“The Set-Up”-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind

“The Set-Up”-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett In Mind

By Zack James

Alexander Slater had always been ever since he was a kid, maybe ten or eleven if not before, a big fan of hard-boiled detective novels and films based on those novels by guys like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Rich O’Connor, Sid Stein, and Lanny Drew. Had spent many a Riverdale hometown Saturday afternoon in the late 1950s in the faded run-down, gum-strewn on the floor, cobwebs in the balcony seats, toilet in the men’s room a relic of plumbing around the time of the original Cranes who made their fortunes providing such hard-wear to the growing population in need of indoor plumbing and whose castle overlooked Crane’s Beach up north of Riverdale about seventy-five miles away, old-fashioned popcorn cooker which always, always provided burnt kernels at the bottom of the box Majestic Theater on Mooney Street just off of the downtown shopping area watching re-runs  of the classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Lady In The Lake, The whole Thin Man series, The Last Kiss, Girl Hunt, and The Lost Ones. That downtown area also beginning to fade as the stores, Doc’s Drugstore, the 5&10, Morley’s Clothing store, Sam’s Furniture store and the like that used to cater to the town’s needs moved out to the strip malls or all-purpose malls out on Route One a few miles from downtown.

Of course as a kid all Alexander cared about, along with his regular crew of Saturday matinee double-feature companions, Skip James, Jack Callahan, Johnny Rizzo, Five-Fingers Murphy, Frank Riley and sometimes before his family moved out of town so his father could take a job in the emerging computer industry at Honeywell about forty miles away along Route 128, was that they had enough money to cover the admission (trying as boys universally would then, probably still do, to get the under twelve reduced admission price long after they had entered their teens), were being “grounded” for some silly home or school infraction , and, maybe, just maybe, that for once the popcorn although always with burnt offerings was not stale. So Alexander had through the marvels of cinematic technology and the printed page been able to form a very distinct idea about what a private detective should be like, what he looked like and how he handled himself in the rough spots.       

That ideal was probably epitomized by Sam Slade in The Maltese Falcon on the screen (the 1940s one that made Humphrey Bogart, Bogie, famous not the two earlier ones which he had never seen until a few years ago via Netflix he had ordered the pair online and was seriously disappointed in those efforts, as was his wife Mary who while not nearly as much a fan of the private detective did love the Bogie version of the Falcon) and in some short stories done by Hammett by scrambling through a few libraries and second-hand bookstores looking for compilations. In a word a guy and it was always guys then still were a lot now although he had read a few interesting female detective stories, working class guys, tough, tough enough to by sheer will and pluck to outsmart his well-organized criminal opponents, hard-boiled no question, no sap for anybody even women which every guys knows is easy enough to become when the skirts going swishing by, with a code, a beautiful code of honor that he follows as best he can, maybe not to the letter but as best he can in the spirit, hard-drinking which somehow focused the senses whenever the bottle in the lower desk draw came out, and a rough and ready sense of justice, of tilting after windmills for the good of the cause.

And there that image stayed for a fairly long time until Alexander went out into the world of work after high school. He had taken shop classes in school, printing shop and so immediately after high school he had taken a full-time job with Mister Calder, the best commercial printer in town, whom he worked for after school and on weekends in high school. In due course after a few years in the dreaded Army in Vietnam which took a certain toll on him when he came back to the “real” world, a few years “finding himself” through dope, rock and roll, and following the hitchhike road that many guys of his generation took for a while when Mister Calder retired he took over the shop located in the first floor of the Tappan Building on Lancaster Street right off of downtown (in the opposite direction from the now long gone old Majestic if you were familiar with Riverdale back in the 1970s or earlier).   

At one time, back in the 1940s, early 1950s, the eight story Tappan Building was what they would call today the anchor of the downtown business section. Was the pride of Riverdale what with prosperous small law firms, a few doctors’ offices when doctors had their own private practices more, a couple of dentists, a few reputable insurance companies, nothing big, no Fortune 500 firms but substantial, solid professional. As those firms and professionals drifted out to the strip malls or were eaten up by larger firms elsewhere the once glorious Tappan Building began a long decline into “seen better days.” The owners kind of gave up on the place, not keeping it up with leaking faucets in the restrooms, un-waxed public area floors, unreliable elevators, and the sanctified smell of decay that follows such downward spiraling enterprises. Alexander had taken over for Mister Calder well into the decline of the building but since the leasing arrangements with the owners provided for cheap terms and the fact that his printing business was not one in need of a “good front” he never felt the need to move, probably a wise move once the high-tech moguls made self-printing for most occasions a worthwhile effort.

Alexander thus observed the decline of the Tappan Building first-hand as the type of businesses switched from prosperous professionals to shady characters. A couple of “repo” men, a few failed dentists whom you would not want within fifty feet of your mouth, maybe farther away, a couple of chiropractors, some no-name insurance firms, a notary public, a least a few guys who were running some kinds of scams out of their offices, and a detective agency. Fred Sims’ Detective Agency although all the years that he knew Fred he was the sole detective.      

Fred had been in the building since the mid-1960s but between Alexander’s military service and his wanderlust he did not meet Fred until he took over for Mister Calder. Once they met, met in Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan, a place that is still there although Dolly’s granddaughter runs the place now and has changed it from a smoked-filled ham and eggs, coffee and crullers place to more healthful food and clean atmosphere for those who own the condos that had been created as a result of converting many of the old buildings, schools and churches in the area, they hit it off from the beginning although Fred was a good decade older than Alexander.

Fred, let’s be clear, was not, hear this, was not, and probably never would be Alexander image of a private detective build up from childhood (although in fairness to Fred he was the very first P.I. he had run into in person). Short, bald, with unkempt side hairs sticking out of the baseball cap that he wore indoors and out, and almost never took off, an old Robert Hall’s, if you remember that name in men’s clothing from another age, shaggy sport’s jacket, one of three he owned and alternated, threadbare socks, turned at the heel shoes, black, and many days, many no client days, a fair amount of stubble on his face. His office on the fifth floor reflected that persona, no real “front.”  A hand-printed cardboard sign advertising his name and business on the front door, a small waiting room (which made Alexander laugh for all the years that he knew Fred he never saw anybody in that room), dust in the corners, a well beyond its prime coatrack of uncertain steadiness, a couple of mismatched chairs, a small end table with magazines describing the first Apollo landing in 1969, an office area with a snarled desk, unmatched chair, and a few, too few file cabinets if Fred was prosperous which he was not. Later when they were easier to figure out he did purchase a computer but otherwise over the years the place had, and would continue to have, that beleaguered downward spiral look.    

Alexander one time early on remarked, no, made the mistake and remarked, that Fred was no Bogie while they were sitting at the counter of Dolly’s having their coffee and. Apparently this kind of remark was Fred’s pet peeve because he commenced to rail against the popular notion of what a private detective looks like, what his office looks like, and the real cases that he handles. They are not the murder cases of cinematic and book renown, the public cops, detectives handle that, well or poorly, but in some then twenty years in the business he had never seen any private detective brought in to solve a murder and only once had heard that a very rich guy who had the dough to do so and was frustrated with the public coppers and their inability to solve the kidnapping/murder of his young daughter actually had a private detective savvy enough to solve the crime, after two years on the trail.                   

 No the real work was bullshit stuff. Some barber from Gloversville whose wife ran off with a salesman and he wanted her back her, fast, maybe three days, and not too many expenses. Some “repo” work the average repo guys wouldn’t handle or wouldn’t be allowed by the insurance companies to handle. Back in the day a few Peeping Tom snooping around motels cases looking for adultery when the grounds for a civil divorce were harder to find. A lost dog or other pet once in a while if somebody was attached to the animal, although they usually found their ways home on their own or were never seen again. Looking for long lost relatives, usually fruitless since those relatives wanted to be lost from view. Maybe checking out a scam or two, flimflam stuff. Definitely not looking for lost falcons filled with riches and history with dead bodies and greedy people hovering around. Definitely not taking on some high-powered criminal gang when an old general with wild daughters one of whose husband is missing. Definitely not being employed by some man-mountain to find his long lost and wants to stay lost Velma. Definitely not trying to find some eccentric rich inventor guy whose thin shadow had disappeared in the mist and somebody liked that idea.                                 

 So that day Alexander got his comeuppance, got a first-hand real- world view of what private investigation was all about. Thereafter Fred, when the met for their coffee and at Dolly’s or sometimes when Alexander after work would go up to Fred’s office for a shot of whiskey from that bottle he kept in the bottom drawer of that snarled desk (and one of the few commonalities between real and film detectives) Fred would tell him stories about his previous cases, or cases that he had heard about from other P.I.s around the area when they ran into each other at some meeting or on a spree. Except the one time when Alexander became a moving part in a case that Fred would wind up getting involved in before the coppers stepped in. 

One day a guy, an ordinary looking guy, about thirty, fairly well-dressed, a sports coat and tie, trimmed hair and short beard, not from around Riverdale but with a New England accent, probably Maine, came in Alexander’s print shop looking for a customized job, a small job but in those days as people were self-printing more extensively the small jobs were drying up (fortunately the big commercial orders were still coming in at their normal pace). He wanted fifty copies of what he called a missing person’s poster, you know with photo of the person and description of last known place, who to contact and so on, done on the press and not the copy machine. No problem. Alexander handled the order while this young guy waited. 

A few weeks later the person who had come in with missing person photograph turned up dead, very dead along the bank of the Waban River. Not only very dead but very murdered from the bullet holes through his mangled soggy shirt. Chief Powers of the Riverdale Police came into Alexander’s print shop to find out what he knew about the situation since in the dead man’s back pocket there was a water-logged copy of the missing person poster that had his print shop mark on the right corner. Alexander told the Chief what he knew, said he wanted to help any way he could but the young guy was just a young guy and his description and demeanor would have fit a million young guys. As had the guy he was looking for. That pretty much ended Alexander’s involvement in the case, probably the case would go into those cold files that most murder cases go into if somebody doesn’t jump up and confess with all hands open.

Or so he thought. A few weeks later a young woman, Lara Barstow was the name she gave him, came into Alexander’s printing shop with a shopworn copy of the poster he had created for the murdered young man, and asked to see the proprietor. Since he was that person he introduced himself and asked how he could help her although he was a little suspicious that an average young good-looking woman like Lara would have any connection with the crime, or crimes associated with the young man for whom he had done the work or the young man on the poster. Lara soon cleared things up, “I have been to the police and they told me what happened to my brother Emmet, how he was found murdered out on the riverbank. They said that as far as they were concerned the case was still open but that they had no further leads to work on so that unless they got something that is probably where the case would stand.” [The police did not mention “cold case” file but Lara said she knew what they meant]. Lara then started to cry a bit and Alexander not knowing what to do offered his handkerchief and asked if he should call his wife to assist her in her time of troubles. Lara stiffened at that and told Alexander that she did not need that kind of help but that she was determined to find out who had killed her brother and asked if he had any ideas. Then Alexander, secretly thrilled at the prospect, told her that on the fifth floor of the building that they were standing in his friend, Fred, a private detective, had his office and that maybe he could look into the matter. Lara said that she did not have any serious resources (her word), meaning money but that if Fred as able to do something to find the murderer and clear up a legal situation then she would be coming into some funds. Alexander thinking to himself that this was starting to be something out of the movies let that statement ride only saying, “Let’s see what Fred says,” and led her to the elevator and the fifth- floor office. (On the way up she did not comment on the urine smell in the foyer, the seedy dilapidated aspect of the elevator and its slowness, or the condition of the outside building windows, broken panes letting the weathers in as they left the elevator that made him a little more wary since her whole demeanor was of some old-fashioned gentile upbringing but he figured she was desperate, concentrated on her task, or indifferent to such matter.

Fred, despite the seedy condition of his office, already commented on by Alexander and nothing had changed since the last time he had been up in the office for a few drinks so no further comment is necessary, was smooth affable charm itself when greeting and listening to Lara’s story. And listen he, they did for the story really did have a Hollywood feel to it.

“Emmet Barstow is, ah, was, my older brother, who had gotten into a lot of trouble when he was in prep school at Exeter Academy several years ago. I don’t know if I should tell you the nature of the trouble since it was a rather delicate matter.” Fred stopped her right there and said he needed to know everything, everything in this weak fact case, or he would not be able to help her. She continued, “Well, ah, see there was this other boy, this Prescott Devine, a pervert, you know, a homosexual, who tricked Emmet into having sex with him, having sex and taking photographs as it turned out.” [Fred and Alexander gave each other knowing eyes about what was to follow.] You know what happened next, Prescott forced my brother to continue with his wicked designs while in school and later asked for money to avoid a public scandal in our household. So Emmett paid, or rather my father paid before he died and after that Mr. Sidney, the lawyer who has handled our estate until we come of age, paid. Then Prescott fade from view for a couple of years until several months ago after my father died he showed up at our door looking for more money. Emmett gave him what he could but somehow he got wind of my father dying and remembered that Emmett was to inherit a large sum of money upon his death, something he had told Prescott when he was in the throes of love at the beginning [said bitterly]. The terms of the will were that Emmett would inherit almost everything when he turned twenty-five as long as he was alive, and if he were not then I would inherit. But only inherit if there was no cloud over his death. That part had been added only a few months before my father’s death, so he must have had a premonition of something happening.” She paused, then continued, “Emmett had been trying to find Prescott for a while after he had come to our house in order to tell him that he was no longer afraid of any scandal, that he would take his chances with society, our society which might be able to overlook what could be a youthful indiscretion, and maybe just a bout of loneliness. Somebody whom they went to school with told Emmett that Prescott was in this area living in Gloversville and that was why he had the posters made. He was going to distribute them around and the thousand dollars for information figured to draw somebody out who might know his whereabouts. That’s all I know until the police called to have me come and identify the body. The police have kind of let it go to hell and I need your help.

Fred wise to the ways of the world although not used to dealing with upper middle-class young women, as clients anyway except once he had a girlfriend from the leafy suburbs but the parents practically imprisoned her when they found out he did not have three names in his moniker, you know Ward Stewart Lawrence, stuff like that the Brahmins go for, told Lara he needed a one hundred dollar cash retainer before he could represent her in her time of sorrows. She opened her pocketbook, pulled out five Jacksons and they were in business.   

Fred said later that he sensed something was wrong from that moment, the moment she gave him the cash like she expected him to ask for cash rather than haggle over a check or something but Alexander said that was just Fred’s wishful thinking after the fact when the whole thing blew up in his face and the cops had to pull him out of the line of fire. To leave the reader in no suspense at this point Fred went out and did several days of investigation trying to locate the guy who told her brother that Prescott was in the area. He did locate him finally but the lad, a young man whom Fred using the old- time expression was “light on his feet,” and fearful to say anything at all. Fred pressed the issue though and the kid (Fred did not use that word) folded. It seems the kid, Fred said he would not use his name in order to get the information he wanted, also fell under the spell of Prescott, had his pants down more than once over the “crush” he called it, and had done Prescott’s bidding telling Emmett that Prescott was in Gloversville. A couple of days late Fred traced Prescott to a bed and breakfast place outside Gloversville. He figured that he would just go in and talk to Prescott but before he could enter the door to Prescott’s room there was a volley of gunfire aimed his way through the door. He got on the ground first and worked his way back to the kitchen where he called the cops, called the sheriff’s office because he was not sure Gloversville had its own police department. The sheriff came with a few deputies, and a few sharpshooters from the State Police SWAT team. After a couple of futile attempts at coaxing Prescott out they went in full blazes (Alexander said if anybody wanted to know the details of the firefight check with the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office they would have all the details). After a few minutes the firing from Prescott’s room stopped. The cops went into the room and recovered the body, recovered two bodies really, for the other body belonged to one Lara Barstow.

The way things figured out later piecing together everything found in Prescott’s room and later at Lara’ house what happened is when Prescott came to confront Emmett for dough he somehow caught Lara’s eyes, gave her a tumble or two, maybe more (whether he was bisexual or not who knows maybe the dough gave him some weird sexual energy if he was completely gay). Whether he was just working the scam of a lifetime for a lowlife like him or he had some affection for Lara who knows. What is known from some legal papers found at Lara’s house is they formed a scheme to kill Emmett and have her inherit the family money (when she turned twenty-five as well a lawyer handling the trust before that time). Prescott must have known from that scared  kid that Emmett was on his trail. They probably met somewhere and Prescott put a couple of nasty slugs in him and shipped him off down the Waban River and easy street. What fouled the whole thing up was the part about having to know the cause of Emmett’s death before the trust could even be touched in the future. The whole Lara tall tale story in Fred’s office was to see if they could find a fall guy, maybe some hobo or something. Not every criminal, smart or stupid always figures things out right but that what it looked like. Maybe Lara thought just hiring Fred would satisfy the terms of the trust. Who knows. But when Fred was able to find Prescott he, they panicked. And that was that. So Alexander forever after will be able to say he way part of solving a private detective-type crime. He was just glad, glad as hell that he had not accompanied Fred when he had asked him to go to Prescott’s room. He thought save that part for the movies.           

Lost In The Rain On Desolation Row -With Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited In Mind

Lost In The Rain On Desolation Row -With Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited In Mind

By Jack Callahan

“I’ve met Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, I’ve been in the tower with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, “declared Robert South to no one in particular although Jake Devine was the only one in the room at the time. With those words Jake, Jake known as Jake since childhood to distinguish him from John Devine, Senior although his father a genial Irishman addicted to sports betting and drinking whiskey not always in that order was more the slap on the back Jake type while Jake in the throes of his high hippie moments was trying to shed that moniker for his new identity one Be-Bop Benny but old habits die hard and his old high school friends called him Jake and when he went on the hitchhike road west with them in 1965,1966 the name stuck whether he liked it or not, knew that Robert was two things-one, high as a kite on either speed or LSD just then the drug of choice among the “hip” (not always the same as Hippie but Jake did not want to argue the fine points on that one since he himself had been on a two day black beauty speed high-low) on the mind-expanding conscious West Coast cohort of the brethren and two, Robert had been listening to the whole of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row at least once, probably more than once if he was high since he would not have had the stamina to switch the sound system that Captain Crunch had installed in their “digs” now that they were off the road for the winter and settled into Pablo’s mansion. By the way in compensation  for being called Jake by one and all on the bus, of which more in a minute, he had gathered some sense of respect because his latest flame, a serious “hippie chick” met on the road at Big Sur as they were heading south, Frilly Jilly, called him Be-Bop Benny,  called him a few other things once they high on grass, you know marijuana,  got down to the “do the do,” a term the guys still carried with them from the corner days in Riverdale after they had heard the bluesman Howlin’ Wolf do a song with those words in it, those words meaning hitting the sheets, having sex, what she called him in her high hormonal moments was left to them.              

 Yeah, Robert, Jimmy Jenkins, Frank Riley, and a guy, Josh Breslin, they met from a mill town in Maine on Russian Hill in San Francisco where they were camped out in a small park when he stopped by the bus and asked for a joint had been on quite a ride since coming West to see what it was all about and were learning quickly it was all about “drugs, sex and rock and roll” at its core but also about getting out from under the old ways of thinking and living. So when they hit Frisco they headed like lemmings to the sea to Golden Gate Park where all the hell was breaking loose met a few guys who “turned them on,” got them invited to a few parties, including one Captain Crunch was throwing around the new yellow brick road bus that he had just purchased (allegedly in a trade for a big sack of dope but all the time they were on the bus they never had that rumor confirmed by the Captain or anybody else and mainly it didn’t matter by then). This bus was nothing but an old school bus that had been turned into a moving commune after the seats had been torn out, mattresses thrown down, a storage area for family living material like utensils, dishes, and pots and pans, the thing had been repainted in every day-glo  psychedelic color under the sun and best of all hooked up with a great sound system Dippy Mike, the guy who did the sound system for Fillmore West and the Dead, put together for any trips they would take.

And almost from the start at Golden Gate Park the trips began once Captain had selected the Riverdale boys as part of his crew to head south with him. The reason for that heading south, the reason Robert was holding forth those lines from Desolation Row was to “house-sit” here in La Jolla at this mansion that belonged to Pablo Rios, a friend of the Captain’s and a serious south of the border drug dealer who was in Mexico for the winter and the Captain had agreed to doing the sitting as we got into “winter quarters.” Now that the bus was not being used, was being refitted with a new engine and so not useable, the sound system had been transferred to the house for the weekly parties the Captain threw for his friends (and whoever happened to hear about the event and knew where to find the place, not as easy as it sounds when stoned in hideaway between the cliffs La Jolla).                    

Robert, once settled in, once he got his own room with his lady-friend, Lavender Minnie, got heavily into the dope, got heavily into listening to the amped up music and Jake thought he had begun, like they had all heard about with kids who did too much dope, to go over the edge.      

Just as Jake thought that thought Robert rag out again with “they’re selling postcards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown,” and Jake knew that Robert had gone for the next plus minutes to his own world. Eleven plus minutes if he was lucky, since more than once Robert had decided that he needed to give his own take on what the whole thing meant, what the various references meant to him. For example that business with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, the two exile poets who almost single-handedly broke from the old forms and created modern poetry and were treated like gods among the hip at one point was Dylan throwing on the gauntlet, telling those guys a new sheriff was in town. Well, maybe, if you think Dylan was a lyric poet rather than a song-writer, or maybe put the two together. For example that postcards of the hanging stuff was his political moment like Billie Holiday had with Strange Fruit about the scandalous open lynching of black men in the South put together with a new sense of masculinity turned in on itself with sailor boys caught out on the seven seas who transformed themselves in boy-girls with those all male crews. For example that stuff about Ophelia, you know Hamlet’s chick and how she was giving up the ghost (committing suicide) not because of some lost love but because she was pregnant and was not sure who the father was.

For example….but Jake knew Robert was merely babbling, merely going through the numbers and beside, taking another sweet swift hit of meth to jet fuel those two black beauties that had kicked in hours ago he had his own “take” on those lyrics and with the “fake” wisdom brought on by the speed, which would bring hours of high and low thoughts he started to write some stuff down (he would say later so he would not forget it since the thoughts were flying fast and furious just then) and as he drifted into himself here is what came out on those stained yellow legal pad sheets that held whatever was written on them….                

I have to admit Robert was on to something, something sinister and devilish in the American psyche but he was dead wrong on what that “postcards of the hanging” was about, who was being hanged and for what reason. Sure, Billie sang her blessed, goddamn blessed junkie heart out and not just on Strange Fruit, sang her heart out until near the end and the dope, the hop got the best of her voice and her psyche.  Sure I would have seen the fixer man for her if she would just sing one more song to chase my blues away, make them sail into this freaking Pacific wind to the China seas reminding me that many a lost high white note found its way along that path blowing out from North Beach joints but Strange Fruits that dirge to what the fuck was going on in the damn Mister James Crow South during her times, hell ours too since there is a loss of train of thought when Billie couldn’t squeeze anymore life out of the needle and put the lights of New Jack City out in the shade and my running around in cracker North Adamsville trying to drum up books, can you believe this, books for little black kids, then Negro, now Afro-American is gaining currency, but black, black as night like Billie with that sweet orchid hair in god-forsaken Alabama where goddam, Nina Simone was right, goddam hell was breaking loose and Mississippi was burning, burning white stick crosses and white steepled churches, Baptist churches too but it might as well have been some mongrel Buddha swings congregation because the flame was going down in Negro-town.

Yeah, Billie sang it right, sang about that lonely stick figure, black, black as coal swinging in the wind, head bent from that awful snapped neck which could be heard back in the far reaches of the crowd where the children, the very white children stood to learn about who was boss and who was crap, hell, shit in Mister James Crow’s house and about how that lonely stick figure would provide a brisk short-term trade in Mister Brady’s photograph emporium among the fucking hillbilly white trash come to see yet another black man put to the ground, going to see his maker if the fuckin n---ers [edited by Greg Green to conform with publication policy around that “word” and its implications when white guys, even white guys who scratched and cajoled  around white bread, white bread, white trash North Adamsville to get books, can you believe books for black schoolchildren in heathen Alabama] had a maker, had their very own high Jehovah black as night maker. No Mr. Bob, Mr. Dylan taking a righteous war name from drunken sot and Welsh poet, maybe a welcher at the bar tab in the Village too meant to take a look at some hand-press printed postcards of the hanging of the avenging angel, the righteous son of that high Jehovah that made him and those sullen black Baptists too, John Brown, Captain John Brown late of Kansas prairie fires and Harpers Ferry fight(never sure whether there is an apostrophe between the “r” and the “s” on Harpers so no) against the same bastards, against the fathers and grandfathers of those white trash (and not just white trash either once you took the hoods off if they bothered to put them on just to hang a lonely stick figure n—ger, and you know what that coded word means for Miss Scarlett O’Hara and her beau sweet boy Rhett, or her children, all who could be seen swarming around those barren trees), and maybe great-grandfathers of those later photographs per Mr. Brady who watched in heated glean at yet another example of the rightness of keeping Mister James Crow’s laws in place, maybe forever…

…Hell, I don’t know what to make of that “painting the passports brown” so somebody else can figure that one out, maybe and I don’t think I would be that far off he was just holy goof trying to get lyrical and maybe was too stoned to see that there were no passports from those hanging trees…

Leave it to Robert to get the sex stuff all mixed up, “the beauty parlors are filled with sailors” part although he knew, flat out knew and I don’t know where from about what really goes on in isolated male society [again by publication policy maybe “isolated female society” like on the  isle of Lesbos), aboard ships with cozy dark bunks and several watches to do whatever had to be done with sore asses and sore mouths a cause for doctor looks when on land), in prisons where the cells are small and the lights are dim with the howl of someone, some fresh young boy getting his baptism, his deflowering, and of course, honey to the bee what they call in England public schools but here for some reason private school where half of the British ruling class, half the literati got their own de-flowerings. What he didn’t know, maybe couldn’t know although we spent some time down in P-town, excuse me, Provincetown, the kingdom of those guys who are “light on their feet,” fags, sissies (the site manager said he would let this go even though it was a close call) where we drunk as skunks would bash a few for sport for looking at us with those hungry ravenous eyes was that the whole expression was coded, was some Jean Genet Our Lady of the Flowers  reference to “dilly boys,” the guys who hung around the darkened wharves, the low-light taverns frequented by home-bound sailors looking for a change of pace, looking for fresh new faces once they had been deflowered, once they had had their share of sore, asses, sore mouths, damn, sore cocks. What he didn’t realize was that not only sailors were lusting for a workout with dilly boys but those public- school graduates were as well, were searching for some rough trade. Here is what nobody knew, nobody wanted to know running the whole show, running those dilly boys through their paces was none other that Sherlock Holmes, yeah, the so-called parlor pink detective who couldn’t open a bottle of wine without a page of instructions and his honey, his girlfriend if that is the right way to say it [today husband if married-boyfriend if not but that is what Josh wrote back then so onward] Doc Watson, not the famous blind or whatever you call guy who lost his sight late bluegrass star but some stumblebum backwater quack. They ran the rackets, dope, robberies, women, dilly boys, art heists, everything that ran through London while the public relations firm they hired to cover their asses, ha, literally, shilled the story about how they were true blue to king and country (to the stately queens of England too-another coded reference) fighting the much maligned and heterosexual Doc Moriarty who almost thwarted these bastards before they killed him.

The rumor was that the whole thing started, the whole Holmes-Watson criminal enterprise which was protected by men in high places in government, business and society, you know those fellow public-school boys who worked the political racket when Doc Watson went to the beauty parlor to get a fresh do so he would look nice for Sherlock when they went on vacation to Scotland, some islands off the coast, and ran into a couple of pretty sailors just off HMS Pinafore or some such ship and were getting their do’s to look pretty for the rough trade running through the notorious Black Lantern tavern, public house, okay, near the notorious Clapper wharves. Doc pressed a couple of their buttons, showed them some opium he was in legal possession of and they were off to the tavern. That is where to his delight Doc learned about dilly boys and about looking “pretty” checked out some of the merchandise and came home to Holmes who was reportedly frantic with the Doc’s genetic sore ass, sore mouth and sore cock. Sherlock, intrigued, always intrigued I will say that for him after he calmed down went with Doc to the Black Lantern, feasted on the boys, including those two pretty sailors who escorted Doc to that location and the rest is history.

Fuck I have been in that place, have been down the hellish parts of the row, maybe better called the River Styx after old opium-eater Sam Coleridge started seeing sunless seas and went off the deep end about it forgetting Wordsworth’s advice to smoke that madness bong in freaking moderation. Typical junkie’s remorse, lament, you pick the word but don’t give me some twelve step higher power bullshit. Been down there by myself, alone, and with every kind of woman, lately Frilly Jilly, like that moniker, she curls my toes, likes to swallow my cum when she giving me a blowjob, says the stuff is filled with protein which we don’t get enough of doing serious dope, serious speed which takes away the hungers, food hungers anyway and so she will suck me dry, and it is okay with me except once she tried to kiss me with a load in her mouth, wanted me to taste my own cum, wanted to French kiss with that freaking mouth, I freaked out. Jesus. I was just thinking that when we hung around the corner, hung around Riverdale waiting for something to happen we would speculate, boredom I guess, about who, which girls we knew, if they gave head, you know blowjobs would they swallow or spit. Frankie Kelly, who left us a few days ago to head back to Riverdale to check about his draft status and about how to get out of the thing somehow what with the war raging, was the first guy to bring it up and while we knew all about blowjobs we at first thought about the question it seemed strange, seemed kind of esoteric and who gives a fuck but Frankie said that if a girl spit that meant she didn’t like your cum, didn’t have any kinky traits and so maybe was not going to go the distance. Like I say Jilly is a swallower and when I mentioned that conversation she said girls, her girlfriends anyway, talked about the same thing except since it concerned them more they took it seriously and Jilly said the first time she gave a guy a blowjob back in junior high school a couple of years ago when she started getting sexy thoughts and wanted to do something about it, to experiment, she didn’t like it and spit it out. The guy, older, went crazy when she did that. That is when she talked to some girlfriends, the ones who were sexually active or wanted to be, one who told her to swallow fast and it would be okay, which she did the next time with the guy she still didn’t like it but got it down okay and so she has been a swallower ever since. She said she only started to like it, to feel better about taking it when she read last year about the protein and that made her thing of it like a vitamin, a supplement and that was why she liked to suck a guy dry to get as much protein as possible.  (By the way we never even considered that crazy joint swallow Jilly was into who said she learned it from a college guy who was worried about losing his cum to the bed or wherever they did it and she got hooked on doing it, did it with a girl once when they were in a motel room with two guys and the other girl, not the guys though, was interested. But these day Jilly was mostly about the protein, was about swallowing the cum to keep her energy up, and about curling my toes).     

Some women really do like to take it on the wild side. Jilly does, has ever since we picked her up on the Pacific Coast Highway around Carlsbad, maybe Oceanside where the freaking Marines do their blow-up stuff. Likes to give blowjobs and is good at it although since she is only sixteen and does not want to get “in the family way” that is as far as she will go, maybe a sneak hand-job when we are riding along on the bus but I am getting away from what I was thinking about, about circuses, about Lilly Ann, about Madame LaRue ‘s daughter Lilly Ann, who shilled for the Madame, brought in the customers for mother’s fortune-telling racket (with Lilly Ann grabbingly wallets in the dark but I didn’t know that until later, until she, Lilly Ann trusted me enough to believe that I would not turn her in. Jesus, a snitch, no fucking way, excuse my English if I haven’t said that, excuse me, before). Lilly Ann and mother, Madame came to Riverdale with Jim Calhoun’s Mighty Midget Circus, that was how it was billed on the posters and advertisements around town. Jim had been coming to town and I had been threatening when things got tense at home to leave with the operation once they folded up their tents and split, although I never did. That tells you how tense things were at times in the house with wild woman mother and four older brothers crowding me out. The year I am talking about was the year I met Lilly Ann when I was sixteen, she said she was also sixteen but she was really thirteen, going on fourteen she said when she told me the truth after she told me about the wallet-snatching operations that provided the real dough for her and the Madame (Lilly always called her Madame as did everybody else including me).

That was the year, not with her, that would come later, when I first had sex with a girl, a girl from school who you would never think was into sex, had been since doing since twelve when an older brother’s friend “broke her in” she called it when she made me promise not to tell anybody or else she would tell her mother what I had done and get me in serious trouble, was into moaning and groaning and who would scream when she came, screamed right in my ear. Got all wet, sweated some she moved her hips and stomach so much while she was in heat, while she was getting ready to climax (which the first time she did it I didn’t realize that women could do, couldn’t understand why she was so wet). In those days, funny that was just a few years ago but since I have been on the West Coast, since I have been “riding with the king” as Captain Crunch calls it, we, meaning all the corner boys, Robert too were totally interested in getting blowjobs and maybe regular sex, what some girl told me was called the missionary position which she did not like, did not like the weight on top of her and liked to be on top where she could move her hips frantically which was alright with me and made me realize how square we were in high school with our little regular missionary position lack of imagination, if that was available but most of us agreed that a blowjob was easier to figure, easier to get, and less hassle than figuring out how and where to “do the do” our expression for what we called going all the way. I tried to get this girl to give me some head but she balked, she balked as I put my cock near her mouth. Said that thing, my penis, was nasty, she didn’t want it in her mouth. Had tasted some guy’s come after giving him a hand-job and didn’t like the taste, hated it. So no sale. Some young girls are funny you think like with Jilly they would be more worried about getting pregnant than worried about the taste of cum in their mouths. I wish I knew that protein line Jilly mentioned then maybe she would have gone for that, she was a science whizz.

Lilly Ann was actually easy to make, to get in the rack once I won her a doll at Skeets, my favorite game at circuses and amusement parks. When I asked her for a blowjob one afternoon down by the beach she put the towel over us and went to work. Not as good as Jilly since she bared her teeth too much, not enough tongue-lashing   and stopped when I proved to take longer than expected before she started up again but beforehand she had asked me if I liked a girl to swallow or to spit out when she was done. I asked her which she preferred, and she said she didn’t care-if it tasted good she would swallow, if not spit it out. So girls are different in that regard. Lilly Ann was the first girl though who said that if she liked a guy and his cum didn’t taste good and he wanted her to swallow but she had spit it out the next time she would chew gum or something to kill the taste. A girlfriend had told her that when she was younger after some guy almost slugged her for spitting out. Liked to use bubble gum she said so she could make bubbles afterwards and we laughed about that. She sucked me dry said I tasted like maple syrup. We went together for the three weeks the circus was in town and once again home life had me hankering to go on the road when the circus left town, go with Lilly Ann and all the kid stuff romance ideas attached to that. Then one day I went into their trailer and there on the couch Lilly Ann was fucking Mr. Leonard, the city permit guy who okayed Jim’s permit for the city grounds used by the circus. Seems Lilly Ann was the graft for Leonard’s okay. Fuck. I ran out and maybe ran out of naiveite. Never saw Lilly Ann again and lost my taste for circuses- for a while.     

I don’t even want to talk about riot squads, coppers after all the hassles I, we have had between the corner in Riverdale where the cops had seven eyes each on us instead of checking out real crime and criminals and the few demonstrations against the freaking Vietnam War we got knocked around  in at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco topped off by about seven stops of our home, of Captain Crunch’s cruising yellow brick road bus looking not for dope, not for sanitary violations or something stupid like that which would be the usual excuse to stop us although our ace driver Chuck Cassady has everything under control but whether we have underage girls, presumably girls, hidden away with mothers and fathers wondering frantically where their wandering charges were and whether they have been deflowered, nice word, the latter really of concern since they, those parents didn’t want to have to send their young things to the mythical “Aunt Emma” if and when they get pregnant by who knows who. That Aunt Emma thing code for sending the girl away to someplace maybe never to be seen in town again to avoid the obvious stigma of pregnancy not for the girl who after all was just doing what came naturally to humans, having sexual feelings and doing something about it. As I write this Frilly Jilly said if she was ever picked up when the cops stopped us she would take them in back and give them the best blowjobs they ever had, would suck them dry until it hurt. She said a girlfriend of her ’s, maybe the first one who told her guys like it better overall when you swallow their cum, shows that you are part of them the girlfriend said, told she had to do that once and everything came out fine. Had made sure both cops were there even though she felt funny with one cop watching so that she had them cornered if they tried to take her in. One cop said sorry to bother her after. The cops didn’t know she was only fourteen years old so she had something on them. Smart girl. Smart girl Jilly too since she would use the same ruse although I hope she doesn’t have to use it when I am around, or she is around me. I know it has to be done but I am still smarting from Lilly Ann way back having to get out of tight spot by fucking some guy’s brains out.

Jesus this screed in turning into a sex story, a  male fantasy sex story and not staying on the skids of what the bard was getting to and then he lays this Cinderella meeting some charming prince, or some sidewalk Lothario anyway and he gives us the whole thing in a short expression, Cinderella although it could have been Snow White, could have been the Fairie Queen from John Dryden or was it Pope, Alexander Pope, could, well, could have been any fairy tale is easy which turns this whole section into another free for all. Stick with me this Cinderella story is kind of cute, our girl is working the hard life for some bitch mother and her sisters, half- sisters I guess…

No, this screed is getting too weird, getting again into another sex thing Cinderella, Snow White whoever had to “do the do” to get out from under some horrible situation by giving herself, by getting de-flowered  one night to some prince, or a guy who claimed to be a prince. We have been down this road before, so finis. Well not finis since Frilly Jilly read what I had written and said it got her kind of horny, got her thinking about “playing the flute” as she called it lately after one of the young women we partied with a few days ago told her what she called it. That girl also said that Jilly should, well you figure it out, figure out Desolation Row lyrics too                                              

From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- Greece: Mass Anger Over Savage Austerity-Workers Must Rule!-For a Socialist United States of Europe!

Markin comment:

As always in such general strike and possiblly pre-revolutitonary situations a call by communist propagandists for independent working class organizations to take power is in order. For A Greek Communist Party-Greek Trade Union Federations (and whoever else of the up-against-the-wall middle class and student elements they can bring in) government!
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Workers Vanguard No. 983
8 July 2011

European Crisis and the Bankruptcy of Capitalism

Greece: Mass Anger Over Savage Austerity-Workers Must Rule!-
For a Socialist United States of Europe!

On June 29, as a two-day general strike virtually shut down the country and tens of thousands protested outside, the Greek parliament approved a new round of brutal austerity measures demanded by the Greek bourgeoisie and its imperialist overlords. The demonstrators—who included, in addition to workers, a broad range of the population from students and other youth to professionals and retirees—were viciously attacked by club-wielding riot police. More than a year of unrelenting attacks on the living standards of the Greek population has resulted in seething unrest across broad layers of society. In the last year alone, there have been at least a dozen one-day general strikes and massive protests. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, homelessness has skyrocketed and many people, especially pensioners, are reliant on soup kitchens for their survival.

Video footage of the wanton violence meted out by the cops has provoked widespread indignation, as has another video documenting collusion between the police and hooded provocateurs who infiltrated the protesters. Police fired endless volleys of tear gas and stun grenades and pummeled protesters with chunks of masonry. At least 38 were reportedly arrested in what was blatantly a cop riot. We demand that all charges be dropped against the anarchists and other anti-austerity protesters, including those arrested during the earlier general strikes!

It is clear for all to see that working people are being fleeced to pay for a crisis they are not responsible for. The economic crisis gripping Greece—a particularly severe expression of the world capitalist crisis—was triggered in the spring of last year as global financial capitalists, fearing that the heavily indebted Greek government would default on its loan obligations, began spurning Greek government bonds. The plummeting price of those bonds threatened European banks, especially in France and Germany—foreign financial institutions are exposed to some 340 billion euros in Greek public and private debt.

To try to head off the crisis, at least temporarily, the European Union (EU) and the IMF agreed last year to a 110 billion euro “rescue package” on condition that Athens impose draconian austerity measures on Greece’s working people. The October 2009 elections replaced the right-wing New Democracy (ND) regime with the bourgeois-populist Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) of George Papandreou, with the bourgeoisie calculating that the masses would more readily accept “sacrifice” if demanded by PASOK. The PASOK government answered the EU and IMF’s ultimatum with a year-long campaign of slashing public sector workers’ wages, gutting pensions and ramping up taxes. These attacks hit hardest at the poorest in society, including immigrant workers. In addition, Greek officials, in response to EU/IMF demands that they raise cash by privatizing a host of state-owned enterprises, have launched what the bourgeois press describes as a “fire sale,” auctioning off airports, ports and prime land.

European capitalists fear that a default by Greece could immediately pose a similar collapse by other heavily indebted countries such as Ireland and Portugal, which have already received bailouts from the EU and IMF, and Spain, whose economy is larger than that of Greece, Ireland and Portugal combined. Fearing the potentially catastrophic effects of such contagion, the EU/IMF hastily agreed last month on a second “rescue package” for Greece, amounting to a further 120 billion euros. Yet hardly anyone believes that these bailouts will do more than delay the inevitable default.

Everyone can see that the fate of the Greek working class, and much of the petty bourgeoisie, will be ever more dire without a radical solution. The working masses have demonstrated their combativity time and again. But the workers’ leaders, whether the despised PASOK-loyal tops of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) and the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY) or the far more militant-sounding Greek Communist Party (KKE) and its PAME labor front, have thus far succeeded in channeling workers’ anger into what amounts to militant parliamentary lobbying. In effect, they appeal to the Greek capitalists to stand up to their senior partners in Germany and France. This nationalist class collaboration is a recipe for demoralization and defeat.

The allies of the Greek proletariat are to be found not among its “own” exploiters but among the workers elsewhere in Europe and beyond. A proletarian upheaval in Greece could trigger a wave of class struggle throughout Europe against the ever more brutal and incessant attacks of the capitalists against the jobs, benefits and living standards of all workers on the continent. A workers government in Greece would immediately repudiate the imperialist debt. Such an act would require a direct appeal to the proletariat, from Germany and France to Spain and Portugal, to come to the defense of their Greek class brothers and sisters against the combined forces of the European bourgeoisies.

As long as Greek workers are mobilized primarily against the foreign diktats of the IMF and EU, they will be unable to see that opposing the imperialists is intertwined with overthrowing the Greek bourgeoisie. The Greek government is not simply a tool of the European and other imperialist powers, as some signs in the Athens demonstrations suggest, but of the Greek bourgeoisie that has always exploited, suppressed and bled the working class in the pursuit of profit.

The question that is objectively posed is the need for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist order and the establishment of working-class rule. Yet there is a huge disparity between the objective needs of the Greek working class and oppressed on one side and the political program of their leadership on the other. The repeated strikes and protests are designed to dissipate the anger of workers, whose militancy is clearly not the issue. The problem is that the working class is hamstrung by a leadership that accepts the need for the working class to bear some degree of austerity to “bail out” capitalism, while objecting that the terms and conditions dictated by the IMF and the European Central Bank (ECB) are too severe.

The program of the labor bureaucracy—defined by what is “practical” under capitalism—has led to disaster for the working class. To overcome the gulf between the workers’ present consciousness and the necessity for a workers government based on organs of proletarian power, a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party would put forward a series of transitional demands, starting from the felt needs of the masses and pointing the way toward the seizure of state power by the working class and the expropriation of the rapacious capitalist class.

To combat mass unemployment, it is necessary to demand the sharing of available work, with no loss of pay, and a massive program of public works. To protect even their current living standards—already among the lowest in Europe—workers must demand that wages be indexed to inflation. To unmask the exploitation, robbery and fraud of the industrialists and bankers, workers should demand that the capitalists open their (real) books. With the imperialists demanding the dismantling of state enterprises, the proletariat must fight for the expropriation of the productive property of the capitalist class as a whole and the establishment of a planned economy under workers rule, where production would be based on social need, not profit.

Combat National Chauvinism!

Throughout Europe, the capitalist press and politicians have been whipping up a chauvinist frenzy against Greeks, who are portrayed as lazy, ungrateful scroungers. Last year the right-wing German Bild (27 October 2010) screamed: “Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks…and the Acropolis too!” A recent London Financial Times (9 May) editorial demanded: “Athens must be put under the gun.” For all the talk of bailing out Greece, the only “bailout” that is taking place is that of Europe’s banks. Columnist Martin Wolf noted in the Financial Times (21 June): “It is far less embarrassing to state that one is helping Greece when one is in fact helping one’s own banks.”

With chauvinist arrogance, the European imperialists, led by Germany, are seeking to impose on Greece, an EU member state, the kind of diktat they are accustomed to issuing to neocolonial countries in the Third World. The Financial Times (17 June) reports that officials of the “troika”—the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission—are demanding that “outsiders” be brought in “to make Greece’s privatization program happen,” adding that “because Greece seemed incapable of collecting taxes, international experts would come in to do that, too.” The article further reports that Finnish officials were insisting that “Athens assets should be securitised so they could be used as collateral. If Greece defaulted, lenders would gain an airport or some other utility.”

The imperialists’ dismissive attitude to Greece’s sovereignty has in turn fueled national chauvinism in Greece. Right-wing opponents of the EU/IMF’s bailout include New Democracy, Greece’s main opposition party. ND represents Greek business interests that have no intention of paying the imperialists’ extortion themselves and fear, as BBC economics editor Paul Mason put it, “a tax bill the like of which they have never dreamed, nor indeed paid.” However, ND and PASOK are united in the determination that Greek working people pay for the country’s economic crisis.

Recent months have seen the explosive growth of a new movement, the so-called “indignant citizens” movement. The “Indignados” placed themselves at the head of the mass mobilizations outside parliament, where Greek flags proliferated, the Greek national anthem was sung and anti-American and anti-German sentiment was rife. Protesters have waved EU flags with a swastika at the center—equating “German” with “Nazi” and invoking the spectre of World War II, when Greece was occupied by German imperialism (followed by rampaging British troops).

In Spain, the Indignados movement arose in response to the austerity measures that were being enforced by the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Party government before its huge defeat in the last elections. In Greece, the petty-bourgeois Indignados emerged in the context of the abject failure of the trade-union bureaucracy to present any way forward for the struggles of the working masses. The two main trade-union federations, the GSEE and ADEDY, representing the private and public sectors respectively, are controlled by PASOK, which is imposing the austerity measures. Despite the “socialist” reference in its name, and the credentials given to it by opportunist left groups, PASOK is a capitalist party.

Broad layers of the middle class that could be rallied behind an insurgent proletariat struggling for power are instead being drawn into virulently chauvinist, anti-immigrant and anti-working-class movements. Displaying overt hostility to the organizations of the working class and the left, the Indignados present themselves as a “pro-democracy” movement of all classes. As in Spain, all leftist political parties and trade unions, as well as red flags and banners, were banned from the Greek protests at first. Not surprisingly, given the nationalist fervor whipped up by the Indignados, Golden Dawn and other fascist outfits have been seen at the protests.

There has been an ominous rise in racist attacks, as desperately impoverished immigrants are used as scapegoats for the economic devastation. Earlier this year, fascist thugs rampaged through a heavily immigrant area of Athens, killing one person and wounding many more. Golden Dawn got over 5 percent of the vote in municipal elections in Athens late last year. According to the London-based Institute of Race Relations, Golden Dawn’s Nikos Michaloliakos, accompanied by eight apparently armed bodyguards, gave a Nazi salute at a council meeting in Athens in January.

The fascists are emboldened by the racist policies of the government. Greece’s border with Turkey is one of the front lines of “Fortress Europe,” with EU border patrols employed to keep immigrants out. The Greek government has announced plans to build a razor-wire fence, equipped with sonar systems and thermal sensors, along the border. The workers movement must fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants and to unionize foreign workers. For union/minority mobilizations to stop fascist provocations! For integrated workers defense guards to protect immigrant neighborhoods!

Communist Party: Left Face of Greek Nationalism

The Stalinist KKE adopts a posture of militant opposition to the PASOK government and promotes PAME as a class-struggle alternative to what it calls the “government- and employer-led” trade unions. But the Greek Stalinists present no fundamental alternative to the betrayals of the GSEE/ADEDY union misleaders. Despite its occasional verbal radicalism, the KKE is hostile to the program of workers revolution to overthrow Greek capitalism.

The KKE’s political bankruptcy is evident in regard to the Indignados. In an article in Rizospastis (5 June), the KKE correctly noted that “the ‘anonymous’ leaders of the ‘movement of the squares,’ the ‘non-partisan,’ ‘spontaneous,’ ‘non-politicized’ citizens, appear to be politicized, declaring themselves ‘anti-left’.” The article adds that with their slogans “Out with the left,” “Parties out” and “Trade unions out,” the Indignados are “not that democratic, or, to be more accurate, they are undemocratic.” What the KKE cannot challenge, though, is the virulent nationalism of the Indignados, which the KKE itself shares.

Indeed, the KKE has made defense of “national sovereignty” its own calling card, and is particularly virulent in espousing Greek nationalism in relation to Turkey, the traditional enemy of its “own” bourgeoisie. For example, in a speech last year, KKE general secretary Aleka Papariga complained that the EU was not taking account of “our national sovereignty rights” when considering Turkey’s bid for membership. She went on to chastise Papandreou for “trying to cover up the issue by dividing the Aegean, something that will have an adverse effect on the islands’ defense.” Nationalism within the workers movement is the chief obstacle to constructing a genuine revolutionary workers party in Greece.

It is a travesty that the KKE retains a reputation as militant fighters against capitalism based on the Resistance against the Nazi occupation and the subsequent Greek Civil War of 1946-49. In pursuit of its program of class collaboration with the Greek bourgeoisie, the KKE handed power back to the bourgeoisie following World War II. The working class, backed by the peasantry, was the decisive force in the anti-Nazi Resistance, mounting massive strikes and demonstrations from late 1942 until the withdrawal of German troops in 1944. The working class, arms in hand, had state power in its grasp. But its leaders, the treacherous KKE, actually welcomed the arrival of British troops into Greece, enabling the imperialists to stabilize the situation, bring back the hated monarchy and massacre the workers.

The Greek Stalinists lived up to the terms of the secret Tehran agreement, whereby Stalin granted the imperialists the “right” to preserve capitalist rule in West Europe and Greece. Politically disarming the proletariat, the Stalinists went so far as to join a “national” government of the bourgeoisie. In February 1945, they signed the Varkiza agreement, which physically disarmed the KKE-led Resistance forces as British troops and the Greek National Guard were preparing to unleash a full-scale wave of terror against the masses. Only in February 1946 did the KKE finally abandon its suicidal policy and take up the “armed struggle” again. In October 1949, after ferocious repression, the Civil War was ended. The KKE ranks had fought heroically. But needless to say, the KKE learned nothing from the tragic consequences of its treachery and continues to pursue its bankrupt program of subordination to the Greek bourgeoisie.

What the Trotskyists wrote at the end of World War II holds true for the role of the Stalinists throughout the Civil War:

“The Greek masses were burning with revolutionary determination and wished to prepare the overthrow of all their oppressors—Nazi and Greek. Instead of providing the mass movement with a revolutionary program, similar to the Bolshevik program of 1917, and preparing the masses for the seizure of power, the Stalinists steered the movement into the blind alley of People’s Frontism. The Stalinists, who enjoyed virtual hegemony of the mass movement, joined with a lot of petty bourgeois politicians, lawyers, professors, who had neither mass following nor influence, and artificially worked to limit the struggle to the fight for capitalist democracy.”

—“Civil War in Greece,” Fourth International, February 1945

The social-democratic reformists in Greece—such as the Socialist Workers Party (SEK), which is affiliated to the British group of the same name, and Xekinima, the Greek affiliate of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI)—stand to the right of the KKE in their enthusiasm for the anti-Communist, anti-working-class Indignados. For example, Xekinima calls to “Extend the movement to all work places, workers’ neighbourhoods, and the youth” (socialistworld.net, 27 June). The notion of classless “democracy” that these groups promote has long been an anti-Communist code word that actually means support to bourgeois class rule. Thus, both the SEK and Xekinima supported capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union in 1991-92 and hailed counterrevolutionary forces such as Polish Solidarność and Boris Yeltsin’s Russian “democrats.”

For Workers Revolution!

The Trotskyist Group of Greece fights to forge a Leninist-Trotskyist party capable of leading the working class to power. Above all, this means breaking the workers from nationalism and winning them to a revolutionary internationalist perspective. During Round One of the present crisis, the TGG issued a 28 April 2010 leaflet that opposed the widespread Greek nationalism as “poisonous to class consciousness.” Any effective struggle against the bosses’ attacks must begin with the understanding that the workers have no country, until they seize the one they’re in. Our comrades insisted: “What is needed is international workers solidarity across the EU against capital” (see “Down With PASOK Government’s ‘Stability Program’!” WV No. 959, 21 May 2010).

The Greek financial crisis has increased the seething national antagonisms in Europe, as seen in the diplomatic spats between France and Germany. German chancellor Angela Merkel, unpopular at home and with a shrinking majority in the Bundestag (parliament), has clashed with French officials and with the ECB over whether the bankers have to accept some losses. Following pressure from the IMF, Merkel agreed to a new bailout package while the French banks have offered to roll over Greek debts for 30 years. Whatever divisions there may be within bourgeois circles over how to deal with the catastrophic financial situation, in Germany, France, Britain and Europe as a whole, each government is determined to make the working masses pay for a crisis that is caused by the capitalist system itself.

The EU is an imperialist trade bloc, centered on a pact between the French and German capitalist rulers to ratchet up the exploitation of the working classes at home while trying to gain advantage over their imperialist rivals as well as the smaller European states. At the same time, the EU is an unstable formation that intensifies national antagonisms and fuels chauvinism.

We Marxists oppose the EU from the perspective of proletarian internationalism. The comrades of our German section, the Spartakist Workers Party, last year published an article titled “Solidarity with the Greek Workers! For Class Struggle Against the German Capitalists!” (Spartakist No. 183, May 2010), which noted:

“The chauvinist campaign against Greece is being set in motion so as to prevent the German working class from hitting on the idea of placing blame for the crisis at the feet of the capitalist system and its own rulers. The workers movement in Germany must mobilize in solidarity with Greek workers and all the other victims of the EU imperialists—after all, they’ll be confronted with similar attacks in the immediate future. The witchhunt against Greece also serves to split and weaken the multiethnic working class in Germany.”

Today, despite the relentless bleeding of the Greek working people, the country remains mired in deep recession. The bankrupt capitalist class manifestly does not have any crumbs that it is willing to throw to dampen workers’ anger. Short of a struggle for working-class power, the workers’ struggles will continue to be frustrated. The perspective for Greek workers must be that of common class struggle with their class brothers and sisters—from Turkey to Germany and elsewhere around the world.

As the TGG wrote in its leaflet: “What’s needed is a socialist revolution to overthrow the capitalist state and replace it with a workers state that will lay the basis for building a socialist society. For that, you need to build a revolutionary workers party—a party like Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks—which will fight for a workers government. The TGG, Greek sympathizing section of the ICL, seeks to build such a party” (our emphasis).