Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings

Once Again-The Summer Of Love, 1967-Postcards From A Lost Planet-Buddha Swings-Jack Kerouac Wings  

For Jack's month Ocotber in the sweating rains  

By Jeffrey Thorne

Beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground. Fuck it Jack just jumped into it from his beautified beatified skull, maybe thinking of youthful skull behind some bushes or out on some back road highway jumping the bones of some friend’s only, but really and truly jumped from some river of life, mill town life like a million guys before him and now in foreign lands a million guys after him, the river flowing to steam up some engine to grind the fabric that will clothe the world. Ha, like we who come naked into this holy coil can take solace from that low catholic trip it took him, and not just him but lots of others who broke the square habit at least for a time, for the youth duration. Damn beatitude in the end when all the shouting was over and Jack in some drunken grave why couldn’t he have listened to that guy out in Frisco town, the guy, a kid really, who all nervous on bennie nevertheless blew that high white note that was in his DNA, provide by grandma like everything else out to the fucking China seas. But that was at the end. At the beginning hell no said Jack.

The world wasn’t big enough to hold all his desperations, keep them in check, keep those wanting habits every poor boy has inside him talk about DNA. Even rama jamma Buddha didn’t have no cure for that except maybe some jimson and jetsam and mystical balm for a shattered world. Like I say that was at the end though. At the beginning our boy took off as fast as he could from that mill town river and never looked back (except to take the dust off his shoes and bow down before our Lady of the river when luck ran out, the booze ran out, hell, the sweet tea sticks ran out). Took it on the lam, went west east south north (I think on that last direction maybe back to the homeland, back to the stinking big river up north that some earlier Jack crossed to get to that fucking mill river, Jesus, looking for the holy grail, looking for about six ways to get out of that beat down, beat around, beat sound, beat to the ground bitch stuff. Took up with some fat fast mad monk who spouted stuff about negro streets, crazies and Moloch devouring the land, the land of milk and honey, rama rama, went to the mat (secret in more ways than one with that loose bastard who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or cock in his pants -and that was that-for a time (no, not then that street wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with the language and ladies’ pocketbooks or that highbrow junkie hanging around New Orleans looking for quick fixes although they qualified if it came to that).

For a time no question since the pull of fast fat monks could wear off fast under the sun of boze, booze, bennies and grand simon. Took his hat off and let the world slip in-thought maybe the way was the way. Startled guys like desolation angels and dharma bums into thinking they could do what had never been done like some lead pipe cinch. Ran up the mountain (no Prometheus Adonis more likely who was to know) to place incense in the fatted calf body singing, singing, singing some cross between the stations of the cross and plastic nirvana (just to be cute, cute as a nine thieves). Saw Siva run the river gauntlet and leave satiated beyond compare, saw Rama too walking down Post Street in his nightshirt. Then fame got in his way, this is poor boy wanting habits Jack we are talking about remember in case you have lost the drift. Make him surly and brazen wondering why the hell if fame was fame didn’t it jump out at him when he started on his Calvary Road road, started out in dirty sneakers and crusted blue jeans, and when he jumped out of his skull and fled that mountebank river town. Fools and jesters following his every move, hiding in bushes and make that fat monk look like some holy fool, like a goof (again remember please not that street-wise New Jack City gangster poet taking liberties with language and ladies’ pocketbooks). Ah, sullen lost planet life.         

How was he to know, how was Jack to blessed know that his illegitimate children, not child, children would abandon their flea-etched sins and follow the pied piper. Follow the brethren saint mad man with the wooly beard and the incense announcing his arrival at the table singing, singing, singing and it wasn’t hosannas but some odd unspoken tune which ripped across the land for a while. Drew magnetic forces around themselves and expected the kingdom to last until end times. Hah, Jack could have given them the word on that little mistake. I am the light Jack thought and then he faded from the scene into utter darkness those unwashed, unloved, unspoken for illegitimate children to lay waste to the desert for forty years. Jesus         

Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind

Robbing The Rich To Give To The Poor-The Real Story Behind The Robin Hood Legend-With Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures Of Robin Hood” (1938) In Mind      

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Adventures Of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, 1938

Some legends are all baloney, so much hot air. The legend of Robin Hood (who worked under many aliases a few of which have come down in history depending on what scam he was working out and which seem verifiable-Bob Sherwood, Robert Wood, John Hood, Jack Woodson) is the max daddy of one strain of the legend genre. The “rob from the rich, give to the poor” stuff which has had many progenies since his time coming through John of Gaunt to Jim Wiggins to Sam Portage down to Pretty Boy Floyd made famous by Woody Guthrie (and debunked by no less a “New West” authority than Larry McMurtry) to Pretty James Preston in the early 1960s. As usual, and the case of Pretty James Preston, comes to mind since he robbed banks and other places in broad daylight, near the hometown where I grew up, this is all hogwash. Oh, Pretty James might have left a fifty- cent tip at some diner (probably his dead ass way to impress some sullen waitress) or given his used clothing to Goodwill or the Salvation Army (both places where he was well known when he was down on his luck) but the lies that he paid rents for people who lived in the projects, a place where he grew up, brought hundreds gallons of milk for the kids at the elementary school he had gone to, or bought an automobile for the priests up at Sacred Heart are just that. Lies. A fairy tale made up by Scott Lewis a writer for the North Adamsville Ledger who knew Pretty James and essentially acted as a press agent for him.              

Let’s get back to the max daddy, this Robin Hood, or whatever his name was which considering this is all the stuff of legend probably is not his real name although a Sir Robert Woodson did own a lot of land and was some honcho after helping Richard II aka the Lion-Hearted take back his throne way back in the 12^th century around the time the legend got started. The Woodson tax rolls and home court records are still extant, and they show he taxed his peasant land-holders, his “employees” more heavily than other landowners in the area. Had more of these peasants on the rack for simple crimes than any other, more than a guy named Sir Guy Gilroy who was supposedly the local bad baron before Robert took over. Since we can date the legends from this time and this location it is not far-fetched to say no way that this guy was giving to the poor anything but cold porridge and steel. In short, a rather fitting forbear for Pretty James Preston.    

As everybody knows, or should know, legends become legends through repetition, usually oral but in the modern ages through print and eventually through film which is where we are today. This film review of Errol Flynn’s 1938 portrayal of this Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood is a classic modern case of puffing up this “good guy” legend for modern generations just as Woody Guthrie gussied up the murderous Pretty Boy Floyd back in the 1930s as well. Here is how the thing spirals out of control for yet another time.  

King Richard II of England, nominally a Christian, was seriously into leading crusades against the infidels, the Moslems, in the Middle East as much for the bounty as for the faith (sound familiar). On his way back from this trip he was taken prisoner by some geek king in Vienna, an enemy. That detention led his younger brother Prince John, played by Claude Rains last seen in this space walking arm and arm with Humphrey Bogart into the mist looking for a beautiful friendship after letting Victor Lazlo with wife Ilsa leave on the last plane to Lisbon to lead the anti-fascist struggle in Europe, to plot to take his shot at the empty throne. Naturally he needed allies, allies like Sir Guy Gilroy, played by Basil Rathbone last seen in this space smoking high-grade dope with his dear friend Doc Watson in the endless 1940s Sherlock Holmes film series, who were not going along for free. The needed money coming from the hides of every peasant free-holder, tradesmen or servant.    

Of course the money kept rolling in but as to be expected the masses took unkindly to this gouging. Including a free-booter, a border ruffian, a robber, who has come down to us as Robin Hood, played by Errol Flynn who has never before graced this publication. He and his gang played havoc with the roads around Sherwood Forest and gained a pretty penny from whoever passed by-there are no records however to show what he did, or did not do with the dough, other than later when he got his land grants and other rights from the king and gouged his peasants as savagely as Prince John and Sir Guy ever did. Made them take it too since he was a “liberator”

This Robin Hood though made a serious decision that would in the end pay off-go with Prince John and face the hangman or some such unpleasantries or wait on the possible return of King Richard II. He opted for the latter and essentially waged guerilla warfare against Johnny, his barons and their hangers-on.  Made Johnny scream bloody murder and put the swash-buckling blade to Sir Guy. Both events paved the way to getting Richard his throne back, paved the way for Robin Hood to become the richest and greediest landowner in England maybe Wales too. Of course, there is no church record of such a marriage but in the movie Robin weds and beds some ward of the king, Lady Marian, played by Olivia de Haviland also gracing these pages for the first time. That my friends is the stuff of legends and here is the hard part to take-the legend is so engrained that no matter what anybody does to refute the stuff it is in vain. Still Robin Hood’s reputation is all hooey.        

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power (Quote of the Week)

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power (Quote of the Week)

Workers Vanguard No. 1117	8 September 2017

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Kornilov Coup and the Bolsheviks’ Fight for Power

(Quote of the Week)

In August 1917, Russian general Lavr Kornilov launched a military coup to overthrow the bourgeois Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky and sweep away the soviets (workers, soldiers and peasants councils). Both the soviets and the Provisional Government emerged following the February Revolution that toppled the tsarist monarchy amid the interimperialist First World War. In a letter to the Bolshevik Central Committee, V.I. Lenin underlined that in mobilizing to stop Kornilov’s forces, the Bolsheviks must not give any political support to the Provisional Government, which included leading members of the Mensheviks and petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin’s struggle was essential to winning the mass of the proletariat to the fight for soviet power and the victory of the October Revolution.

Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events.

We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten....

It would be wrong to think that we have moved farther away from the task of the proletariat winning power. No. We have come very close to it, not directly, but from the side. At the moment we must campaign not so much directly against Kerensky, as indirectly against him, namely, by demanding a more and more active, truly revolutionary war against Kornilov.... We must relentlessly fight against phrases about the defence of the country, about a united front of revolutionary democrats, about supporting the Provisional Government, etc., etc., since they are just empty phrases. We must say: now is the time for action; you S.R. and Menshevik gentlemen have long since worn those phrases threadbare. Now is the time for action; the war against Kornilov must be conducted in a revolutionary way, by drawing the masses in, by arousing them, by inflaming them (Kerensky is afraid of the masses, afraid of the people). In the war against the Germans, action is required right now; immediate and unconditional peace must be offered on precise terms. If this is done, either a speedy peace can be attained or the war can be turned into a revolutionary war; if not, all the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries remain lackeys of imperialism.

—V.I. Lenin, “To the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.” (30 August 1917)

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO-THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN COMMUNISM-A Book Review

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO-THE FOUNDATION OF MODERN COMMUNISM-A Book Review

BOOK REVIEW

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, KARL MARX AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS, PENQUIN CLASSICS: NEW EDITIONS, NEW YORK, 2002

If you are a revolutionary, a radical or merely a liberal activist you must come to terms with the theory outlined in the Communist Manifesto. Today’s political activists are obviously not the first to face this challenge. Radicals, revolutionaries and liberals have had to come to terms with the Manifesto at least since 1848, when it was first published. That same necessity; perhaps surprisingly to some given the changes in the political landscape since then, is true today. Why surprisingly? On the face of it, given the political times, it would appear somewhat absurd to make such a claim about the necessity of coming to terms with the overriding need for the revolutionary overturn of the capitalist order outlined in the Manifesto. It, however, is.

With the collapses of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-influenced Eastern European states about fifteen years ago, which were supposedly based on Marxist concepts, one would think that Marxism was a dead letter. But hear me out. Even the less far-sighted apologists for the international capitalist order are now worrying about the increasing gap between rich and poor, not only between the so-called first and third worlds but also within the imperial metropolitan centers themselves. Nowhere is that more evident that in the United States where that gap has dramatically increased over the last thirty years. Thus, despite the carping of the ‘death of communism’ theorists after the decisive capitulation of international Stalinism in the early 1990’s, an objective criterion exists today to put the question posed by the ongoing class struggle and of the validity of a materialist concept of history back on the front burner.

Whether one agrees with the Marxian premises about the need for revolution and for a dialectical materialist conception of the workings of society or not one still must, if for no other reason that to be smart about the doings of the world, confront the problem of how to break the stalemate over where human history is heading. 'Globalization' has clearly demonstrated only that the 'race to the bottom' inherent in the inner workings of capitalism is continuing at full throttle. Moreover, the contradictions and boom/bust cycles of capitalism have not been resolved. And those results have not been pretty for the peoples of the world.

Experience over the last 160 years has shown that those who are not armed with a materialist concept of history, that is, the ability to see society in all its workings and contradictions, cannot understand the world. All other conceptual frameworks lead to subjectivist idealism and utopian concepts of social change, at best. One may ultimately answer the questions posed by the Manifesto in the negative but the alternatives leave one politically defenseless in the current one-sided international class war.

So what is the shouting over Marxism, pro and con, all about? In the middle of the 19th century, especially in Europe, it was not at all clear where the vast expansion and acceleration of industrial society was heading. All one could observe was that traditional society was being rapidly disrupted and people were being uprooted, mainly from the land, far faster than at any time in previous history. For the most part, political people at that time reacted to the rise of capitalism with small plans to create utopian societies off on the side of society or with plans to smash the industrial machinery in order to maintain an artisan culture (the various forms of Ludditism). Into this chaos a young Karl Marx stepped in, and along with his associate and co-thinker Friedrich Engel, gave a, let us face it, grandiose plan for changing all of society based on the revolutionary overthrow of existing society.

Marx thus did not based himself on creation of some isolated utopian community but rather took the then current level of international capitalist society as a starting point and expanded his thesis from that base. Now that was then, and today still is, a radical notion. Marx, however, did not just come to those conclusions out of the blue. As an intellectual (and frustrated academian) he took the best of German philosophy (basically from Hegel, then the rage of German philosophical academia), French political thought and revolutionary tradition especially the Great French Revolution of the late 1700’and English political economy.

In short, Marx took the various strands of Enlightenment thought and action and grafted those developments onto a theory, not fully formed at the time, of how the proletariat was to arise and take over the reins of society for the benefit of all of society and end class struggle as the motor force of history. Unfortunately, given the rocky road of socialist thought and action over the last 160 years, we are, impatiently, still waiting for that new day.

In recently re-reading the Manifesto this writer was struck by how much of the material in it related, taking into account the technological changes and advances in international capitalist development since 1848, to today’s political crisis of humankind. Some of the predictions and some of the theory are off, no question, particularly on the questions of the relative staying power of capitalism, the relative impoverishment of the masses, the power of the nation-state and nationalism to cut across international working class solidarity and the telescoping of the time frame of capitalist development but the thrust of the material presented clearly speaks to us today. Maybe that is why today the more far-sighted bourgeois commentators are nervous at the reappearance of Marxism in Western society as a small but serious current in the international labor movement. Militant leftists can now argue- Stalinism (the horrendous distortion of Marxism) never again, to the bourgeois commentators' slogan of - socialist revolution, never again.

As a historical document one should read the Manifesto with the need for updating in mind. The reader should nevertheless note the currency of the seemingly archaic third section of the document where Marx polemicized against the leftist political opponents of his time. While the names of the organizations of that time have faded away into the historical mist the political tendencies he argued against seem to very much analogous to various tendencies today. In fact, in my youth I probably argued in favor of every one of those tendencies that Marx opposed before I was finally won over to the Marxian worldview. I suggest that not only does humankind set itself the social tasks that it can reasonably perform but also that when those tasks are not performed there is a tendency to revert to earlier, seemingly defeated ideas, of social change. Thus the resurgent old pre-Marxian conceptions of societal change have to be fought out again by this generation of militant leftists. That said, militant leftists should read and reread this document. It is literarily the foundation document of the modern communist movement. One can still learn much from it. Forward.

Revised September 26, 2006

What’s The Matter With Kansas-1950s Style?-With Kim Novak And William Holden’s “Picnic” (1955) In Mind

What’s The Matter With Kansas-1950s Style?-With Kim Novak

And William Holden’s “Picnic” (1955) In Mind

DVD Review

By Guest Writer Bartlett Webber

Picnic, starring Kim Novak, William Holden, Rosalind Russell, Susan Strasberg, from the play by William Inge, 1955

Maybe it was the first scene where Hal, played by William Holden, jumps off the hobo freight train that set me up to like this film under review, the film adaptation of William Inge’s play Picnic. Ever since my old time growing up days in North Adamsville whenever the trains came by and some dusty local hoboes, tramps or bum (and there are distinctions between them recognized by the whole wandering nation) or passers-through hopped the skids I have been entranced by this whole scene. Spent back in Summer of Love days when I (and an assortment of guys who I hung around with in high school) headed west to see what was up in San Francisco many a night myself on the rattlers (well-named when the hours passed and all you heard out in the prairie was that freaking rattling). So I saw Hal as a wild-eyed spirited forbear.     

I set the headline up the way I did, asking rhetorically what the matter of Kansas was, for a purpose. No, not today’s more political purpose when many are asking what happened to convert one of the reddest states in the nation back in the day (“red” then meaning socialist red) to today’ Republican conservative red but why is everybody in this film ready to heave-ho the old time prairie small town values to get the hell to somewhere else (even if only the next town or next state over).       

  

Here’s the play and you figure out why, okay? That first scene Hal, the muscular brawny hobo saint who shows plenty of 1950s “beefsteak” to an appreciative 1950s female audience), when he lands in this small Podunk town was no accident. He, long weary and without current prospects, expects an old rich father college buddy, Alan, to help him out, get him a fresh start. (Hal obviously had been on hard times since the days when he flunked out of college for lack of study even though he had had it made as the college football hero.) At first it looked his reconnection with that college buddy idea was going to get him back on his feet. But then he spied her. Spied Madge, played by a young and fetching Kim Novak. Moreover Madge spied him and then the dance of dances began. 

All of this taking peeks got its big workout at the town’s annual Labor Day picnic where Madge, know universally for her good looks and apparently not much else, was to under Alan’s guidance be crowned Queen of the May. Hal and Madge are still looking though as they all, Alan, Hal, Madge, Madge’s brainy younger sister Millie, played by a young Susan Strasberg, Madge’s mother and an older neighbor woman head to the picnic and the fun-filled activities that usually go along with such small town festivities, maybe a big town’s too. Then the night falls and the stars seem to be aligned. And for anybody who doesn’t get that idea then you have missed probably the closest thing a 1950s film gets to the act of intimate sexual attraction, of an explicit sexual scene except unlike now with clothes on, when to the strains of Moonglow they dance the dance most of us have all been through.

From there though as can be expected of a guy like Hal who was all fire and motion things go downhill. Alan, as expected, was in a rage that Hal stole his girl and put the rich father-friendly local cops on him for “stealing” his car. Hall gets into a beef with the coppers so we know why he will be on lam (to next state Tulsa). Millie who is eternally humiliated for being a “plain jane” compared to big sister Madge swears she is going to New York and become a great writer once she gets the dust of small town Kansas out of her system. In a side story an “old maid” schoolteacher, played by Rosalind Russell,   desperate to get married and flee her fate gets hitched and blows the burg. And Madge? Well Madge despite those golden prospects with Alan, despite her mother’s admonitions that she can do better than hobo Hal and with little sister’s blessing blows that small town as well (to next state Tulsa as well).           

See this film if only for that “dance” scene which will make you sit up and take notice even in today’s jaded explosive screen sex world. Oh yeah, if you are a guy start practicing those jazzy hip William Holden dance moves. If a gal check out Kim Novak’s “come hither” moves that had even an old guy like me thinking funny thoughts.    

It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James

[This is an on-going conversation between several aging males who back in the day were corner boys together growing up in the poor working class Acre section of Riverdale some miles outside of Boston. The theme of the remembrances is related to rock and roll and other musical influences and the exact date, place and scenario where certain seminal experiences occurred-Listen in- Z. J.]

“Jesus, now that you mentioned Mr. Lawrence, our seventh grade music teacher, I am starting to remember some other stuff about the guy, about what a creep he was trying to break us from our unbreakable bond with rock and roll,” Seth Garth said to Jack Callahan as they both hoisted their three, or was it fourth, double scotch with water chaser, an old habit for both of them since the chaser made the drink last longer in the old days when they were short of dough and were sipping their drinks to stretch out the evening. The gist of what Seth had told Jack was in response to Jack’s remembering the very first time that they had heard Woody Guthrie and what song they had learned first. That gist of talk was based on Seth, an old time folk music critic, mainly for The Eye out on the West Coast having recently seen in a folk magazine the announcement that the Smithsonian/Folkway operation was finally putting out a treasure trove in four CDs of some Woody Guthrie songs recorded by Moses Asch during World War II. Seth for the life of him could not remember what song he had heard and when of Guthrie’s and so he had called upon Jack to meet him at their favorite watering hole the Erie Grille in Riverdale where they both were now residing (and after varying absences had grown up in the town). Jack had answered that it had been in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class and the song had been the alternative national anthem-This Land Is Your Land. 

The method to Mr. Lawrence’s madness, to ween the kids off of rock and roll, had gone beyond trying to foist silly folk music off on them but to drown them in any other kind of music he could think to distract, or attempt to distract them with, especially during lunch when they played their transistor radios and drove him crazy with their rock and roll. A few times, if you could believe this he tried to get them interested in jazz, in swing music, what each and every one of them considered the music that their parents listen to and which had driven them to the transistors in the first place. Worse, worse of all he had tried to get his charges interested in the music of Benny Goodman, the so-called “king of swing.” That was all Seth needed to hear as he blurted out in front of the class “My mother and father dance to that pokey stuff on Saturday nights and they are barely moving when they dance. I am not going to listen to that here.” Needless to say Seth stayed after school a number of afternoons for his transgression. But he felt vindicated in what he had uttered and took the punishment like a soldier.

Still it did no good as Mr. Lawrence played something called Blue Skies which was his parents’ “their song.” Something else by a guy named Cole Porter that Benny Goodman made famous. It got no better when Mr. Lawrence played stuff with Peggy Lee because to his mother’s chagrin his father had “crush” on old Peggy and Seth had to secretly admit that she was kind of sexy looking at that.  

But that was then. A few nights after Seth and Jack were cutting up old touches, after drinking themselves to melancholia, Seth went to the library and picked up an old Benny Goodman CD with plenty of American Songbook stuff on it. Guess what old Seth, old rock and roll devotee Seth with an overhang of folk, blues, and a little mountain music started to pop his fingers to the beat, started laughing to himself that he know knew what they meant when they said “it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.” And they were right. Just ask Benny,       

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-The Revolutionary Party In The Revolution- The Bolshevik Experience In The Russian Revolution of 1917

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-The Revolutionary Party In The Revolution- The Bolshevik Experience In The Russian Revolution of 1917

The following remarks were made at an ad hoc conference put together by some leftist organizations in the Northeast in order to try to draw for today’s labor militants and their allies the lessons of previous revolutionary struggles highlighted by the only successful working class revolution in history-the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The speaker urged his listeners to read Leon Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution to gain a very literate and fast-moving understanding of that revolution from a man who stood outside the Bolshevik organization in early 1917 but who nevertheless when he committed himself to that party defended it against friend and foe the rest of his life. For those who could not wade through the one thousand plus pages of Trotsky’s major work the speaker also commended his Lessons of October written as a polemic in the hard fought struggle to save the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik Party in 1923-24. The points made by Trotsky in that polemic are used here as the jumping off point for discussing the events of 1917. *****

Apparently after the events of the past couple of years in the Middle East and more recently in Europe we are once again broadly in the age of revolution. While this provides opportunities for revolutionaries after a very long dry spell it also means that many of those who wish to seek a revolutionary path, including those who look the revolutionary socialist left for guidance have very little actual working knowledge about how to bring one about. Moreover although we are witnessing revolutions right before our eyes we are not witnessing yet the kind of revolutions, socialist revolutions that, can lead humankind to create a more productive, co-operative and just world. Our bright shining example is still the Bolshevik-led October Revolution in 1917 and I will try today to highlight some of the lessons from that revolution that we, and other thoughtful labor militants throughout the world, should be thinking about as we ride the wave of the current class struggle upsurge in this wicked old bourgeois world. Originally when I thought about this presentation I had intended to give a rough draft of the main events of the Russian Revolution in 1917. But when I thought about it further I realized that I would wind up recreating Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution and there is just not enough time for that. So I decided to scale back and concentrate on the role of the party, the Bolshevik party. And that makes sense because in the final analysis, as Trotsky continually argued after he got “religion” on the organization question , that has been the decisive difference when the struggle for state power was up for grabs. We have seen the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international working class in the advanced capitalist age, the vanguard party question to state the proposition bluntly, confirmed many times, too many times, in the negative in such places and times as early 1920s Germany and Italy up until today in places like Tunisia, Egypt and Greece not to take a careful look at that experience. Even almost one hundred years later, and maybe just because of that time lapse there are great general points to be drawn from Russia in 1917.

The Bolsheviks got it right for their times and so while we understand that conditions today will be vastly different from the broken down monarchy sunk in the fourth year of a debilitating war, in a place where the land question cried out for solution, and where oppressed nations sought independence from the oppressive empire, we can learn how they worked their program into a successful conclusion against some very high odds against them. That combination of leadership, program and the objective conditions for revolution came together for the Bolsheviks to be able to be in a position to implement their socialist program. Probably the biggest political lesson from the Bolshevik experience is kind of a truism of all political work- don’t be afraid to be in the minority. While I have, along with Lenin and Trotsky, no truck with those who are happy to stay mired in the circle spirit in left-wing politics that we have too often found ourselves here in American sometimes an organization if it is true to itself has to stand “against the current” to use an old expression. Especially as the events of 1917 unfolded it was apparent that the Bolsheviks, and those revolutionaries in other organizations or individuals like Trotsky who were drawn in that party’s wake, were the only ones capable of taking advantage of the dual power situation and leading the struggle against imperialist war, for bread, and for land to the tiller. As Lenin and later Trotsky when he was hard-pressed to defend the legacy of the party noted, the Bolsheviks were not without their own internal problems as far as orientation toward the actual flow of events in 1917 particularly before Lenin arrived from abroad. I will speak in a moment about the decisive nature of the April Theses and the April Bolshevik conference where the new party orientation got its first work-out. But here I would only mention that some parties like the Bolsheviks that had essentially healthy revolutionary instincts were searching for a revolutionary path even if it was not always a linear path. The Bolsheviks had the experience of having formed early clandestine propaganda groups, fought out through polemics the extreme political differences on the nature of the struggle in Czarist Russia with other left-wing organizations, had done underground political work and above ground when possible, had worked in the Duma and the Soviets during and after the 1905 revolution, had been exiled, banished, and imprisoned, and a myriad of other experiences of mass struggle (as well as hard times like after 1905 and the first parts of WWI) that gave them some valuable experiences which they were able to apply in 1917.

Obviously not all organizations that had also gone through many of those same experiences drew the requisite conclusions, and here I would contrast the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks, and more importantly, the POUM in Spain during the Spanish revolution in the 1930s. In the end the Mensheviks might have had some revolutionaries in their organization (most of the best, and some not of the best, went over to the Bolsheviks in various periods) but they were not a socialist revolutionary organization for 1917 times. They were caught up in the linear thinking of the traditions of the French Revolutions (1789 and 1848), bourgeois revolutions when the time for those types of revolution in Europe time had passed. (A key point that Trotsky drew for Russia after 1905 in formulating his theory of permanent revolution.) That last point is why I like to use the POUM (Party Of Marxist Unification in English) as a better example than the Mensheviks of what I mean. The Menshevik stood for the socialist revolution in the great by and by and their policies reflected that reformist impulse (if not just flat out counter-revolutionary impulses).The POUM, as their name says, formally stood for socialist revolution but their program, their strategy, and their whole line before and during the revolution make it clear that, at best, they were what we call a centrist party- revolutionary in talk, reformist in deed. They had no appetite to stand alone if necessary; they had no appetite to struggle with other leftist organizations to lead the revolution. It is unbelievable, although telling, that there are defenders (in hindsight which makes it worst) of the POUM today who saw basically nothing wrong in their work in the Spanish revolution. Jesus.

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I mentioned above that we study the Bolshevik revolution because it is our one shining example of working class victory over the last one hundred and fifty years. We study that revolution just like Lenin, Trotsky and the rest studied the Paris Commune , the Revolutions of 1848 and the Great French Revolution in order to draw the lessons of previous precious revolutionary experience (as we should too). The important thing about the October Revolution that I want to discuss for a minute now is how the Bolsheviks were able to, for the most part, gauge the revolutionary temper of the masses. Their cadre down at the base was able to stir up in propaganda and agitation the main grievances of the masses- the famous three whales of Bolshevism -the simple yet profound fight for the eight hour day, worker control of factory production and peasant control of agricultural production and the fight for a democratic republic through the slogan of a constituent assembly. Out on the streets in 1917 the Bolshevik were able to narrow that down even further for mass consumption –peace, bread and land to the tiller. The other so-called revolutionary organizations due to faulty and untimely senses of where the masses were heading were catch flat-footed when the deal went down and they, one way or another, supported some form of bourgeois regime after the Czar abdicated. Trotsky made a big point in Lessons of October and elsewhere when explaining the tempo of the revolution that it is necessary for revolutionaries to KNOW when to strike and when to hold back. In contrast, the two examples I like to use from the early 1920s that are illustrative are Germany in 1921 when the young German Communist party got ahead of the masses for a number of reasons and more importantly 1923 when they were behind the masses. Sometimes as the Russian Social-Democratic soviet experience in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1905 demonstrates you are forced to go through some experiences whether the situation is ripe or not. The point though is to know when to move one way or the other. In 1917 the Bolsheviks as will be discussed below KNEW when to move, and when not to move.
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Modern capitalist, especially now in its rather long imperialist stage, has produced many defenses, political, social, economic, and in the final analysis its military and police apparatuses, to defend its rule. Before the Bolshevik revolution there was some wishful thinking, exemplified by the German Social-Democratic Party, that somehow socialism could grow organically out of capitalism without the fuss of revolution. We know, we know painfully, where that has led. That party as became clear when they had their opportunities in 1918 had not revolutionary strategy. But revolutionary struggle since 1917 dictates that revolutionary organizations have a strategic orientation. In that sense the Russian example is extremely important first because the Bolsheviks showed that without a revolutionary strategy we cannot win and secondly with a strategy and the ability to shift you can take advantage of weaknesses in the bourgeois power structure. There were three basic strategies at play in 1917 among Russian Social Democrats (other tendencies like the Social-Revolutionaries and Anarchists played off the main themes developed by the social democracy. The most prevalent one prior to 1905 was that Russia was headed for a liberal bourgeois republic and that working class organizations would play the role of loyal opposition to the bourgeois liberals. This is prime Menshevik strategy. The main Leninist theme until 1917 was essentially that this capitalist bourgeois republic would be governed by a worker-peasant coalition. While the Bolsheviks knew that the liberals has move historically to the right it still premises a capitalist state. Of course the third strategy, the one Lenin forced, in his own way, on the Bolsheviks kicking and screaming for the most part, was Trotsky’s famous theory of permanent revolution, where the workers “leaning” on the amorphous peasantry would create a workers republic through the soviets. Lenin’s timely understanding of Russian politics which lead him to revamp his strategy is prima facie evidence both of his revolutionary abilities and of the keen understanding of the role of strategy to drive the revolution forward. There was no room in Russia in 1917, as Alexander Kerensky learned to his dismay, for that middle strategy.

A look at most revolutionary periods will show that the question of war, including a bloody losing war, is a catalyst plays a great part in fomenting upheavals. Socialist thinkers from Marx onward had noted that war is the mother of revolution (in Marx’s own time the prime example being the Paris Commune) War, as Trotsky and others have noted, takes the civilian population out of its ordinary routine, places great stress on society and requires great sacrifices and/or personnel in order to be pursued. The Bolsheviks had already established themselves on the war issue before 1917 by their opposition to the war budgets (and had their Duma deputies exiled to Siberia), their role in the fledgling anti-war Zimmerwald movement and their slogans of the “main enemy is at home” and “turn the guns around.” When the Czar abdicated and a form of popular front government took its place many, including elements of the Bolshevik Party leadership in Russia, wanted to turn defensist under the new circumstances. The Bolsheviks majority in contrast called for continue opposition to the war and played their “peace card” by understanding that the peasant soldiers at the front were war-weary and wanted to be alive when the land was distributed. Very powerful incentives to walk away from the stalemated trenches

The April theses are probably the most graphic document we have about the Bolshevik party and its ability shift gears in the revolutionary process. In essence Lenin came over to Trotsky’s view of the nature of the revolution in front of him. Without that shift (and at the time before Trotsky got back to Russia), which did not go unopposed, October would not have happened .The question of the support of the Provisional Government was the key question of the pre-insurrection period. This is really an example the popular front as a substitute for revolutionary action. For those unaware of what a popular front is that is a mix of working- class parties and bourgeois parties (although not usually the main ones) that are thrown up in time of crisis (although not always a crisis as various French parliamentary examples in the recent past have shown). In Russia the main component for our purposes were the bourgeois liberal Cadets, various Social-Revolutionary tendencies representing various segments of the peasantry and the Mensheviks representing the reformist wing of the working class movement. The reality of the popular front is twofold-first the program is limited to what is acceptable to the bourgeois bloc partners and secondly- and more importantly for our concerns, it is a strategy put forth by reformist elements in the working class to frustrate revolution. The Mensheviks were the past master of this strategy stemming from their bourgeois liberal conception of the revolution. 

What set the Bolsheviks apart and was masterful on their part was the various tactics toward the popular front. Once Lenin got the Bolshevik Party to buy into the April Theses and to stop giving critical support to the Provisional Government a whole series of tactics came into play. So, for example, in June the Bolsheviks led demonstrations calling for the ouster of the ten capitalist ministers in the Provisional Government rather than a straight “down with the provisional government” a slogan that did not respond to the tempo of the revolution. In short the Bolsheviks called on the Mensheviks and various S-R factions to form a solely socialist ministry and the Bolsheviks promised, pretty please promised, they would not overthrow that government. Of course the reformists rejected this idea but exposed themselves before masses that were more and more looking to the soviets rather that the increasingly pro-war and anti-land seizure provisional government for political guidance. As the dual power situation (Provisional Government versus Soviets) continued and as the masses became disillusioned with the actions of the government in prolonging the war effort (and not resolving the land question, or much else for that matter) some segments of the Petrograd population (and key units in the army) wanted to overthrow the government in July. That again was premature as the Bolsheviks did not have the masses behind them. Rather than leave the ill-advised vanguard to suffer the results alone the Bolsheviks tried to lead an orderly retreat and in the short term took a serious beating (Lenin in hiding, Trotsky arrested, etc.) but one that showed that of all the tendencies the Bolsheviks stood with the demand of the masses.

As the Provisional Government’s grasp on power got shakier and was threatened from the right, essentially the remnants of the monarchical parties, the Bolsheviks organized, in the name of the soviets, the defense of Petrograd during the Kornilov scare. This flowed from the eminently practical position that when the right-wing in clawing at the door it is the duty of revolutionaries to defend even the most tepid democratic institutions a situation we still hold to today. In the Bolsheviks case the military defense of the provisional government by an organization which had been outlawed began the process of bringing the masses over to the soviets and though that organization the Bolsheviks (and incidentally began the serious process of the Mensheviks and S-Rs to liquidate the soviets). During the fall of 1917 the demand for elections for an authoritative Constituent Assembly were being pressed by various petty bourgeois parties and individuals including, as mentioned above, those whose power rested in the soviets. The Bolsheviks had various attitudes toward a couple of formations that were supposed to prepare for the Constituent Assembly-the Democratic Conference and the Pre-Parliament. They participated in the Democratic Conference and once it became clear that it was just a “talk shop” and not the road to the constituent assembly and Trotsky led the boycott of the other (much to Lenin’s praise). In the final analysis the role of the revolutionary party is to make the revolution and so the final point to be made about the importance of the Bolshevik experience, and what virtually all other movements since that time have faltered on, is the art of insurrection.

As I noted above, for example, the situation in the early 1920s in Germany showed a party, an immature, communist party to be sure, that tried to insurrect too early and without the masses and later, perhaps as a result of that first failure in part, failed to take advantage of an exceptional revolutionary opportunity. The Bolsheviks knew, as they had their cadre on the ground in the city, the barracks, and the soviets, the pulse of the masses, who among the masses and military units would follow them, and most importantly under what conditions they would follow. In this sense Trotsky’s organizing strategy of acting on the defensive (of soviet power) while going on the offense was brilliant. Moreover using the soviets as the organizing center rather than the narrower confines of the party worked to legitimize the seizure of power in important segments of the masses. This placed the seizure of power by them, although many bourgeois historians have argued to the contrary, well outside the notion of a party coup. Much ink has been spilled on the question of which organization; party, soviets or factory committees are the appropriate vehicle for the seizure of power. The answer: whatever organization (s) is ready to move when the time is ripe for revolution. Thank you

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” In Mind

Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines-In Honor Of Icarus’s Progeny- With Cary Grant And Jean Arthur’s “Only Angels Have Wings” In Mind 

By Lance Lawrence

A tear comes to my eyes every time I hear the name Johnny Cielo, yes, Johnny, one of Icarus’s latter- day sons who was a pioneer in aviation when that was tricky business-when flying by the seat of your pants really was something more than a quaint saying. (By the way for passport trouble purposes, for cons and scams, for ducking the law, John Law he called them Johnny Cielo had many aliases; Johnny Too Bad, Johnny Blade, Johnny Blaze, Blaze Johnson, Johnny Icarus, Izzy Johns and who knows how many other those are just the ones I remember but I will use his real name, assuming that it is for my purposes here). Yes, Johnny was a piece of work, was somebody who gave as good as he got and who had that flight dream from very early on, from the first day he heard about Wilbur and Orville Wright and their successors. Johnny though was strictly a fly boy adventurer, although he could have had a piece of Alleghany Airlines and lived on easy street for the rest of his life. Could have been flying Piper Clubs for the country club rubes to gawk over. But our Johnny was not built that way, didn’t want to become an extended cycle repair shop guy, didn’t have Howard Hughes’ overweening desire to own it all, whatever “it” was for the moment.       

Some people, even people knowledgeable about the history of aviation in America, have claimed they never heard of Johnny Cielo until you mention the Barranca air service set-up. Then they are all ears-not so much about the aviation part, the desperate flights to get the mail out, to get stuff delivered to impossible places, but about Johnny’s red-hot affair with film siren of the 1930s and 1940s Rita Hayworth. Yeah, there was plenty of truth to his exploits with the females, with high class dames like Rita back then. Rita who was every military guy’s favorite pin-up and if not then second. Johnny led Rita a merry chase, had her abandoning that very promising and lucrative Hollywood career to follow him to the wilds of Barranca down in Central America and then ditched her leaving her no choice but to grab the next best thing (this before the Aga Khan took his run at her and snagged her for a while-even “a while” most guy’s idea of heaven). Left Rita for some vaudeville tramp down on her uppers, somebody who couldn’t even stand in the same room as Rita but Johnny was funny that way-would stay with one woman just so and that not long. Told them straight out his fly-boy life was it and he did not expect a woman, wouldn’t ask a woman to follow him where he was going. And he was right, just ask Rita who did and got not even a by your leave.   

Maybe it is better to begin at the beginning, or at least how Johnny got down on his own uppers so bad he had to take a shot a running a fool’s errant airline down in sunny Banana Republic Barranca. Johnny got deep into running dope, you know, marijuana, opium stuff like that way before most people even know what the hell illegal drugs were about from sunny Mexico up north. Did it for a few years, made a ton of money and proceeded to blow it on dames, various experimental airplane projects and hand-outs to every drifter he ran across. Then one day an agent for whatever cartel he was working for at the time, such things are murky and best left murky told him he was through, that they had some new boy, their boy who would run the merchandise.

Johnny thereafter needed work, needed it bad to keep up with the fresh but expensive Rita. Nothing doing around America for a guy whose last job was a dope smuggler so he headed south to Central America when his old friend and comrade Letts Fagan said he had a deal for him if he came fast. The deal was a secured route for a mail and express delivery for everything south of Mexico to what the hell Antarctica if he wanted to go that far if they could set up the route through some pretty tough terrain in the days when propeller was king and planes still wobbly in inclement weather. Heading out he told Rita he was going, he didn’t expect her to follow, wouldn’t ask her to but can you believe she said “let’s go” and as a sign of her own seriousness she was ready the next day to travel-a world record maybe for a woman with a big wardrobe and plenty of luggage to pull off. Johnny was impressed-and pleased.      

Things started out pretty well for Johnny and Rita and Johnny and his new airline. Looked like he would meet all the deadlines imposed by the contract and by his own daring. Pulled a few rabbits out of the hat to get through a bunch of horrible weather to deliver whatever there was to deliver-typical Johnny Cielo magic. Then the roof caved in, or rather that tramp from some northward-bound tramp steamer trampled into town looking for some sweet sugar daddy- or a Johnny kind of guy. She wasn’t choosey especially when she found out that Johnny was carrying Rita in tow. Two minutes after she saw him she had him in a backroom at Lett’s restaurant doing whatever she wanted, whatever he wanted. (We are all adults and know what was what but when some guy, some Johnny latter-day devotee wrote up his biography the guy left the hard sexual description part out, just like they were doing in the films in those but you know as well as I do, and I know, because before the end Johnny told me, it was oral sex, a blow job, said she was good at that, Rita too, but you had to coax Rita and not the tramp.)

Okay even tramps have names, as if it mattered to Johnny or any other guy when a woman leads him to some backroom, so hers was Jean, Jean Smith I think Johnny said she called herself. Like I said Johnny had a fistful of aliases, so she probably did too. She was from nowhere, had done nothing but was something new and shiny for Johnny and that was that. Of course two dames, a glamour gal and a tramp or any combination thereof, working the same guy in the small blistered and balmy town are not going to make anything work in the end. That was when Rita blew town, went back to Hollywood to be knocked off by the Aga Khan for a while until she got bored. (The funny thing and even that biography guy didn’t know about the situation until I sent him a letter and he looked the stuff up after Rita blew that Moslem prince off and went back-where else Hollywood not Brooklyn or wherever she was from she and Johnny went under the sheets again for a while until she blew him off-nice trick. Johnny always spoke highly of his sassy redhead after that though-always had that glean in his eye when he mentioned her name. 

The tramp won round one. A big win but Johnny was all business for a while trying to make the nut with that fucking two-bit contract that must have been written up by a Wall Street lawyer it had so many escape clauses for the owners. Johnny had by his own reckoning, a half dozen ex-World War I planes of no repute, or something like that to get the mail and goods over the hump. Tough going, very tough as he lost a few guys who like him would rather die than not fly so they took risks, big risks, just for the hell of it. And nobody, Johnny made sure of that, mourned out loud about the dead guy, grabbed his smack sack possessions and divvied them up so no moony stuff. After one guy got, a guy who was supposed to buy this Jean a steak when he tried to make a play for her behind Johnny’s back, to sit with the angels, that what they called it she sniffled up and Johnny told her to shut up or follow Rita (Johnny could be cutting). Here’s the real deal Johnny part though-five minutes after the guy flamed out Johnny was a sky pilot taking the undelivered load over the hump and back in some kind of hurricane. (That “hump” not the Burma World War II hump that almost broke the backs of English and American pilots but through Condor Pass the next country over from Barranca.)