From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk-Part IV-THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk-Part IV-THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS


Markin comment:

This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.

Leon Trotsky
History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk
Part IV
THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS
At an historical night sitting, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted the historical Peace Decree. At that time the power of the Soviets was still only consolidating in the most important centres of the country, while the number of people abroad who had confidence in it was quite insignificant. We carried the decrees unanimously, but to many it appeared to be merely a political demonstration. The Compromise-mongers kept repeating at every street corner that our resolution could not lead to any practical results, since, on the one hand, the German Imperialists would not recognize and would not even condescend to talk with us, and, on the other hand, our allies would declare war on us for entering into separate peace negotiations. It was under the shadow of these gloomy predictions that we were making our first steps towards a universal democratic peace. The Decree was accepted on November 8th, when Kerensky and Krasnoff were at the very gates of Petrograd, and on November 20th we communicated over the wireless our proposals for the conclusion of a general peace both to our allies and enemies. By way of reply the Allied Governments addressed, through their military agents, remonstrances to General Dukhonin, the Commander-in-Chief, stating that all further steps on our part towards separate peace negotiations would lead to most serious results. We, on our part, replied on November 24th to this protest by a manifesto to all workers, soldiers, and peasants, declaring that under no circumstances should we allow our army to shed its blood by order of any foreign bourgeoisie. We brushed aside the threats of the Western Imperialists and assumed full responsibility for our peace policy before the international working class. First of all, by way of discharging our previous pledges, we published the secret treaties and declared that we repudiated all that was opposed in them to the interests of the popular masses everywhere. The capitalist Governments tried to play off our disclosures against one another, but the popular masses everywhere understood us and appreciated our action. Not a single Socialist patriotic paper, as far as we know, dared protest against this radical change effected by the Government of workers and peasants in all traditional methods of diplomacy, against our repudiation of its evil and unscrupulous intrigues. We made it the aim and purpose of our diplomacy to enlighten the popular masses, to open their eyes as to the nature of the policy of their respective Governments, and to fuse them in one common struggle against, and hatred of, the bourgeois-capitalist regime. The German bourgeois Press accused us of protracting the negotiations, but the peoples themselves eagerly listened everywhere to the dialogues at Brest, and thereby, in the course of the two and a half months during which the peace negotiations proceeded, a service was rendered to the cause of peace which has been acknowledged even by honest enemies. For the first time the question of peace was raised in such a way that it could no longer be distorted by any machinations behind the scenes.

On December 5th we signed the agreement for the suspension of hostilities along the whole front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. We again appealed to the Allies to join us and to conduct the peace negotiations together with us. We received no answer, although this time our allies did not try to intimidate us by threats. The peace negotiations began on December 22nd, six weeks after the adoption of the Peace Decree. This shows that the accusations levelled at us by the hireling and Socialist traitor Press, that we had not tried to come to an understanding with the Allies, were nothing but lies. For six weeks we kept on informing them of every step we made, and constantly appealed to them to join us in the peace negotiations. We can face the people of France, Italy, and Great Britain with a clear conscience. We did all we could to prevail upon the belligerent nations to join us in the peace negotiations. The responsibility for our separate peace negotiations rests not upon us, but upon the Imperialists of the West, as well as those Russian parties which all along had been predicting an early death to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government and urging the Allies not to take seriously our peace Initiative.

Anyhow, on December 22nd the peace negotiations were opened. Our delegates made a declaration of principles defining the basis of a general democratic peace in the precise terms of the Decree of November 8th. The other side demanded an adjournment of the sittings; but their resumption was put off, on Kühlmann’s motion, from day to day. It was obvious that the delegates of the Quadruple Alliance had considerable difficulty in drawing up their reply to our declaration. At last, on December 25th, the reply came. The diplomats of the Quadruple Alliance adhered to the democratic formulæ of a peace without annexations and contributions on the principle of self-determination of nations. We could see clearly that this was merely a piece of make-believe. But we did not expect even that, for is not hypocrisy the tribute paid by vice to virtue? The fact that the German Imperialists considered it necessary to pay this tribute to our democratic principles was, in our eyes, evidence of the rather serious internal condition of Germany. But although, on the whole, we had no illusions as to the democratic leanings of Kühlmann and Czernin – we were only too well acquainted with the nature of the German and Austrian ruling classes – it must, nevertheless, be candidly admitted that we did not at the time anticipate that the actual proposals of the German Imperialists would be separated by such a wide gulf from the formulæ presented to us by Kühlmann on December 25th as a sort of plagiarism of the Russian Revolution. We, indeed, did not expect such an acme of impudence.

The masses of the working classes in Russia were deeply impressed by Kühlmann’s reply. They read in it the fear of the ruling classes of the Central Empires in face of the discontent and growing impatience of the masses in Germany. On December 28th, a gigantic workers’ and soldiers’ demonstration took place in Petrograd in favour of a democratic peace. But the next morning our delegates returned from Brest-Litovsk and brought those predatory demands which Kühlmann had presented on behalf of the Central Empires by way of interpretation of his so-called democratic formulæ.

At first it may appear difficult to understand what exactly were the expectations of the German diplomacy when they presented their democratic formulæ in order, two or three days later, to reveal their brutal appetites. The theoretical debates, too, about those democratic formulæfor the most part initiated by Kühlmann himself – may seem to have been rather a risky affair. It ought to have been clear to them from the beginning that on this battlefield the diplomacy of the Central Empires could scarcely gain any laurels. But the secret of Kühlmann’s conduct of diplomacy lay in that he was profoundly convinced that we would be ready to play duets with him. The trend of his thought was approximately as follows: Russia must have peace. The Bolsheviks had obtained power thanks to their fight for peace. The Bolsheviks wanted to remain in power. This was only possible on one condition, namely, the conclusion of peace. True, they had committed themselves to a definite democratic peace programme. But what were the diplomats for, if not for disguising black as white? They, the Germans, would make the position easier for the Bolsheviks by hiding their spoil and plunder beneath a democratic formula. Bolshevik diplomacy would have sufficient grounds for not desiring to probe too deeply for the political essence of their enticing formulae, or, rather, for not revealing it to the eyes of the world. In other words, Kühlmann hoped to come to a tacit understanding with us. He would pay us back in our fine formula, and we should give him an opportunity of obtaining provinces and whole nationalities for the benefit of the Central Empires without any protest on our side. In the eyes of the German working classes, therefore, this violent annexation would receive the sanction of the Russian Revolution. When, during the negotiations, we made it clear that we were not discussing mere empty formulæ and decorative screens hiding a secret bargain, but the democratic foundations of the cohabitation of nations, Kühlmann took it as a malevolent breach of a tacit agreement. He would not for anything in the world budge even an inch from his formula of December 25th. Relying on his refined bureaucratic and legal logic, he tried his best to prove to the world that there was no difference whatever between black and white, and that it was only due to our malicious will that we were insisting on it.

Count Czernin, the representative of Austria-Hungary, played at these negotiations a part which no one would call impressive or dignified. He clumsily seconded and undertook at air critical moments, on behalf of Kühlmann, to make the most violent and cynical declarations. As against this, General Hoffman would often introduce a most refreshing note into the negotiations. Without shamming any great sympathy with the diplomatic niceties of Kühlmann, General Hoffman many times banged his soldier’s boot on the table, at which the most intricate legal debates were carried on. For our part, we had not a moment’s doubt that at these negotiations General Hoffman’s boot was the only serious reality.

The presence of the representatives of the Kieff Rada at the negotiations was a great trump card in Kühlmann’s hands. To the Ukrainian lower middle class, who were then in power, their “recognition” by the capitalist Governments of Europe seemed the most important thing in the world. At first, the Rada had offered its services to the Allied Imperialists and got from them some pocket-money. It then sent delegates to Brest-Litovsk in order to obtain from the Austro-German Governments, behind the backs of the peoples of Russia, the recognition of their legitimate birth. Scarcely had the Kieff diplomats entered on the road of “international” relations than they manifested the same out look and the same moral level which had hitherto been a characteristic feature of the petty Balkan politicians. Messrs. Kühlmann and Czernin, of course, did not indulge in any illusions as to the solvency of the new partner at the negotiations. But they realized quite correctly that by the attendance of the Kieff delegates the game was fated to become more complicated, but also more promising to them. At their first appearance at Brest-Litovsk the Kieff delegation defined the Ukraine as a component part of the nascent Federal Republic of Russia. That was an obvious embarrassment to the diplomats of the Central Powers, whose chief concern was to turn the Russian Republic into a new Balkan Peninsula. At their second appearance, the diplomats of the Rada declared, under the dictation of Austro-German diplomacy, that from that moment the Ukraine no longer desired to form part of the Russian Federation and would constitute henceforth an independent Republic.

In order to give the readers a clear idea of the situation in which the Soviet Government was placed at the last stage of the peace negotiations, I think it useful to reproduce here the main passages of the speech which the author of these lines delivered, as the People’s Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, at the sitting of the Central Executive Committee on February 27, 1918.



THE SPEECH OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSIONER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
“Comrades, – Russia of the Soviets has not only to build the new, but also to sum up the results of the past and, to a certain extent – a very large extent indeed – to settle old accounts, above all, the accounts of the present war which has now lasted three and a half years. The war has been a test of the economic resources of the belligerent nations. The fate of Russia, a poor, backward country, was, a war of attrition, pre-determined from the beginning. In the mighty conflict of the military machines the decisive r6le belonged, in the last resort, to the ability of the respective nations to adapt their industry in the shortest possible time, and thus to turn out again and again, with constantly increasing rapidity and in ever-increasing quantities, the engines of destruction which have been wearing out in no time in this terrible slaughter of nations. At the beginning of the war every, or almost every, country, even the most backward, could be in possession of powerful engines of destruction, since those machines could be obtained from abroad. All backward countries did possess them, including Russia. But the war soon wears out its dead capital, unless it is constantly replenished. The military power of every individual country drawn into the whirlwind of the worldwide war was measured by the ability to make guns, shells, and other engines of destruction by its own means during the war itself. If the war had decided the question of the balance of power in a very short time, Russia, speaking theoretically, might have come out on the victorious side. But the war dragged on, and did so by no means accidentally. The mere fact that during the preceding half-century all international politics had been reduced to the establishment of the so-called balance of power, that IS, to the greatest possible equalization of the military forces of the adversaries, was bound, m view of the strength and Wealth of the modern capitalist nations, to make the war a protracted business. The result has been, first and foremost, the exhaustion of the poorer, less economically developed countries.

Germany proved to be the most powerfull country in the military sense, owing to the mighty development of her industry and the new, rational, up-to-date structure of that industry side by side with the archaic structure of her State. France, with her economic system largely based on small production, proved to be very much behind Germany, while even such a powerful Colonial Empire as England showed herself weaker than Germany, owing to the more conservative, routine-like character of her industries. When the will of History summoned revolutionary Russia to initiate peace negotiations, we had no doubt whatever that, failing the intervention of the decisive power of the world’s revolutionary proletariat, we should have to pay in full for over three and a half years of war. We knew perfectly well that German Imperialism was an enemy imbued with the consciousness of its own colossal strength, as manifested so glaringly in the present war.

All the arguments of the bourgeois cliques which keep telling us that we should have been incomparably stronger had we conducted our peace negotiations in conjunction with our Allies are fundamentally wrong. If we were to carry on, at some distant future, the peace negotiations in conjunction with the Allies, we should, in the first place, have had to go on with the war; but seeing how our country was exhausted and weakened, its continuation, not its cessation, would have led to further exhaustion and ruin. We should thus have had to foot the bill of the war in conditions still more unfavourable to us. Even if the camp which Russia had joined on account of the international intrigues of Tsardom and the bourgeoisie – the camp, that is, at the head of which stands Great Britain – should come out of the war completely victorious (granting for the moment this rather improbable eventuality), it does not follow, comrades, that our country would also have come Out victorious, since Russia, inside this victorious camp, would have been still more exhausted and ruined by the long-drawn-out war than it is now. The masters of that camp, who would have gathered all the fruits of victory – that is, England and America – would, in their treatment of our country, have displayed the same methods which were employed by Germany at the peace negotiations. It would be absurd and childish, in appraising the policy of the Imperialist Countries, to start from other premises than their naked self-interest and material strength. Hence, if we, as a nation, are now weakened in the face of the Imperialist world, we are so. not because we broke away from the fiery circle of the war after previously shaking off the chains of international military obligations – no, we are weakened by the same policy of Tsardom and the bourgeois classes against which we fought, as a revolutionary party, both before and during the war.

You remember, comrades, the conditions in which our delegates went to Brest-Litovsk last time, direct from one of the sittings of the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets. We had informed you then of the state of negotiations and of the demands of the enemy. These demands, as you no doubt remember, amounted to disguised, or rather semi-disguised, annexationist claims to Lithuania, Courland, part of Livonia, the Moon Sound Islands, and a semi-masked indemnity which we then computed at six to eight or even ten thousand million roubles. In the interval, which lasted ten days, serious disturbances broke out in Austria and strikes took place among the labouring masses there – the first act of recognition of our methods of conducting the peace negotiations on the part of the proletariat of the Central Powers in face of the annexationist demands of German Imperialism. How miserable are the allegations of the bourgeois Press, that it took us two months’ talk with Kühlmann before we discovered that the German Imperialists would demand robbers’ terms. No, we knew that beforehand. But we tried to turn our “conversations” with the representatives of German Imperialism into a means of strengthening those forces which were struggling against it. We did not promise in this connection any miracles, but we asserted that our way was the only way still left at the disposal of revolutionary democracy for securing the chances of its further development.

“One may complain that the proletariat of other countries, especially of the Central Empires, is passing to an open revolutionary struggle too slowly. Yes, the tempo of its advance is much too slow. But in Austria-Hungary we saw a movement which assumed the proportions of a national event and which was a direct and immediate result of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.

Before we departed from here we discussed the matter together, and we said that we had no reason to believe that that wave would sweep away the Austro-Hungarian militarism. Had we been convinced to the contrary, we should have certainly given the pledge so eagerly demanded from us by certain persons, namely, that we should never sign a separate treaty with Germany. I said at the time that it was impossible for us to make such a pledge, as it would have been tantamount to pledging ourselves to defeat German Imperialism. We held the secret of no such victory in our hands, and in so far as we could not pledge ourselves to Change the balance and correlation of the world’s powers in a very short period of time, we openly and honestly declared that the revolutionary Government might, under certain circumstances, be compelled to accept an annexationist peace. For not the acceptance of a peace forced upon us by the course of events, but an attempt to hide its predatory character from our own people would have been the beginning of the end of the revolutionary Government.

At the same time we pointed out that we were departing for Brest in order to continue the negotiations in circumstances which were apparently becoming more favourable to us and less advantageous to our adversaries. We were watching the events in Austria-Hungary, and various circumstances made us think that, as hinted at by Socialist spokesmen in the Reichstag, Germany was on the eve of similar events. Such were our hopes, and then in the course of the first days of our new stay at Brest the wireless brought us via Vilna the first news that a tremendous strike movement had broken out in Berlin, which, like the movement in Austria-Hungary, was the direct result of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. But, as it often happens, in consequence of the “dialectical,” double-edged, character of the class struggle, it was just this powerful swing of the proletarian movement, such as Germany had never seen before, that aroused the propertied classes and caused them to close their ranks and to take up a more irreconcilable attitude. The German ruling classes are only too well imbued with the instinct of self-preservation, and they understood that any, even partial concession, under such circumstances, when they were being pressed by the masses of their own people, would have been tantamount to a capitulation before the idea of revolution. That is “why, after the first period of conferences, when Kühlmann had been deliberately delaying the negotiations by either postponing the sittings or wasting them on minor questions of form, he, as soon as the strike had been suppressed and his masters, he felt, were for the time being out of danger, reverted to his old accents of complete self-confidence, and redoubled his aggressiveness. Our negotiations became complicated owing to the participation of the Kieff Rada. We reported the facts of the case last time. The Rada delegates made their appearance at a time when the Rada still represented a fairly strong organization in the Ukraine and when the issue of the struggle had not yet been decided. Just at that moment we made the Rada an official offer to conclude with us a definite agreement, the principal term of which was our demand that the Rada should proclaim Kaledin and Korniloff enemies of the Revolution and refrain from interfering in our fight against them. The Kieff delegates arrived at the moment when we were cherishing hopes of coming to an agreement with it on both heads. We had already made clear to the Rada that so long as it was recognized by the Ukrainian people we should admit it to the negotiations as an independent member of the Conference. But in proportion as things in Russia and the Ukraine developed, and the antagonism between the democratic masses and the Rada was becoming deeper and deeper, the readiness of the Rada also increased to conclude any sort of peace with the Central Powers, and, if necessary, to invite German Imperialism to intervene in the internal affairs of the Ukrainian Republic in order to support the Rada against the Russian Revolution.

On February 9th we learned that the peace negotiations between the Rada and the Central Powers had been successfully completed behind our backs. February 9th was the birthday of Prince Leopold of Bavaria, and, as is the custom in monarchical countries, the solemn, historical act of signing the treaty was fixed for this festal day – whether with the Rada’s agreement or not we do not know. General Hoffman caused the artillery to fire a salute in honour of Leopold of Bavaria, having previously asked the Ukrainians’ permission to do so, as, according to that treaty, Brest-Litovsk had been incorporated with the Ukraine.

However, at the very moment when General Hoffman was asking the Kieff Rada for permission to fire a salute in honour of Prince Leopold, events had advanced so far that, with the exception of Brest-Litovsk, but little territory was left under the Rada’s authority. On the strength of telegrams which we had received from Petrograd we officially informed the delegates of the Central Powers that the Kieff Rada was no longer in existence – a fact which was by no means immaterial for the course of the peace negotiations. We proposed to Count Czernin to send representatives, accompanied by our officers, to the territory of the Ukraine in order to see on the spot whether his co-partner, the Kieff Rada, was still in existence or not. Czernin at first seemed to jump at the idea, but when we raised the question whether the treaty with the Kieff delegation would only be signed after the return of his messengers or not, he began to hesitate and promised to consult K4llhmann, and having done so, sent us a reply in the negative. This was on February 8th, and on the following day they were obliged to sign the treaty. That brooked no delay, not only because of Prince Leopold’s birthday, but also because of a more serious circumstance, which, of course, Kühlmann had explained to Czernin: “If we send our representatives to the Ukraine now, they may find that the Rada is no longer in existence, and then we should have to face the Russian delegates only; which of course would greatly thwart our chances at the negotiations.” We were told by the Austro-Hungarian delegates: “Leave alone the question of principles, place the problem on a practical footing – then the German delegates will try to meet you. It is impossible that the Germans should desire to continue the war for the sake, for instance, of the Moon Sound Islands, if you formulate your demands more concretely ...” We answered: “ Very well, we are ready to test the conciliatory attitude of your colleagues, the German delegates. So far we have been discussing the question of the right of self-determination of Lithuanians, Poles, Letts, Esthonians, etc., and have elucidated the fact that there is no chance for the self-determination of these small nations. Let us now see what kind of self-determination you intend to allot to the Russian people, and what are the military strategical plans and devices behind your seizure of the Moon Islands. The Moon Islands, as part of the Esthonian Republic, as a possession of the Russian Federal Republic, have a defensive value, while in the hands of Germany they are means of offence and constitute a menace to the most vital centres of our country, particularly to Petrograd.” But, of course, Hoffman had not the slightest intention of making any concessions. Then the decisive moment came. We could not declare war – we were too weak. The army was in a state of complete internal dissolution. In order to save our country from ruin it was necessary to re-establish the internal organization of the labouring masses. This moral union could be established only by constructive work in the villages, in the workshop and the factory. The masses, who had passed through the colossal suffering and the catastrophic experiences of the war, had to be brought back to the fields and factories, where they could be rejuvenated morally and physically by work and thus be enabled to create the necessary internal discipline. There was no other way of salvation for our country, which had to pay the penalty for the sins committed by Tsardom and the bourgeoisie. We were forced to get out of the war and lead our army out of the slaughter. At the same time we declared to German Imperialism, straight in the face: “The peace terms which you force us to accept are those of violence and plunder. We cannot allow you, diplomats, to tell the German workers: ‘You branded our demands as annexationist; look here, those demands have been signed by the Russian Revolution!’ Yes, we are weak, ‘we cannot fight at present, but we have enough of revolutionary courage to tell you that we will never of our own free will sign the terms which you are writing with your sword across the bodies of the living peoples’.” We refused to give our signatures, and I believe, comrades, that we acted as we ought to have acted.

Comrades, I do not want to say that a further advance of the Germans against us is out of the question. Such a statement would be too risky, considering the power of the German Imperialist Party. But I think that by the position we have taken up on the question we have made any advance a very embarrassing affair for the German militarists. What would happen if they should nevertheless advance? There is only one answer to this question. If it is still possible to raise the spirit in the most revolutionary and healthy elements in our exhausted country, reduced as it is to desperate straits, if it is still possible for Russia to rise for the defence of our Revolution and the territories of the Revolution, it is possible only as a result of the present situation, as a result of our coming out of the war and of our refusal to sign the peace treaty.



THE SECOND WAR AND THE SIGNING OF PEACE.
The German Government, during the first days after the breaking off of the negotiations, hesitated, uncertain as to which course to. choose. The politicians and diplomats thought apparently that the chief thing bad been accomplished, and that there was no need to run after our signatures. The military, however, were in all circumstances prepared to break through the framework outlined by the German Government in the Brest-Litovsk treaty. Professor Kriege, adviser to the German delegation, told one of our delegates that in the present conditions there could be no question of a new German offensive against Russia. Count Mirbach, then at the head of the German mission in Russia, left for Berlin assuring us that a satisfactory agreement on the exchange of prisoners had been reached. But all this did not prevent General Hoffman from announcing, on the fifth day after the breaking off of the negotiations, the end of the armistice, the seven days’ notice being antedated by him from the day of the last sitting at Brest. It would be truly out of place to waste time here, in righteous indignation at this dishonourable act, for it is but in keeping with the general diplomatic and military morality of all the governing classes.

The new German offensive developed under conditions which were deadly to Russia. Instead of the agreed seven days’ warning, we only had two days’. This spread a panic in the ranks of the army, already in a state of chronic dissolution. There could scarcely be any question of resistance. The soldiers would not believe that the Germans would advance, after we had declared the state of war at an end. The panic-stricken retreat paralysed even the will of those individual regiments which were ready to take up fighting positions. In the working-class quarters of Petrograd and Moscow the indignation at the treacherous and truly buccaneering German attack knew no bounds. The workers were ready, in those tragic days and nights, to enlist in the army in their tens of thousands. But the necessary organization was lagging far behind. Individual guerrilla detachments, full of enthusiasm, perceived their helplessness at the first serious encounter with the German regular troops, and this was, of course, followed by a further depression of spirits. The old army, long ago mortally wounded, was falling to pieces, and was only blocking up all ways and by-ways. The new army, on the other hand, was arising much too slowly amidst the general exhaustion and the terrible dislocation of industry and transport. The only real serious obstacle in the path of the German advance was the huge distances.

Austria-Hungary had her eyes chiefly on the Ukraine. Through its delegates the Rada had made a direct request to the Central Empires for military help against the Soviets, which by that time had obtained complete victory throughout Ukrainia. In this way the Ukrainian lower middle-class democracy, in its fight with the workers and the poorest peasantry, had voluntarily opened the gates to foreign invasion.

At the same time the Government of Svinhufvud was seeking the help of German bayonets against the Finnish proletariat. German militarism was assuming quite openly, in the face of the whole world, the rôle of executioner of the Russian workers’ and peasants’ revolution.

In the ranks of our party there arose a heated discussion as to whether we should, under such conditions, submit to the German ultimatum and sign a new treaty which – we were all quite convinced of that – would contain far more onerous conditions than those we had been offered at Brest-Litovsk. The representatives of one school of thought considered that at the present moment, when the Germans were effectively intervening in the internal struggles on the territory of the Russian Republic, it was unthinkable to make peace in one part of Russia and remain passive whilst in the north and south the German troops were establishing a regime of bourgeois dictatorship. Another school of thought, at the head of which stood Lenin, argued that every interval, every breathing space, however short, would be of the greatest value for the internal consolidation of Russia and for the restoration of her capacity for self-defence. After our absolute inability to defend ourselves at the present moment from the attacks of the enemy had been demonstrated so tragically before the whole country and the whole world, our conclusion of peace would be understood everywhere as an act forced on us by the cruel law of the correlation of forces. It would be mere Childishness to base our action on abstract revolutionary morals. The question at issue was not how to perish with honour, but how, in the end, we could live through to victory. The Russian revolution wants to live, must live, and must by all possible means refuse to be drawn into battle far beyond her strength she must win time in the expectation that the revolutionary movement in the West would come to her aid. German Imperialism was still at close and fierce grip with British and American militarism. Only for this reason was it possible to conclude peace between Germany and Russia. We must not let this opportunity slip by. The well-being of the Revolution was the supreme law I We must accept the peace which we dared not refuse we must gain some time for intensive work in the interior, including the reconstruction of our army.

At the Congress of the Communist Party, just as at the fourth Congress of the Soviets, those in favour of peace were in a majority. Many of those who in January had been opposed to signing the Brest peace treaty were now in favour of peace. “At that time,” said they, “our signature would have been understood by the British and French workers as a miserable capitulation without any attempt to avoid it; even the base insinuations of the Anglo-French chauvinists about a secret agreement between the Soviet Government and the Germans might have met with some acceptance in certain sections of the Western European workers, had we then signed the peace treaty. But after our refusal to sign, after the new German offensive against us, after our attempt at resistance, after our military weakness has been demonstrated to the whole world with such awful clearness, no one will dare reproach us with having capitulated without a struggle.” The Brest-Litovsk treaty, the second, more onerous edition, was duly signed and ratified.

In the meantime, in the Ukraine and in Finland the executioners were going on with their grim work, threatening more and more the most vital centres of Great Russia. Thus, the question of the very existence of Russia as an independent country became indissolubly bound up with the question of a European revolution.



CONCLUSION
When our party was assuming the reins of Government, we knew beforehand “what difficulties we should undoubtedly meet on our way. Economically the country had been exhausted by the war to the last degree. The Revolution had destroyed the old administrative machinery without having had the opportunity of creating a new one m its place. Millions of workers had been forcibly torn away from the economic life of the country, thrown out of their class, and morally and mentally shattered by three years of war. A colossal war industry on an insufficiently developed economic foundation had sucked up the very life-blood of the nation, and its demobilization presented the greatest difficulties. The phenomena inseparable from economic and political anarchy had spread widely throughout the country. The Russian peasantry had been for centuries welded together by the barbarous discipline of the land and bent down from above by the iron discipline of Tsardom. The state of our economic development had undermined the one discipline and the Revolution destroyed the other. Psychologically, the Revolution meant an awakening of human individuality in the peasant masses. The anarchical form in which this awakening found expression was but the inevitable result of the previous repression. It will only be possible to arrive at the establishment of a new order of things, based on the control of production by the producers themselves, by a general internal deliverance from the anarchical forms of the Revolution.

On the other hand, the propertied classes, although forcibly removed from power, refuse to give up their positions without a fight. The Revolution has raised in an acute form the question of private property in land and the means of production, that is, the question. of the life and death of the exploiting classes. Politically this means a constant – sometlmes covert, sometimes overt – bitter civil war. In its turn, civil war necessarily brings in its train anarchist tendencies in the movement of the labouring masses.

In view of the dislocation of finance, industry, transport, and the food supply, a protracted civil war, therefore, is bound to cause gigantic difficulties in the way of the constructive work of organization. Nevertheless, the Soviet regime has every right to look forward to the future with confidence. Only an exact inventory of the resources of the country; only a national universal plan of organization of production ; only a prudent and economical distribution of all products can save the country. And this is just Socialism. Either a descent to the state of a mere colony, or a Socialist transformation – such is the alternative which faces our country.

This war has undermined the foundations of the entire capitalist world, and in this lies our invincible strength. The Imperialist ring which is choking us will be broken by a proletarian revolution. We no more doubt this for one moment than we ever doubted the final downfall of Tsardorn during the long decades of our underground work.

To struggle, to close our ranks, to establish discipline of labour and a Socialist order, to increase the productivity of labour, and not to be balked by any obstacle – such is our watchword. History is working for us. A proletarian revolution in Europe and America will break out sooner or later, and it will free not only the Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and Finland, but the whole of suffering humanity.

An Encore -The Son Of Dharma-With Jack Kerouac’s On The Road In Mind

An Encore -The Son Of Dharma-With Jack Kerouac’s On The Road In Mind

Jack Callahan thought he was going crazy when he thought about the matter after he had awoken from his fitful dream. Thought he was crazy for “channeling” Jack Kerouac, or rather more specifically channeling Jack’s definitive book On The Road, definite in giving him and a goodly portion of his generation that last push to go, well, go search a new world, or at least get the dust of your old town growing up off of your shoes, that had much to do with his wanderings. Got him going in search of what his late corner boy, “the Scribe,” Peter Paul Markin called the search for the Great Blue-Pink American West Night (Markin always capitalized that concept so since I too was influenced by the mad man’s dreams I will do so here). Any way you cut it seeking that new world that gave Jack his fitful dream. That  “driving him crazy” stemmed from the fact that those wanderings, that search had begun, and finished shortly thereafter, about fifty years before when he left the road after a few months for the hand of Chrissie McNamara and a settled life. Decided that like many others who went that same route he was not build for the long haul road after all.  

But maybe it is best to go back to the beginning, not the fifty years beginning, Jesus, who could remember, maybe want to remember incidents that far back, but to the night several weeks before when Jack, Frankie Riley, who had been our acknowledged corner boy leader out in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys from about senior year in high school in 1966 and a couple of years after when for a whole assortment of reasons, including the wanderings, the crowd went its separate ways, Jimmy Jenkins, Allan Johnson, Bart Webber, Josh Breslin, Rich Rizzo, Sam Eaton and me got together for one of our periodic “remember back in the day” get-togethers over at “Jack’s” in Cambridge a few block down Massachusetts Avenue from where Jimmy lives. We have probably done this a dozen time over the past decade or so, more recently as most of us have more time to spent at a hard night’s drinking (drinking high-shelf liquors as we always laugh about since in the old days we collectively could not have afforded one high-shelf drink and were reduced to drinking rotgut wines and seemingly just mashed whiskeys, and draino Southern Comfort, and that draino designation no lie, especially the first time you took a slug, the only way to take it, before you acquired the taste for it).

The night I am talking about though as the liquor began to take effect someone, Bart I think, mentioned that he had read in the Globe that up in Lowell they were exhibiting the teletype roll of paper that Jack Kerouac had typed the most definitive draft of his classic youth nation travel book, On The Road in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication in 1957. That information stopped everybody in the group’s tracks for a moment. Partly because everybody at the table, except Rich Rizzo, had taken some version of Kerouac’s book to heart as did thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of certified members of the generation of ’68 who went wandering in that good 1960s night. But most of all because etched in everybody’s memory were thoughts of the mad monk monster bastard saint who turned us all on to the book, and to the wanderings, the late Peter Paul Markin.

Yeah, we still moan for that sainted bastard all these years later whenever something from our youths come up. It might be an anniversary, it might be all too often the passing of some iconic figure from those times, or it might be passing some place that was associated with our crowd, and with Markin. See Markin was something like a “prophet” to us, not the old time biblical long-beard and ranting guys although maybe he did think he was in that line of work, but as the herald of what he called “a fresh breeze coming across the land” early in the 1960s. Something of a nomadic “hippie” slightly before his time (including wearing his hair-pre moppet Beatles too long for working class North Adamsville tastes, especially his mother’s, who insisted on boys’ regulars and so another round was fought out to something like a stand-still then in the Markin household saga). The time of Markin’s “prophesies,” the hard-bitten Friday or Saturday night times when nothing to do and nothing to do it with he would hold forth, was however a time when we could have given a rat’s ass about some new wave forming in Markin’s mind (and that “rat’s ass” was the term of art we used on such occasions).

We would change our collective tunes later in the decade but then, and on Markin’s more sober days he would be clamoring over the same things, all we cared about was girls (or rather “getting into their pants”), getting dough for dates and walking around money (and planning small larcenies to obtain the filthy lucre), and getting a “boss” car, like a ’57 Chevy or at least a friend that had one in order to “do the do” with said girls and spend some dough at places like drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants (mandatory if you wanted to get past square one with girls, the girls we knew, or were attracted to, in those days).           

Markin was whistling in the dark for a long time, past high school and maybe a couple of years after. He wore us down though pushing us to go up to Harvard Square in Cambridge to see guys with long hair and faded clothes and girls with long hair which looked like they had used an iron to iron it out sing, read poetry, and just hang-out. Hang out waiting for that same “fresh breeze” that Markin spent many a girl-less, dough-less, car-less Friday or Saturday night serenading us heathens about. I don’t know how many times he dragged me, and usually Bart Webber, in his trail on the late night subway to hear some latest thing in the early 1960s folk minute which I could barely stand then, and which I still grind my teeth over when I hear some associates going on and on about guys like Bob Dylan, Tom Rush and Dave Von Ronk and gals like Joan Baez, the one I heard later started the whole iron your long hair craze among seemingly rationale girls. Of course I did tolerate the music better once a couple of Cambridge girls asked me if I liked folk music one time in a coffeehouse and I said of course I did and took Markin aside to give me some names to throw at them. One girl, Lorna, I actually dated off and on for several months.

But enough of me and my youthful antics, and enough too of Markin and his wiggy ideas because this screed is about Jack Kerouac, about the effect of his major book, and why Jack Callahan of all people who among those of us corner boys from Jack Slack’s who followed Markin on the roads west left it the earliest. Left to go back to Chrissie, and eventually a car dealership, Toyota, that had him Mr. Toyota around Eastern Massachusetts (and of course Chrissie as Mrs. Toyota).

In a lot of ways Markin was only the messenger, the prodder, because when he eventually convinced us all to read the damn book at different points when we were all, all in our own ways getting wrapped up in the 1960s counter-cultural movement (and some of us the alternative political part too) we were in thrall to what adventures Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty were up to. That is why I think Jack had his dreams after the all-night discussions we had. Of course Markin came in for his fair share of comment, good and bad. But what we talked about mostly was how improbable on the face of it a poor working-class kid from the textile mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, from a staunch Roman Catholic French-Canadian heritage of those who came south to “see if the streets of America really were paved with gold” would seem an unlikely person to be involved in a movement that in many ways was the opposite of what his generation, the parents of our generation of ’68 to put the matter in perspective, born in the 1920s, coming of age in the Great Depression and slogging through World War II was searching for in the post-World War II “golden age of America.”  Add in that he also was a “jock” (no slur intended as we spent more than our fair share of time talking about sports on those girl-less, dough-less, car-less weekend nights, including Markin who had this complicated way that he figured out the top ten college football teams since they didn’t a play-off system to figure it out. Of course he was like the rest of us a Notre Dame “subway” fan), a guy who played hooky to go read books and who hung out with a bunch of corner boys just like us would be-bop part of his own generation and influence our generation enough to get some of us on the roads too. Go figure.       

So we, even Markin when he was in high flower, did not “invent” the era whole, especially in the cultural, personal ethos part, the part about skipping for a while anyway the nine to five work routine, the white house and picket fence family routine, the hold your breath nose to the grindstone routine and discovering the lure of the road and of discovering ourselves, and of the limits of our capacity to wonder. No question that elements of the generation before us, Jack Kerouac’s, the sullen West Coast hot-rodders, the perfect wave surfers, the teen-alienated rebel James Dean and wild one Marlon Brando we saw on Saturday afternoon matinee Strand Theater movie screens and above all his “beats” helped push the can down the road, especially the “beats” who along with Jack wrote to the high heavens about what they did, how they did it and what the hell it was they were running from. Yeah, gave us a road map to seek that “newer world” Markin got some of us wrapped up in later in the decade and the early part of the next.

Now the truth of the matter is that most generation of ‘68ers, us, only caught the tail-end of the “beat” scene, the end where mainstream culture and commerce made it into just another “bummer” like they have done with any movement that threatened to get out of hand. So most of us who were affected by the be-bop sound and feel of the “beats” got what we knew from reading about them. And above all, above even Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, Howl which was a clarion call for rebellion, was Jack Kerouac who thrilled even those who did not go out in the search the great blue-pink American West night.              

Here the odd thing, Kerouac except for that short burst in the late 1940s and a couple of vagrant road trips in the 1950s before fame struck him down was almost the antithesis of what we of the generation of ’68 were striving to accomplish. As is fairly well known, or was by those who lived through the 1960s, he would eventually disown his “step-children.” Be that as it may his role, earned or not, wanted or not, as media-anointed “king of the beats” was decisive.           

But enough of the quasi-literary treatment that I have drifted into when I really wanted to tell you about what Bart Webber told me about his dream. He dreamed that he, after about sixty-five kinds of hell with his mother who wanted him to stay home and start that printing business that he had dreamed of since about third grade when he read about how his hero Benjamin Franklin had started in the business, get married to Betsy Binstock, buy a white picket fence house (a step up from the triple decker tenement where he grew up) have children, really grandchildren and have a happy if stilted life. But his mother advise fell off him like a dripping rain, hell, after-all he was caught in that 1960s moment when everything kind of got off-center and so he under the constant prodding of Markin decided to hit the road. Of course the Kerouac part came in from reading the book after about seven million drum-fire assaults by Markin pressing him to read the thing.

So there he was by himself. Markin and I were already in San Francisco so that was the story he gave his mother for going and also did not tell her that he was going  to hitchhike to save money and hell just to do it. It sounded easy in the book. So he went south little to hit Route 6 (a more easterly part of that road in upstate New York which Sal unsuccessfully started his trip on). There he met a young guy, kind of short, black hair, built like a football player who called himself Ti Jean, claimed he was French- Canadian and hailed from Nashua up in New Hampshire but had been living in Barnstable for the summer and was now heading west to see what that summer of love was all about.

Bart was ecstatic to have somebody to kind of show him the ropes, what to do and don’t do on the road to keep moving along. So they travelled together for a while, a long while first hitting New York City where Ti Jean knew a bunch of older guys, gypsy poets, sullen hipsters, con men, drifters and grifters, guys who looked like they had just come out some “beat” movie. Guys who knew what was what about Times Square, about dope, about saying adieu to the American dream of their parents to be free to do as they pleased. Good guys though who taught him a few things about the road since they said they had been on that road since the 1940s.

Ti Jean whose did not look that old said he was there with them, had blown out of Brockton after graduating high school where he had been an outstanding sprinter who could have had a scholarship if his grades had been better. Had gone to prep school in Providence to up his marks, had then been given a track scholarship to Brown, kind of blew that off when Providence seemed too provincial to him, had fled to New York one fine day where he sailed out for a while in the merchant marines to do his bit for the war effort. Hanging around New York in between sailings he met guys who were serious about reading, serious about talking about what they read, and serious about not being caught in anything but what pleased them for the moment. Some of this was self-taught, some picked up from the hipsters and hustlers.

After the war was over, still off-center about what to do about this writing bug that kept gnawing at him despite everybody, his minute wife, his love mother, his carping father telling him to get a profession writing wasn’t where any dough was, any dough for him he met this guy, a hard knocks guys who was something like a plebeian philosopher king, Ned Connelly, who was crazy to fix up cars and drive them, drive them anyway. Which was great since Ti Jean didn’t have a license, didn’t know step one about how to shift gears and hated driving although he loved riding shot-gun getting all blasted on the dope in the glove compartment and the be-bop jazz on the radio. So they tagged along together for a couple of years, zigged and zagged across the continent, hell, went to Mexico too to get that primo dope that he/they craved, got drunk as skunks more times than you could shake a stick, got laid more times than you would think by girls who you would not suspect were horny but were, worked a few short jobs picking produce in the California fields, stole when there was no work, pimped a couple of girls for a while to get a stake and had a hell of time while the “squares” were doing whatever squares do. And then he wrote some book about it, a book that was never published because there were too many squares who could not relate to what he and Ned were about. He was hoping that the kids he saw on the road, kids like Bart would keep the thing moving along as he left Bart at the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge on their last ride together.

Then Bart woke up, woke up to the fact that he stayed on the road too short a time now looking back on it. That guy Ti Jean had it right though, live fast, drink hard and let the rest of it take care of itself. Thanks Markin.              

The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

For Your Eyes Only, starring Roger Moore, 1981

Apparently the story within the story of who the real Bond, James Bond is will go on as least as long as the freaking producers are willing to put up cold hard cash to see who still gives a damn about the question. I thought I had been done, had finished with this question once Will Bradley conceded that Sean Connery was head and shoulders the best of the lot (conceded by silence, by giving up the ghost of trying to keep going with his ill-conceived premise, an almost laughable one that one pretty boy Pierce Brosnan was the One). Nobody else was even considered worthy enough to have a champion and make the argument multi-faceted. (By the way that Connery-Brosnan controversy, what my old friend Sam Lowell, the legendary film critic who still wanders the cinematic world with a large shadow behind him, has called on more than one occasion a tempest in teapot had no serious other contenders at the time-now either) Two events though have cast a long shadow over the question. The news of recent origin that one Idris Elba British to the core but as black as night was being considered for the role of Bond in some future episode which will put a whole new spin of the question and a possible recasting of the standings of the “others” who fill out the ranks of who have played Bond when I did an off-hand review of  George Lazenby’s solo 1969 performance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service which put him at the bottom of the list. That got me, if not battered and bruised Will Bradley, rethinking the placement order which meant having to watch, re-watch a Roger Moore Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, among others to see who would take the coveted third spot now that George Lazenby is comfortably seated in last place. This is necessarily provincial since if the Elba rumor turns out to be true we could have the whole apple cart upset.

Since I have no competition as of yet over who will fill out the “third through” ranks I will argue that Roger Moore, a little woodenly, a little less spritely than either Connery or Brosnan, and a little less technologically competent that Brosnan and less suave and off-handed than Connery nevertheless should fill the third slot. Not because the story line is qualitatively better than any of the others-they divide simply between the more interesting since more realistic Cold War Soviet as main enemy films and the post-Soviet demise amorphous international criminal cartels films and not much more since all are threats to Her Majesty’s reign and governments and so much fodder for ace Empire hitman Bond the only person standing between the continued regime and chaos.    

This film follows the tried and true Soviets as villain formula. Somebody, some third party, has blown away an important spy ship containing an important defense gizmo which will save the Empire and all civilization as we know it will be sunk if the damn Soviet’s get their greedy hands on the item. Problem: said system is located somewhere in the briny deep and everybody is scrambling to get to the locale first and win the prize. Enter Roger Moore as James Bond who of course has to go through hoops before getting to the locale. Along the way there are the standard ruses and deceptions, a few moves under the silky sheets and some hand to hand battles with whatever passes for the latest technology-planes, submarines, skis, yes skis as old James skis like he was an Olympian among his many other manly skills. As a sign of the times, 1981, Bond rather than get the system back to MI6, cornered and backed into a corner with the system by Russian agents throws it off a cliff so nobody gets it-détente at work. All very civilized at the end and Roger Moore seems to me to epitomize that calm, determined Bond needed by the times when the Soviet Union was in trouble and who knows what would happen. More later when we get a chance to view more Moore footage but for now he is king of the number three spot.                       

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- The Struggle For A Real Independence Day-A Five Point Discussion Program

An Encore Salute To The Untold Stories Of The Working- Class 1960s Radicals-“The Sam And Ralph Stories”- The Struggle For A Real Independence Day-A Five Point Discussion Program

Greg Green, site manager Introduction 

 [In early 2018, shortly after I had taken over the reins as site manager at this on-line publication I “saw the light” and bowed to the wisdom of a number of older writers who balked at my idea of reaching younger and newer audiences by having them review films like Marvel/DC Comics productions, write about various video games and books that would not offend a flea unlike the flaming red books previously reviewed here centered on the now aging 1960s baby-boomer demographic which had sustained the publication through good times and bad as a hard copy and then on-line proposition. One senior writer, who shall remain nameless in case some stray millennial sees this introduction and spreads some viral social media hate campaign his way, made the very telling observation that the younger set, his term, don’t read film reviews or hard copy books as a rule and those hardy Generation of ’68 partisans who still support this publication in the transition from the old Allan Jackson leadership to mine don’t give a fuck about comics, video games or graphic novels. I stand humbled.

Not only stand humbled though but in a valiant and seemingly successful attempt to stabilize this operation decided to give an encore presentation to some of the most important series produced and edited by Allan Jackson-without Allan. That too proved to be an error when I had Frank Jackman introduce the first few sections of The Roots Is The Toots Rock And Roll series which Allan had sweated his ass over to bring out over a couple of years. Writers, and not only senior writers who had supported Allan in the vote of no confidence fight challenging his leadership after he went overboard attempting to cash in on the hoopla over the commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Summer of Love in 1967 but also my younger writer partisans, balked at this subterfuge. One called it a travesty.

Backing off after finding Allan, not an easy task since he had fled to the safer waters of the West looking for work and had been rumored to be any place from Salt Lake City to some mountainous last hippie commune in the hills of Northern California doing anything from pimping as press agent for Mitt Romney’s U.S. Senate campaign in Utah to running a whorehouse with Madame La Rue in Frisco or shacking up with drag queen Miss Judy Garland in that same city, we brought Allan back to do the introductions to the remaining sections. That we, me and the Editorial Board established after Allan’s demise and as a guard against one-person rule, had compromised on that gesture with the last of the series being the termination of Allan’s association with the publication except possibly as an occasional writer, a stringer really, when some nostalgia event needed some attention.      

That was the way things went and not too badly when we finished up the series in the early summer of 2018. But that is not the end of the Allan story. While looking through the on-line archives I noticed that Allan had also seriously edited another 1960s-related series, the Sam and Ralph Stories, a series centered on the trials and tribulations of two working-class guys who had been radicalized in different ways by the 1960s upheavals and have never lost the faith in what Allan called from Tennyson “seeking a newer world” would resurface in this wicked old world, somebody’s term.

I once again attempted to make the mistake of having someone else, in this case Josh Breslin, introduce the series (after my introduction here) but the Editorial Board bucked me even before I could set that idea in motion. I claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Allan was probably out in Utah looking for some residual work for Mitt Romney now that he is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator for Utah or running back to Madame La Rue, an old flame, and that high- end whorehouse or hanging with Miss Judy Garland at her successful drag queen tourist attraction cabaret. No such luck since he was up in Maine working on a book about his life as an editor. To be published in hard cop y by well-known Wheeler Press whenever he gets the proofs done. So hereafter former editor and site manager Allan will handle the introductions on this encore presentation of this excellent series. Greg Green]                   

Allan Jackson, editor The Sam And Ralph Stories -New General Introduction

[As my replacement Greg Green, whom I brought in from American Film Gazette originally to handle the day to day site operations while I concentrated on editing but who led a successful revolt against my regime based on the wishes of the younger writers to as they said at the time not be slaves to the 1960s upheavals a time which they only knew second or third hand, mentioned in his general introduction above some of the series I initiated were/are worth an encore presentation. The Sam and Ralph Stories are one such series and as we go along I will try to describe why this series was an important testament to an unheralded segment of the mass movements of the 1960s-the radicalized white working- class kids who certainly made up a significant component of the Vietnam War soldiery, some of who were like Sam and Ralph forever after suspicious of every governmental war cry. Who also somewhat belatedly got caught up in the second wave rock and roll revival which emerged under the general slogan of “drug, sex and rock and roll” which represented a vast sea change for attitudes about a lot of things that under ordinary circumstances would have had them merely replicating their parents’ ethos and fate.        

As I said I will describe that transformation in future segment introductions but today since it is my “dime” I want to once again clear up some misapprehensions about what has gone on over the past year or so in the interest of informing the readership, as Greg Green has staked his standing at this publication on doing to insure his own survival, about what goes on behind the scenes in the publishing business. This would not have been necessary after the big flap when Greg tried an “end around” something that I and every other editor worth her or his salt have tried as well and have somebody else, here commentator and my old high school friend Frank Jackman, act as general introducer of The Roots Is The Toots  rock and roll coming of age series that I believe is one of the best productions I have ever worked on. That got writers, young and old, with me or against me, led by Sam Lowell, another of my old high school friends, who had been the decisive vote against me in the “vote of no confidence” which ended my regime up in arms. I have forgiven Sam, and others, as I knew full well from the time I entered into the business that at best it was a cutthroat survival of the fittest racket. (Not only have I forgiven Sam but I am in his corner in his recent struggles with young up and coming by-line writer Sarah Lemoyne who is being guided through the shoals by another old high school friend Seth Garth as she attempts to make her way up the film critic food chain, probably the most vicious segment of the business where a thousand knives wait the unwary from so-called fellow reviewers.) The upshot of that controversy was that Greg had to back off and let me finish the introducing the series for which after all I had been present at the creation.               

That would have been the end of it but once we successfully, and thankfully by Greg who gave me not only kudos around the water cooler but a nice honorarium, concluded that series encore in the early summer of 2018 he found another way to cut me. Going through the archives of this publication to try to stabilize the readership after doing some “holy goof” stuff like having serious writers, young and old, reviewing films based on comic book characters, the latest in video games and graphic novels with no success forgetting the cardinal rule of the post-Internet world that the younger set get their information from other sources than old line academic- driven websites and don’t read beyond their techie tools Greg found another series, the one highlighted here, that intrigued him for an encore presentation. This is where Greg proved only too human since he once again attempted an “end around,” by having Josh Breslin, another old friend whom I meet in the Summer of Love, 1967 out in San Francisco, introduce the series citing my unavailability as the reason although paying attention to the fact that I had sweated bullets over that one as well.      

This time though the Editorial Board, now headed by Sam Lowell, intervened even before Greg could approach Josh for the assignment. This Ed Board was instituted after my departure to insure the operation would not descend, Sam’s word actually, into the so-called autocratic one-person rule that had been the norm under my regime. They told Greg to call me back in on the encore project or to forget it. I would not have put up with such a suggestion from an overriding Ed Board and would have willingly bowed out if anybody had tried to undermine me that way. I can understand fully Greg’s desire to cast me to the deeps, have done with me as in my time I did as well knowing others in the food chain would see this as their opportunity to move up.  

That part I had no problem with, told Greg exactly that. What bothered me was the continuing “urban legend” about what I had done, where I had gone after that decisive vote of no confidence. Greg continued, may continue today, to fuel the rumors that not only after my initial demise but after finishing up the Roots Is The Toots series I had gone back out West to Utah of all places to work for the Mormons, or to Frisco to hook up with my old flame Madame La Rue running that high-end whorehouse I had staked her to in the old days, or was running around with another old high school pal, Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley the high priestess of the drag queen set out in that same town whom I also helped stake to  his high-end tourist attraction cabaret. All nonsense, I was working on my memoir up in Maine, up in Olde Saco where Josh grew up and which I fell in love with when he first showed me his hometown and its ocean views.          

If the reader can bear the weight of this final reckoning let me clear the air on all three subjects on the so-called Western trail. Before that though I admit, admit freely that despite all the money I have made, editing, doing a million pieces under various aliases and monikers, ballooning up 3000 word articles to 10,000 and having the publishers fully pay despite the need for editing for the latter in the days before the Guild when you worked by the word, accepting articles which I clearly knew were just ripped of the AP feed and sending them along as gold I had no dough, none when I was dethroned. Reason, perfectly sane reason, although maybe not, three ex-wives with alimony blues and a parcel of kids, a brood if you like who were in thrall to the college tuition vultures.

Tapped out in the East for a lot of reasons I did head west the first time looking for work. Landed in Utah when I ran out of dough, and did, DID, try to get a job on the Salt Lake Star and would have had it too except two things somebody there, some friend of Mitt Romney, heard I was looking for work and nixed the whole thing once they read the articles I had written mocking Mitt and his white underwear world as Massachusetts governor and 2012 presidential candidate. So it was with bitter irony when I heard that Greg had retailed the preposterous idea that I would now seek a job shilling for dear white undie Mitt as press agent in his run for the open Utah United States Senate seat. Here is where everybody should gasp though at the whole Utah fantasy-these Mormons stick close together, probably ingrained in them from Joseph Smith days, and don’t hire goddam atheists and radicals, don’t hire outside the religion if they can help it. You probably had to have slept with one of Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s wives to even get one foot in the door. Done.              

The helping Madame La Rue, real name of no interest or need to mention,  running her high-end exclusive whorehouse out in Half Moon Bay at least had some credence since I had staked her to some dough to get started after the downfall of the 1960s sent her back to her real world, the world of a high class hooker who was slumming with “hippies” for a while when it looked like our dreams were going to be deterred in in the ebbtide. We had been hot and heavy lovers, although never married except on some hazed drug-fogged concert night when I think Josh Breslin “married” us and sent us on a “honeymoon” with a fistful of cocaine. Down on dough I hit her up for some which she gave gladly, said it was interest on the “loan: she never repaid and let me stay at her place for a while until I had to move on. Done

The whole drag queen idea tells me that whoever started this damn lie knew nothing about my growing up days and had either seen me in The Totem, Timmy Riley’s aka Miss Judy Garland’s drinking with a few drag queen who worked and drew the wrong conclusions or was out to slander and libel me for some other nefarious reason. See Miss Judy Garland is the very successful drag queen and gay man Timmy Riley from the old neighborhood who fled to Frisco when he could no longer hide his sexual identity and preferences. To our great shock since Timmy had been the out-front gay-basher of our crowd, our working-class corner boy gay-bashing crowd. I had lent, after getting religion rather late on the LGBTQ question, Timmy the money to buy his first drag queen cabaret on Bay Street and Timmy was kind enough to stake me to some money and a roof before I decided I had to head back East. Done.

But enough about me.  This is about two other working- class guys, Sam Eaton and Ralph Morris, met along life’s road one from Carver about fifty miles away from where Seth, Sam, Timmy and a bunch of other guys grew up and learned the “normal” working-class ethos-and broke, tentatively at times, from that same straitjacket and from Troy, New York. Funny Troy, Carver, North Adamsville, and Josh’s old mill town Olde Saco all down-in-the-mouth working class towns still produced in exceptional times a clot of guys who got caught up in the turmoil of their times-and lived to tell the tale. I am proud to introduce this encore presentation and will have plenty more to say about Sam and Ralph in future segments.]

Allan Jackson Introduction To Sam and Ralph-The Wild Boys of Cambridge When Cambridge Was Jammed Full Of Wild Girls And Boys    

[Some guys from the old days, from the old growing up poor in the working-class Acre section of North Adamsville, I still have contact with over fifty years later. Guys like Seth Garth who is now in a “battle” along with his new protégé Sarah Lemoyne who looks for all the world to be an up and coming contributor to this publication against his, and my, old time friend Sam Lowell who promised me he would retire, especially after he provided the key last and decisive vote when the younger writers rose up against my editorship and forced me to retire. Forced me West seeking another job to keep myself solvent causing all kinds of rumors and fairy tales to enter the world which only muddied up the already murky waters. Other guys like beautiful Si Lannon and generous benefactor to this publication Jack Callahan also come to mind. Of course the elephant in the room has always been, and probably always will be, one Peter Paul Markin, who taught us many things before his sadly untimely demise caused by his own hubris many years ago. I honored his memory for years using his name as my moniker in various publishing efforts and will detail the genesis of that decision in the memoir of my time in the publishing industry which I am working on and expect to complete by next year.     

I am proud to have had the chance to keep so many friendships from the old neighborhoods days as I am a man who puts a great deal into things like loyalty and camaraderie. Of course those relationships do not exhaust the number of long friendships and close working relationships. Josh Breslin met in the Summer of Love, 1967, Zack James, youngest brother of my closest friend in high Alex, and Lance Lawrence come readily to mind. Then there are guys, I am only talking guys today as I will deal with gals in an up-coming introductory segment, like fellow Vietnam veteran Ralph Morris from over in Troy, New York whom I met I believe down in Washington, D.C. in 1971 a few weeks before we, Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW), did our part to try to shut down the government to shut down the war on May Day -and failed. Guys like his friend Sam Eaton from Carver about fifty miles from North Adamsville,  not a veteran since he was exempted from the draft as the sole support of his mother and four sisters after his father passed away suddenly of a heart attack, whom Ralph “met” after both had been arrested in those May Day actions in “jail” at the RFK football stadium. They, Sam and Ralph, and I have stayed in contact over the years and have worked on many political projects mostly against war together.    

That brings me to the idea behind having Sam and Ralph as the central characters in a series I helped plan around the story- and fate- of some working- class radicals who for the most part had kept the faith, had not retreated to self, had not given up the mist of change we were struggling for in those halcyon and heady 1960s upheaval days. At the cost of over-generalization the thing that united the North Adamsville remnant, including me, guys like Josh Breslin and guys like Sam and Ralph was our working-class backgrounds. While the road to new understandings of the ways of the world were different we all arrived at some similar conclusions and since then have seen no reason to dramatically change them if in the aging process we are less able to stir the old energies. Have been ready to “pass the torch” for a while. The stories of the old North Adamsville corner boys had by 2012 or so been done to death as had the stories centered on other working-class guys like Josh Breslin from places like Olde Saco up in Maine and so the natural place to turn was the long-time relationship between Sam and Ralph. Things seemed right in the universe doing the series then-and now with this encore.]          

Allan Jackson’s Encore Introduction to “An Ex-American Soldier’s Story”

Some generations are driven by events that have world historic importance-Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 the day of infamy according to President Franklin Roosevelt, maybe not so to others but that is for the historian to decipher and 9/11 2001 come readily to mind. For the Generation of ’68 Peter Paul Markin’s designation for the generation, or the best part of it that rose up to try and slay the dragon of the Vietnam War that fateful April 30, 1975 when with a puff of air the North Vietnamese Regulars and the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front waltzed int to Saigon, now rightfully Ho Chi Minh City after the great national liberation leader, after a 10,000 day world, the bloodiest and most bloodthirsty part the American invasion from say 1964 to that well-known photograph of the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy by helicopter of the last remnant of the America hubris in the area.

Not everybody, soldier or civilian saw, sees that day as cause for some serious contemplation, reflection about the borders of hubris. Some soldiers, some fellow soldiers, and this is what I want to make sure I get clear in this introduction did their duty as they saw it, came home and as best as they could  got back to the real world, that was probably a majority of the roughly two million military personnel who served in that conflict. Another segment, smaller and more troubled never did get back to the “real” world. Drugs, physical maladies, mental problems, and just getting back the nine to five world they had expected to inhabit proved too much. Guys like the guys who famously became the “brothers under the bridge” that I wrote about for the East Bay Other after I had come back from Vietnam and had had my own troubles getting back into that real world. The epitome, the personal known to me epitome of that soldier though was Peter Paul Markin, whose moniker I used for a number of years to honor my fallen hometown neighborhood friend and brother who taught me, us many things before he went under and who had done okay for a while but just couldn’t get rid of the demons in his head, what Seth Garth, using a line from a Patty Griffin song “put out the fire in your head” used to say.        

Then there were the Ralph Morris-types who came back ready to smite dragons, and is still ready to do so, ready to take on all comers who want to get this country into yet another war and who as a sidebar has fought under various banners for social justice ever since. I met Ralph down in Washington in the spring of 1971 when he, I, was red hot to express his outrage at the murderous actions of his government against people with which he had no quarrel.  We were linked up with other ex G.I.s in various actions as veterans, as guys who knew and saw things up close and personal and ready to do something, maybe give up our lives if it came to that to stop the fucking war (that is still the only way I can describe it with the “fucking” in front).  Ralph knew the war was fucked, knew it in his bones but it took the actual experience of going to sort things out. Sure he had his problems coming home but he stayed the course. A guy like Ralph would not have been as happy, if that is the way to put such a thing, as the North Vietnamese Regulars and the South Vietnamese Liberation fighters to have the damn war finished in 1975 but every year he, we reflect on the day and are proud of our small part in helping try to stop the thing from going on forever.]        

Allan Jackson’s Encore Introduction To “The Struggle For A Real Independence Day-A Five Point Discussion Program”
I think that anybody who has read An American Ex-Soldier’s Story about how his Vietnam War experience influenced Ralph Morris directly and Sam Eaton indirectly will understand that for those like this pair who took their “conversion” to anti-war and social justice struggles from out of working class indifference or even hostility seriously  would expect them to have some programmatic points to guide them. Especially after having been exposed to the hot house atmosphere around Cambridge in the early 1970s when you were nothing but fodder for others’ plans if you did not have one of your own to present to the so-called “unwashed masses.” Which turned out to be, unfortunately, mostly fellow Cambridge radicals as times passed and later as most of them went back to the academia, back to business or the professions which they assumed were their God-given rights after toying around with revolution for the best two years or so of their lives not even that dwindle.

So Ralph and Sam honed away on program, worked with a ton of ad hoc groups some so remote in time and influence to have been forgotten by even Frank Jackman and he specialized in commenting on such groups for many years, and waited. When Occupy turned up to give a momentary ray of hope they were “all in” and were many writers associated with this publication at the time who helped finance their “expeditions” to New York City and elsewhere. That is all I need to say as prologue as the rest, the program, while in need of some specific tweaking and updating pretty much could be a viable left-wing alternative program to those around the extreme left-wing of the Democratic Party.         

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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Ralph Morris and Sam Eaton a couple of old-time radicals, old-time now not being the Great Depression labor radicals who had been their models after a fashion and who helped built the now seemingly moribund unions but anti-war radicals from the hell-bent street in-your-face 1960s confrontations with the American beast during the Vietnam War reign of hell were beside themselves when the powder-puff uprising of the Occupy movement brought a fresh breeze to the tiny American left-wing landscape in the latter part of 2011.  (That term “powder puff” not expressing the heft of the movement but the fact that it disappeared almost before it got started giving up the huge long-term fight it was expected to wage to break the banks, break the corporate grip on the world and, try to seek “newer world”). Although Ralph and Sam were not members in good standing of any labor unions, both having after their furtive anti-war street fights and the ebbing of the movement by about the mid-1970s returned to “normalcy.” Ralph having taken over his father’s electrical shop in Troy, New York when he retired. Sam had gone back to Carver to expand a print shop that he had started in the late 1960s, but having come from respectable working-class backgrounds in strictly working-class towns, Carver about thirty miles from Boston and the cranberry bog capital of the world and Ralph in Troy near where General Electric ruled the roost, and had taken to heart the advice of their respective grandfathers about not forgetting those left behind, that an injury to one of their own in this wicked old world was an injury to all as the old Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) motto had it. Moreover despite their backing away from the street confrontations of their youth when that proved futile after a time as the Vietnam War finally wound down and yesterday’s big name radicals left for parts unknown they had always kept an inner longing for the “newer world,” the more equitable world where the people who actually made stuff and kept the wheels of society running and their down-pressed allies ruled.   

So Ralph and Sam would during most of the falloff 2011   travel down to the Wall Street plaza which was the center of the movement on weekends, long weekends usually, to take part in the action after the long drought of such activity both for them personally and for their kind of politics. They were crestfallen to say the least when the thing exploded after the then reigning mayor and the NYPD the police pulled down the hammer and forcibly disbanded the place (and other city administrations across the country and across the world and police departments doing likewise). Of more concern since they had already known about what the government could do when it decided to pull down the hammer was thereafter when the movement imploded from its own contradictions, caught up not wanting to step on toes, to let everybody do their own thing, do their own identity politics which did much to defang the old movements, refusing out of hand attempting to cohere a collective leadership that might give some direction to the damn thing but also earnestly wanting to bring the monster down.

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

A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

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

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

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



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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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