On The 50th Anniversary Of The Passing Of The “King Of The Beats” -Ti Jean Kerouac-A Series Of Appreciations-

On The 50^th Anniversary Of The Passing Of The “King Of The Beats” -Ti Jean Kerouac-A Series Of Appreciations-  

By Contributing Editor Allan Jackson

For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50^th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies"

By Lance Lawrence

[In the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admit that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we could see out in the National Mall and later Greenwich Village night.

This piece first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers, a younger group according to the demographics provided to me by the advertising department when I was trying to figure out where the thing got lost in the fog. Some readers thought because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. Some readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.

There were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of society. Jack Weir because of some West Coast references. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope. All wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him when he went under the ground. Lance Lawrence]

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I have seen the best poet of the generation before mine declare that he had seen that the best minds of his generation had turned to mush, turned out in the barren wilderness from which no one returned except for quick stays in safe haven mental asylums. Saw the same Negro streets he saw around Blue Hill Avenue and Dudley Street blank and wasted in the sweated fetid humid Thunderbird-lushed night (and every hobo, vagrant, escapee, drifter and grafter yelling out in unison ‘what is the word-Thunderbird-what is the price forty twice” and ready to jackroll some senior citizen lady for the price-ready to commit mayhem at Park Street subway stations for their “boy,” to be tamped by girl but I will be discrete since the Feds might raid the place sometime looking for the ghost of Trigger Burke who eluded them for a very long time. Thought that those angel-headed hipsters, those hep cats hanging around Times, Lafayette, Dupont, Harvard squares) crying in pools of blood coming out of the wolves-stained sewers around the black corner would never stop bleating for their liquor, stop until they got popular and headed for the sallow lights of Harvard Square where they hustled young college students, young impressionable college students whose parents had had their best minds wasted in the turbid streets of south Long Island (not the West Egg of Gatsby’s dream of conquering everything in sight like any other poor-boy arriviste with too much money and not enough imagination and not East Egg of the fervid elites but anytown, Levitttown of those who would escape to Boston or Wisconsin to face the angel of death up front and say no go, pass, under luminous moons which light up sparks and say to that candid world which could have given a fuck hard times please come again no more.

Saw hipsters cadging wine drinks from sullen co-eds staying out too late in the Harvard Square night who turned out to be slumming from some plebian colleges across the river maybe good Irish girls from frail Catholic parishes with rosaries in their fair-skinned hands and a novena book between their knees who nevertheless has Protestant lusts in their pallid hearts but unrequited (here’s how-they would arrive at the Café Lana with ten bucks and their virginity and leave with both and some guy with dreams of salty sucking blowjobs walking out the backdoor and doing the whack job behind the dumpster –a waste of precious fluids and according to Norman Mailer world-historic fucks which would product the best minds of the next generation all dribbled away). Maybe tasty Jewish girls from the shtetl in not East or West Egg who flocked to the other side of the river and gave Irish guys who previously had dribbled their spunk behind dumpsters after losing out to ten bucks and virginity in tack tickey-tack Catholic girls who refused to give that head that would have brought some of best mind some freaking relief (better not say fucking relief because that would be oxymoronic). Maybe some sullen fair-skinned and blonded Protestant girls who spouted something about one god and no trinities, no god and no trinities and just feel good stuff. All three varieties and yes there were more but who knew of Quakers, Mennonites, lusty Amish girls run away from home, Tantic card-wheelers, and fresh- faced red light district sluts who at least played the game straight-played the cash nexus for pure pleasure and maybe to even up some scores. All-Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, yeah, Quakers (fakirs, fakers and Shakers included), the sluts, Mennonites and yes those lusty red-faced Amish runaways all coming together after midnight far from the negro streets but not far from the all night hustlers and dime store hipsters with their cigar store rings and cheap Irish whiskeys bought on the installment plan who converged around the Hayes-Bickford just a seven league jump from the old end of the line dead of night Redline subway stop in order to keep the angel of death at arms’ length. There to listen until dawn to homosexuality affixed hungry for the keyhole blast or the running sperm fakir poets and slamming singsters fresh out of cheapjack coffeehouses where three chords and two- line rhymes got you all the action you wanted although maybe a little light on the breadbasket sent around to show that you were appreciated. Yeah, now that I think about the matter more closely hard times please come again no more.                    

Saw the angel of death make her appearance one night at the Café Lana and then backstopped the Club Nana to fetch one young thing who warbled like heaven’s own angel. Hipster turned her on to a little sister and the some boy and she no longer warbled but did sweet candy cane tricks for high-end businessmen with homely wives or fruitless ones who had given up that sort of “thing” after the third junior had been born and who were ready to make her his mistress if she would just stop singing kumbaya after every fuck like she was still a freaking warbler, a freaking virgin or something instead of “used” goods or maybe schoolboys whose older brothers took them to her for their first fling at going around the world, welcome to the brotherhood or maybe some old fart who just wanted to relive his dreams before the booze, the three wives and parcel of kids did him in and then the hustler sent her back to the Club Nana to “score” from the club owner who was connected with Nick the dream doper man, the Christ who would get him- and her well –on those mean angel-abandoned death watch streets but who knew that one night at the Hayes (everybody called it just that after they had been there one night, one after midnight night where they had that first cup of weak-kneed coffee replenished to keep a place in the scoreboarded night where hari-kara poets dreamed toke dreams and some Mister dreamed of fresh-faced singer girls looking for kicks. So please, please, hard times come again no more.              

I have seen frosted lemon trees jammed against the ferrous night, the night of silly foolish childhood dreams and misunderstanding about the world, the world that that poet spoke of in a teenage dream of indefinite duration about who was to have who was to have not once those minds were de-melted and made hip  to the tragedies of life, the close call with the mental house that awaits us all.

By Lance Lawrence

Sometimes you just cannot win. Sometimes you just let it pass and other times as now anything less than incarceration or the bastinado will not permit me to say some words on a subject that I care about. Attentive readers of Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s or its sister publication where such material is something like syndicated know that I, and most of the older writers here and for that matter other publications who grew up in the 1950s have some relationship to “the Beats” to Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg above but lesser lights stationed in North Beach, San Francisco and Greenwich Village, New York City and other sullen outposts. Know that although we were way too young or too interested in our generation’s salvation-rock and roll music-to be washed clean by the Beats that by some process of osmosis we picked up some of the ideas, words, be-bop, lust, homosexual slang, road terminology. Courtesy of Jack Kerouac and the crowd whether he accepted the honorific “King of the Beats” or like Bob Dylan dubbed by the mass media always looking for a hook “King of the Folkies” for the next generation, the folkie-hippie counterculture abdicated.        

Personally, and I have the scars and restless writerly nights to prove it, I was very second-wave influenced by Kerouac and not only by his most famous book, bible really when the time for such things was ripe, On The Road. Maybe less that books like Big Sur which got me to Todo el Mundo just south of Big Sur and some wild escapades and near fatal escapes toked to the gills on weed or whatever came through the very open door. Influences which have made it natural to recount some of those adventures in print of one sort or another. Natural as well this 50^th anniversary year since Jack Kerouac’s death in 1969 to make a big deal out of that milestone. To write some fresh material as below or to republish some older material. And not just memories of Kerouac’s influence but what I called in one article the “assistant king of the beats” Allan Ginsburg.    

That is where the sometimes you can’t win comes in and the have to “speak to the issue” rears its head as well. Recently both to acknowledge the 50^th anniversary of Kerouac’s passing and to honor Allan Ginsburg’s as well I had an article Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall originally published in Poetry Today in 1997 republished in several publications under the title For Ti Jean Kerouac On The 50^th Anniversary Of His Death And The “Assistant King Of The Beats” Allan Ginsberg-Hard Rain’s A Going To Fall With Kudos To Bob Dylan “King Of The Folkies."   

In a new introduction to the piece I mentioned that in the interest of today’s endless pursue of transparency which in many cases covers up the real deal with a few fake pieces of fluff admitted that I knew Jack Kerouac’s daughter, his now late daughter whom he never recognized for whatever cramped reason and which took its toll on her with an also early death, met out in Todo el Mundo south of Big Sur off the famous Pacific Coast Highway. Those were the fast and loose days when everybody wanted to be out somewhere around Big Sur and one day I happened to be in The Lost Way restaurant (now still open under another name serving wholesome food unlike the burgers and fries and beer that sustained us then) and somebody mentioned that Jack’s daughter, unacknowledged daughter as I said, Jan was sitting a few tables away having as I learned later from her had just come from  Pfeiffer Beach which played a role in a few of Jacks’ books. One thing led to another and we wound up taking Jan with us to our digs (house) in Todo el Mundo several miles away.    

That simple fact has now led in 2019 to some fool, a fool with a name very familiar in the age of the Internet of Anonymous, to assume without proof that Jan and I, or Jan and somebody in the house were having an affair, and most probably me. The only “proof” given, maybe asserted is better was that a guy by the name of Johnny Spain told him that he had been there at our house when Jan came tumbling and that we had a party for about four days when booze, sex, and drugs flowed freely. I knew Johnny Spain back in those days so that part is real. He was on the run from the coppers for either drug possession or for assault I forget which since we had a few such characters some our way and as we were not fond of the coppers then, maybe not now either we gave him shelter. Johnny probably saw many things as he imbibed in whatever was around the place, but he would not have seen me hanging with Jan. Simple reason: one Carol Riley forever known as Butterfly Swirl in those times when many of us, including me the Duke of Earl (yes from the 1950s hit single), were carrying monikers to reflect our new-found freedoms was slumming from her perfect wave boyfriend existence down in Carlsbad in the days before young women took to the surf themselves and had come north to see what was happening. Butterfly was very possessive which I didn’t mind but would have ditched me and/or has it out with Jan if we had been having an affair. End of story, well, not quite the end Butterfly returned to Carol and her perfect wave surfer before long after finding out “what was what.”          

This is really where my real ire is hanging though. In that same introduction I mentioned that I also knew Allan Ginsburg in his om-ish days long before he became a professor when we fired up more than one blunt (marijuana cigarette for those who are clueless or use another term for the stick) to see what we could see out in the D.C. National Mall and later Greenwich Village night. Like I said that piece which formed the basis for republication first appeared in Poetry Today shortly after Allan Ginsburg’s Father Death death and caused a great deal of confusion among the readers. I gave a few examples of what went awry in the responses. Some readers thought because I mentioned the word “cat” I was paying homage to T.S. Eliot generally recognized in pre-Beat times as the ultimate modernist poet. That reference actually referred to “hep cats” as in a slang expression from the 1940s and 1950s before Beat went into high gear not a cat. In any case there was no way the staid and high Victorian sensibilities Eliot would know anything about the bohemia of his day except maybe knowing some bonkers Bloomsbury cadre. One would be totally remiss to call him the max daddy of anything as I did in my homage.

Some readers, and I really was scratching my head over this one since this was published in a poetry magazine for aficionados and not for some dinky survey freshman college English class, that because I mentioned the word “homosexual” and some jargon associated with that sexual orientation when everybody was “in the closet” except maybe Allan Ginsburg thought I was referring W.H. Auden. Jesus, Auden, a great poet no question if not a brave one slinking off to America when things got too hot in his beloved England in September 1939 and a self-confessed homosexual in the days when that was dangerous to declare in late Victorian public morality England especially after what happened to Oscar Wilde when they pulled down the hammer was hardly the only homosexual possibility despite his game of claiming every good-looking guy for what he called the Homintern. Frankly I didn’t personally think anybody even read him anymore once the Beats be-bopped.

There were a few others who were presented as the person I was championing. James Lawson because some of his exploits were similar to the ones I described but those events were hardly rare in the burned over 1950s down in the mud of society. The flight from downtrodden home life made worse by plodding square parents whose dreams for their off-spring were life-deadening civil servant jobs although admittedly a step up from the dregs down at the working poor base of society.  Jack Weir because of some West Coast references, the usual suspects North Beach, Big Sur, Todo el Mundo (where Allan Ginsburg never went or never went while I was there, Fillmore Street dreams and drugs, the inevitable Golden Gate reference. Jeffery Stein, the poet of the new age shtetl because of the dope and self-identification with the downtrodden and the caged inmates at the mental hospitals which he frequented more times than he liked to admit.

All wrong. That poet had a name an honored name Allan Ginsburg who howled in the night at the oddness and injustice of the world after saying Kaddish to his mother’s memory and not be confused with this bag of bones rough crowd readership who refused to learn from the silly bastard. This piece was, is for ALLAN GINSBURG who wrote for Carl Solomon in his hours of sorrow just before he went under the knife and I for him, for Allan the sad day when he went under the ground.

That all was twenty some years ago and while those readers responses were stone-cold crazy they at least had the virtue of ignorance since I did not mention the name Allan Ginsburg in the title nor in the piece. Frankly I did not think I had to do so. What, however, is to be made of readers in 2019 who I assume had read my introduction and its named poet in bold print who still believe that I am referring to some other poet, some of them pretty obscure and old school which makes me think these readers were maybe college freshman survey course takers. I won’t go through them all since unlike 1997 where one actually had to write and mail with proper postage whatever was on their minds today they can just flail away and done so many more responses showed up at my in-box.

Here are today’s scratching my head entries. What Sam Lowell a fellow writer here has seen it all in his forty plus years as a film critic calls trolls since they are tied to alternate facts and more importantly whatever they have on their minds, if that is what they have. Maybe they just don’t read introductions or are among the dwindling few who still take umbrage that someone would tout the virtuous of long-time known homosexual when everybody else has moved on, has bought into a very sensible idea that it is nobody else’s business who you love-and now wed. So a few of the rabid went along that line but rather than grab onto Ginsburg have assumed that I was writing about Walt Whitman, since I mentioned the grand civil war and the fate of boys and men including a semi-erotic paean to Abe Lincoln. Of course they got that wrong since Whitman’s ode to Lincoln Oh Captain, My Captain is one of the few truly chaste and un-coded poems he wrote. But that is a classic example of this troll contingent’s faking reality to suit some odd-ball political agenda from we should all run like hell.

It only got worse after Greg Green, site manager for the on-line publications here who in the old hard copy days would have been called the editor, started publishing some of the e-mails which only fueled the flames. Declared open season on reason until on advice of wise Sam Lowell mentioned above who chairs the Editorial Board that sits to clamp down on an editor’s more off-the-wall decisions. To continue a vague off-hand reference to the various Eggs off Long Island Sound got one F. Scott Fitzgerald the brass ring mainly so that Jay Gatsby could be extolled as the upwardly mobile paragon of American virtue for a new century (that is exactly what was said if you can believe that since in the unlamented Jazz Age except for the jazz Jay got himself shot and dumped in some coal bin.) A couple more to make my point since I suddenly realized that to even present these holy goofs, an expression learned at the feet of one Jack Kerouac who had I believe more talented types in mind, but the expression just popped out at me. Yeats, Yeats of all poets drew some fan-dom based on talk of Irish girls losing their virtues in sullen Cape Cod gin mills. How that goes with muse Maude Gonne escapes me. Finally, and at least this person had some literary sense he thought because I mentioned Time Square hipsters, drifters and grifters waking up in sullen midnight sweats looking for some savior not the Lord fixer man to get them well and ready to do an occasional soft-core armed robbery or jack-roll (I was impressed with the sue of that term since nobody uses that expression for a very old trick of taking a slender club or maybe a roll of fisted quarters and bopping some drunk or old lady for their ready cash I was speaking of one Gregory Corso the bandit-poet. Sorry I was reaching for the big Howl and Kaddish master and beautiful lumpen dream Corso was a secondary player back in those long-gone daddy days. Enough. Lance Lawrence]

[Back in 2007 and then in 2017 when we commemorated the 50^th and 60^th anniversaries respectively of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s landmark travel book of a different kind On The Road which ignited a generation maybe two to “hit the road” I was the site manager, then called general editor, a throw-back from the times when American Left History was a hard copy publication. At those times I had been re-reading a series of Ti Jean’s books after senior writer Sam Lowell had pointed out to me that the previous years had been the 50^th and 60^th anniversaries respectively of fellow Jack “beat” brother Allan Ginsberg’s landmark poem (really screed) Howl which for a while took poetry into a different direction which we had neglected to commemorate (and which we did belatedly). Now Sam has again reminded that we have come to a certain commemoration date, the 50^th anniversary of the death of Jack Kerouac and we are again in need of evaluation, no, re-evaluating the place of his work, his place as “king of the beats” whether than title fits or not and his place in the sun.    

Of course on those prior occasions I could assign whatever I wanted to whomever I wanted since I was the person who was handing out the assignments. Now after a prolonged internal fight in which I was deposed and sent into “exile” I am back but solely as a contributing editor, not as the person handing out assignments. That task is now in the capable hands of one Greg Green whom I knew over at American Film Gazette many years ago and had brought over a couple of years ago to run the day to day operation here. Greg and I have had our ups and downs especially after I was in desperate straits when I was sent into exile and had no current source of income and had to depend “on the kindnesses of strangers.” But that is past and since I was instrumental in the previous commemorations Greg decided that I should as with a couple of other major projects that I have done since my return oversee the Kerouac death watch this year.   

Needless to say, since this dark cloud anniversary is upon us I have to do a new introduction, a setting of the tone. One thing that I was not able to do when I was overseeing the previous commemorations was to write about something that has haunted me for a long time-how different Jack’s experiences were from those of my parents, from any Acre neighborhood parents despite some very strong similarities between the way he grew up and the way they did. In short they were near contemporaries having all been born and raised in the 1920s and forward. Nevertheless they could not have been more different in their lifestyles and life dreams. It would take their son, and their son’s generation to at least momentarily connect with the older man and what he brought to the table. Maybe the link between “beat” and “hippie” was tenuous, but it was there, and is there fifty years after his passing to the unsettled grave. That will be the thread that runs through this new series. Adieu, Ti Jean.     

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Jack fifty tears, fifty years gone in some bastard grave in holy, holy, holy Edson Merrimack River ground busted asunder by holy goofs looking for timely relics, looking for that one word which would spring them into some pantheon, some parity with the king (we will not even mention that other king that animated our dreams for we now speak of parent, parent of class of ’68 dream. Funny non-Catholic ground Lowell given his deep sea dive to right his ship around the beatitudes that the class of ’68 left in the shade if you wished to know. Mere turning in her old Quebec come down to the textile mills from desolate turn of the century farms which gave to the bloody English overlords, another common sticking point against heathen English overrunning the small patch farms with enclosures and encumbered debts devotion grave, with the times out of sorts the young passing before ancient hatreds mother. Not a stranger come the end on Hard Rock Mountain and no place but some stinking trailer benny and that fucking crucifix that never helped anybody that far gone into the haze.

Not strange for assuredly lapsed Catholic cum Buddha swings devotee coming out of Desolation Mountain, Dharma bum frills and assorted other spiritual trips, (won’t even think about that black boy, and he was just a boy, who against some grandmother dreads blew the high white note out to the China Seas, via, well, via Frisco Bay drove the writing, the what, the unvarnished truth  until it drove him into the ground. That and those endless whiskeys and cheap Thunderbird wines when dimes were scarce a few times down on his luck cadging wino bottles from buying for underaged kids, with his bottle the kicker and what the hell if he didn’t go it, didn’t get his some sterno junkie would dip into Salvation Army surplus and the thirst was great. Not “his” thirst but “the” thirst and don’t mix the two up buddy as he told that straggly bearded kid, some hippie bastard from Omaha clueless about the decadent night which lie ahead, the compromises too.

Strangely bisected, fuck finally my real point (another luxury of not having to be general editor with parsing and editing to make “nice” for the academic journals which thrive, which throttle on  Jack’s sputum and can get down in the mud with the real critics like Artie Shaw and Bugs Malone and not worry about half-ablaze in the head, half fire in the head Patti Griffin called it once),  through my own parents too who had no idea of hip, no idea of “beat,” except maybe mother in beatitude but that is a different story, a story about common roots high holy day Catholic stuff. Another common point, emerged in veiled tears, speaking of tears, to rear their ugly heads come feast days. (Wondering if her, their fairy sons would see the light, would submit to the calling that every grandmother hoped without saying leaving it to transient daughters to do their own parsing. Father no hipster born to the hills and hollows which hallowed by memory played no part in big boom beat-beat time coming out of World War II like houses on fire. No speedy cross-country by 1947 Hudson (hell no car a public transportation might as well say welfare crude bum and fuck that is all a guy like that deserved.) With big ideas of shaking things up, making merry with the always with us squares and other geometric forms. Jesus the worst part knowing that they knew not of square or any other geometric dreams. Too bad, too bad when they chance came around and the call went out looking for junkie hipsters, con men and queers hanging around public toilets on Seventh Avenue in New York City.  

No Dean Moriarty, hell call a thing by its right name, no Max Fame, no Allan Ginsberg, no Kenneth Rexforth, no Hank James, or his brother William speaking in tongues trying to figure what a guy named Freud meant when he wanted to go where his mother lived, after killing cosmic fathers and brothers, no Gregory Corso, no John three names somebody a throwback to ancient Boston Brahmin bouts with legitimacy speaking of bastards, trace the genealogy back to Mayfair swells days, nothing for the bastard who is bothering one Laura Perkins who I have been sweet on for an eternity but who only has eyes for Sam Lowell about her sexy takes on serious 19^th century artist who were as capable of going down into the mud, blowing some high white note out in the Japan seas for a change. Above all no Neal Cassidy, no fake Dean Moriarty to skirt the libel laws with wives and mistresses searching for vagrant unknown fathers in some dusty coal bins but a poor old good old boy and maybe in another time said Dean, Adonis Dean against Father Sheik, would have wandered out in the cowboy West night looking for drunken fathers with hip-ness but that was not the play, not at all. Father Sheik coming like a bat out of hell from those hazardous coal bins looking to break the eternal hills and hollows existence that plagued his fathers since the time the first clan were cast out of England for stealing pigs or consorting with them in any case with not unfamiliar family refrain of “leave, or the gallows,” such were the tempers of the times.

And Father Sheik, hell, Adonis Dean too, with no way out except that passport via some Nippon adventure over Pearl always Pearl nothing else needed and he off to Pacific battles and raiments. Jack to the North Seas and merchant marine bunks with odd-ball seasick sailors (and me wondering whether having looked of late at YouTube should attribute my borrowed words but the hell with it plenty of seasick sailors had nothing to do with YouTube or song lyrics). And forsaken Dean too young to know the face of battles hung up in reformatory secret vices which an earlier generation (and later ones too) would “dare not speak their names” (Catamite, Sodomite, homosexual, pug ugly, suck-head, your call.) How quaint.

Two years and two places do make a different no Bette Davis eyes in the hills and hollows but Jack-induced Merrimack adventures of boys seeking pleasures in riverside woods and hamming it up for all the world to see. If only the old man could have written out his dreams, if he could have written out anything. Jack to the library born to take his fill of whatever classics that river textile town had to offer and whiskey you’re the devil which should have given even a blinded son something to think about with dear Jack fifty years dead and the old man still trembling in his teeth. My God.

But he never made, he the old man never made New York ever as far as I could tell, knew none but obvious landmarks like tall Empire State Building or Lady Liberty. Mother Jacked on some Cape Cod Canal cutaway small steamer to the Big Apple (not Big Apple then but who knows) and Automats, evoking Laura’s Edward Hopper sad-assed dreams of a guy who couldn’t even draw smiling faces and hence the queen of 20^th century angst and alienation and five cent ferry rides to Staten Island. The Village, okay for me to call it Village as I was a denizen once for Jack too might as well have been on some planet’s moon for all she knew-him too, too rich for his blood but Jack’s meat, no problem. Even if strangely Times Square hipsters, grifters, drifters and Howard Johnson hot dog eaters were mixed into the new wave, then new wave against Big Band Duke, Artie, Lionel jazz boys coming up with their sullen lipped riffs to spring a new alienated be-bop on the square world. Jack knew square, knew father square, knew mother, Mere, square in large letters of unrequited love but shook it off long enough to cross the great desert America giving Lady Liberty the boot, the un-shod sole, or maybe taking a cue from Jack book lamming it out on Bear Mountain just for the hell of it. But this old mother, not Mere mother, never knew, never had an idea of even in her big Catholic, Irish Catholic dream of meeting the boy next door and finding steady white-collar civil servant heaven. Jesus is that what she was about when the deal went down and Jack split for Ohio with two bucks and six bologna sandwiches stale well before Toledo believe me I know.             

Life took a different tact though she never found that clever test-worthy boy next door (he was some greaser with a big hog of a bike which would have inflamed Dean, would have gotten his wanting habits on and maybe a run to the Coast). So she having had her fill of Coney Island dreams and Automat five cent pies took a chance on the Sheik (strange on looking at Jack photographs how sheik-like our boy was and father too like some lost tribe members) found guarding the country’s defense not far from her home but he of Pacific wars, many with manly Marines. Jack flopped the Navy but did dangerous merchant marine runs out in the North Atlantic, out to the Murmansk seas (that makes three China and Japan alongside) not honored even in Washington until much later down in front of Arlington National bravos resting places. And a not so funny twist of sagging fate brought her dish loads of kids and some undefined alienation from which she was excluded, and he too by association. They didn’t prosper far from it but they also didn’t have that run, no, those runs, to the West looking for lost fathers, looking for the Adonis of the West to shake up his love. Could two worlds be any more different and only about say forty miles apart. That not a question but maybe a quiet condemnation for some woe-begotten life of quiet desperation, her mantra for all the good it did her.

It would take a son, some son, some great girth of sons and daughters to jailbreak, to Jack their ways out of that parent, remember their parents’ contemporary, that snare set for those who didn’t get to Times Square, didn’t get to the Village but stuck it out in Hoboken, Elko, Oceanside. It would take some unsettled sense that all was not right with the world, that too many kids were stuck with Modesto hot-rod dreams, Hell’s Angels angers, Louisville thwarts, and many La Jolla searches for perfect waves to jumpstart what Jack, and not just Jack but he is fifty tears, fifty years gone. Oh, what might have been. 

France’s New Caledonia Colony Independence for Kanaky! For a Workers and Peasants Government Centered on the Kanak People! Part One The following is the first part of an article translated from le Bolchévik No. 226 (December 2018), newspaper of our comrades of the Ligue trotskyste de France, with two minor factual corrections regarding French imperialist machinations in Ivory Coast.

Workers Vanguard No. 1154	3 May 2019

France’s New Caledonia Colony

Independence for Kanaky!

For a Workers and Peasants Government Centered on the Kanak People!

Part One

The following is the first part of an article translated from le Bolchévik No. 226 (December 2018), newspaper of our comrades of the Ligue trotskyste de France, with two minor factual corrections regarding French imperialist machinations in Ivory Coast.

The referendum held on November 4 in New Caledonia resulted in a win for the “no” vote on independence, but with a majority of less than 57 percent. This was a rude awakening for the loyalist partisans of France, who were counting on 10 or 20 percent more. The struggle for independence, which had been put on hold for 30 years prior to this referendum, has been re-ignited due to the narrow margin of the loyalist victory.

Kanak youth, who were said to be indifferent or even increasingly pro-France, in reality mobilized en masse to vote for independence. The lower voter turnout in the Loyalty Islands, which are overwhelmingly pro-independence, shows that some of the Kanak population abstained, not due to indifference but because they justifiably had little faith in the sincerity of a ballot organized by the colonial power. The principal Kanak union, the Federation of Unions of Kanak and Exploited Workers (USTKE), which is well established in the Loyalty Islands, called for non-participation in the ballot because of this.

This referendum marks another dark page for the French left on the colonial question: to our knowledge we are the only ones to have taken a position in favor of a “yes” vote on independence before the referendum. We reprint below, edited for publication, the speech by our comrade Alexis Henri at the October 25 Paris meeting of the Ligue trotskyste de France, in which he showed how LO [Lutte ouvrière, a prominent reformist group in France] distinguished themselves by their hypocrisy and hostility to independence.

LO found themselves to the right of the French Communist Party (PCF), which did express some sympathy for the indépendantistes, even though, as is usual for them, this was mostly for the purpose of promoting a “fair” neocolonial policy from the “country of the Rights of Man.” They wrote that if the “yes” vote were to win, “Our country [France] will also have to define financial relations with the new nation and a close and respectful partnership permitting the economic and social development of the territory-nation” (PCF Declaration, 30 October 2018).

The POID [Democratic Independent Workers Party, disciples of the late pseudo-Trotskyist Pierre Lambert] dodged the question by hiding behind the USTKE. As for the New Anti-Capitalist Party, they took advantage of the differences on the referendum between the USTKE and the other indépendantistes, who were advocating a “yes” vote, to declare: “It isn’t up to us to decide for the Kanak, either about their future or their attitude to the referendum” (l’Anticapitaliste, 25 October 2018). With such a “vanguard,” the Kanak don’t need a rear guard! In contrast, we Trotskyists struggle to mobilize the working class, both here and there, to wrest Kanaky’s independence from the claws of French imperialism, and to forge a revolutionary Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party.

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Dear comrades and friends, on November 4 a referendum will be held in Kanaky on the question: “Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?” Unlike the referendum of 1988, which was tied to the approval or not of a new colonial statute, this time the question is clearly posed and our call is to vote “yes.” Even if the “no” vote wins, we base ourselves on the Kanak struggle of more than a century and a half against French occupation in order to make a clear call for immediate independence, whatever the outcome of this referendum and subsequent ones planned for 2020 and 2022. We are for driving French imperialism completely out of the Pacific.

Independence would be an enormous step forward for the Kanak people and all the workers and oppressed of this archipelago. It would be a defeat for French imperialism, and therefore favorable for the class struggle here in France. The most eloquent precedent in this regard is Algerian independence, which opened the way for [the pre-revolutionary events of] May ’68, as we explained in le Bolchévik (No. 225, September 2018).

At the same time, we are very aware that independence alone is not sufficient to emancipate Kanaky from imperialist capitalist domination and oppression. We can see how French imperialism today continues to look for ways to “punish” neighboring Vanuatu (formerly “New Hebrides”) for having freed itself from the direct tutelage of France and Britain in 1980.

This is why our perspective for Kanaky is for a workers and peasants government centered on the Kanak people. Such a government would be very conscious of the vital need to extend the revolution to the imperialist centers of the Pacific—that is to say, Australia, Japan and the United States—as well as the former French colonial power. This is the perspective of Trotsky’s permanent revolution.

Kanak People’s History of Anti-Colonial Struggle

The Kanak people have hardly ever stopped struggling against the occupation of their country by French forces. The “taking possession” of the island in 1853 was marked by innumerable revolts over the years, generally drowned in blood. Of particular note was the revolt of 1878, led by Great Chief Ataï, which halted the colonists’ land-grabbing for more than 15 years.

Louise Michel, one of the surviving heroes of the Paris Commune of 1871, who had been deported to New Caledonia, famously solidarized with the revolt. We have to insist on the point that she was quite alone in this at the time. The French workers movement, which was just beginning to revive itself after the massacre of the Communards, has a sordid history on the colonial question, except for the period of the early Communist Party in the 1920s, which was born out of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. I will return shortly to this question, including to the LTF’s own serious deviations during the 1980s.

The French state profited from each defeat of the Kanak, carrying out new massacres and seizing the land of those they defeated. They took practically all the coastal plains and valleys to gradually “confine” the Kanak in “reserves” made up of the most mountainous and infertile lands, barely 8 percent of the area of Grande Terre [the main island].

In April 1917, a new revolt broke out in the North of the country, specifically against conscription for the [World War I] European battlefields. Once more, the French colonial troops carried the day. Around 300 Kanak were killed. In the 1920s, forced labor, which was already in effect throughout the French colonial empire, was systematized in Kanaky.

At the end of the 1920s, after three-quarters of a century of France’s “civilizing mission,” the Kanak population was half, or even by some estimates a quarter, of what it had been a century earlier; they were less than 30,000. The colonial administration seriously considered the outright disappearance of the Kanak people. There was not one single Kanak doctor, or even a high school graduate.

The Kanak people didn’t have the right to leave the reserves, except for tightly monitored work purposes. The colonial administration grouped the clans into “tribes” created arbitrarily in line with their confinement in the reservations, and named tribal “chiefs” who were to serve as go-betweens, in defiance of rules prevalent among the Kanak on the authority of clan chiefs.

However, the Kanak continued to resist their annihilation. During World War II, New Caledonia represented a strategic prize in the Pacific. For two years, it was one of the principal American military bases, with tens of thousands of soldiers permanently stationed there. Our U.S. comrades have written extensively on the racism against blacks in the army at that time, but for the Kanak, the treatment of black American soldiers compared favorably to the iron rule of the French. The only example in which the French imperialists showed themselves to be less reactionary, or more hypocritical, than their meddlesome American allies was their refusal to have brothels racially segregated!

For the first time, thousands of Kanak had access to steady jobs in order to serve the logistical needs of the American troops. At the end of the war, the French colonists were no longer able to reimpose the medieval practice of forced labor. Having seen the infrastructure deployed by the American army, the Kanak were now conscious that the Gaullists [postwar rulers of France under General Charles de Gaulle] were pathetic losers by comparison.

In addition, there was an exponential growth of the Communist Party among the Kanak, thanks to the work of Jeanne Túnica y Casas, who promised them complete equality with whites, even if it remained in the framework of the chauvinism of the tricolor [French flag]. But Túnica y Casas had to take refuge in Australia after her house was blown up (quite possibly by the French state, even while the PCF was in government). Usually at loggerheads, Catholic priests and Protestant clergy united against the Communist danger, everywhere pushing the idea that Communists would take the remaining Kanak land away from them. This is the origin of the Caledonian Union, a party which had a base among the Kanak because it stood for their greater participation in public affairs and put forward some social measures in their favor.

In the 1950s, the increasing entry of the Kanak into the proletariat, including in the nickel mines and refineries, marked the birth of the trade-union movement out of the struggle for wage equality for all the different ethnicities. From this period, the Kanak won the right to vote, at least on paper. It is hardly accidental that many are still not registered.

Following the Gaullist coup d’état of 1958, the Métropole [European France] reclaimed strict control of New Caledonia. The Gaullists wanted to maintain control of the nickel industry from Paris, and they went back on autonomy provisions that had been decreed by Defferre [minister for “Overseas France”] in 1956 during Guy Mollet’s [Socialist Party (SP)] government. (This was during the period of France’s war against Algerian independence.) Right-wing reaction struck the Kanak and the pressure on their lands intensified. In response, a new wave of struggle began to build. This was a direct product of May ’68. Caledonian students in France, both black and white, became radicalized as a result of the massive general strike. This was the Red Scarves movement. Another group called itself the “1878 Group” in memory of the great revolt led by Chief Ataï.

All this ferment gradually pushed the Caledonian Union (UC) toward becoming pro-independence. Most of the white broussards [rural Caldoches (long-term European inhabitants), many of them cattle ranchers] left the party. In 1981, its president Pierre Declercq, a French-born left-wing Catholic, was assassinated by loyalists. The UC found itself at the heart of an Independence Front.

Obviously, the vague, deceptively soothing declarations of [then SP president François] Mitterrand on the destiny of the Kanak had nothing to do with any sympathy for their liberation. Mitterrand had been with the Cagoule [“Hooded Men”] fascists in the 1930s, and then in the [Nazi collaborationist] Vichy government. He was also the very man who in the early 1950s succeeded in “turning” Ivory Coast political leader Houphouët-Boigny, who was a deputy of the RDA [African Democratic Rally], allied to the French Communist Party. Houphouët went on to become the pillar of Françafrique [French neocolonial policy in Africa]. Mitterrand, the personification of French Algeria, as minister of police and minister of the guillotine during the Algerian War, had the blood of innumerable Algerian militants on his hands.

The Independence Front, renamed the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), boycotted the colonial elections of 1984. The secretary-general of the UC, Eloi Machoro, made a famous and heroic gesture, smashing a ballot box with an axe. Mitterrand quite simply had him assassinated later by a commando of GIGN [elite French police] killers, all the while inflaming French chauvinism by making everyone believe that it was a plot by perfidious Albion [Britain] and Australian subjects of Her Majesty to drive France out of the Pacific.

The Kanak revolt lasted several years. The Kanak suffered dozens of dead, killed by racist broussards and/or the forces of the French state. I don’t have the time here to go into more detail on the uprising, but I will say that the turning point was the Ouvéa massacre on the Loyalty Islands, where 19 Kanak were slaughtered—some of them in cold blood—by French special forces who stormed their cave hideout.

This massacre took place in the midst of the 1988 presidential election in France. The blood of the Kanak contributed to the defeat of [Prime Minister Jacques] Chirac. Unfortunately, the chauvinism of the French left meant that his defeat in the end simply contributed to the re-election of Mitterrand, with [Michel] Rocard as prime minister, who became one of the mentors of [current president Emmanuel] Macron.

Rocard knew how to wave the carrot as a complement to the bloody violence that the Kanak had just suffered. This carrot was the Matignon Accords, under the terms of which the FLNKS was offered the management—within the colonial framework—of the two majority-Kanak regions. The North Province afterwards obtained rights to the Koniambo mine complex and the promise of a refinery for the ore. But in fact, the Nouméa region and nickel production by the Société Le Nickel, the island’s main mining company for a hundred years, remained fully in the hands of French imperialism. The Kanak were also promised that a vote on self-determination would take place in ten years, in 1998. At the end of that ten-year period, it was Jospin [Socialist Party prime minister] in France (with the PCF again in the government) who negotiated a new postponement of a vote for 20 years, up until the present.

Nature of the November 4 Ballot

Now, 20 years later, the FLNKS has declared that independence is just around the corner and professed their optimism that the “yes” vote would win at the referendum. The opinion polls categorically deny such a prognosis, and six months ago I was struck by the unshakeable confidence that a pro-colonialist newspaper like Figaro had placed in the forthcoming result of the ballot.

The USTKE, the principal union organizing the Kanak, and the second on the archipelago after the Federation of Unions of Workers and Employees of New Caledonia, which is linked to the [French trade-union federation] CFDT, is calling for non-participation in the referendum. They held several meetings in Paris and at the [French CP’s] l’Humanité Fête to explain their position.

For the USTKE, it is not a genuine referendum for self-determination in the sense that 20,000 Kanak are not even on the electoral rolls, while on the other hand thousands of colonists have been registered in the course of different revisions of the lists. In theory, in line with the accords signed in 1988 by the FLNKS, more or less only those who have been residents of New Caledonia since at least the 1980s, and their descendents, would have the right to vote. This therefore included the entire layer of Europeans brought in en masse by the Gaullist government at the end of the 1960s and early ’70s at the time of the “nickel boom,” which was explicitly intended to make the Kanak a minority population.

But as a matter of fact, the USTKE has shown that each time the Kanak pressed for their whole population to be actually registered, the government reopened the lists, and it was always the métropolitains [French-born residents] and other persons having so-called “material and moral interests” in New Caledonia who were added. The USTKE estimated that 6,000 to 7,000 such voters were improperly added. As a result, this long-time colonial tampering has made the Kanak a minority in a referendum that concerns their own destiny.

These denunciations by the USTKE are absolutely credible. We have no doubt of the deceit carried out by the French state, which uses all possible means to hang on to its colonial possessions. Joseph Andras also reports, in his recent book Kanaky, that there were pro-independence Kanak who refused to register on the list for the referendum since they considered that the whole ballot was a masquerade aiming to give a democratic face to colonial domination. However, to the extent that we can judge from afar, the situation is very different from the 1987 ballot organized by Chirac, when all of the Kanak pro-independence organizations called for abstention. Then, there was a 98 percent “no” vote regarding independence in a completely fake ballot marked by the near-total abstention by the Kanak.

The USTKE fears that if Kanak people participate, French imperialism will claim that the Kanak themselves contributed to the very strong result expected from the “no” vote and that this would show that they wish to remain French. Certainly, in any colonial conflict, there is also a layer of loyalists. But the reality is that a significant section of the Kanak want to take part in the vote, and doubtless there are some who believe in the promises of the FLNKS that the “yes” vote can win.

However, there are also some who don’t have these kinds of illusions but wish to take advantage of the first opportunity given to them to give voice to independence, even if the result is a foregone conclusion. In his book, Joseph Andras cites veterans of the struggles of the 1980s who, this time around, absolutely want to vote. There are also Kanak who fear an overwhelming victory for the “no” vote and for that reason want to vote “yes.” That is why we think that not only can one vote “yes” despite the electoral cheating of French imperialism, but that it is an opportunity to take a stand for independence.

In any case, even if the “no” vote wins, we would not conclude that the Kanak people have freely chosen their chains and that it would be necessary to respect this result. We will continue to call for immediate independence for Kanaky, including if the two additional referendums projected for 2020 and 2022 continue to give a clear victory to colonialism.

French Imperialist Maneuvers to Stay in Power

This is, in short, the whole problem of referendums organized by a colonial power. Even when they are carried out in the framework of a growing struggle for independence, they are inevitably biased in favor of colonialism, independent of the problem of the electoral rolls. For a fair referendum, the prior withdrawal of all French imperialist troops would be necessary. Algeria’s independence referendum was held on 5 July 1962, after the French troops had been driven out. In the same way, in Crimea, the population was able to express its predominantly Russian identity in a referendum only after the withdrawal of the Ukrainian troops and under the protection of Russian troops.

Quite to the contrary, France sent thousands of extra cops and soldiers, supposedly to make voting conditions safe. Moreover, Macron had just reshuffled his government, naming as overall head of the police forces a man who was sub-prefect in Iparralde (Northern Basque Country) from 2010 to 2012, right in the middle of [the Basque separatist] ETA’s disarmament. The man chosen to run the political police (the “DGSI”) made his mark coordinating police repression in Corsica. This brings to mind Pasqua, Chirac’s police minister in the 1980s, who said that “Defense of Bastia [a Corsican city] begins in Nouméa.” The French bourgeoisie professes its confidence in the referendum but holds the truncheon and the gun at the ready. We say: French soldiers, cops and gendarmes out of Kanaky!

But the French bourgeoisie has other, more cunning, means to influence the situation in its favor. Since the 1980s it has increased the economic dependence of the archipelago on French state subsidies. First place in the colony’s economy goes not to nickel but to financial transfers from Paris, notably the payment of public servants.

These functionaries, often of French origin, receive substantial colonial subsidies as expatriates, notably those designed to compensate for the high cost of living. Under this system, France artificially maintains the nominally high salary levels that make New Caledonia appear like a haven of very high GDP per inhabitant in comparison to the rest of the Pacific region, owing to the fact that the CFP (the colonial money in circulation) is tied to the euro. This helps to maintain the fear that the standard of living would collapse in the case of independence. (In reality, French money leaves the Hexagon [France] briefly at best, since a good part is deposited in French banks, and another part serves to import goods and services provided by French businesses.)

An additional consequence of the high level of nominal salaries and prices is that profits are higher for imports than for local products. All this is designed to maintain and reinforce economic dependence on Paris.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Workers Vanguard No. 1155	17 May 2019

France’s New Caledonia Colony

Independence for Kanaky!

For a Workers and Peasants Government Centered on the Kanak People!

Part Two

The following is the second part of an article translated from le Bolchévik No. 226 (December 2018), newspaper of our comrades of the Ligue trotskyste de France. Part One appeared in WV No. 1154 (3 May). The article is based on a talk given by the LTF last year, shortly before New Caledonia’s November 4 referendum on independence, in which the “no” vote prevailed.

At the time of the Matignon Accords 30 years ago, the FLNKS [Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front] won an agreement in principle for the reopening of the Koniambo mine in the North [Province of New Caledonia] and the building of a refinery complex for the ore in order to counterbalance the overwhelming power of the SLN [Société Le Nickel], whose financial backers are French capitalists like the Duval family. The Koniambo complex was to be controlled by the regional council, which is in the hands of the indépendantistes.

To begin with, the operation enabled Jacques Lafleur, one of the principal Caldoche [long-term European inhabitants] capitalists and one of the negotiators of the Matignon Accords, to get rid of his mining interests at a good price. As the region did not have the capital for the enormous investments at stake, the sell-off in reality served simply as a facade to enable the entry of big international mining conglomerates, today notably Glencore, whose CEO is a white capitalist of South African origin. In South Africa, it’s called Black Economic Empowerment.

Furthermore, a third nickel company suddenly appeared in the South Province, this one controlled by the Caldoches. The bottom line is that there is no way for the Kanak to have real influence in the extraction and refining of the principal wealth of their country. All that the FLNKS obtained is the job of running the social services of the French colonial power, by administering the North region and the Loyalty Islands. That won’t advance the cause of independence one iota.

All this underlines two things. First, despite the fact that the leaders of the FLNKS pretend that independence is on the way and that the “process of decolonization” is inevitably going ahead, the reality is that it will not come from this referendum. Massive social and class struggles will be necessary to drive out French imperialism. Second, economic dependence on imperialism is deep and multifaceted. National independence in and of itself will not abolish it. What is necessary is a workers and peasants government centered on the Kanak people that expropriates the capitalists and extends the struggle until they are expropriated in the imperialist centers.

That is the basis of our fundamental difference with the nationalists of the USTKE [Federation of Unions of Kanak and Exploited Workers] and their political wing, the Parti travailliste [Labour Party]: They want an independent Kanaky in a framework that remains capitalist, but which is more equitable toward the Kanak and the exploited. Capitalism cannot be equitable for the Kanak or for the exploited. For our part, we want all power to the workers by means of socialist revolution.

At their Paris meeting on September 19, USTKE leader Rock Haocas showed convincingly that independence could not be expected from a referendum whose dice are loaded so much in favor of French imperialism. He added that “We have to think of a new strategy to win independence.” But what is it? A mystery. Radical nationalism is at an impasse. We intervened at this meeting to present our program, laying out our proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist perspective to drive out French imperialism.

French Imperialism and the Pacific

France will not leave Kanaky without being driven out. It has been preparing this referendum for 30 years. The Macron government has even recently changed the weather bulletin on the 8 p.m. news on France 2 [TV station] to also give the weather report for Nouméa. In other words, they hammer away every day that New Caledonia is France, whether it is raining or the wind is blowing.

New Caledonia is French imperialism’s key possession in the Pacific. French Polynesia is thousands of kilometers away from anywhere and has lost its strategic interest with the end of nuclear testing. On the other hand, New Caledonia is a military rampart just to the east of Australia, as I have already mentioned. Its nickel resources are potentially strategic, even if they are no longer exported to France.

The claim of French imperialism to still be a player in the big league rests on its possessions in the Pacific. Before that, it was Polynesia, which allowed it to maintain its nuclear arsenal. The exclusive economic zone around New Caledonia represents more than three times the area of France. As the bourgeois-chauvinist [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon said in his presidential program, “France is a maritime power without really being aware of it. Nevertheless, it is a question of essential sovereignty for our country, which has a presence in all the seas across the globe.” With declarations like this, there is no need to ask what he thinks of independence for the Kanak people. In the best of cases, he would do as his mentor and role model [former Socialist president François] Mitterrand did.

France is manifestly an imperialist power in decline and on the road to marginalization. But it has not renounced its role, which only makes it more dangerous. It wants to play its small part in the great game in the Pacific to try to destroy the bureaucratically deformed Chinese workers state and restore capitalism in that country. It has sent warships to provoke the Chinese navy in the South China Sea near the Spratly Islands. It has sold new-generation attack submarines to Australian imperialism, armaments whose only use in the region is for conflict with China. It is constantly stirring up fear over the so-called transformation of Vanuatu into a Chinese aircraft carrier and saying that New Caledonia itself would follow the same road in the case of independence.

In the face of these Cold War-style provocations, Marxists proclaim loud and clear that we are for the unconditional military defense of China against any imperialist threat and against any internal threat of capitalist counterrevolution. This is also an aspect of our demand for the withdrawal of French troops from New Caledonia. We fight for proletarian political revolution in China to establish a regime based on workers councils. Such a regime, inspired by proletarian revolutionary internationalism and not the narrow Chinese nationalism of the ruling bureaucracy in Beijing, would help the Kanak people finally liberate themselves from the stifling yoke of French colonialism.

The Land Question

Our political perspective is not simply independence. In Kanaky, it is above all for a workers and peasants government centered on the Kanak, a formulation of the dictatorship of the proletariat that highlights two of its crucial aspects for Kanaky: the land question and the question of national liberation of the Kanak people.

I think the second point is straightforward. Contrary to the claims of the chauvinist French press, the Kanak have always emphasized that they were a hospitable people and that they had no intention of throwing the European or Oceanian immigrants into the sea. Their concept of Kanaky was not racial but national, but the Kanak had to be masters in their own country. The Caldoches have a choice: either they accept living in an independent Kanaky, where they will have their place, or they consider themselves French above all else, in which case their only choice is to leave for France. For the immigrants into Kanaky from the surrounding region, the question posed is their integration into this society. We are for their integration into a society dominated by the Kanak people rather than by French imperialism. This directly flows from our support for independence.

A fundamental aspect of Kanak identity is the land question. At the time of the arrival of the Europeans, the Kanak had a society of patrilineal clans based on the cultivation of taro and yam. They maintained hillside terraces with efficient irrigation systems for the taro plantations. Each clan was identified by its own ceremonial mound. The land dispossession of the Kanak and their confinement in reservations constituted a profound trauma. The Kanak people want to recover their land. This is quite legitimate. Nationalization of the land would allow soviets (councils) of peasants in the rural areas to reappropriate the land as they judge fit.

The very large landed estates have declined since the 1950s. Since the 1980s, there has been significant agricultural reform. What this means in practice is that a significant number of the [rural] Caldoche broussards, especially on the east coast of Grande Terre, got rid of their land at a good price, paid for by the state. Today, a clear majority of the land on the east coast that is not state property is in the hands of the Kanak. However, the best lands are on the west coast—with most of their value found below ground—and in the metropolitan area of Greater Nouméa, the only real city in the country, where real estate remains, as before, in the hands of whites.

There has never been modern agriculture of the capitalist type in New Caledonia. This is very different from South Africa or Zimbabwe, where after the socialist revolution the direct transformation of the large properties into collective production units controlled by soviets of rural workers can be envisaged. In New Caledonia, the large properties of several hundred or several thousand hectares on the west coast now remain essentially in the hands of the Caldoches, and are dedicated to the extensive raising of cattle with reduced manpower.

The colonial rulers tried to introduce coffee growing, but this continues to decline and it is in fact quite marginal today. Typically, you have a coffee plantation of a hectare or less, a supplementary crop for some Kanak. In practice, the banks systematically refuse to lend even the smallest amount of money to the Kanak. From their viewpoint, tribal or clan land, being inalienable, cannot guarantee a mortgage. Thus, even the Kanak who would like to develop commercial agriculture remain deprived of any perspective of economic development. Agriculture practiced on the Kanak lands, and it is the same for fishing, is essentially destined for self-sufficiency and customary exchanges, not for the market.

How would socialist modernization of agriculture be carried out? This is something that is impossible to sketch out with our very limited knowledge, from afar, and especially without a Trotskyist organization in Kanaky. A workers and peasants government centered on the Kanak means that the dictatorship of the proletariat leans consciously on the Kanak peasantry to create the means for a progressive development of labor productivity and harmonious development of the country outside of Greater Nouméa.

For Permanent Revolution!

If we are able to present a Marxist line on Kanaky today, it is because we have been able to reappropriate a Leninist framework on the national question thanks to a crucial fight that was conducted in our party last year to break with English and French great-power chauvinism in particular. This fight culminated at our last international conference. I am not able to elaborate on this today, but I will refer to the latest issue of Spartacist [English-language edition No. 65, Summer 2017], which presents the question better than I can do here.

As a result of this correction of our program on the national question, we have rejected the entirety of the numerous articles published in the 1980s in le Bolchévik on “New Caledonia.” At that time, our organization consciously refused to use the word Kanaky. These articles are marked by a vulgar French chauvinism, in practice little different from what [the reformist group] Lutte ouvrière published in the May-June [2018] issue of Lutte de classe [Class Struggle], except for the fact that, on paper, le Bolchévik called for independence.

In contrast to our current position, LO openly affirms its indifference on this question, saying that the victory of either the “yes” or the “no” vote at the next referendum would only result in influencing “the redistribution [between the Caldoche right and Kanak indépendantistes] of posts and positions, but always under the aegis of the French state.” A bit further down in their article, they insist that “even if independence were voted up, the workers would not be liberated in any way: certainly not from exploitation, and not even from discrimination as Kanaks.” At the same time, LO absurdly makes out that French imperialism could in the case of independence grant the Kanak petty bourgeoisie “a majority stake as shareholders in the SLN.”

French chauvinism always accompanies the absence of a revolutionary proletarian perspective. Our propaganda of the 1980s practically disappeared the existence of the proletariat in New Caledonia. Actually, unlike on most of the islands of the Pacific, a proletariat has existed for a hundred years on Grande Terre, certainly small, but endowed with considerable social power, disproportionate to its numerical size. It is concentrated significantly in the mines, in nickel refining, the ports and airports.

This proletariat is multiethnic. Over time, the French capitalists have resorted to various waves of indentured labor, from Japan (later interned then expelled by the Gaullists during the war), Indonesia and Indochina. (The latter were expelled at the beginning of the 1960s because they were increasingly being won over to Communism during the Vietnam War.) More recently, there has been a notable immigration of Wallis Islanders.

There are also Kanak in the proletariat, especially since the breakdown of the Indigénat [the racist “Indigenous code”] regime after the war [World War II]. As I have already said, the development of the trade union at the SLN from the 1950s onwards was intimately linked to the struggle for equal pay for equal work, irrespective of ethnicity. I have also spoken about the brief upsurge of the Communist Party after the war. The essential question dominating the history of the workers movement of New Caledonia is the question of equality for the Kanak.

Certainly, the Kanak remain concentrated at the bottom of the wage scale. There is an unspoken racist glass ceiling that reserves the qualified jobs for white Caldoches or more recent arrivals from France. The lack of qualifications and low educational achievement of the Kanak are themselves products of the French state policy of imposing teaching in French and not in the mother tongue. This, in turn, has served, since the 1960s, as an additional pretext for the pursuit of France’s colonial policy of making the Kanak people a minority in their own country and bringing in qualified personnel from France.

The proletariat in power will, as a priority, struggle to put an end to this state of affairs. This will mean, in particular, radical changes in education policy, with teaching carried out in the mother tongue and considerable investments in educational infrastructure for the benefit of the Kanak and other peoples who are today oppressed.

Such a policy will be linked to the promotion of paid employment for women, also with equal pay for equal work. It will be a question of laying the material basis for a real socialization of education and childcare, which will permit the gradual replacement of the family, a pillar of social conservatism and the oppression of women, by freely consensual relations between individuals. For the Kanak, this will also include an end to the oppressive forms of clan-based family structures, which include arranged marriages and the prohibition of divorce.

Obviously, it is not possible to construct socialism on a single island. The program of socialism in one country is a Stalinist program that proved its failure in the Soviet Union, leading finally to the capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92. The Soviet Union was roughly a thousand times larger and more populous than Kanaky. The immediate struggle for the extension of a socialist revolution in Kanaky is of vital importance because the imperialists, whether they are French, Australian or others, would do everything possible to crush the revolution before it could be extended.

But the seizure of power by a workers and peasants government in Kanaky would be an enormous step forward to break the French proletariat from the chauvinism that ties it to its own bourgeoisie. It would be a boost for the proletarian revolution here in this country. The allies of a revolutionary workers government of Kanaky are not the UN where French imperialism sits on the Security Council; they are the workers and oppressed masses in Indonesia, in France, in Australia and elsewhere. This perspective is inconceivable without a revolutionary workers party in Kanaky, a party composed in its overwhelming majority of Kanak people. Without such a party, the inevitable uprisings to come of the Kanak and the workers risk suffering the cruelest of setbacks again. This struggle is intimately linked to the fight to reforge the Fourth International, with sections deeply anchored in the working class, in Kanaky, in France and in the rest of the world.

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- The Boss Comes Home- The Pete Seeger Sessions

The Pete Seeger Sessions, Bruce Springsteen, 2006

This review was originally posted for the DVD. The accolades for that serve for the CD as well. There are also CD/DVD combination discs available

"Frankly, I had never been a strong fan of Bruce Springsteen’s during his more raucous Rock & Roll career. I like Rock & Roll very much but most of his work seemed, to my ear, a little off kilter. However, with an acoustic recording in 2005 (and an earlier one from from 1996 that I will review separately) and now an American tradition folk recording of some works made famous by the legendary folksinger and ardent folk traditionalist Pete Seeger Springsteen has come back home. This session produced interesting versions of some common American songs like "Eire Canal", "John Henry", Mary Don't You Weep" and "Shenendoah" that are done with so much retexturing (Springsteen’s term) that Bruce has now created a niche for himself in the folk pantheon. Who would have thought?

This is a short documentary about the making of the sessions album but it gives real insight into the way Springsteen ‘feels’ the song, gears up, and then goes out and performs it in that gravelly voice that I like in male singers. For my money his version of "Shenandoah" is one of the most hauntingly moving I have ever heard (partially as a result of great back up on instruments and vocals, including a strong performance by Bruce's wife Patty). And I do not usually even like the song. All this, plus his gang of musicians were obviously having a good time. And it shows from start to finish. I am going out to buy the album, pronto. (There are some DVD/CD reverse side combinations available on this one)."

Note: The reference to Bruce coming home is from the DVD. One of the back up musicians' father was a well-known folkie in the 1960's who taught Bruce his acoustic guitar back then. What goes around comes around.

Traipsing Through The Arts-By The Numbers-Once Again On The Infamous "Portrait Of Madame X"-John Singer Sargent’s Dirty Revenge

Traipsing Through The Arts-By The Numbers-Once Again On The Infamous "Portrait Of  Madame X"-John Singer Sargent’s Dirty Revenge

By Laura Perkins

Some paintings leave you mystified no matter what the quality may be and in the case of John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X that goes double, more than double(everybody knows her name but the X factor makes it more exotic particularly for my purposes and for those who don’t go to Wikipedia ). Nobody is, or should question, Sargent’s tremendous technical skills as an artist although art critic John Updike has pointed out in several of his essays on the subject that at least in his portrait period, the period when he painted for hard cash and bitter haggling to get his dough, kale he might as well have taken a photograph for all the blandness, all the lack of psychological depth in his work. Of course if somebody wanted to mount a Sargent defense, except for a few younger Boston socialites they were hard, hard subjects to put in a good light especially when their contracts called for an austere and proper look for posterity.

Certainly, the Boit sisters, had plenty of reason to get rid of that foolish painting of them in their respective youths that their parents had commissioned. Some say the Boit parents really wanted to show off their beautiful Ming vases which travelled with them everywhere and the children were there for decoration. I have heard the story from several sources but have been unable to pin it down any time I run into a knowledgeable curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where the painting landed. They all seem to have been sworn to some Omerta secret blood oath by the upper echelons of the local art cabal to not say anything to tarnish the Sargent golden calf dough flow that keeps the place afloat in good times and bad. They have collectively responded on en masse to dismiss the story out of hand with the exact same answer saying, get this, that those who spread that story are just “haters.” At least in the old days before the current debasement of language by social media and sloth we would be written off as philistines and ignorant holy goofs.

There is another story that Cecelia, the oldest Boit girl hiding in the shadows in the famous painting either was ready to put the thing to the knife or burn it one night in a rage. The reason, a perfectly good one in teenage girl or boy eyes, was that Sargent who apparently felt t that he had all the time in the world and the same in regard to his  imprisoned subjects had all the time in the world would have them posing for hours while he sang and smoked horrible cheapjack five cent cigars and she missed a “hot date” with some Parisian kid who dumped her afterward when she was a “no show.” This story too seeks verification but has a certain better “cred” standing since all the sisters were only too happy to get rid of the albatross since none of them wanted it when they grew up. Another rumor that one girl’s Boston marriage partner was herself going to take the knife to the thing one night in a drunken rage if the damn thing was brought into their home up on Beacon Hill. 

That little interlude on the Boit girls to set up the fate of Madame X and why she (and her mother) hated that portrait and why he hated women from all the evidence leaving this well-groomed professional beauty (read: courtesan in Realspeak) with no reputation left in Parisian high society then and for eternity (or as long as the Met in New York City holds on to the piece) being gawked at by infidels and holy goofs for that hideous nose Sargent came on too strong with. But before that a quick cautionary tale about portrait paintings and clever artists. The famous Dutch artist Van Dyck made a pile of dough, kale painting portraits of the English Royal family under Charles I of England (the guy who got his head chopped off for his stubbornness by Oliver Crowell and the boys. The head never found from its resting place after agents, probably gypsies, now Roma, from a secret severed head cult grabbed it for their kinky rites.). One famous portrait was of Charles’ wife, Henrietta Maria, who Van Dyck made into some “hot” beauty for public consumption. Some princess with no ax to grind when she excitedly met her later started shrieking to the high heavens about what a real beast Henrietta Maria looked like in real life, complete with fangs from what I heard. Don’t tell me when dough, kale is on the line an artist, a non-starving artist is not above a few thousand touch-up so we get what amounts to “fake news” about what these high end denizens really looked like.  

Now back to dear Madame X. Of course everybody in Paris which meant then, as now, high society Paris knew the American transplant landed on French soil with one idea in mind- to get high up in the food chain as fast as she could. Using her, Jesus, always the coded words, professional beauty, which I have “translated” above as courtesan, she did just that. It is hard to follow all the details but it appeared at least from the co-written memoirs of her personal maid that the back door to her bedroom was something like a revolving door of all those in some position to help her up the chain (seemingly with her endlessly broke husband at least tacitly letting her do her thing. The only hard evidence though of her, well, whorish behavior was the revelation of the LeBlanc who was Sargent’s paint mixer, the guy who made those black, browns and greys which made even the little Boit girls look austere (and frumpy). He, backed by the maid, claimed he had been Madame’s lover when she was on her “plebian” mood.    

Of course, none of this would be relevant to Sargent since everybody knew that he had no sexual interest in the Madame and in fact consciously decided to bring her down in society by his devilish mastery of the painting surface. After years in the fog led by successive MFA art directors and the local cabal who  kept high-priced press agents busy keeping that fog from lifting we have been fortunate that blessed novelist John Updike and others have enlightened us about Sargent’s sexual proclivities. Those feelings centered around his fellow exiled American literary light Henry James and those countless dinners both would be invited to fill the bachelor chairs across from some old biddy after which they left together in merry old pre-World War I England. Also that he was extremely hostile to women making them, as he did with the young and innocent Boit sisters mentioned above which caused one of them to almost take the knife to the portrait, sit for hours in rigid positions and uncomfortable clothes while he “entertained” some “assistant” with singing, claret and what was universally agreed were horrible five-cent cigars.

(If you want to know about the clothes that Sargent imprisoned his women in with tortuous waspish waist corsets and horrible bosom-enhancers you need go no further that the John Singer Sargent Museum, oops, MFA. As if the joint didn’t have enough things Sargent from top to bottom down in the dungeon, down in the basement of the American Arts wing, the place where they stuff the Native American and Mezo-American art away from the paying clientele they had an empty room, empty since used for their small homage to the Summer of Love, 1967 they have set up yet another exhibit. An exhibit featuring the various torture chamber dresses the distaff side of the of Brahmins who sat for Sargent in his dough, kale portrait days. As a prelude to yet another “big tent” exhibit in a couple of years. The cabal has thoughtlessly not put warnings up that children should not go to that gallery without some parental guidance, some warning like that.)

Today we don’t care or shouldn’t care about a person’s sexual preferences but then with strict sodomy laws and deep social shunning it was best to keep any off-beat sexual business in the deep closet. My sense is that having to keep in that deep basket kicked some ugly movements in Sargent’s psyche, some desire to express his hatred of women without having to expose himself to social ridicule. In the end he would not get away with it. Would have to flee Paris like a rat for the sunny shores of England and Hank when he couldn’t make his dough, kale doing portraits even though he lowered his prices to something like Wal-Mart discount levels. The only example I can think of that fits and that might give today’s reader a sense of his desperation was that if he had not left France he would have been selling his stuff in competition with the Velvet Elvis paintings at local flea and farmer’s markets. He had too much talent for that fate, no doubt.          

With that recently unearthed knowledge, with a better sense of that seething hatred of women it makes perfect sense that Sargent did what he did to Madame X’s portrait. She was a parvenu, white trash really in his circle, and he could hardly have attempted to do such damage to the likes of Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge or Mr. Henry Higginson Wentworth in their portraits or else he would have been sleeping on the Thames or the Charles River. Bingo, he did two little tricks that brought her down low, taking a chapter from the previously mentioned Van Dyck’s handbook. The most daring, the one caused him to have to scurry like a wharf rat to other shores was the “slip of the brush” when he painted Madame shoulder dress strap just a little too far down the shoulder for prudish high society tastes. That seemingly slight “mistake” in rigid everybody the same high society reduced dear Madame to the equivalent of a “lady of the evening,” whore, maybe nothing but a street whore depending on what the high society women decided to lay on her. A bunch of merciless old biddies who had nothing better to do than keep the “riffraff” from getting ahead of them on the food chain.

In the long haul though that slipped strap business was nothing. Sargent’s real bastardly revenge on women was what he did to Madame’s nose. For some reason, whether hers or his, either Madame refused to have her portrait done from a frontal position like all the others by him or Sargent decided that side position would expose her horrible bird-like nose better. Or, maybe because she refused if she did refuse, Sargent decided to give her the full blast of his fury. Maybe in the days before plastic surgery saved many an ugly nose which caused even professional beauties restless nights nobody thought much about it one way or another. As long as they didn’t have to meet her in person like the cautionary tale story of Henrietta Maria above and realize that something was desperately wrong in the written descriptions and photographs of her. It was only recently, maybe twenty years ago, that famous art critic Roone York noted that in the several portraits of Madame by Sargent and later artists that same horrid nose turned in that awkward side position. And meanwhile Sargent’s golden calf operation is unsullied. Something is wrong, very wrong here.