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on anybody's toes in the movement no matter how hare-brained the scheme or just plain recycled ideas that had not worked in the 1960s and had even less chance now that the state had even more weapons at its disposal, to let everybody do their own thing with or without some kind of coordinated plan that would make the thing more productive,  do their own identity politics, you know gays can only speak of gay oppression straights keep out, women can only speak of women's oppression men, gay or straight keep out, blacks can only speak of black oppression, white males and females, gay or straight keep out and so on, defending their particular turf as furiously as any old-time Tammany Hall political hack, which did much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand cohering a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.

Ralph and Sam in the aftermath, after things had settled down and they had time to think decided to put together a proposal, a program if you like, outlining some of the basic political tasks ahead to be led by somebody. Certainly not by them since radical politics, street politics is a young person’s game and they admittedly had gotten rather long in the tooth. Besides they had learned long ago, had talked about it even over drinks at Jack Higgin’s Grille more than once, how each generation will face its tasks in its own way so they would be content to be “elder” tribal leaders and provide whatever wisdom they could, if asked. Here working under the drumbeat of Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up something of a “national anthem” for what went on among the better elements of Occupy are some points that any movement for social change has to address these days and fight for and about as well.       

A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

***Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, those who have just plain quit looking for work and critically those who are working jobs beneath their skill levels was this high in the American labor force, although it is admittedly down from the Great Recession of 2008-09 highs. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around to all who want and need it. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work. 

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions when the union-run hiring hall ruled supreme in manning the jobs is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling, where, and at what skill level,  and equitably divide up current work. 

Here is the beauty of the scheme, what makes it such a powerful propaganda tool-without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” –with the no reduction in pay proviso, although many low –end employers are even now under the “cover” of the flawed Obamacare reducing hours WITH loss of pay-so that to establish this work system as a norm it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

 

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce and less in the formerly pivotal private industries like auto production.  Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. (Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, the North American auto industry employed almost a million workers but only a third or less are unionized whereas in the old days the industry was union tight.)

The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American service-oriented  economy. Everyone should support the recent militant efforts, including the old tactic of civil disobedience, by service unions and groups of fast-food workers to increase the minimum socially acceptable wage in their Fight For $15.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy.

 

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of company-owned trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. The key here is to organize the truckers and distribution center workers, the place where the whole thing comes together. We have seen mostly unsuccessful organizing of individual retail stores and victimizations of local union organizers. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone, probably Bart Webber in his more thoughtful moments,  once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant mainstay of the run to the bottom capitalist ethos. Well, as to the latter point that’s a thought. 

 

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more defeats like in Wisconsin in 2011, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Defeat all “right to work” legislation. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

*** Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray, the very stray   Republican) candidates. In 2008 and 2012 labor, organized labor, spent over 450 million dollars respectively trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The “no show, no go” results speak for themselves as the gap between the rich, make that the very rich but don’t forgot to include them on the fringes of the one percent and poor has risen even more in this period. For those bogus fruitless efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea presented, an old idea going back to the initial formation of the working class in America, in those elections was that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor” and the Republicans are the 666 beasts but the Obama administration does not take a back seat to the elephants on this one. The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement. They always have their hands out. 

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’ profits. One egregious example from the recent past from around the time of the Occupy movement where some of tried to link up the labor movement with the political uprising- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks in the summer of 2011 when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down when the deal goes down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections against individual reactionaries, like Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle when some form of general strike was required to break the anti-union backs (and which was overwhelmingly unsuccessful to boot-while the number of unionized public workers has dwindled to a precious few).  

 

***End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reached its final stages back in 2011, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we argued, Sam more than I did since he had been closer to the initial stage if the opposition that we must recognize that we anti-warriors had failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other proxy wars) continue now with a new stage against ISIS (common moniker for the Islamic State) in Iraq we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the U.S. troop escalation we know is coming before that fight is over. Not Another War In Iraq! Stop The Bombings In Syria, Iraq, Yemen! Stop The Arms Shipments To The Middle East Especially To Israel and Saudi Arabia! Defend The Palestinian People-End The Blockade of Gaza-Israel Out Of The Occupied Territories. And as always since 2001 Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of Every Single U.S./Allied Troops (And The Mercenaries) From Afghanistan!  

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- Despite a certain respite recently during the Iran nuclear arms talks  American (and world) imperialists have periodically ratcheted up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner on this issue, Israel) in Iran and Syria is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe us we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World! And Keep Them Off!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, like Saudi Arabia and France over the recent period have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

 

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that in 1915 in the heat of war and paid the price unlike other party leaders who were pledged to stop the war budgets by going to prison. The only play for an honest representative of the working class under those conditions. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets (let’s see, right now no new funding in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get the drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

***Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states whatever political disagreements we may have with the Cuban leadership like Cuba, and whatever their other internal political problems caused in no small part the fifty plus year U.S. blockade, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs. Be clear Obamacare is not our program and has already been shown to be totally inadequate and wasteful however we will defend that program against those who wish to dismantle it and leave millions once again uninsured and denied basic health benefits.  

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle-class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students from broken homes and minority homes in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take a big chuck from the bloated military budget and the bank bail-out money, things like that, if you want to find the money quickly to do the job right), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while low-cost aid has not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast into some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures and aid underwater mortgages now! Although the worst of the crunch has abated there are still plenty of problems and so this demand is still timely if not desperately timely like in the recent past. Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

***We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers’ party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966): 

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-Janaury 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Four

In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-Janaury 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Four       

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 



For a number of years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 in each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s –Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose then was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period in honoring revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since every January  

Leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered in separate incidents after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.



I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in which he eventually wound up in prison only to be released when the Kaiser abdicated (correctly went to jail when it came down to it once the government pulled the hammer down on his opposition), on some previous occasions. The key point to be taken away today, still applicable today as in America we are in the age of endless war, endless war appropriations and seemingly endless desires to racket up another war out of whole cloth every change some ill-begotten administration decides it needs to “show the colors”, one hundred years later in that still lonely and frustrating struggle to get politicians to oppose war budgets, to risk prison to choke off the flow of war materials.  



I have also made some special point in previous years about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, the “rose of the revolution.” About her always opposing the tendencies in her adopted party, the German Social-Democracy, toward reform and accommodation, her struggle to make her Polish party ready for revolutionary opportunities, her important contributions to Marxist theory and her willing to face and go to jail when she opposed the first World War.



This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find, and are in desperate need of a few good heroes, a few revolutionaries who contributed to both our theoretical understandings about the tasks of the international working class in the age of imperialism (the age, unfortunately, that we are still mired in) and to the importance of the organization question in the struggle for revolutionary power, to highlight the  struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, in order to define himself politically.

Below is a fourth sketch written as part of a series posted over several days before Lenin’s birthday on the American Left History blog starting on April 16^th (see archives) of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in the Russia of the Tsar toward the end of the 19^th century and early 20^th century which will help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and the ones that Lenin had to get a handle on.

*******

Ivan Smilga was sitting at the quay on the Neva River in Saint Petersburg forlorn, more forlorn than he had been since sometime in his early childhood when he found out that the land that he lived on did not actually belong to him, or rather did not belong to his father, and he had run out into the fields in rage, had not understood the almost feudal arrangement that his father had with landlord owner, including service by any sons in case of war decreed by the Tsar. He did not know much about that, didn’t care a fig about that military service part since he was well under any conscript age but he did rage that his father, every year his father never got ahead, never tired as well of talking about the miseries of his life that defeated any chance of his getting ahead on land that he continually said had been played out by the previous tenant, Tsachev. Still his father did nothing about it, not even when he had heard that some young people had come out from Moscow to organize them and instead threatened to turn them in if they dared step on “his land” (although in the end that organization effort came to naught since the city radicals had made the cardinal error of calling themselves intellectuals which set them apart as well as the fact that they, as was their wont in the cities, produced much literature which only a few like Ivan would have been able to read).

This day Ivan was forlorn because they had taken Elena off, off to Siberia a place he himself had known having served a two year sentence there a few years before for political crimes against the state, in short trying to kidnap state officials for ransom to get money and to make the point they could do the deed with impunity,   when he had ill-advisedly and against his common sense took up with a revolutionary cell in Moscow and had been “fingered” by one of the worker comrades to the Okhrana in order to cut his own sentence. Elena had been taken in for trying to organize a demonstration for a shorter work day and other more political rights (ten instead of twelve hours days and half a day on Saturday, the right to organize trade unions, the right to free speech, etc.) in front of the Winter Palace on New Year’s Day to bring in the new year, and the new century [1900].

The direct reason for Ivan’s agitated state was that he had become “engaged” to Elena and had come to depend on her for his emotional support. (This engagement thing was not the old-fashioned type involving dowries and exchanges but a “new-type” where that “engagement” signified that they had already slept together in anticipation of marriage, or in more advanced circles just slept together. Ivan and Elena were the former.)

Yes, the year 1899 had not been a good year for the left-wing political struggles in Russia. The Tsar and his ministers had determined to crush any opposition in the bud and so even the organizing of trade unions, illegal but semi-tolerated especially in the foreign concessions, had become a point of contention. Ivan and Elena had clashed many times over that question. Elena, after they had met, or rather had re-met having worked in Moscow together at the Smythe and Son textile factory, at the Putilov Iron Works where he was an apprentice blacksmith and she worked in the foundry, had been involved in a strike action in which Elena was a central figure that wound up getting a number of fellow workers back on the job after they had been fired. As a result of that victory the previously hesitant Ivan (hesitant due to that very trip to Siberia of his own and a desire not to go back and well as fears for Elena that had now come true) had met Elena “half-way” and worked with her on trade-union organizing issues. He would however have no truck with the broader issues, the question of democratic right when he would have to confront the state in a more direct manner. He had had enough of that. Besides he had come to think, under the influence of various liberal and radical thinkers who were popping up in the capital and who were making some sense to Ivan’s mind that if they, the workers, could just get more pay, less work, and some time off that things would be better. Let others, other, smarter people worry about the larger issues. That day to day struggle fight was all that could be expected and that was enough.

When Elena (and her fellow political workers, mainly students at Saint Petersburg University and radical workers from the Vyborg, the working class quarters) determined that trade union organizing was not enough and that the Tsar had to be confronted with the issue of democratic rights and a street demonstration Ivan had gone off in a fit, had left Elena alone for several days to stew outside Saint Petersburg. During that time Elena, a crackerjack organizer and also a very committed revolutionary, had organized the march set for New Year’s Day. On that day there was no turning back for her and her comrades. The minute they stepped off at noon they were surrounded by sabre-welding Cossacks and arrested. Before Ivan could get back to the city, before he could attempt once again to talk her out of the rash action she had been arrested and faced deportation to Siberia. That is why one Ivan Smilga was sitting before the Neva River forlorn. But that is also one reason why Ivan thought that maybe, just maybe Elena had been right, that the struggle for a better life for him and her, them might need some more thought on his part.      

Big Sky Country Before The Fall- Brad Pitt’s “ A River Runs Through It” (1992)-A Film Review

Big Sky Country Before The Fall- Brad Pitt’s “ A River Runs Through It” (1992)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

A River Runs Through It, starring Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer, Tom Skerrit, directed by Robert Redford, based on the memoir of writer Norman Maclean, 1992

There has been a substantial amount of talk around town of late about running the clock back to the so-called golden age of America when working stiffs had a chance to get ahead in the 1950s. Of course not all boats rose at that time, especially among blacks and white Appalachian hillbillies like my family who never even got close to the boat, but we will let that ride for now. If one really wanted to look at something like latter day Eden in the American experience then perhaps one needed to go West, go out to Big Sky country where they took their religion, their work ethic and their, uh, fly-fishing seriously in the early part of the twentieth century if the plot-line of this film under review Robert Redford’s adaptation (and narration) of Norman Maclean’s memoir A River Runs Through It.          

What this film looks at is a kinder, gentler time out among the big rocks and the fast running western rivers as seen through the eyes of Norman Maclean, played by Craig Sheffer, looking at his coming of age and growing up adventures along with his wilder younger brother Paul, played by younger wilder Brad Pitt, up against the stern Jehovah out of the wilderness father figure minister father, played by Tom Skerritt who took both his religion and his fly-fishing seriously. The early part of the film aside from serious breathe-taking looks at the Montana wilds involves the usual boys coming of age stuff including defying the cloying family home life  befit a minister’s sons. Later after some time away from college in the East Norman came back for a time before setting out for a career as a professor. In Cain and Abel fashion (without the murderous impulse) Paul stayed home, stayed in bedrock Podunk Montana working as a newspaperman after college but more to the point living the high life as a gambler, fist-fighter, heavy drinker and woman chaser, including having a Native American girlfriend (and just to prove that those times were perhaps a little less edenic for Native Americans she faces as much Anglo hostility as blacks faced in the that golden age 1950s).       

A lot of the latter part of the film dealt with the romance (and eventual marriage) of Norman and local belle, Jessie, played by Emily Lloyd, whose stand-off-ishness drove Norman crazy before he got his chance at a professor’s job at the University of Chicago and she agreed to marry the guy. It also dealt with the demise of Paul who seemed to have been stricken with the mark of Cain and was eventually murdered and left to die in some back ally for what could have been any number of reasons from serious gambling indebtedness to drinking to hanging around with Native American women. So maybe in the end the only thing idyllic back then were those beautiful rivers and the joy some took in fly-fishing against the hard realities of human existence. Excellent film though with a good ensemble cast and great cinematography. Robert Redford did good, did very good on this one. 

Once Again -Who Killed John F. Kennedy?-A Film Review-1988

Once Again -Who Killed John F. Kennedy?-A Film Review-1988

DVD REVIEW

By Frank Jackman 


The Men Who Killed Kennedy, 1988

Those of us who are interested in history often come across situations where we have to defend the notion that there are conspiracies in history but not all history is a conspiracy. In modern times, with the possible future exception of 9/11, the ‘mystery’ of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 has played into the hands of those who see history merely as a conspiracy. I have read more than my fair share of books on the subject, most recently the late Norman Mailer’s book on Oswald, and here I review a documentary from 1988 that, in essence, merely adds fuel to the fire of that controversy. At this remove however, in 2008, I think it is clear that the conspiracy mongers have had their day on the subject and have come up short. Not through lack of trying, though.

Given my leftward political trajectory since the time of the assassination one would think that I would be amenable to some theory of high-level governmental, corporate or criminal conspiracy. As a teenager I campaigned for Kennedy in 1960. I was shocked and dismayed by his murder, throwing away a political notebook that I kept and swearing off politics forever. That resolve obviously did not last long. I am, moreover, more than willing to believe that governmental officials, corporate officers and criminal masterminds are willing to do anything to keep their positions of power. However, it just does not wash here. Part of the problem is there are just too many theories to fit the facts.

The real problem with the various conspiracy theories is that they ask us to suspend disbelieve for their theories even greater than the botched up job that the Warren Commission provided. These theories inevitably work between the lines of that report.
I think the classic example in this documentary, that can stand for my opinion in general, is when one of the conspiracy theorists very calmly states his propositions about how the Warren Report botched things and then, as calmly cites four possible groups of conspirators who could have done the deed, anti-Castro Cubans, disgruntled CIA rogue elements, disgruntled militarists and Mafia-types. Well that narrows the field considerably, doesn’t it?

But here is the kicker- I am convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was capable of doing the murder by himself, that he did it and that he stands before history as having done it. Grand conspiracy theories that deny the role of the individual in history do so in this case for no apparent reason. That ‘theory’ may not be sexy enough for some but Oswald should have his fifteen minutes of fame. Unless someone produces the ‘smoking gun’ missing in all other theories-in short, a real named person (or persons) who did the deed let us leave it at that.

When Hammer Productions Pulled The Hammer Down-Cushing And Merill’s “Cash On Demand” (1961)-A Film Review

When Hammer Productions Pulled The Hammer Down-Cushing And Merill’s “Cash On Demand” (1961)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Cash On Demand, starring Peter Cushing, Andre Merill, 1961 

[Unlike some of the other writers, film reviewers at this publication who use this space, according to site manager Greg Green, to go off on tangents discussing everything but the film they are supposed to be reviewing I am using it to introduce myself. Hi-Sarah Lemoyne is my name and this is my first serious job in journalism after several years doing a little of this and of that while keeping myself alive as a barista at Starbucks. Greg hired me for now as a stringer which he, and all the older writers, tell me is the way that things work in this business. Leslie Dumont told me that when she was hired by Allan Jackson, the former site manager when this publication was a hard copy edition, a number of years ago before she got her by-line in Women Today she had not only been a stringer, meaning then that she got paid by the word but had written half of the film reviews that Sam Lowell got credit for in his by-line when he was drunk, doped up or off chasing some woman. Funny meeting him after what Leslie told me he seemed nice and certainly not a guy who would pilfer somebody else’s work but I still have a lot to learn.

That is really what I want to talk about, about learning things, as I work on my first assignment which Greg says will help broaden my horizons. I have been given the chance to review a block of six films, six black and white films from the 1950s and early 1960s put out through the Hammer Production Company in England and distributed in America by Columbia Pictures. I will admit that before this assignment came up I had never seen a black and white film (Greg told me to include this point). Since I started here Seth Garth has sat with me when we watched what he called a classic black and white film worthy of note from a period later than the 1940s and 1950s The Last Picture Show  starring Jeff Bridges whom I did know from the movie Crazy Hearts. I am not sure I like black and white film as a way to create a certain mood but like Greg says it will broaden my horizons and reviewing older films will allow me to learn from my mistakes without causing a whole lot of problems for him. Sarah Lemoyne]   

Seth Garth mentioned to me when I told him that my assignment was this Hammer Production series and that I had never seen a black and white film since I was born in 1988 that the Hammer operation was based on a low budget schedule using unknown British actors who would work on the cheap and getting the guys who wrote books to do the screenplay to save money on writing and production time. Still he seemed to think that dollar for dollar they have held up. His experience had been reviewing the monster and ghoul movies Hammer was famous for and an important film noir series which he had reviewed in this space a few years ago. With that advice, and mention that I should take it easy and not go crazy trying to think up some “cinematic studies” stuff to what he called “padding” the review, I worked my way through the first film Cash on Demand, I don’t think they spent much money on figuring snappy titles, which seemed a little weird a couple of times to make sure I got the plot right. (Seth also said if you are in trouble with a review just go heavy on the plot and characters which is what most readers want anyway which seemed like good advice.)  

Seth also said that everybody loves a con man, everybody except the person being conned and although I don’t agree with him the con man, the bank robber here seems to be what had Seth all in a dither when I told him the plot and was looking for advice about what everybody around here calls “the hook,” what you want the reader get out of your considered judgment of the merits of the film. This con man, a Colonel played by Andre Morell, posing as an insurance investigator has the uptight and strait-laced branch manager of a London bank, Harry Fordyce, played by Peter Cushing beside himself just before Christmas when he descended on the bank supposedly for an audit. Once the scene get reduced to a battle of wits between the two the Colonel lays out his plan, or rather his intention to rob the bank without firepower or visible accomplices. Lays it out so that Harry has no choice but to go along. The Colonel has buffaloed  Harry with the idea, complete with telephone conversation (which turned out to be tapes when the whole scam was exposed later), that his unseen accomplices were holding Harry’s wife and son hostage and would do them grievous bodily harm if he did not comply to the letter with the instruction being laid out to him.  

The Colonel’s “hook” was that Harry only and solely cared about his wife and child and despite every instinct he had learned as a banker and as an uptight person he went grudgingly along with the con, with the robbery of some 93, 000 pounds sterling which seems like a lot of money for the times and even today when I would be glad to have such a sum to get out from under my college tuition debt hanging over me. The Colonel had Harry in a box until it comes time to depart with the dough. Then everything broke loose although not to Harry’s liking because one of his employees has called the coppers when things didn’t seem to add up. The London coppers apparently so clever on the pursuit brought that the Colonel was brought back in handcuffs to confront his “confederate”-the perplexed Harry.

After a bit of sleight of hand Harry was angled into going to the police station to answer a lot of questions about why he shouldn’t be sitting in the cell next to the Colonel at Dartmoor prison. Chastised by the experience we are left with the implication that hereafter Harry will be better toward his fellows and a more stand-up man. I hope everybody is okay with the synopsis and that this little tale has some meaning about being less uptight in the world and filled a bit more with the milk of human kindness. First review done and hopefully accepted.       

*On The Anniversary Of The Beginning Of The American Civil War-"GLORY II"- ALL HONOR TO THE UNION ARMY'S 1ST SOUTH CAROLINA VOLUNTEERS

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the proudly stiff-necked abolitionist, Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

BOOK REVIEW

ARMY LIFE IN A BLACK REGIMENT, THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, BEACON PRESS, BOSTON, 1970

Those familiar with the critical role that the recruitment of black troops into the Union Armies in the American Civil War usually think about the famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment under Robert Gould Shaw which has received wide attention in book, film and sculpture. And those heroic fighters deserve those honors. Glory, indeed. However, other units were formed from other regions that are also noteworthy. And none more so than the 1st South Carolina Volunteers commanded by the arch-abolitionist Theodore Higginson one of John Brown’s fervent supporters and an early advocate of arming the slaves during the Civil War. He desperately wanted to lead armed blacks in the battle against slavery and got his wish.

I have remarked elsewhere (in a review of William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner)
that while the slaves in the South, for a host of reasons, did not insurrect with the intensity or frequency of say Haiti, the other West Indian islands or Brazil that when the time came to show discipline, courage and honor under arms that blacks would prove not inferior to whites. And Higginson's book is prima facie evidence for that position.

One should note that, unlike the Massachusetts 54th which was made up primarily of freedman the 1st South Carolina was made up of units of fugitive and abandoned slaves. Thus, one should have assumed that it would have been harder to train and discipline uneducated and much-abused slaves. Not so. After reading a number of books on the trials and tribulations of various Union regiments, including the famous Irish Brigade, the story Higginson tells compares very favorably with those units. While Higginson's use of ‘negro’ dialect in the telling of his story may not be to the liking of some of today’s ‘politically correct’ readers of this book it is nevertheless a story worth reading told by a ‘high’ abolitionist and Civil War hero.

On The 150th Anniversary Of The Beginning Of The American Civil War – Karl Marx On The American Civil War-In Honor Of The Union Side

Markin comment:

I am always amazed when I run into some younger leftists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. In the age of advanced imperialism, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we are almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And are always harping on the need to overthrow the system in order to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress. Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in our eyes. Read on.
****
Articles by Karl Marx in Die Presse 1861

The Opinion of the Newspapers and the Opinion of the People

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Source: MECW Volume 19, p. 127;
Written: December 25, 1861;
First published: in Die Presse, December 31, 1861.


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London, December 25
Continental politicians, who imagine that in the London press they possess a thermometer for the temper of the English people, inevitably draw false conclusions at the present moment. With the first news of the Trent case the English national pride flared up and the call for war with the United States resounded from almost all sections of society. The London press, on the other hand, affected moderation and even The Times doubted whether a casus belli existed at all. Whence this phenomenon? Palmerston was uncertain whether the Crown lawyers were in a position to contrive any legal pretext for war. For, a week and a half before the arrival of the La Plata at Southampton, agents of the Southern Confederacy had turned to the English Cabinet from Liverpool, denounced the intention of American cruisers to put out from English ports and intercept Messrs. Mason, Slidell, etc., on the high seas, and demanded the intervention of the English government. In accordance with the opinion of its Crown lawyers, the latter refused the request. Hence, in the beginning, the peaceful and moderate tone of the London press in contrast to the warlike impatience of the people. So soon, however, as the Crown lawyers — the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, both themselves members of the Cabinet — had worked out a technical pretext for a quarrel with the United States, the relationship between the people and the press turned into its opposite. The war fever increased in the press in the same measure as the war fever abated in the people. At the present moment a war with America is just as unpopular with all sections of the English people, the friends of cotton and the country squires excepted, as the war-howl in the press is overwhelming.

But now, consider the London press! At its head stands The Times, whose leading editor, Bob Lowe, was formerly a demagogue in Australia, where he agitated for separation from England. He is a subordinate member of the Cabinet, a kind of minister for education, and a mere creature of Palmerston. Punch is the court jester of The Times and transforms its sesquipedalia verba into flat jokes and spiritless caricatures. A principal editor of Punch was accommodated by Palmerston with a seat on the Board of Health and an annual salary of a thousand pounds sterling.

The Morning Post is in part Palmerston’s private property. Another part of this singular institution is sold to the French Embassy. The rest belongs to the haute volée and supplies the most precise reports for court flunkeys and ladies’ tailors. Among the English people the Morning Post is accordingly notorious as the Jenkins (the stock figure for the lackey) of the press.

The Morning Advertiser is the joint property of the “licensed victuallers”, that is, of the public houses, which, besides beer, may also sell spirits. It is, further, the organ of the English Pietists and ditto of the sporting characters, that is, of the people who make a business of horse-racing, betting, boxing and the like. The editor of this paper, Mr. Grant, previously employed as a stenographer by the newspapers and quite uneducated in a literary sense, has had the honour to get invited to Palmerston’s private soirees. Since then he has been enthusiastic for the “truly English minister” whom, on the outbreak of the Russian war, he had denounced as a “Russian agent”. It must be added that the pious patrons of this liquor-journal stand under the ruling rod of the Earl of Shaftesbury and that Shaftesbury is Palmerston’s son-in-law. Shaftesbury is the pope of the Low Churchmen,” who blend the spiritus sanctus with the profane spirit of the honest Advertiser.

The Morning Chronicle! Quantum mutatus ab illo! For well-nigh half a century the great organ of the Whig Party and the not unfortunate rival of The Times, its star paled after the Whig war. It went through metamorphoses of all sorts, turned itself into a penny paper and sought to live by “sensations”, thus, for example, by taking the side of the poisoner, Palmer. It subsequently sold itself to the French Embassy, which, however, soon regretted throwing away its money. It then threw itself into anti-Bonapartism, but with no better success. Finally, it found the long missing buyer in Messrs. Yancey and Mann — the agents of the Southern Confederacy in London.

The Daily Telegraph is the private property of a certain Levy. His paper is stigmatised by the English press itself as Palmerston’s mob paper. Besides this function it conducts a chronique scandaleuse. It is characteristic of this Telegraph that, on the arrival of the news about the Trent, by ordre from above it declared war to be impossible. In the dignity and moderation dictated to it, it seemed so strange to itself that since then it has published half-a-dozen articles about this instance of moderation and dignity displayed by it. As soon, however, as the ordre to change its line reached it, the Telegraph has sought to compensate itself for the constraint put upon it by outbawling all its comrades in howling loudly for war.

The Globe is the ministerial evening paper which receives official subsidies from all Whig ministries.

The Tory papers, The Morning Herald and The Evening Standard, both belonging to the same boutique, are governed by a double motive: on the one hand, hereditary hate for “the revolted English colonies"'; on the other band, a chronic ebb in their finances. They know that a war with America must shatter the present coalition Cabinet and pave the way for a Tory Cabinet. With the Tory Cabinet official subsidies for The Herald and The Standard would return. Accordingly, hungry wolves cannot howl louder for prey than these Tory papers for an American war with its ensuing shower of gold!

Of the London daily press, The Daily News and The Morning Star are the only papers left that are worth mentioning; both work counter to the trumpeters of war. The Daily News is restricted in its movement by a connection with Lord John Russell; The Morning Star (the organ of Bright and Cobden) is diminished in its influence by its character as a “peace-at-any-price paper”.

Most of the London weekly papers are mere echoes of the daily press, therefore overwhelmingly warlike. The Observer is in the ministry’s pay. The Saturday Review strives for esprit and believes it has attained it by affecting a cynical elevation above “humanitarian” prejudices. To show “esprit”, the corrupt lawyers, parsons and schoolmasters that write this paper have smirked their approbation of the slaveholders since the outbreak of the American Civil War. Naturally, they subsequently blew the war-trumpet with The Times. They are already drawing up plans of campaign against the United States displaying a hair-raising ignorance.

The Spectator, The Examiner and, particularly, MacMillan’s Magazine must be mentioned as more or less respectable exceptions.

One sees: On the whole, the London press — with the exception of the cotton organs, the provincial papers form a commendable contrast — represents nothing but Palmerston and again Palmerston. Palmerston wants war; the English people don’t want it. Imminent events will show who will win in this duel, Palmerston or the people. In any case, he is playing a more dangerous game than Louis Bonaparte at the beginning of 1859.

The Great Art Heist Caper-Carmen Diaz and Colin Firth’s “ Gambit” (2012)- A Film Review

The Great Art Heist Caper-Carmen Diaz and Colin Firth’s “ Gambit” (2012)- A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Gambit, starring Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz, Allan Rickman, 2012

Willie Sutton the great and legendary bank robber was reputed to have said (I assume when he was in police custody although who knows maybe he gave free-lance interviews on the fly) when asked why he robbed banks answered truly enough “that was where the money was.” Okay, but dear sweet Willie was an old-fashioned boy and while in his time that was the place to go to earn his daily living that mode of employment is now rather dangerous filled with sensors, wires and the 3^rd Marine Division, or so it seems. Moreover as the film under review The Gambit amply demonstrates there are more ways to heaven through guile, and through a choice piece in the international art market. That guile is important since there are basically two ways to acquire art and amass your fortune. That aforementioned guile which will drive the action in this film and a straight out heist into some museum overriding the security systems and such which is the stuff of more than one cinematic storyline. I like the second way quite a bit since I have been around long enough to have seen the masters of the profession at work in the famous, or infamous your choice, big rip-off at the Gardner Museum in Boston which to this day has the frames of the ripped off art work as painful reminders that those objects have never been recovered and the police and others are still scratching their heads on that one.

The guile strategy does have its good points though especially if you have a ready buyer and you have an enflamed unscrupulous individual wealthy, wealthy these days meaning a billionaire or one who has access to billions. Especially when it is an inside job, a comeuppance inside job. The average person probably does not know it since the very rich in Scotty Fitzgerald’s famous aphorism are different, very different from you and me but high end art collectors can put art experts on their payrolls without thinking about it. A wise investment when you think about it guarding against fakes and frauds and tax deductible too. That is the case here with hired gun art expert Deane, played by Colin Firth who is out to bamboozle an ugly rich and nude everyman billionaire do we really need to know names, played by the villainous late British actor Alan Rickman.

This is how this caper played out and you really have to admire it even if your heart is with those Gardner master thieves. Claude Monet, the max daddy Impressionist, painted a couple of haystacks out in the French countryside in the 1890s, one at dawn the other at dusk. The “at dawn” one money bags already has but the other “at dusk” had a long and troubled history including being part of German Nazi Goring’s private collection and supposedly  subsequently when the Reich fell down in poor Podunk, Texas in the hands of the guy who grabbed it when the Nazi went down. Or rather to complete the key ensemble, his granddaughter PJ now, played by Cameron Diaz, a true cowgirl in the sand.

Deane’s play is to convince the dear Lord that the Texas Monet is legitimate and enlists PJ in the caper to add the final touch to the also lecherous Lord. The caper goes through a bunch of perhaps unnecessary pratfalls once PJ hits London in order to get her claws into the Lord, get them in good so he buys the story, takes the bait. Which he does. This is the beauty of the play though. Deane had his confederate master art forger paint two Monets-dawn and dusk and through a series of flimflam maneuvers is able to substitute a fake “dawn” for the real one in the Lord’s possession while claiming the dusk one is a fake (which it is of course). Deane sells the real “dawn” to a Japanese competitor of the Lord’s for a cool ten million-pounds (pre-Brexit). Nice play-and PJ gets a big cut too before heading back to Podunk, Texas. I wonder if the dear Lord is interested in a Rembrandt self-portrait–cheap at the price.