Monday, August 26, 2019

Dear MoveOn member, Will you join the National Organizing Call to stop Trump's deportation and detention machine this Thursday, August 29 at 7 p.m. ET? RSVP here to join.

MoveOn Civic Action Corinne Ball<moveon-help@list.moveon.org>
To  Alfred F Johnson  
Dear MoveOn member, 
Every week this summer has brought new attacks from Trump against the rights and safety of immigrant families and communities.
Just last week, the Trump administration announced its intention to detain families indefinitely, defying a long-standing order on how to treat children in detention safely and with dignity. This follows unprecedented workplace raids that tore families apart, new rules designed to make families fear utilizing safety net programs like SNAP, and rhetoric from rally stages and Twitter that has fueled racist attacks, including acts of mass violence.
Trump is continuing to escalate his racist agenda.
But Congress has the power to take action and rein in these abuses—and that opportunity comes when House and Senate Democrats will play a critical role in passing a government spending bill by September 30.
That's right: All the Democrats who have expressed outrage can use their congressional power to force limits, accountability, and spending cuts on the agencies carrying out human rights abuses against immigrants at the border and across the U.S.
When our members of Congress get back to D.C. next week to debate the budget, let's make sure they return with the message that they must call ICE and CBP to account for their human rights abuses. 
RSVP to join the national organizing call.
On the call, you'll
  • hear our plan to create pressure on members of Congress while they are home and keep up that pressure when they return to Washington;
  • get important info directly from leaders and issue experts from MoveOn, United We Dream, and the National Immigrant Justice Center on how we confront and stop Trump's attacks;
  • learn more about the cruel strategies of the Trump administration, the impacts of these policies to immigrant families and communities; and
  • most importantly—discover ways that you can take action. 
It's crucial that our representatives hear from us now—loudly and clearly—that they must do everything in their power to rein in ICE and CBP.
This administration is ruthlessly intent on causing pain to immigrant and Latino communities. The most immediate action Congress can take to restrain these out-of-control agencies is by slashing the budgets they use to fund their cruelty.
RSVP here.

Since Trump assumed office, MoveOn members have consistently shown up to push back against the worst of his administration's racist policies. Together, hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members—from all walks of life—have taken to the streets, called Congress, signed petitions, chipped in to fund these important fights, and more. We've marched against the Muslim Ban, rallied against Trump's family separation policy, and acted in solidarity with Dreamers to pass important legislation that will set up the eventual passage of the Dream Act in the next administration. 

Now, we have just days to make our voices heard before our members of Congress head back to Washington. Let's join together and stop Trump's deportation machine.

Thanks for all you do.

-Corinne, Emma, Ilya, Schuyler, and the rest of the team
Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your support, now more than ever. Will you stand with MoveOn?
Contributions to MoveOn.org Civic Action are not tax deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. This email was sent to Alfred Johnson on August 26, 2019. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

New poll alert (Bernie takes the lead) BernieSanders.com 4:33 PM

BernieSanders.com<info@berniesanders.com>
To  alfred johnson  

And there it is.
After months of being counted out and written off by the political and media establishment of this country, a new national poll just released shows us in first place.
Monmouth National Poll - August 26
Bernie Sanders: 20%
Elizabeth Warren: 20%
Joe Biden: 19%
Kamala Harris: 8%
No one else above 5%
The momentum is undeniable. Bernie is +6 since their last poll, a bigger jump than any candidate. Help us keep it up, and we're going to win:
Can you make a contribution ahead of our end-of-month fundraising deadline? We have some big budget decisions to make when it ends.
What’s more, Bernie leads among young people, people without a college degree, and people of color. You should know that, and be proud of it... even if that isn’t the story the media likes to tell about our diverse coalition.
Thanks for chipping in,
Faiz Shakir
Campaign Manager






The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- On the National Question (1938)

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-    *From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- On the National Question (1938)




Google the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right?

Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist (I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding.); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s.

I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.

Veterans, firearms, and suicide. VeteransPolicy.org

VeteransPolicy.org<execdirector@veteranspolicy.org>
Driving the Week: The VHPI Newsletter Logo Image
The importance of lethal means safety as a prevention strategy 
The Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute has released a new analysis on veterans, firearms, and suicide. From the paper by senior policy analyst Russell Lemle, Ph.D.:

United States veterans die by suicide, and by suicide using a firearm, at much higher rates than non-veterans. There is a growing body of research indicating that increasing the time and space needed for at-risk veteran to access a firearm saves lives in the short and long run.

This document reviews the background data on veterans, firearms, and suicide, and the emerging Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) suicide prevention efforts to encourage at-risk veterans to voluntarily store their firearms more safely. It concludes with suggestions for policy and research initiatives that could further diminish these tragic deaths. Click here to get a copy of the paper.

Just a few (of many) startling facts from the paper: 
  • Firearms are, by far, the most common means for suicide among veterans. Approximately 70% of male veteran suicide deaths and 41% of female veteran suicide deaths are caused by self-inflicted firearm injury, (rates that exceed their non-veteran counterparts).
  • There is increased risk of suicide among persons with access to firearms at home. People with any firearm at home are at least twice as likely to die by suicide as people without firearms at home. The risk of suicide is far higher if firearms are stored loaded and unlocked. The elevated suicide risk applies not only to the firearm owner but to all other household members as well.
  • Survivors of suicide attempts using firearms report that the availability of firearms in their home was usually the reason for using firearms rather than another method.
  • When the Israeli Defense Forces began requiring soldiers to store their firearms on base before going on weekend leave, the overall suicide rate dropped 40%, led by significant decreases in weekend suicides.
  • While some suicides are considered and planned over an extended period, for many individuals the decision to attempt suicide is often impulsive and fleeting. Surveys have found that a large percentage of people who survived suicide attempts began their attempt within minutes or hours after making the decision. The high-risk, acute phase of many suicidal crises is brief.
Download the paper to read the recommendations.

Lawsuit zeroes in on Mar-a-Lago trio’s influence
From Nikki Wentling at Stars and Stripes:

A lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Department of Veterans Affairs alleges the agency failed to preserve private emails that could reveal the extent of the influence three members of President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., exerted over decisions affecting veterans.

Democracy Forward, an activist organization that often challenges Trump’s actions, filed the complaint in U.S. district court, along with American Oversight, an activist and litigation organization founded in 2017 with the goal of uncovering misconduct and conflicts of interest in Trump’s administration.

The suit alleges former VA Secretary David Shulkin used a private, non-official email account to communicate with Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter, lawyer Marc Sherman and Bruce Moskowitz, a Palm Beach doctor – a trio dubbed the “Mar-a-Lago Crowd.” None of the men have served in the U.S. military or government, yet they instructed VA officials to steer policies affecting millions of Americans, according to an investigation last year by ProPublica, a nonprofit news agency.

“Members of the Trump administration have routinely used private email and backchannels to conceal their work from scrutiny,” Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement. “The VA has an obligation to recover Secretary Shulkin’s emails to determine what he tried to keep out of the public eye."

Unions and VA privatization
The union that represents the majority of VA employees is at the bargaining table. From ABC9 Tucson:

Henry Trejo of the Alliance for Retired Americans doesn't want to lose the doctor who cared for him for eleven years.

"My doctor has immediate access to my records and she knows all about me and it's easy to go there and be treated by her. Now in the private sector, we don't know what kind of treatment we're going to get."

Congressman Raul Grijalva says if the administration cuts the bargaining power of unions there's no organized voice to speak up for workers and veterans.

In statements, the VA denies it's trying to break up or privatize the system . It says it's trying to renegotiate it's union contracts ; "... to improve medical care, customer service, and staff accountability while maximizing value for Veterans and taxpayers.”

Has your doctor asked if you’re a veteran?
From ConnectingVets Radio:

[The Warrior Centric Healthcare Foundation] was established in 2013 when Lewis and a research team discovered the problem with veteran identification in the civilian healthcare system.

"The largest misconception among the general public, and indeed those that run hospitals in other healthcare facilities, is that all veterans get their care at the VA. That is not true," Lewis said.

And the way that civilian doctors typically identify veterans has some major flaws, according to Lewis.

Lewis explained that civilian doctors tend to count on insurance, attire and connected services to identify veterans. Veterans who come through the civilian medical system typically have Tricare, wear tattoos or apparel that identify them as veterans, or are receiving certain services through the VA. She uses herself — as a veteran who qualifies for all of her medical services to be taken care of at VA facilities — as an example to show the gaps in the current civilian approach.

"You would not have seen Tricare on my record, there's nothing in my record from the VA, I don't have tattoos, I don't wear pins on my clothes that say I'm a veteran — so how would you recognize me if you're not asking me if I'm a veteran? If you're not asking those questions, you are not recognizing all the veterans in your footprint," Lewis said.

“Seeking care for mental health a top frustration for vets”
Even with the private sector’s VA Community Care Network operating in much of the country, veterans are having trouble finding mental health providers who are well-versed in veterans-specific culture or conditions. Read more at The Columbian.

Quick Clicks
  • Politico: Johnson & Johnson to pay Oklahoma $572 million for role in opioid epidemic.
  • Legion.org: The American Legion held a panel to discuss drug-free treatments for PTSD and traumatic brain injury.
  • The Southern Maryland Chronicle: Yes, the smoking ban at VA facilities applies to employees, too.
  • NextGov: The VA health records digitization project is really, really, really behind.
“VA Maine has no beds” for long-term mental health care
From WAGM-TV Maine:

Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Angus King (I-ME), and Representatives Chellie Pingree (ME-01) and Jared Golden (ME-02) urged Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Robert Wilkie to address the absence of long-term mental health and substance abuse treatment care for veterans at VA facilities in Maine. VA Maine has no beds for such care.

“This lack of local mental health services presents an exceptionally difficult choice for Maine veterans who seek mental health and substance abuse treatment: either receive care far away from their family and support networks or forego evaluation and treatment out of concern for having to leave their communities,” wrote the delegation. “Togus urgently needs the ability to provide veterans with long-term care for mental health or substance abuse issues. This unacceptable situation for Maine veterans has continued for too long."

The delegation’s letter supports a request made by VA Maine to establish a permanent unit to provide long-term beds dedicated to mental health and substance abuse treatment. VA providers are trained specifically to help veterans overcome their unique challenges, which normal health care facilities can not provide.

The Maine delegation has made improving mental health care for our state’s veterans a high priority. Last month, Golden successfully passed a provision through the House to increase the amount of funding provided for long-term mental health care beds at VA facilities as part of the Military Construction/Veterans Affairs appropriations bill. In June, Golden pressed Dr. Richard Stone, the Executive in Charge of the Veterans Health Administration, for a plan to address the lack of long-term mental health and substance abuse treatment services at Togus.
A Vietnam Veteran handed a copy of VHPI Senior Policy Analyst Suzanne Gordon’s book, Wounds of War, to Senator Cory Booker, during a presidential campaign stop in New Hampshire. The Veteran and member of Veterans for Peace shared his concerns about VA privatization. Click here to watch the video.
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Not All Harvard Professors Were, Are Crazy And In Some Academic Bubble-Using Modern Digital Technology To Bring Back The Lions Of The Pre-Be-Bop Poetry Like Moore, Eliot, Pound And Frost



Not All Harvard Professors Were, Are Crazy And In Some Academic Bubble-Using Modern Digital Technology To Bring Back The Lions Of The Pre-Be-Bop Poetry Like Moore, Eliot, Pound And Frost

A link to an NPR Morning Edition segment on the poetic voice restoration project at Harvard



By Rav Davis


Okay, okay I suffered through long drawn on readings of highbrowed T.S. Eliot, pastural Robert Frost, neo-fascist Ezra Pound and a million other guys and gals who made up the poetry pantheon back in the day, back in high school. Not as far back in the day as when some very savvy professor decided to use the technology of his day to get those high-end poets on vinyl, or wax on anything that would preserve them for posterity. And then it all fell down the materials were left in some sullen corner to decay and die.       

Enter digital technology and bang-bang like magic many of those seemingly lost forever recitals are now back in the racks, now ready for poetic listening. A monument to culture and to hard work. But still I would rather listen to one be-bop long gone daddy like Allen Ginsberg holding forth on a moonless Howl. Just like I am doing now via YouTube as I write this little tribute to some hard-thinking Harvard folk.



For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-In Honor Of Lena Spencer- Caffé Lena And Saratoga’s Folk Scene

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-In Honor Of Lena Spencer- Caffé Lena And Saratoga’s Folk Scene








If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83 (June 2017)

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. That is where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers who sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute (that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze. (I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important)

Those urban locales were the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some other colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and character in her own right, where some of those names played but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality. And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is different, where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. Tough going for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear)Tough too when you landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes.  

The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. She was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels

     


Caffé Lena, Kate McGarrigle and various artists, directed by Stephen Trombley, Miramar Production, 1991

I know of the work of, and have reviewed in this space, the late Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, obviously Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, The McGarrigle family, David Bromberg and many of the other “singing” heads that populate this tribute documentary or found their way to Café Lena’s. Lena Spencer, owner, operator (and, from all accounts off-hand fairy godmother), through thick and thin, as thoroughly documented here , of Saratoga’s Café Lena was the impresario of the upstate New York’s booming 1960s folk scene. So there is a certain sense of déjà vu in viewing this film. This documentary film was probably as much about our youthful dreams and ambitions (and that hard musical road, although voluntarily chosen) as it was a tribute to Lena.

I know Saratoga and its environs well and if New York City’s Greenwich Village and Cambridge’s Harvard Square are better known in the 1960s folk revival geography that locale can serve as the folk crowd’s summer watering hole (and refuge from life’s storms all year round). From the descriptions of the café ‘s lifestyle and of the off-beat personality of Lena it also was a veritable experiment in ad hoc communal living). The folkies that did find found refuge there have been interesting behind- the- scenes stories to tell about Len that make this a very nice slice of history of the folk revival of the 1960s.

A special note to kind of bring us full circle. My first CD review of folksinger Rosalie Sorrels and the late Utah Phillips combined works together, who are highlighted in this documentary along with Kate and Anna McGarrigle, mentioned a spark of renewed recognition kindled on my part by the famous folk coffee house “The Café Lena” in Saratoga Springs, New York. Thus, it is rather fitting that Rosalie performs Utah’s “If I Could Be The Rain” and Utah his “Starlight On The Rails” here. Even more fitting are the McGarrigles performing their “Talk To Me Of Mendocino”, song composed in honor of Lena.

"Talk to Me of Mendocino"

written by Kate McGarrigle
© 1975 Garden Court Music (ASCAP)


I bid farewell to the state of old New York
My home away from home
In the state of New York I came of age
When first I started roaming
And the trees grow high in New York State
And they shine like gold in the autumn
Never had the blues from whence I came
But in New York State I got 'em

Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes I hear the sea
Must I wait
Must I follow
Won't you say come with me

And it's on to South Bend, Indiana
Flat out on the western plain
Rise up over the Rockies
And down on into California
Out to where but the rocks again
And let the sun set on the ocean
I will watch it from the shore
Let the sun rise over the redwoods
I'll rise with it till I rise no more

Talk to me of Mendocino
Closing my eyes I hear the sea
Must I wait
Must I follow
Won't you say come with me

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings Of Leon Trotsky, 1939-40

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-   Defeated, But Unbowed-The Writings  Of  Leon Trotsky, 1939-40




Google Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for a copy of an article, "Marxism In Our Times", from the pen of Leon Trotsky for 1939, the period of the book reviewed below.

BOOK REVIEW

If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky’s writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky’s political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles inside the Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970’s and 1980’s. (Cannon’s writings in support of Trotsky’s work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.

After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin’s tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940.

As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can easily count, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of the heroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky’s.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920’s. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky’s unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, in large part militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.

I WILL ADD TO THIS SERIES AS I REREAD OR ACQUIRE THE OTHER VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES. HERE GOES FOR NOW.


THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1939-40, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973

As to the 1939-40 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: On the Eve of World War II (an analysis of the impending war and what revolutionaries had to do when it came ): The German-Soviet Alliance (an interesting take on an policy that sent faint-hearted defenders of the Soviet Union overboard); The World Situation and Prospects (an optimistic, and as it turned out too optimistic assessment of the revolutionary prospects); Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian World Revolution (the program of the Fourth International for the war period and its aftermath); and, Another Thought on Conscription (on the American conscription question and a first look at the ill-advised Proletarian Military Policy).