Tuesday, June 25, 2019

The Third Comintern Congress and the Struggle for Bolshevism To the Masses:Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921 Edited and Translated by John Riddell (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015) A Review

Spartacist Supplement

The Third Comintern Congress and the Struggle for Bolshevism
To the Masses:Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921
Edited and Translated by John Riddell
(Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2015)
A Review

The publication of an English translation of the proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International (CI, or Comintern) is a very welcome event. We salute John Riddell for his decades of work in producing not only this volume but also the proceedings of the CI’s First, Second and Fourth Congresses, as well as three other books documenting the struggle for a revolutionary Marxist international during V. I. Lenin’s time.
It is necessary, however, to approach Riddell’s work with some caution, given his great distance from the politics of the Bolshevism of Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Riddell deals in half-truths. This is captured in the very title of his new book, To the Masses. As Trotsky noted:
“The slogan of the Third Congress did not simply read: ‘To the Masses!’ but ‘To power through a previous conquest of the masses!’ After the faction led by Lenin (which he characterized demonstratively as the ‘Right’ wing) had to curb intransigently the entire Congress throughout its duration, Lenin arranged a private conference toward the end of the Congress in which he warned prophetically: ‘Remember, it is only a question of getting a good running start for the revolutionary leap. The struggle for the masses is the struggle for power’.”
The Third International After Lenin (1928)
Study of the CI in its early, revolutionary period is indispensable for those motivated by the struggle for socialist revolution. The early Comintern drew a sharp line against the social-chauvinist Second International and various centrist waverers and fakers. Lenin, Trotsky and their comrades fought to transform the fledgling parties that were drawn to the banner of the Bolshevik-led October Revolution into disciplined vanguard parties capable of leading the proletarian overthrow of capitalist rule.
By the time the Third Congress met in Moscow in June-July 1921, the preliminary weeding out of reformists and centrists who had joined the CI under pressure from their working-class bases, among whom the October Revolution was hugely popular, was well under way. The “Conditions of Admission into the Communist International” (21 Conditions) adopted at the Second Congress in 1920 provided essential guidelines for breaking the new Communist parties both programmatically and organizationally from the reformists. The Third Congress was, in Trotsky’s words, a “school of revolutionary strategy” (The First Five Years of the Communist International, Vol. II [New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1953]).
While the theses, resolutions and major speeches and interventions by Lenin and Trotsky at the Third Congress have long been available, this is the first time a transcript of the entire proceedings has been published in English. Riddell has also produced new translations of the resolutions, a useful names glossary and a substantial appendix of documents, correspondence and reports from commission meetings, including previously unavailable material. This is important because much of the debate took place in smaller meetings or through letters by the major participants. Riddell’s introduction provides useful context for the Congress. At the same time, as we show, the facts that he chooses to present (or not present) add up to a particular political slant: the elevation of unity above program. The same applies to the documents he chooses to include (or not include) in the appendix.
E. H. Carr, the great historian of Soviet Russia, remarked in a 1961 lecture series:
“History properly so-called can be written only by those who find and accept a sense of direction in history itself. The belief that we have come from somewhere is closely linked with the belief that we are going somewhere.”
What Is History? (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962)
Carr concluded: “Our view of history reflects our view of society.”
Indeed, Riddell’s To the Masses reflects his own political views and appetites. Riddell spent many years as a leader in the Canadian organization linked to the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP). This included the SWP’s period of degeneration from Trotskyism to reformism in the early-mid 1960s, a development fought by the Revolutionary Tendency, forerunner of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Loyal to the SWP of Jack Barnes long after it formally renounced the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution in the early 1980s, Riddell continued to support the SWP until 2004. Through 1993, his books were produced for the SWP’s Pathfinder Press in a series titled The Communist International in Lenin’s Time. But the SWP decided to cut off the project. The Third and Fourth Congress proceedings were later published by the Historical Materialism Book Series, whose paperback editions are produced by Haymarket Books, associated with the U.S. International Socialist Organization (ISO). (The hardback editions were published by Brill.) While Historical Materialism/Haymarket publishes authors with a range of political views, Riddell’s outlook shares much with that of the ISO and many others associated with Historical Materialism conferences.
With one or two exceptions, Riddell only hints at his views in the introduction to To the Masses; for these you have to scour his website. The question is: What lessons are to be drawn from the Third Congress? On one side is the road mapped out by Lenin and Trotsky, who fought against leftist errors by German and other Communist leaders as a necessary step in forging revolutionary parties that could win the masses and fight for power. On the other side is the road subsequently taken by the German party and most of the CI leaders, who “corrected” their errors by adapting to and conciliating the Social Democracy, tacitly writing off the possibility of proletarian revolution.
The latter course meshes with the politics of Riddell and kindred spirits who seek to disappear the vast gulf that separated Lenin’s Comintern from the Second International and its leading section, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). In the reactionary miasma that issued out of the capitalist counterrevolution that destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991-92, the ISO et al. have ever more openly identified with the pre-1914 Second International and its leading ideological spokesman, Karl Kautsky. Their rehabilitation of Kautsky, who condemned the dictatorship of the proletariat established in Russia in 1917, stems from their rejection of the Bolshevik-led revolution as a model and, with that, Lenin’s struggle to split proletarian revolutionary forces from the Second International. (For more on this question, see “Recycling the Second International: The Neo-Kautskyites,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 63, Winter 2012-13.)
On his blog, Riddell salutes a 1909 article by Kautsky that defends the social-democratic idea of a party encompassing all self-defined socialists, from right-wing opportunists to revolutionaries (“Karl Kautsky and Labor Parties: A Memoir of Canada,” johnriddell.wordpress.com, 1 June 2016). Riddell calls Kautsky’s piece “a link in a 150-year-old chain of Marxist thought on broad working-class political formations and the tactical and strategic challenge they present to the building of a revolutionary movement.” In reality, the “party of the whole class” meant that vanguard layers of the proletariat were submerged in a backward mass while the party’s pro-capitalist parliamentarians and trade-union misleaders bound the workers to their class enemy. Today, the neo-Kautskyites seek to revive the reputation of the Second International, whose support for the imperialist war in 1914 was the culmination of years of growing opportunist practice.
The final overturn of the October Revolution in 1991-92 was accompanied by a deepgoing retrogression of consciousness around the world: with few exceptions, advanced layers of the working class today no longer identify workers’ struggles with the goal of building a socialist society. As our comrade James Robertson put it, “Now we’re in an unusually deep trough, and the experiences that are immediately available to us are not very good. So we had better make very heavy reference back to the experiences of the workers movement when it could see much further: 1918 through 1921” (“The Bolshevik School of Experience,” Workers Hammer No. 195, Summer 2006). The task of the ICL is to carry forward the program of Bolshevism, seeking in the course of class struggle to reimplant revolutionary Marxism within the proletariat.
In counterposition to Riddell, we stand on the legacy of the first four Congresses of the Communist International, continued by the Fourth International founded by Trotsky and his supporters in 1938. Where Riddell neuters the programmatic conquests of the early CI and embellishes weaknesses or ambiguities, we have made serious efforts to critically extend its work in those instances where history has revealed problems. These include our reappraisal of and resulting opposition to the Communist practice of running candidates for executive offices in the bourgeois state (“Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 61, Spring 2009) and our article, “Why We Reject the ‘Constituent Assembly’ Demand” (Spartacist [English edition] No. 63, Winter 2012-13). Those articles should be seen as a corollary to Lenin’s writings on the state. We have also long been critical of weaknesses in the 1922 Fourth Congress, primarily its call for an “anti-imperialist united front” and its misuse of the “workers government” slogan.
Translation and Politics
Major discrepancies exist between the various language versions of early CI resolutions and proceedings, even those published in Lenin’s time. This problem stems from incomplete and partial translation at the Congresses, where, in addition to the more widely used German and Russian, French and English were also official languages. Until the Riddell editions became available, the CI material in English was partial and for the most part poorly translated.
Three decades ago, the Prometheus Research Library, the library and archive of the Central Committee of the Spartacist League/U.S., published a new English translation of one of the most important resolutions from the Third Congress, “Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of Their Work” (Prometheus Research Series No. 1, 1988). Along with a substantial introduction, this bulletin included a translation of the reports and discussion on this point at the Congress. More recently, we published an English translation of the Congress’s “Theses on Methods and Forms of Work of the Communist Parties Among Women” (“A New Translation: Communist International Theses on Work Among Women,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 62, Spring 2011). We are in no position to judge the overall quality of translation in the Riddell series. But based on our work on these two resolutions, we do say that Riddell’s versions are problematic.
In introducing his new volume, Riddell lays out a self-contradictory policy: “The translation, while remaining faithful to usage conventions within the Communist movement of the time, endeavours to use the vocabulary of today’s English, even when Communists of the 1920s would likely have used a different term.” The translations in To the Masses certainly come off as smooth to the modern reader, but at least in the case of the Organizational Resolution, the original meaning is blunted, as we will demonstrate later in this article. This is compounded by the fact that, for whatever reason, the italic emphases of the original Resolution have not been included in the translation, despite Riddell’s assurances that such emphases “have for the most part been retained.” This omission robs the text of its sense of urgency and has the effect of underplaying Lenin’s role in its framing, since emphatic phrases were so characteristic of his style.
Riddell has translated from the most definitive German text, making occasional revisions where the Russian significantly differs. Since German tended to be the language most widely used in the CI, this is a reasonable starting point. Nevertheless, this procedure can also produce distortions. For example, the Women’s Theses, as we documented in our 2011 article, were the result of a year-long debate pitting West and Central European cadre against Russian cadre over the legacy of the work of the Second International and the extent to which the Bolshevik experience could be generalized. Riddell disappears this important fact.
The views of the Russian comrades largely prevailed, and they wrote the final text of the resolution. Our translation of the Women’s Theses was therefore drawn from the 1933 Russian version and checked against the 1921 German version. Riddell used the reverse procedure. While he included many passages from the Russian that do not appear in the German, he chose to omit a key sentence from the Russian stating: “Women socialists who carried out special work among women had neither a place, nor representation, nor a decisive vote in the Second International.” Riddell’s choices reflect his minimization of the Comintern’s break with the reformism of the Second International.
At bottom, translation issues flow from politics. We recommend to our readers that they stick with the ICL translations of (and background to) the Women’s Theses and the Organizational Resolution, which more faithfully capture the intent of the Russian and German originals.
The March Action
The most passionately debated issue at the Third Congress was the German March Action. A wave of workers’ struggles had broken out in central Germany in March 1921, provoked by the Social Democratic regional authorities sending in police to suppress combative miners in the coalfields of Mansfeld. What was in order for the German Communists (originally the German Communist Party, or KPD, but known in 1921 as the United Communist Party, or VKPD) were defensive tactics. If successful, that course might have allowed the proletariat to go onto the offensive.
But the VKPD called for armed resistance. While workers in the Mansfeld area fought heroically, there was little response elsewhere. Later, a general strike called by the party was unsuccessful, leading to physical fights in many places between a Communist minority and workers under the influence of the Social Democrats. The outcome was a grave defeat, with thousands of the most militant workers arrested and imprisoned. Yet the VKPD leadership maintained that the March Action was actually a victory and vowed to remain on its disastrous course.
Backing this view was a “theory” that Communists had to be permanently on a “revolutionary offensive.” Debate over the “theory of the offensive” polarized the Comintern, with Lenin and Trotsky initially in a minority in the Russian Political Bureau. It was in this context that Lenin and Trotsky declared that they were on the right wing of the Congress. Following a series of sharp fights, the Congress made an important corrective, and most of those who had zealously supported the March Action accepted the criticisms of the “theory of the offensive.”
It was made clear at the Congress that the spread of revolution would take longer than had been anticipated in the turbulent period that began toward the end of World War I. But the German leadership, aided and abetted by CI head Gregory Zinoviev, increasingly seized on this understanding as a rationale to conciliate the SPD, viewing its left wing as a potential ally rather than an obstacle to a proletarian seizure of power. When a revolutionary crisis enveloped Germany two years later, the Communists made no serious attempt to fight for power.
Opportunists are always happy to condemn ultraleftism; nobody today would dispute the fact that the March Action was a mistake. What draws a political line between reformists and revolutionaries is not the lessons of the 1921 March Action but those of the defeated German revolution of 1923. Implicitly in his introduction and explicitly elsewhere, Riddell has endorsed the line of conciliating the Social Democrats that led to disaster in 1923.
The Struggle to Assimilate Bolshevism
By the time the Third Congress convened, the Red Army in Russia had emerged victorious from more than two years of Civil War against the White Guard forces and imperialist intervention. The result, as Lenin stated in a Congress resolution on the policies of the Russian party, was an unstable equilibrium “that enables the socialist republic to exist—not for long, of course—within the capitalist encirclement.” (Unless otherwise indicated, quoted passages from Third Congress proceedings and documents are taken from To the Masses.) But the Civil War had further devastated Russia’s industrial base. Discontented peasants could not expect to get manufactured goods in exchange for the produce that was demanded of them. Yet to revive industry, it was first necessary to feed the cities. With no way to go forward, the Bolsheviks were forced to make a retreat, embarking on the New Economic Policy (NEP). This course enabled peasants to accumulate a surplus that they could market, establishing market trade within the framework of the workers state.
Conditions facing the Soviet state had been markedly different during the CI’s Second Congress a year earlier. Following the defeat of the White armies on Russian soil, the Red Army had repelled Marshal Pilsudski’s imperialist-backed Polish forces from Ukraine; by the summer of 1920, Soviet forces had advanced to the outskirts of Warsaw, marking their farthest westward march. In the end, however, the Red Army was repulsed and compelled to retreat. Furthermore, in the fall of that year a promising revolutionary situation in Italy was betrayed by the Social Democrats, and Mussolini’s fascists were gaining strength. The Italian bourgeoisie was emboldened to begin an economic offensive against the proletariat. Then came the defeat of the March Action.
By the time of the Third Congress, the initial revolutionary wave that had swept Europe after World War I, sparked by the Russian Revolution, had receded. In his report on the Russian party, Lenin said that it was “clear to us that, without the support of the world revolution, the victory of the proletarian revolution was impossible.” The Bolsheviks had done all they could to preserve the Soviet system, because “we knew that we were working not only for ourselves, but also for the international revolution.” But the workers state faced a life-or-death situation. That the Bolsheviks brought their policies of tactical retreat (for Soviet Russia) before the CI Congress—the highest Communist party body—for approval was a profound demonstration of international democratic-centralism and the antithesis of the practices of the Comintern and the Russian party in their later period of Stalinist degeneration. After vigorous debate, the Bolsheviks’ tactics were put to a vote and prevailed—an integral part of reorienting the Third International as a whole.
The workers state had survived, but revolutionary opportunities elsewhere had been defeated, due mainly to the lack of a tested and steeled revolutionary leadership. These defeats also showed that the Social Democrats, while serving as an essential prop for capitalist rule, still commanded the allegiance of large sections of the workers. The Third Congress set down the fact that the resources of the newly formed Communist parties, politically as well as organizationally, were not yet sufficient for the conquest of power.
The appendices in To the Masses include an excerpt from a 14 August 1921 letter by Lenin to the German Communists (published in full in Lenin’s Collected Works), written a few weeks after the Congress concluded. However, the excerpt omits Lenin’s trenchant summary of the tasks facing the CI:
“First, the Communists had to proclaim their principles to the world. That was done at the First Congress. It was the first step.
“The second step was to give the Communist International organisational form and to draw up conditions for affiliation to it—conditions making for real separation from the Centrists, from the direct and indirect agents of the bourgeoisie within the working-class movement. That was done at the Second Congress.
“At the Third Congress it was necessary to start practical, constructive work, to determine concretely, taking account of the practical experience of the communist struggle already begun, exactly what the line of further activity should be in respect of tactics and of organisation. We have taken this third step. We have an army of Communists all over the world. It is still poorly trained and poorly organised. It would be extremely harmful to forget this truth or be afraid of admitting it. Submitting ourselves to a most careful and rigorous test, and studying the experience of our own movement, we must train this army efficiently; we must organise it properly, and test it in all sorts of manoeuvres, all sorts of battles, in attack and in retreat. We cannot win without this long and hard schooling.”
In his report on the world economy, the first substantive point at the Congress, Trotsky stressed that there would be no “final crisis” automatically spelling the end of capitalism. The proletariat had to overthrow the capitalist system, and for this a revolutionary party was indispensable. The Social Democrats, said Trotsky, “almost entirely exclude the subjective factor—the dynamic revolutionary will of the working class.” He also attacked subjectivist notions that willpower was sufficient in and of itself for successful revolutionary struggle, pointing as an example to the peasant-based Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) party in Russia. He noted that the SR left wing ridiculed the need for concrete analysis of economic and political situations and falsely claimed that all obstacles could be overcome through “free will and the revolutionary actions of a minority.”
The Mensheviks had sought to do in Russia what the Social Democrats succeeded in doing in Germany in 1918-19: abort a social revolution. Due above all to Lenin’s leadership, the Bolsheviks were able to thwart the Menshevik attempt to derail the Russian Revolution. In contrast, the German proletariat lacked a tested revolutionary party. Where Lenin split with the Mensheviks in 1903, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and other revolutionaries remained in the SPD even after it voted, on 4 August 1914, to support its own imperialist bourgeoisie in World War I. Between 1903 and 1917, the Bolsheviks had been tempered and steeled through sharp political and theoretical struggles, through two revolutions and through what Lenin described as a “rapid and varied succession of different forms of the movement,” both legal and illegal and ranging from local circles to mass movements (“Left-Wing” Communism—An Infantile Disorder [1920]).
The Organizational Resolution
Most of the parties that came over to the CI from the Second International had significant residues of social-democratic program and practice. These were variously reflected in parliamentary illusions, trade-union opportunism, loose functioning and the presence of a reformist right wing. The Bolshevik experience had to be distilled and made accessible to these parties, so that it could be assimilated and applied by them to the specific circumstances in their own countries.
This was the purpose of the Organizational Resolution, which was drafted under Lenin’s close guidance. Given the extensive debates on the issues in dispute, particularly the March Action, this resolution got short shrift on the floor of the Congress, crammed in toward the end with hardly any discussion. But that was not the original intention of the Comintern leadership, as reflected in the Call for the Congress, which describes the organizational question as a major point on the agenda.
In his introduction, Riddell devotes all of two paragraphs to the Organizational Resolution and qualitatively understates its purpose. He writes that it was designed “to grapple with bureaucratic deformations member parties had inherited from the prewar Second International.” In fact, the Resolution mandated a wrenching reorganization to transform those parties into combat organizations, led by professional revolutionaries and capable of wresting power from the bourgeoisie.
The Resolution is suffused with this understanding. The German word Kampforganisation, with its clear military connotation, is repeated insistently in the last part of the Resolution, particularly in the section titled “On the Combination of Legal and Illegal Work.” Yet the phrase “combat organisation” appears only once in the Riddell translation, replaced elsewhere by a range of weaker phrases such as “organisation of struggle” and “fighting contingents.” The repetition is lost and the revolutionary intent is denatured, all part of a consistent softening of the Resolution in a social-democratic direction.
Moreover, where the German original condemns the Social Democrats for concentrating on “parliamentary impossibilities,” Riddell renders this as “opportunities that arise—or more likely, do not arise—in parliament.” The Resolution’s language on the need for a Communist party to vigorously combat the Social Democrats and supplant them as leaders of the proletariat is also blunted by Riddell. Where the German text has the Communist organization striving to be recognized “as the courageous, perceptive, vigorous and consistently loyal leader of the common movement” (our emphasis), Riddell replaces “the” with “a.”
Riddell’s dismissive attitude to the Resolution is clear elsewhere as well. At the Fourth Congress the following year, in what was his final speech to the world Communist movement, Lenin complained that the Resolution was “too Russian” and lamented that “we have not learnt how to present our Russian experience to foreigners” (“Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of the World Revolution,” November 1922). By this he meant that the CI had not yet managed to make Communists in the West absorb the Resolution’s intent and implement it on their own national terrain.
Liberal academics and social democrats have frequently distorted the meaning of “too Russian” to imply that Lenin was confessing that the Resolution was not applicable to West Europe. Riddell says the same thing in the introduction to his compilation of the Fourth Congress proceedings, claiming that Lenin intended a “warning against arbitrarily imposing Russian organisational norms” (Toward the United Front [Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012]). Lenin intended exactly the opposite in his speech, insisting that “that resolution must be carried out” and asserting that foreign Communists “must assimilate part of the Russian experience.”
Theses on Tactics and Strategy
Divisions in the CI going into the Third Congress were substantial, threatening a split. The most authoritative exponent internationally of the “theory of the offensive” was the Russian Nikolai Bukharin. The majority of the VKPD leadership supported the March Action and had been opposed by a minority led by former leader Paul Levi (now expelled) and Clara Zetkin. The March Action was also supported by the Italians and Austrians as well as the Hungarians led by Béla Kun, a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) who had been sent to Germany in early March 1921.
Levi and Zetkin had resigned in a huff from the VKPD Zentrale (central leadership body) in February 1921, when their opportunist position on Italy was voted down. They had both defended Giacinto Serrati, the leader of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), when he refused to expel the reformist wing of his party. Levi then went on vacation and was out of Germany when the March Action crisis exploded. His subsequent criticisms of the March Action were mainly correct, as Lenin acknowledged. But Levi went outside and against the party with his attacks—in two public pamphlets—violating democratic-centralist discipline. He termed the March Action a “putsch,” going so far as to compare VKPD leaders with Hitler’s crony General Ludendorff—at a time when the party was being savagely persecuted. The VKPD justly expelled Levi for this act of political strikebreaking. Levi appealed his expulsion to the Third Congress.
The Russian party was initially divided on the March Action, with Trotsky later reporting that for a period of time the two sides met in opposing caucuses, indicating a pre-factional situation. But Lenin and Trotsky won over Lev Kamenev, thereby gaining a majority on the Political Bureau against Zinoviev and Bukharin, who supported the March Action, as did Karl Radek, the CI representative to Germany. In the end, the Russian delegates came to an agreement, compromising on some wording in the “Theses on Tactics and Strategy” presented to the Third Congress and generally presenting a united face.
The Theses described the March Action as a “step forward” insofar as it represented a heroic response by a section of the working class, fighting under Communist leadership, to an overt provocation by the bourgeois state. This was a repudiation of Levi’s accusation that the March Action was a putsch. The Theses upheld Levi’s expulsion for his breach of discipline but also stressed that the VKPD had made a number of errors, the most serious of which was to confuse a defensive situation with an offensive one. The document asserted, “This error was compounded by a number of party members who contended that, under present conditions, the offensive represented the VKPD’s main method of struggle.”
In her Reminiscences of Lenin (1924), Zetkin relates how Lenin told her that the Theses would enable the Lefts to save face: “The congress will wring the neck of the celebrated theory of the offensive and will adopt a course of action corresponding to your ideas. In return, however, it must grant the supporters of the offensive theory some crumbs of consolation” (translated in To the Masses). Lenin also offered Levi a path back to the party, so long as he acted as a disciplined supporter of the CI. But Levi went a different way. After briefly forming his own small group, he soon ended up back in the SPD.
The German, Italian and Austrian delegations introduced amendments to water down the criticisms in the Theses. In a sentence stressing the need to “win the majority of the working class to the principles of communism,” they wanted to delete “majority” and substitute “goals” for “principles.” Lenin intervened strongly against the amendments, insisting that not a single letter of the resolution be changed. He noted that even anarchists agreed with the “goals” of communism inasmuch as they opposed capitalist exploitation, but communist principles included recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the use of state coercion in the period of transition to communism.
Lenin insisted that talk of taking power in the absence of winning a decisive majority of the toilers was empty chatter. He noted:
“In Russia, we were a small party, but we had with us in addition the majority of the Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country. Where do you have that? We had with us almost half the army, which then numbered at least ten million men. Do you have the majority of the army behind you?”
He argued that a decisive struggle must be waged against this type of revolutionary adventurism, “otherwise the Communist International is lost.”
Trotsky created an uproar among the Lefts with his trenchant criticism of the March Action, using far sharper language than had Radek in his lengthy report on the Theses. Six delegations signed a statement declaring that while they supported the Theses in principle, they had strong reservations about Trotsky’s speech.
Lenin and Trotsky were very severe in their criticism of leftism at the Third Congress because at the time they viewed it as the most immediate threat to the CI. However, their primary concern in the longer run was whether Communist leaders had the determination to act in a revolutionary fashion. In remarks to delegates from the German, Czech, Hungarian and other parties on July 11, as the Congress drew to a close, Lenin expressed concern that Bohumir Šmeral, head of the Czech party, might not be prepared to carry out “the offensive in Czechoslovakia” when the situation called for it. This came after Šmeral had told Lenin of his fear that he might be called on to carry out some “untimely action.” In the same speech, Lenin emphasized:
“The left mistake is simply a mistake, it isn’t big and is easily rectified. But if the mistake pertains to determination to act, then this is by no means a small mistake, it is a betrayal. These mistakes are not comparable. The theory that we shall make a revolution, but only after others have acted first, is utterly fallacious.”
The leftism of 1921 proved to be fleeting. German Communist leaders Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer, leading enthusiasts for the March Action in 1921, were obstacles to revolution when they were running the party two years later. Bukharin later ran the CI with J.V. Stalin when it presided over the betrayal of the 1925-27 Chinese Revolution; Bukharin then became the leader of the Right Opposition. Another major backer of the March Action, the Hungarian Jószef Pogány (John Pepper), was pushing farmer-labor populism in the U.S. a few years after the Third Congress.
Reformist Apologists for Levi
Grotesquely, some leftists today solidarize with Paul Levi’s stabbing the German party in the back over the March Action. An example is Daniel Gaido, who has edited two books produced by Historical Materialism and is associated with the Argentine pseudo-Trotskyist Partido Obrero. In a posting on Riddell’s blog, Gaido denounces Levi’s expulsion as a “wretched affair” and declares that “Zinoviev and Béla Kun, the organizers of the ‘March Action’ putsch in 1921, should have been defenestrated at the Comintern’s third congress, not Levi.” Actually, when it comes to defenestration, it is Daniel Gaido who is throwing communism out the window.
Riddell does not go as far as Gaido. In his introduction, he asserts that “the congress decisions represented an inevitable compromise” and that the “broader political compromise at the congress” (which included Levi’s expulsion) “served a necessary goal—too often neglected in the socialist movement—of preserving the unity of revolutionary forces.” But there was nothing inevitable about the compromise given the very serious differences. The agreement that Lenin achieved was based on principle. He had won on the fundamental issue: the Lefts had abandoned their support to the “revolutionary offensive.”
Riddell also asserts that “in a congress notable for candour and controversy, almost nothing was said in criticism of the ECCI’s record” and that the “failure to assess the role of the ECCI emissaries in the March Action” had negative results. This is not a new argument. Similar charges of a cover-up at the Third Congress were raised by the late fake-Marxist ideologues Tony Cliff and Pierre Broué. Jennifer Roesch of the ISO solidarizes with this approach in her review of To the Masses, claiming that Radek, Kun and Zinoviev were able to “evade any responsibility for their role” and that this “set a dangerous precedent” (“Majorities, Minorities, and Revolutionary Tactics,” International Socialist Review, Summer 2016).
The Congress did not pass a resolution denouncing Kun and his co-thinkers. But neither did it pass a resolution condemning the errors of Clara Zetkin, who continued to defend Levi’s actions until well into the Congress. Lenin and Trotsky were interested in political clarity, not retribution against individuals for mistaken positions. In his 14 August letter to the German Communists cited earlier, Lenin criticized Radek for publicly attacking Zetkin in the VKPD newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) shortly after the Congress. Lenin pointed out that a “peace treaty” had been negotiated at the Congress providing for joint, non-factional work. (This section of Lenin’s letter is also omitted in Riddell’s appendix.)
Accusations of a cover-up are belied by the material that Riddell himself and others have compiled. Lenin’s scathing criticism of Kun was well known by all who attended the Third Congress. Alfred Rosmer, then a leader of the French party, recalled in his memoir Lenin’s Moscow (London: Pluto Press, 1971): “Throughout the debates, Lenin had covered Bela Kun with sarcasm; expressions such as ‘stupidity of Bela Kun’, ‘foolishness of Bela Kun’ recurred time and time again.” At an expanded ECCI meeting held on the eve of the Congress, Lenin intervened sharply to defend Trotsky against Kun’s advocating that the French Communists follow an adventurist course of calling on draftees to refuse conscription, which would have led to the victimization of those who tried it. Lenin said bluntly: “I have come here in order to protest the speech by Comrade Béla Kun in which he attacked Comrade Trotsky instead of defending him, as he was obligated to do if he was a real Marxist.” He called Kun’s position “not worthy to be expressed by any Marxist, by any Communist comrade.”
The “cover-up” line is an echo of charges made by Levi himself. In Our Path: Against Putschism (April 1921), Levi wrote in regard to the Comintern envoys:
“They never work with the Zentrale of the country in question, always behind its back and often even against it. They find people in Moscow who believe them, others do not.... The only thing of this kind that the ECCI manages are appeals that come too late, and excommunications that come too early. This kind of political leadership in the Communist International leads either to nothing or to disaster.”
— David Fernbach, ed., In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi (Boston: Brill, 2011)
Comparing the ECCI to the Soviet state agency charged with fighting counterrevolutionary subversion, Levi declared: “The ECCI works more or less like a Cheka projected beyond the Russian frontiers.” This was grist for the mill for the Social Democrats, who accused the Comintern of serving the needs of Russian nationalism, sacrificing the interests of workers internationally to the dictates of their “Soviet masters.”
The assertion that Kun and others were not held accountable implies that the fight against leftism was incomplete at the Third Congress. If true, one would expect it to be a continuing serious problem. But the opposite was the case. Yesterday’s advocates of the revolutionary offensive were nowhere to be found when such an offensive was actually on the agenda in Germany in 1923.
Tellingly, in her review of To the Masses, the ISO’s Roesch does not even mention that Levi ended up a social-democratic renegade. Levi’s rapid return to the SPD is nonetheless an embarrassment to some of his present-day defenders, which helps explain why they make Clara Zetkin into a veritable cult figure. According to Roesch, “The contributions of Lenin, Trotsky, and Zetkin, in particular, stand out for their political clarity and exposition of the dynamic relationship between objective and subjective factors on the one hand, and between party and class on the other” (“Majorities, Minorities, and Revolutionary Tactics”). To compare Lenin and Trotsky, the foremost Communist leaders of the time, with Zetkin is patently absurd. If Zetkin had heard someone saying this, she would have been deeply embarrassed.
A longstanding member of the SPD left wing known especially for her work among working-class women, Zetkin was a rare participant in the 1889 founding of the Second International who made it into the CI. However, even after the Russian Revolution, her understanding of the need for a programmatically hard vanguard party was partial, reflecting an incomplete break with social-democratic conceptions. Lenin’s struggles with Zetkin at the Third Congress were key to winning her over more thoroughly to Bolshevism. (See “Clara Zetkin and the Struggle for the Third International,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 64, Summer 2014.)
Riddell claimed in “Clara Zetkin in the Lion’s Den” (johnriddell.wordpress.com, 12 January 2014) that “Zetkin’s discussion with Lenin helped win the leading Russian Communists to support her critique of the disastrous ‘March Action’ launched by Béla Kun and her party.” This is backwards. It was Lenin who won over Zetkin on key questions in the course of the Third Congress. In a letter to Zetkin and Levi on 16 April—written before Lenin learned that Levi had gone public with his criticisms—Lenin acknowledged that he had read little about the German events. But, he wrote, “I readily believe that the representative of the Executive Committee [Kun] defended stupid tactics, that were too leftist…this representative is very often too leftist.” At the same time, Lenin expressed distress over Levi and Zetkin’s defense of the centrist Serrati in Italy and their irresponsible resignations from the German leadership.
Zetkin continued to defend Levi even after she arrived in Moscow. She insisted that the March Action was a “putsch” and alibied Levi’s strikebreaking. On the eve of the Congress (18 June), she wrote, “I am convinced that Comrade Levi, in writing his pamphlet, was guided by passionate concern for the party’s present and future.” Lenin remonstrated with her: “You saw only the erroneous policy of the Zentrale and its bad results and not the combative workers of Central Germany. In addition, Paul Levi’s completely negative criticism lacks any sense of adherence to the party” (Reminiscences of Lenin).
From 1921 to 1923
In The Third International After Lenin, Trotsky pointed out:
“The revolutionary character of the epoch does not lie in that it permits of the accomplishment of the revolution, that is, the seizure of power at every given moment. Its revolutionary character consists in profound and sharp fluctuations and abrupt and frequent transitions from an immediately revolutionary situation; in other words, such as enables the communist party to strive for power, to a victory of the Fascist or semi-Fascist counter-revolution, and from the latter to a provisional regime of the golden mean…immediately thereafter to force the antagonisms to a head again and acutely raise the question of power.”
The ability of the revolutionary party to recognize these shifts is of exceptional importance.
By 1923, the situation in Germany was very different from what it had been two years earlier. In late 1922, the government failed to make reparation payments to France in the form of requisitions of coal and other basic commodities, as dictated by the Versailles Treaty. In response, French troops occupied Germany’s heavily industrial Ruhr region in January 1923. Amid severe economic dislocation and hyperinflation, the trade unions were paralyzed. The SPD, whose chief mechanism for chaining the working class to the bourgeois order was its leadership of the unions, lost control over the mass of the working class. Workers deserted both the unions and the SPD in droves and poured into the factory councils, in which the Communist Party (once again called the KPD) had substantial weight.
However, the KPD “continued to follow its one-sided interpretation of the slogan of the Third Congress” (Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin). After reining in the revolutionary strivings of the working masses earlier in 1923, it climbed down without a fight on the eve of a planned insurrection in October.
Cringing legalism had set in atop the party well before these critical events. An early indicator came during Brandler’s trial for participation in the March Action, when he declared to the prosecutor that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is possible even under the German constitution!” Brandler added: “Since 1918 the possibility of determining the fate of Germany through armed uprisings has increasingly diminished” (Der Hochverratsprozess gegen Heinrich Brandler vor dem ausserordentlichen Gericht am 6. Juni 1921 in Berlin [The High Treason Trial of Heinrich Brandler Before the Special Court on 6 June 1921 in Berlin] [1921] [our translation]). At an August 1923 meeting of the Russian Political Bureau, Trotsky said of the German leadership: “What they have over there is the mindset of a whipped dog after the experience of the failure of its March [Action]” (“Recording of Discussion ‘On the International Situation’ at the 21 August 1923 Session of the Politburo of the CC of the RKP[B],” Istochnik, May 1995 [our translation]).
At bottom, the KPD banked on the illusion that the left wing of the Social Democracy could become a revolutionary ally. As early as December 1921, the German Communist Party asserted that it was “willing to facilitate, by all parliamentary and extra-parliamentary means, the coming into being of a socialist workers government” and was ready to “join such a government if it has a guarantee that this government will represent the interests and demands of the working class in the fight against the bourgeoisie” (Political Circular No. 12, 8 December 1921). Far from acting as a corrective, key leaders of the Comintern, notably Zinoviev and Radek, encouraged the KPD on this course, which was essentially approved by the ECCI in January 1922.
In December 1922, the Fourth CI Congress adopted a deliberately obfuscationist resolution—“Comintern Theses on Tactics”—that enumerated five different kinds of “workers governments,” including an overtly capitalist social-democratic government. The real point was to legitimize a parliamentary coalition with the Social Democrats in the guise of a “workers’ government with Communist participation” that did “not yet signify the dictatorship of the proletariat” (quoted in Riddell, Toward the United Front). This attempt to create a halfway house between proletarian and bourgeois rule constituted a revision of the Marxist understanding of the state, as codified in such works as Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917) and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918). The working class cannot simply take hold of the existing state machinery and run it in its own class interests. The bourgeois state must be overthrown through workers revolution and a new state—the dictatorship of the proletariat—erected in its place.
The flawed Fourth Congress discussion on workers governments was taken by the KPD leadership as an endorsement of its conciliation of the left Social Democrats. In October 1923, the KPD formed regional coalition governments with the SPD in Saxony and Thuringia, which melted away when challenged by the German army. KPD leaders quickly called off an insurrection that the Comintern had prodded it into planning. An index of the KPD’s deep disorientation was that its plans for launching the insurrection hinged on SPD-led unions calling a general strike.
Trotsky realized belatedly in August 1923 that a revolutionary situation existed in Germany. He was the one who demanded that the KPD and Comintern organize a struggle for power, while Zinoviev vacillated and Stalin counseled holding back. But Trotsky’s approach at the time was largely administrative. He approved of the KPD’s entry into the Saxony and Thuringia governments, believing that this would provide a “drill ground” for revolution.
A year later, Trotsky came to grips with the underlying causes for the German defeat, generalizing from the experience of the Bolshevik Revolution. In The Lessons of October (1924), which was written in response to the KPD’s capitulation, he asserted that even an experienced revolutionary party runs the risk of lagging behind events and of counterposing the slogans of yesterday to the new tasks. This is particularly true in a revolutionary crisis, when elements of the party leadership will resist the necessity to make a turn when the question of power is posed. In 1917 this was overcome by Lenin’s leadership; in Germany in 1923 there was no one to play this role.
Riddell does not address the 1923 events in Germany at all in his introduction to To the Masses. He deals only briefly with the issue in his book on the Fourth Congress—even though the occupation of the Ruhr took place only a month after that Congress met—and does not clearly state a position on the issues in dispute. But in a presentation at a Historical Materialism conference in Toronto in 2012, he noted that the Fourth Congress resolution left room for a “workers government” to take office “while the capitalist state, or most of it, was still around,” a position that he embraced. Riddell uses this methodology to support capitalist governments of various stripes (see “Revisionists Still Trying to Bury Leninism,” Workers Vanguard No. 1006, 3 August 2012). He claims, for example, that “the government of Bolivia headed by President Evo Morales can indeed be viewed as a ‘workers’ government’ of the type discussed by the German revolutionary Clara Zetkin and the Communist International (Comintern) in the early 1920s” (“How Clara Zetkin Helps Us Understand Evo Morales,” johnriddell.wordpress.com, 18 September 2011).
Debate Over Italy
Contrary to the tale told by most of today’s reformists, Lenin and Trotsky also waged sharp fights against the right wing at the Third Congress. This was most notable in debates over the Italian Socialist Party. The PSI, which had come over to the Comintern in 1919 without a split, included a spectrum of tendencies, among them a substantial reformist grouping around Filippo Turati. One of the 21 Conditions stipulated that reformists, specifically including Turati, be excluded from the party. Their presence in the PSI had ensured the party’s betrayal of the revolutionary struggles in Italy in 1919-20.
At the PSI congress in Livorno in January 1921, the centrist leadership around Serrati refused to break with Turati & Co., despite repeated insistence by ECCI representatives. Serrati claimed that he would split with Turati, but at a time that suited him. The left wing around Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci walked out and founded the Communist Party of Italy (PCI), which was recognized as the CI section. The PSI appealed its expulsion at the Third Congress but was decisively rejected. The door was left open for Serrati’s readmission, but only if he expelled the reformists and fused with the PCI. In fact, Serrati did not come back to the CI until 1924, two years after Mussolini had taken power.
Zinoviev indicted Serrati and the PSI in his ECCI report at the Third Congress. At bottom, Serrati’s argument was that he could not break with the reformists because they had support in the trade unions. Zinoviev responded that the Comintern would not be blackmailed by numbers, asserting, “Even if we lose a large number of Italian workers for a period of time, that cannot be avoided, and we will win them back again.”
Levi, who attended the Livorno congress as a representative of the German party, supported Serrati’s stance, as did Zetkin in Germany. Riddell is evasive as to his own views on the Italian split while providing cover for Zetkin. In his introduction, Riddell writes that Zetkin, in eventually supporting the Third Congress decision on the PSI, “identified it with her controversial stand immediately after the Livorno Congress.” In fact, Zetkin took a far different stance after Livorno. In a 25 January letter to Lenin—not reproduced by Riddell in his appendix—she called the PSI split “a grave defeat” (Briefe Deutscher an Lenin 1917–1923 [Letters to Lenin by Germans 1917-1923] [Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1990] [our translation]). She argued for a “most rapid reunification of the two factions,” stating that it was “an objectively unjustifiable error for the communists to constitute their own faction.”
For her part, the ISO’s Roesch complains that the split at Livorno was a “debacle” that “prompted a fierce and debilitating debate within the German party—causing its two most clear-sighted leaders, Paul Levi and Clara Zetkin, to resign from its central leadership.” For Roesch, the fault lies with the ECCI and the Italian Communists for carrying out the Comintern line!
Zetkin’s conciliationist position on the PSI was reflected in her early interventions at the Third Congress. The crux of her first speech on the question, delivered on June 27, was to assert that while she had favored an immediate break with Turati, “what made this break difficult was the existence of a middle force, which indisputably included broad proletarian masses”—a clear reference to the Serrati group. This is the same tailist argument that Serrati made: If the “masses” have illusions in the reformists, then you can’t break with the likes of Turati.
Zetkin went on to say that she believed that the PSI controlled numerous municipalities and municipal police and that “it adds considerably to the Communists’ strength that in thousands of municipalities they have control of an armed force” that could “intervene in conflicts on behalf of the revolutionary struggle.” This utterly reformist argument portraying the bourgeois cops as allies of the workers was refuted in the discussion by the German delegate Wilhelm Koenen.
Intervening later on the round, Lenin described the Turati forces as “Italian Mensheviks” and emphasized that the Italian party “could not become a Communist Party” as long as it tolerated them in its ranks. He asked, “During the occupation of the factories in Italy, did we see anything resembling communism?” and responded: “No, at that time, there was as yet no communism in Italy.... And the first step along this road is a final break with the Mensheviks, who for more than twenty years have been busy collaborating with the bourgeois government.”
In light of the discussion, Zetkin changed her views. Speaking again on June 29, she demanded that “the break from the Turati forces must be carried out immediately, ruthlessly, and without evasions” and affirmed that the CI “carries out splits only in order to forge unity on a higher and more solid level” (emphasis in original). She concluded that the Italian workers should “separate yourselves nationally from forces with whom you no longer can nor should be united.... You must choose!”
Levi’s rightward course out of the Comintern began with his opposition to the PSI split at Livorno, not with the March Action. In his mind (and evidently Riddell’s as well), the March Action and PSI split were directly connected. In reality, these two questions were qualitatively different in their political substance.
The Fight for German Communism
From the time of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks had seen Germany, with its large pro-socialist proletariat, as key to the international situation, giving exceptional strategic importance to the struggle to forge a Communist party there. With its defeat in World War I, Germany entered into a period of deep social upheaval. Beginning with a working-class revolt in November 1918 that led to the overthrow of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the country was racked by protests, strikes and semi-insurrections. But unlike in Russia the previous year, there was no Bolshevik party to lead the masses to power. Instead, the SPD, joined in government for a crucial period by the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), formed a capitalist government that oversaw the bourgeoisie’s bloody counterrevolution.
Having supported German imperialism from the outset of the war, the SPD leaders had expelled virtually all of their critics in early 1917. In April, the expelled members founded the USPD, a highly heterogeneous centrist grouping including Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein and Rudolf Hilferding on the right and the Spartacist group of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht on the left. Only in late December 1918, when the decisive revolutionary moment was already at hand, did the Spartacists split from the USPD to form the KPD(S) (Communist Party of Germany [Spartakus]). A couple of weeks later, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were murdered by reactionary Freikorps troops unleashed by the SPD government. Two months after that, Leo Jogiches, another leading cadre, was also murdered. Thus, the KPD was deprived of its most experienced and effective leaders. Luxemburg’s protégé and Zetkin’s close colleague, Paul Levi, became its central leader.
Riddell’s introduction to To the Masses is uncritical of Levi up to the time of his public break from the party in 1921. Levi was not without some capacity. Lenin insisted that the Theses on Tactics and Strategy firmly endorse Levi’s attempt to apply united-front tactics to Germany through the January 1921 “Open Letter to German Workers’ Organisations” that Levi had co-authored with Radek. The “Open Letter” had been widely denounced as opportunist in the German party and by Zinoviev and Bukharin.
But Levi was one-sided and an opportunist dilettante to boot. Throughout the upheavals that roiled Germany in the postwar years, he was conscious of the dangers but blind to revolutionary opportunities. His deficiencies might have been counterbalanced within a collective leadership. However, Levi had a pathological hatred of more leftist elements. Rosmer noted that Levi “loathed all anarchists and syndicalists en bloc; they were elements of an ‘opposition’ which permanently obsessed him” (Lenin’s Moscow). Yet many working-class leaders influenced by syndicalism had become key figures in the CI, among them Rosmer himself and James P. Cannon, a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) who became a founding leader of the U.S. Communist Party and later of American Trotskyism.
In Germany and other countries in 1919-20, Left Communism was a significant current, giving voice to an important layer of the working class that was impatient to carry out a revolutionary overturn. The Left held a number of erroneous positions, such as opposition to working in trade unions led by reformists and to participating in parliamentary elections. Lenin understood that in many cases these positions were a knee-jerk response to betrayals by the pro-capitalist union leaders and the Second International. He believed that Left Communists and revolutionary syndicalists (sometimes the same people) were in many cases excellent human material, often more subjectively anti-capitalist than those recruited from social-democratic parties.
Levi’s approach was the opposite. At a KPD conference in October 1919, he expelled anyone who voted against participating in reformist-led unions or utilizing the bourgeois parliament. The KPD lost half its membership, including much of its proletarian base. Levi’s ultimatism appalled Lenin, who wrote of the expelled Lefts:
“My impression is that they are very gifted propagandists, inexperienced and young, like our own Left Communists (‘Left’ due to lack of experience and youth) of 1918. Given agreement on the basic issue (for Soviet rule, against bourgeois parliamentarism), unity, in my opinion, is possible and necessary, just as a split is necessary with the Kautskyites.”
— “Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany Regarding the Split,” 28 October 1919
The following year, the leftists who had been drummed out of the KPD founded the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD), which initially had more than 40,000 members and significant influence in the factories. The Comintern leadership attempted to reintegrate them into the main German party. But when KAPD representatives were offered a decisive vote at the Second CI Congress, Levi threatened to pack his bags and leave. In the end, the KAPD representatives refused to attend the Congress due to their political differences. Nevertheless, in December 1920 the CI provisionally allowed the KAPD to become a sympathizing section, and its status was reviewed at the Third Congress.
By then, the KAPD was much smaller, and the prospect of an imminent revolutionary situation was no longer posed. The workers movement was on the defensive, and the KAPD was averse to following CI discipline. The Third Congress passed a motion giving the KAPD three months to fuse with the VKPD or its association with the CI would be terminated. The KAPD rejected the ultimatum, left the Comintern and formed its own hostile international current.
While the Comintern fought to win over revolutionary syndicalists and anarchists, Levi pushed for unity with the centrists. His purge of the Lefts in 1919 was intended to appeal to the USPD leadership. At the time, there was great ferment within that centrist party. Much of its working-class base was revolutionary-minded, while the leadership was divided between hardened reformists and a vacillating group that conciliated the right wing.
A USPD congress in Leipzig in late 1919 approved a resolution stating that the party would support a new International including both the CI and what it described as “social-revolutionary parties” in other countries. This was an attempt to appropriate the authority of the October Revolution while creating a counterbalance to the overwhelming authority of the Russian Communist Party, giving the USPD room to maintain its opportunist practices. (A centrist international was in fact established in 1921. Derisively dubbed the Two-and-a-Half International by the CI, it soon folded back into the Second International.)
The Comintern naturally opposed the 1919 Leipzig resolution, but Levi wanted a regroupment with the USPD based on conciliating its leaders. The KPD began to run articles in its press stating that Lenin’s harsh criticisms of the USPD were out of date and posing the possibility of the two parties coexisting in the Comintern. The CI took over dealings with the USPD to stop the KPD leadership’s conciliationist course. Contrasting the different approaches toward the USPD, historian Werner Angress notes that “whereas Levi was primarily interested in facilitating this political marriage by being conciliatory to the Independents, Lenin was more concerned with devising safeguards against the possibility that a merger would bring ‘opportunist’ elements into the Communist movement” (Stillborn Revolution—The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921-1923 [Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963]).
At the subsequent USPD conference in Halle in October 1920, a left wing encompassing nearly two-thirds of the active membership split from the right-wing leaders after a sharp confrontation with centrist politics. A four-hour speech by Zinoviev was pivotal in steering the leftists toward the CI, leading them to fuse with the KPD in December 1920 and form the VKPD. This was a signal achievement.
Nonetheless, Levi’s treatment of the Lefts amounted to a lost opportunity. In a party that had never fully assimilated the Marxist understanding of the state, the purge of the Left meant that the leading cadre consisted even more heavily of those elements most sensitive to pressures from parliamentarism and the bourgeois legal order.
Profintern and the Revolutionary Syndicalists
The Comintern’s attempt to win over revolutionary syndicalist militants was evident in the Third Congress discussion on the trade-union question. Many of these syndicalists were opposed to political struggle and to political parties, a false response to the abject parliamentarism of the Second International. The “Theses on the Communist International and the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU)” adopted at the Congress characterized as a “bourgeois notion” the “concept that trade unions are neutral, apolitical, and non-partisan.” The resolution explained that Communist parties are composed of the most politically conscious elements of the proletariat who therefore required their own organization, separate from and opposed to the reformist parties. For their part, the unions are mass organizations of the working class, which seek to unite all workers within a given industry regardless of what political tendency, if any, they belong to.
The RILU, or Profintern, was set up as a counterweight to the Amsterdam trade-union international, which was dominated by Social Democrats from the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals. By their very nature, the Amsterdam misleaders sowed class-collaborationist defeatism and national chauvinism. To forge proletarian unity in struggle against the capitalists required breaking unions from the reformists and placing them under a leadership committed to the cause of socialist revolution. In practice, Profintern-affiliated unions were led by either Communists or revolutionary syndicalists. On the part of the CI, the Profintern was an attempt at a united front with the syndicalists, allowing for common actions while giving Communists more opportunity to persuade syndicalist workers of the correctness of their views.
In addressing syndicalist prejudices, the resolution opposed calls raised by the IWW and others for workers to leave the unions that were under pro-capitalist leadership, affirming instead that Communists should work within them and “try by every means to win the old unions to revolution.” While frankly acknowledging such differences, the Comintern sought to collaborate with syndicalist forces. Longtime IWW leader William “Big Bill” Haywood was a Third Congress delegate and spoke under the trade-union point. Numerous other syndicalists were delegates to the founding congress of the Profintern, which was held concurrently with the CI gathering.
The Lessons of October
The main task of the Third Congress was to prepare the parties of the Comintern for the revolutionary crises that were bound to come. In 1923 one did in fact come, but the programmatic weaknesses of the KPD, reinforced rather than corrected by a CI that was itself beginning to degenerate, let the revolutionary situation slip. The Lessons of October demonstrated Trotsky’s brilliant grasp of the adaptation to social-democratic practice and bourgeois legalism that underlay the 1923 defeat:
“If by Bolshevism—and we are stressing here its essential aspect—we understand such a training, such a tempering, and such an organization of the proletarian vanguard as enables the latter to seize power, arms in hand; and if by Social Democracy we are to understand the acceptance of a reformist opposition activity within the framework of bourgeois society and an adaptation to its legality—i.e., the actual training of the masses to become imbued with the inviolability of the bourgeois state; then, indeed, it is absolutely clear that even within the Communist party itself, which does not emerge full-fledged from the crucible of history, the struggle between social democratic tendencies and Bolshevism is bound to reveal itself in its most clear, open and uncamouflaged form during the immediate revolutionary period when the question of power is posed point-blank.”
The 1923 defeat had enormous repercussions. A wave of disappointment swept over the Soviet masses, who had keenly anticipated a victory of the German workers, and thereby the crucial extension of the revolution. The resulting demoralization helped open the door for the Soviet Thermidor, in which political power was usurped from the working class. By the end of 1924, Stalin, at the head of the developing Soviet bureaucracy, was promulgating the nationalist dogma of “building socialism in one country.”
The CI began to change, too. As Trotsky wrote in The Third International After Lenin, “From 1923 on, the situation changed sharply. We no longer have before us simply defeats of the proletariat, but routs of the policy of the Comintern.” The decisive watershed was 1923. This understanding is integral to Trotskyism, the revolutionary Marxism of our time.
John Riddell began The Communist International in Lenin’s Time series just after Jack Barnes’ SWP abandoned its last pretense of Trotskyism. The earlier volumes are extremely valuable for English-speaking Marxists, but they have to be viewed through the prism of where the Barnesites were going. For example, in the introduction to the proceedings of the CI’s 1920 Congress of the Peoples of the East (To See the Dawn [New York: Pathfinder, 1993]), the paeans to bourgeois-nationalist forces, including South Africa’s African National Congress, express the SWP’s embrace of the disastrous “two-stage” schema for revolution in the colonial and semicolonial world, long a hallmark of Stalinist betrayal.
Riddell has traveled some political distance since then, but no nearer to Leninism. At least he acknowledges publicly that he is no longer a Trotskyist. Still, his reformist politics differ little from those of Daniel Gaido or the ISO, who from time to time nominally assert some connection to Trotskyism.
The proceedings of the Third CI Congress collected in To the Masses demand careful study, since an understanding of the past is essential to prepare for the future. We in the ICL seek to critically assimilate and transmit the history of Bolshevism and the early years of the Comintern in order to strengthen our efforts to build an international Leninist vanguard party for the revolutionary struggles that lie ahead.

*The Bob Dylan Bootleg Legacy- A Time Capsule

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.   







CD REVIEW

Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3, Bob Dylan, Columbia Records, 1991.

I have spilled no little ink on the question of the value of various bootleg products, genuine basement tapes, fake basement tapes, etc. that have come out of over the years detailing the career of the premier folk troubadour of his times, Bob Dylan. The core of my argument is that if you have limited cash resources, time or energy (or, heaven forbid, aren't all that into him) then getting copies of his earlier albums rather than more esoteric compilations is the way to go. That said, I can remember being very pleasantly surprised when this three volume CD start of what would become, as of this writing, an eight volume series came out.

The virtue of this particular set housed under roof is that it ranges in material, time and composition from Dylan's early work in 1961 until the time of release, 1991. In between we are feasted to outtakes, variations and some never, until then, previously released material. Thus we get some early talking blues material that shows the early influence of Woody Guthrie on Dylan's early style as he tries to find his "voice" (and Volume One ends with a poetic screed/talking blues in honor of Woody that alone is worth the price of admission to this volume).

We further get some glimpses at Dylan's changeover to a more personal, less quasi-political style, in the mid-1960's with songs like "Farewell, Angelina" and "Sad-eyed Lady Of The Lowlands". Of course, the whole switchover to electric, including electric back up band (The Band, initially), gets signaled here by full array of tracks with the classic "Like A Rolling Stone" being a very nice highlight. His religious conversion, or whatever it was (or is), is expressed in songs like "Foot Of Pride" and "Tell Me". Then there are the variations like a faster version of "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry" than the one used on an earlier album. And, of course, the outtakes like the truncated version of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" recorded here. All in all, quite a mishmash but a mishmash with great historical interest. And a few tunes that should have been released long ago like "Blind Willie McTell", a carib-flavored "Santa Fe" and "Walking Down The Line". Feast on.

Note: As always in this series there is a very informative and copious set of liner notes that go into detail about the genesis of each song or some other worthwhile tidbit.


ANGELINA

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1981 Special Rider Music


Well, it's always been my nature to take chances
My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances
Where the current is strong and the monkey dances
To the tune of a concertina

Blood dryin' in my yellow hair as I go from shore to shore
I know what it is that has drawn me to your door
But whatever it could be, makes you think you've seen me before
Angelina

Oh, Angelina. Oh, Angelina

His eyes were two slits that would make a snake proud
With a face that any painter would paint as he walked through the crowd
Worshipping a god with the body of a woman well endowed
And the head of a hyena

Do I need your permission to turn the other cheek?
If you can read my mind, why must I speak?
No, I have heard nothing about the man that you seek
Angelina

Oh, Angelina. Oh, Angelina

In the valley of the giants where the stars and stripes explode
The peaches they were sweet and the milk and honey flowed
I was only following instructions when the judge sent me down the road
With your subpoena

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?
I've tried my best to love you, but I cannot play this game
Your best friend and my worst enemy is one and the same
Angelina

Oh, Angelina. Oh, Angelina

There's a black Mercedes rollin' through the combat zone
Your servants are half dead; you're down to the bone
Tell me, tall man, where would you like to be overthrown
Maybe down in Jerusalem or Argentina?

She was stolen from her mother when she was three days old
Now her vengeance has been satisfied and her possessions have been sold
He's surrounded by God's angels and she's wearin' a blindfold
And so are you, Angelina

Oh, Angelina. Oh, Angelina

I see pieces of men marching; trying to take heaven by force
I can see the unknown rider, I can see the pale white horse
In God's truth tell me what you want, and you'll have it of course
Just step into the arena

Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases
Pass the tree of smoke, pass the angel with four faces
Begging God for mercy and weepin' in unholy places
Angelina

Oh, Angelina. Oh, Angelina

BLIND WILLIE MCTELL

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1983 Special Rider Music



Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, "This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem."
I traveled through East Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

Well, I heard the hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Were his only audience
Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
(I can) hear the undertaker's bell
(Yeah), nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand
There's a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

Well, God is in heaven
And we all want what's his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I'm gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell

FAREWELL ANGELINA

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1965, 1966 Warner Bros. Music Inc



Farewell Angelina
The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
And the trumpet play slow
Farewell Angelina
The sky is on fire
And I must go.

There's no need for anger
There's no need for blame
There's nothing to prove
Ev'rything's still the same
Just a table standing empty
By the edge of the sea
Farewell Angelina
The sky is trembling
And I must leave.

The jacks and queens
Have forsaked the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guards
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I'll see you in a while.

See the cross-eyed pirates sitting
Perched in the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the neighbors they clap
And they cheer with each blast
Farewell Angelina
The sky's changing color
And I must leave fast.

King Kong, little elves
On the rooftoops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the make-up man's hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
Farewell Angelina
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be gone.

The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it's quiet.


FOOT OF PRIDE

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1983 Special Rider Music


Like the lion tears the flesh off of a man
So can a woman who passes herself off as a male
They sang "Danny Boy" at his funeral and the Lord's Prayer
Preacher talking Ôbout Christ betrayed
It's like the earth just opened and swallowed him up
He reached too high, was thrown back to the ground
You know what they say about bein' nice to the right people on the way up
Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin' down

Well, there ain't no goin' back when your foot of pride come down
Ain't no goin' back

Hear ya got a brother named James, don't forget faces or names
Sunken cheeks and his blood is mixed
He looked straight into the sun and said revenge is mine
But he drinks, and drinks can be fixed
Sing me one more song, about ya love me to the moon and the stranger
And your fall by the sword love affair with Erroll Flynn
in these times of compassion when conformity's in fashion
Say one more stupid thing to me before the final nail is driven in.

Well, there ain't no goin' back when your foot of pride come down
Ain't no goin' back

There's a retired businessman named Red, cast down from heaven and he's out of his head
He feeds off of everyone that he can touch
He said he only deals in cash or sells tickets to a plane crash
He's not somebody that you play around with much
Miss Delilah is his, a Philistine is what she is
She'll do wondrous works with your fate
Feed you coconut bread, spice buns in your bed
If you don't mind sleepin' with your head face down in a grave.

Well, there ain't no goin' back when your foot of pride come down
Ain't no goin' back

Well they'll choose a man for you to meet tonight
You'll play the fool and learn how to walk through doors
How to enter into the gates of paradise
No, how to carry a burden too heavy to be yours
Yeah, from the stage they'll be tryin' to get water outta rocks
A whore will pass the hat, collect a hundred grand and say thanks
They like to take all this money from sin, build big universities to study in
Sing "Amazing Grace" all the way to the Swiss banks

Well, there ain't no goin' back when your foot of pride come down
Ain't no goin' back

They got some beautiful people out there, man
They can be a terror to your mind and show you how to hold your tongue
They got mystery written all over their forehead
They kill babies in the crib and say only the good die young
They don't believe in mercy
Judgment on them is something that you'll never see
They can exalt you up or bring you down main route
Turn you into anything that they want you to be

Well, there ain't no goin' back when your foot of pride come down
Ain't no goin' back

Yes, I guess I loved him too
I can still see him in my mind climbin' that hill
Did he make it to the top, well he probably did and dropped
Struck down by the strength of the will
Ain't nothin' left here partner, just the dust of a plague that has left this whole town afraid
From now on, this'll be where you're from
Let the dead bury the dead. Your time will come
Let hot iron blow as he raised the shade

Well, there ain't no goin' back when your foot of pride come down
Ain't no goin' back

I SHALL BE RELEASED

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1967,1976 Dwarf Music


They say ev'rything can be replaced,
Yet ev'ry distance is not near.
So I remember ev'ry face
Of ev'ry man who put me here.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

They say ev'ry man needs protection,
They say ev'ry man must fall.
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above this wall.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd,
Is a man who swears he's not to blame.
All day long I hear him shout so loud,
Crying out that he was framed.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

LAST THOUGHTS ON WOODY GUTHRIE

Words and Music by Bob Dylan
1973 Special Rider Music


When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up
If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup
If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long
And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away
And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin'
And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin'
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin'
And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin'
And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin'
And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin'
And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm
And to yourself you sometimes say
"I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn't they tell me the day I was born"
And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet
And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air
And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare
And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying
And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin'
And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet
And you need it badly but it lays on the street
And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat
And you think yer ears might a been hurt
Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt
And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush
When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush
And all the time you were holdin' three queens
And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean
Like in the middle of Life magazine

Bouncin' around a pinball machine
And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin'
But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed
And no matter how you try you just can't say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead
And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign
And you say to yourself just what am I doin'
On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin'
On this curve I'm hanging
On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm talking
In this air I'm inhaling
Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running
What am I saying, what am I knowing
On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin'
On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin'
In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin'
In the words that I'm thinkin'
In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin'
Who am I helping, what am I breaking
What am I giving, what am I taking
But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
But then again you know why they're around
Just waiting for a chance to slip and drop down
"Cause sometimes you hear'em when the night times comes creeping
And you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping
And you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin'
And you can't remember for the best of yer thinking
If that was you in the dream that was screaming
And you know that it's something special you're needin'
And you know that there's no drug that'll do for the healin'
And no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding


And you need something special
Yeah, you need something special all right
You need a fast flyin' train on a tornado track
To shoot you someplace and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a stream engine howler
That's been banging and booming and blowing forever
That knows yer troubles a hundred times over
You need a Greyhound bus that don't bar no race
That won't laugh at yer looks
Your voice or your face
And by any number of bets in the book
Will be rollin' long after the bubblegum craze
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat
That it ain't got you licked
It can't get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked
You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope's just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner 'round a wide-angled curve

But that's what you need man, and you need it bad
And yer trouble is you know it too good
"Cause you look an' you start getting the chills

"Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill
And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house
And it ain't made in no Hollywood wheat germ
And it ain't on that dimlit stage
With that half-wit comedian on it
Ranting and raving and taking yer money
And you thinks it's funny
No you can't find it in no night club or no yacht club

And it ain't in the seats of a supper club
And sure as hell you're bound to tell
That no matter how hard you rub
You just ain't a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub
No, and it ain't in the rumors people're tellin' you
And it ain't in the pimple-lotion people are sellin' you
And it ain't in no cardboard-box house
Or down any movie star's blouse
And you can't find it on the golf course
And Uncle Remus can't tell you and neither can Santa Claus
And it ain't in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes
And it ain't in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons
And it ain't in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices
That come knockin' and tappin' in Christmas wrappin'
Sayin' ain't I pretty and ain't I cute and look at my skin
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow
Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry
When you can't even sense if they got any insides
These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows
No you'll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper mache«
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain't in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who'd turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend
The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world
And you can't find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant
And make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain't in the ones that ain't got any talent but think they do
And think they're foolin' you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of rnoney and chicks
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin', "Christ do I gotta be like that

Ain't there no one here that knows where I'm at
Ain't there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AINÕT REAL"

No but that ain't yer game, it ain't even yer race
You can't hear yer name, you can't see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs

You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in the Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown

The Front Pages From The Distaff Side-Rosalind Russell And Cary Grant’s “His Girl Friday”-(1940)-A Film Review DVD Review


The Front Pages From The Distaff Side-Rosalind Russell And Cary Grant’s “His Girl Friday”-(1940)-A Film Review     
DVD Review




By Sam Lowell

His Girl Friday, starring Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy, directed by Howard Hawks, from a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, 1940  

Recently in reviewing another later (1960) Cary Grant vehicle, The Grass Is Greener, where he plays a cuckolded English Earl whose wife’s affections were stolen by an arriviste American oil man (played by also hunk Robert Mitchum) I noted that as a rule Cary Grant, the epitome of maleness, handsomeness, suaveness and whatever else matters to the majority females that made up the 1940s and 1950s audiences did not lose the woman (and in that vehicle he didn’t either but it was a close call when the deal went down). In the film under review Howard Hawk’s adaptation of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s screwball comedy, The Front Page, he almost let another dame get away, let his ex-wife Hildy beat it to upstate New York. So maybe I was a little wrong about Cary’s ability to swoop women off their feet-and keep them swooped (is that the right past tense, oh well).                 
Here’s the play and it may be familiar to those who saw the play or the later screen version with Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau except, a very big except the ‘‘ace” reporter is a woman, a female Hildy, played by rough and tumble, give as well as he received, Rosalind Russell, which allows the male-female tussle that drives the film to go forward. Tussle because one, Hildy had given Walter, Walter Burns, the mad monk editor-in-chief/owner of a New York City newspaper, his walking papers, no go, done, and two, she is now engaged and ready to let the rough and tumble life of an ace reporter fall by the wayside. Engaged to Bruce Baldwin, a nice safe middle of the road insurance man, played by Ralph Bellamy.      

But see Walter, since the nasty divorce had gotten “religion,” well maybe had gotten religion, since he is remorseful about the bad way he treated Hildy and wants her back. The hook: the hook for any good and resourceful journalist- a big career-making or enhancing front page story. The bait for the hook- covering the execution of a small time grafter whose upcoming date with death is being played by the political establishment for the impending elections as the final nail in the coffin for the anarchist plague that had descended upon the city. The felon nothing but a snook and so Walter lures Hildy into looking into what the whole plan is all about. Gets her in so deep she can’t even think about poor ordinary nice guy Bruce and his very average life plans. In the end the snook gets a reprieve and the local politicos have egg all over their faces for their cover-ups. And Hildy and Walter go about their merry way. As for Bruce, well, he is on his way back to Albany-alone. You know Cary had this one in the bag from the beginning when you think about it. Just don’t let your good woman loose around him-okay.        

When Ernest Hemingway Trod The Earth With A Heavy Footprint And The Devil Took The Hinter Post Gladly Come Killing Field Time


When Ernest Hemingway Trod The Earth With A Heavy Footprint And The Devil Took The Hinter Post Gladly Come Killing Field Time

By Si Landon

Sometimes things happen in the world, sometimes people rear up on their hind legs and throw you the biggest curve ball out of nowhere and that is what makes life interesting. Made life interesting one time for the now fully retired newspaperman Larry Larson who spent his entire career working by-lines for small-time (The Riverdale Gazette) and big time (The Post ) publications centered around the “slice of life” stories that people would tell him, or he would hear about or somebody would tip him to check out this or that person or situation. He always had plenty of material, great and small, to work his three columns a week magic on. One of the biggest stories that he had covered was the long trail aftermath of the big Tip Top Hat Company robbery which happened in 1946 and carted the robbers a quarter of a million dollars, a lot of money then, although now as Larry said in his article strictly walking around money. As one of the robbers was alleged to have said it was almost like money found on the ground the job went so smoothly. It was the aftermath though that made the story “slice of life” worthy. Actually, as will be detailed below, made two such stories that kind of worthy.

Larry Larson was not even born in 1946 so he had no first-hand knowledge of the robbery. The way he got the story was from the son of the main planner of the robbery John Colfax. That name is important because when the deal went down it was his mother, Kitty Colfax, who had done the mastermind planning although his father, “Big Jim” Colfax, for many years got the public credit. The way John found out about the whole adventure was by accident. He had been sitting in a bar in Pottsville, Pennsylvania where his grandparents, Frank and Etta Collins, had raised him when some old-timer barfly hearing his name mentioned asked whether he was related to Kitty Colfax, nee Collins, who had been involved in the big Tip Top Hat Company robbery over in Gloversville. Figuring the old-timer was on his uppers, was looking to cadge a few drinks from a fresh face walk-in against the indifference of the sullen crowd of all-day drinkers John thought he was being worked for a few whiskies. Something about the guy though made him bite, maybe because he recently been thinking about those lost parents or maybe because he had always been semi-consciously curious about stuff his grandparents dismissed whenever he long ago brought the subject up. The old-timer gave him a few details and John, half-drunk thought no more of it that night. The next day though sobered up he went to his grandparents’ house and asked about Kitty Colfax, nee Collins. Frank and Etta went white knowing that the time had come to tell their grandson who his mother and father were and what they had done. Since he was only a year old when they took custody of him John had no memory of them, and his grandparents had told him they had died in a tragic car accident. End of story.

John wanted to know more, much more about who his parents were and what they had done but since Kitty had run away from home when she was sixteen to run around with whoever had dough in Philadelphia, whoever would buy her love for sale in what the whole thing really amounted too once Kitty knew how to get her claws into a man and keep them there, they were vague on what had occurred. The details of how after meeting Big Jim and planning the caper that would put them, really her on easy street Kitty had wound up spent the next twenty years of her life in prison dying of cancer shortly before she was to be released. Frank and Etta had thought it best to break off totally with their daughter to protect John and so the lie and the whitewashed walls on the subject on one Kitty Collins.

Once John pressed the issue his grandparents did tell John that the guy who broke the case, Jim Reardon, the ace claims investigator for the Allied Insurance Company, the company that had a small insurance policy which they had to honor taken out by one of the robbers, a guy named Ole Andreson known as the Swede, might still be around and check with him in Philadelphia. John did so working his way through the thickets finding out that Reardon had retired to Tom’s River over in New Jersey. He got the address and a few weeks later he was sitting in Reardon’s living room peppering him with a million questions. Reardon had done a million big time claims for Allied so although he remembered what had happened and how he had nabbed the last of the robbers alive, John’s mother and father, he had forgotten many of the details about Kitty and Big Jim. He did have boxes of material in his musty basement catalogued by the year so he invited John to go down and look.

John got a general idea about the caper from the various reports and newspaper clipping in Reardon’s Colfax dossier, but the most fascinating item was Kitty Colfax’s journal that she kept from her girlish days until a few days before she was nabbed by Reardon. Reardon confessed he had never read the journal after he had grabbed the item from the Colfax mansion where he had nabbed Kitty and Big Jim after a shoot-out. A shoot-out between Big Jim and Dum Dum one of the other robbers who was looking to find out why he had been left with egg on his face and nothing else when it came time to divvy up the robbery proceedings. Reardon had meant to do so to learn yet another lesson in the ways of human greed but the press of big cases didn’t give him time to see what made Kitty tick. That journal was the source of John (and Reardon as well) finding out that the demon planner behind the robbery and the betrayal of their confederates had been Kitty’s work and Big Jim was just the “front” man since the others would not have listened to her on her own hook.              

Here’s where the second story comes in. After John had satisfied himself that he probably would not have liked to meet his mother-or father -and that his grandparents were right to keep the knowledge of his bad ass parents from him he started on the trail of a reference early on in his mother’s journal about a daughter named Sheila who had been born in 1943 not long after she had left Pottsville and whom she had given up, had let be adopted by the Farr family from Scranton. This would be John’s half-sister of some sort even if she was illegitimate. He felt that if he had gone this far he might as well see the thing through and so he started a search for her. Unfortunately by the time he was able to catch up to her whereabouts he found out that she had been killed a couple of years before by a renegade “hit” man after taking part in the big U.S. Mail truck robbery out in Riverside, California. That had netted the robbers over a million dollars, once again a lot of money then if only walking around money now.

He dug into what the California newspapers had written about the case, written what they knew anyway and what he was able to pick up from a guy, a grease monkey, Claude Atkins, who worked with Eddie Stevens, a.k.a. Billy Baxter, a.k.a. Sam Lawrence and who knows what other names a has-been big time race car driver who was involved in the robbery in order to get enough for Sheila’s wanting habits once she got her claws into him. What he found out, and which he related to Larry who had known the particulars of her mother’s story was that Sheila had the same genes as her mother. Had the expensive wanting habits that drove Kitty from nowhere Pottsville. Had driven Sheila from hard-scrabble Scranton when she was old enough to escape. Larry was able to take what John had given him, which had been a lot less that he had been given about Kitty and whipped it into a story-line “like mother, like daughter.”     

Apparently Sheila had run away from the Farr home when she was fourteen with an older guy who promised her the moon. She had wound up originally in Chi town with him where he dumped her after a few months when the next best thing came along. After he had tired of her. Left her stranded at fifteen with nowhere to go, not back to Scranton anyway so she started whoring in a place over on the right side of Division Street. That is where she met Red Riley who also went under the moniker Dutch Reagan, another older guy, a big-time gambler who was her client one night and who came back several times to sample her wares before they took off together for Reno. For a couple of years, maybe three, she got about everything that she wanted from Red-except excitement which she craved ever since the day she high-tailed it out of Scranton and the strict Pentecostal Farr home.     

One day she heard that the Reno Classic, a car race was coming up. She asked Red to take her, but he backed out saying he didn’t give a damn about race cars and he needed to rest up for a big poker game that was starting that night. Sheila went alone and was thrilled by the speed and action, got her adrenal up. Got it up particularly when the winner, Billy Baxter later to be Eddie Stevens, turned out to be a good-looking guy. She went right up to him after his victory while he was surrounded by a bevy of young and beautiful girls and asked him if she could buy him a drink. He took one look at her and said “sure, baby, after I change into my street clothes.” Claude saw then that she was nothing but trouble and the volatile Billy was doomed to fall prey to her charms. That night and for about three nights after Billy went underground, Claude couldn’t find him to get himself and the car ready for next race in Riverside the next week. When he did show up he was non-committal about the next week’s race. Had that shit-eating grin that every guy who has been taken around the world had.

Two bad things, bad for the guys if not for Sheila, then happened. First Eddie took a horrible spin-out at Riverdale and wreaked the car when he tried a foolhardy inside move for position trying to impress Sheila with his skills. No fool after that incident Sheila dumped him as a guy who was going nowhere and would not have the dough necessary to keep her in fast action style. Second Red, after a three days and nights poker game tapped out, was busted and Sheila was ready to leave him when he told her about the plan. A plan to rob a U.S. Mail truck that would be carrying over a million in cash on a not well-travelled road through the high desert down in Southern California. That idea kept her in check, kept her in Red’s clutches.  They, Sheila and Rusty along with a couple of Red’s confederates kept working out the plan to ambush the truck on a deserted road once they were able to pass the truck on the one lane dirt road. Nobody’s reflexes and driving ability was good enough to do the task though. Then Sheila, half-thinking that she needed a safety valve in case the job went bust and half-thinking that Red’s plan didn’t mean a damn thing if they couldn’t get pass the mail truck told Red that she had a guy who could do the serious driving easily. If she could find him.                    

Sheila did find Billy now working the auto demolition circuit under the name of Eddie Stevens down in Riverdale after getting in contact with Claude who knew where Eddie was and what he was doing. Claude said she had that same hungry look on her face that he had seen that day when she first approached Eddie. He was fucked whatever she had in mind. After bullshitting Eddie about how he knew from the get-go that she was only interested in guys who were interested in fighting their asses off for a shot at the main chance she soft-pedalled him into a motel bedroom and went to work on him. A couple of days later she brought Eddie to see Red and see if he was the guy for the driver’s job. Done deal after Eddie beat the pajamas out of the timed clockings that were needed to successfully complete the job.   

In the event the robbery went off without a hitch-the actual robbery part anyway. There had been bad blood between Red and Eddie though over Sheila before the robbery over Red’s attitude toward her. That bad blood never abated when Eddie was left along with the other confederates looking stupid once Red and Sheila (Sheila’s idea here so like her mother ready to stiff any guy except she didn’t have whatever genes Kitty had to plan the heist) made their prearranged plans to keep all the dough under some principle that cutting dough two ways (really one way in the end) was a lot more profitable, that easy street would last a lot longer than splitting five ways.

Of course Eddie may not have been the brightest bulb on the planet but he soon figured when Sheila did not show at the spot that they had planned to meet and take all the dough for themselves that he had been put on the spot. Put on the spot big time when Red told his boys that Eddie had been the one, had stiffed them. Red knowing that Eddie would be hitting some low-rent race track to earn his kale had his boys work the circuits. They eventually found him doing “chicken runs” against high school drop-outs in Modesto, found out the shack rooming house where he hung his hat and went in for the kill. As far as the local sheriff could tell Eddie put up no struggle, had no obvious fear of death on his rigid face when the coroner came to do his report. Yeah, Sheila had done her work well.       

They say that no good turn should remain unpunished, the same with bad though when Judgement Day came for Red, using the name Dutch then and Sheila after those loose cannon killers found out that it had been Red who had stiffed them. After a big afternoon shoot-out the local sheriff and that over-worked coroner had four more stiffs to figure out the cause of death.

John Colfax knew one thing, no, two things. He was glad he had never met his mother and equally glad he had never met his sister.   

Upon The 50th Anniversary Of The Death Of "King Of The Beats" Jack Kerouac-Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- In The Heart Of The Last Kiss Night- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Elvis Presley performing his classic, Love Me.

CD Review

The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1956-1957, Time-Life Music, 1996


Scene: (Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which graces each CD in this Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll series. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows a he, Johnny Riley, and a she, Peggy McGuire, half-dancing, half-embracing, half-kissing (wait a minute that is too many halves, right?). Kissing that last dance kiss as if their lives depended on it, and maybe it does. Or it had better be so else this scene will turn to ashes)


Johnny Riley had been thinking, thinking hard about Peggy, Peggy McGuire, all day as he prepared himself in anticipation of his date with her for that night’s school dance over at the North Adamsville High gym. Although they had only gone out a few times, a few glorious down the day time beach, out to the movies, and after school bowling at Jake’s Bowling and pizza at Salducci’s times he was thinking hard about her just the same. Ya, it was getting to be like that. More pressing though was, if she liked him too, and he thought she might, what it would be like on their first kiss. She looked like a good kisser but kissing, although he didn’t have all that much experience at it truth to tell, wasn’t something you could tell about by looking; only doing. With that “wisdom” in mind he planned, planned hard, almost as hard as he was thinking about Peggy on how he would “work” around to that first kiss tonight. Ya, tonight was the night he thought to himself later as he made his final preparations, teeth brushed, check, mouth wash, check, deodorant, check, hair tonic-ed and combed, check. Ready.

And out the door with the keys to father’s, clueless father’s, automobile on loan, on special Johnny loan for this evening because Johnny’s father “liked” Peggy. Johnny wondered, wondered for just a second, whether his father and mother kissed. Nah, no way. And as he drove to pick Peggy up Johnny went through his plan in his head one more time. At the dance he was going to dance all the slow dances real close and real physical to get her worked up a little. Then after the dance suggest that they go to Salducci’s for some pizza and then down the beach to “watch the submarine races.” Although he wouldn’t say that but more like it was nice night and let’s go down to the beach and watch the moon or something like that. The key though was to get her “in the mood” with that slow dancing.

Well, Johnny picked Peggy up, they talked in the car on the way over, just chitchat stuff, Johnny parked the car, and they went into the dance. No problems so far, and things were going according to Johnny plan because no sooner had they got there than the DJ played Fever by Little Willie John and Johnny “worked” his closeness magic and a few songs later with Long Lonely Nights by Lee Andrews and The Hearts. After intermission the DJ played Ivory Joe Hunter’s Empty Arms, a song, no question, designed to bring lips together. And Johnny could sense that Peggy, every time he held her closer, didn’t try to back off but just followed his lead and stayed close. Yes, this was going to be the night. A couple of songs they sat out as both agreed they were drippy like old foggy Pat Boone’s April Love and Lloyd Price’s Just Because.

Then Elvis’ Love Me came on and they got up again to dance. About two seconds into the dance Peggy gave Johnny the biggest kiss he had ever received in his life, not a long kiss but big, big with meaning, kiss. Right on the dance floor. And then Peggy said she had enough of dancing and since it was such a nice night maybe they could go down to the beach to cool off and “watch the submarine races.” See, as hard as Johnny was thinking about Peggy that day, Peggy McGuire was thinking just a little harder about him, and about why he was taking so long to give her a first kiss like he didn’t want to. So a girl had to take things in hand sometimes. Of course old clueless Johnny only found this out, between kisses, as they were watching those submarine races on that nice night down at the beach. Thanks Elvis.

The Centennial Of Pete Seeger’s Birthday (1919-2014)- *Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Woody Guthrie - "Talking Hard Work Blues"

Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Woody Guthrie performing "Talking Hard Work Blues". Enough, Woody! I got tired just listening to the amount of work you did.

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, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. 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.



Woody Guthrie - Talking Hard Work Lyrics
Album: Vol. 1-This Land Is Your Land


While we are on the subject of hard work, I just wanted to tell you that I am a man who likes hard work.
I was born working and I worked my way up by hard work.
I ain�t ever got no where, but I got there by hard work.
Work of the hardest kind.
I been down and I been out
I been disgusted I been busted and I couldn�t be trusted.
I worked my way up and I worked my way down
I been drunk and I been sober.
I been baptized and hyjacked.
Worked my way in jail and I worked my way outta jail
Woke up a lot of mornin�s, didn�t know where I was at.
The hardest work I ever done was when I was tryin� to get myself a worried woman to help ease my worried mind.
I�m gonna tell ya just how much work I had to do to get this woman I was tellin� you about
I shook hands with 97 of her kinfolk and her blood relatives and I done just the same with 86 people whos� just her friends and her neighbors
I kissed 73 babies and put dry pants on 34 of em� well as others
Done this same thing well there are a lot of other things just like this.
I held 125 wild horses and put saddles and bridles on more than that
Harnessed some of the wildest and craziest teams in that whole country
I rode 14 loco broncos to a stand still
And I let 42 hound dogs lick me all over, 7 times I�s bit by hungry dogs and I was chewed all to pieces by rattlesnakes and water moccasins on 2 river bottoms
I chopped and carried 314 arm loads of stove wood
109 buckets of coal
Carried a gallon of kerosene 18 miles over the mountains
Got lost � lost a good pair of shoes in a mudhole
And I chopped and weeded 48 rows of short cotton
13 acres of bad corn
I cut the sticker weeds out of 11 back yards
All on account of cuz I wanted to show her that I was a man and I liked to work
I cleaned out 9 barn lofts
Cranked 31 cars, all makes and models
Pulled 3 cars out of mud holes, and 4 or 5 out of snow drifts
I dug 5 cisterns of water for some of her friends
Run all kinds of errands
Played the fiddle for 9 church meetin�s
I Joined 11 separate denominations
I joined up and signed up with 7 best trade unions I could find
I paid my wages, um, a, dues 6 months in advance
I waded 48 miles of swamps and 6 big rivers
Walked across 2 ranges of mountains and crossed 3 deserts
I got the fever, Sun stroke, Malaria, blue, moonstruck, skeeter bit, Poison Ivy and the 7-year itch and the blind staggers
I was give up for less, lost and dead a couple of times
Struck by lightning, struck by Congress, struck by friends and kinfolks well as by 3 cars on highways A lot of times in people�s hen-houses
I been hit and run down run over and walked on knocked around.
I�m just sittin� here now tryin� to study up what else I can do to show that women that I still ain�t afraid of hard work

Monday, June 24, 2019

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Larry Hoover

In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Larry Hoover



http://www.thejerichomovement.com/prisoners.html



A link above to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month 

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)


In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a longtime supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!