*The Latest From The Students For A Democratic Society (SDS, 2006 Model) Website

Click on the headline to link to the latest from the "Students For A Democratic Society (SDS, 2006 Model)" Website.

Markin comment:

Looking over the material on this Website is one of the reasons that I recently noted that students today, and I can be corrected on this with some contrary evidence, do not have that grand world view about solving the major problems confronting the planet that we "old gezzers and gezzettes" did back in the days, the 1960s. We made many mistakes back then but avoiding the realities of the necessity of "big picture" solution(s) and that of the special duty to struggle against the "monster" required of those of us who were "living in the belly of the beast" here in America were not among them.

***From The Black Liberation Struggle Archives-The Murder Of Emmett Till- Once Again, "Mississippi Goddam", No, "Double Goddam"- A Film Review

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Emmett Till, whose murder made him a young, catalytic figure in the black civil rights movement of the 1950s. As one of the interviewees in this documentary noted with Till's brutal murder, not only were black men under the gun, North and South, but black children as well.

DVD REVIEW

The Untold Story Of Emmett Louis Till, Titlemark Productions, 2005


Earlier this year, in February, as part of honoring various figures for Black History Month, I reviewed a 2003 PBS Productions film documentary on the case of young civil rights figure, Emmett Till. The comments that I made there can, for the most part, stand here as well in this 2005 shorter documentary that reflected the stir in the black and progressive community over the reopening of Till case by the United States Attorney-General’s office. It also reflects the passing of Emmett’s mother in 2003, without having seen justice done for her son after a life time of effort. As I point out at the bottom of this post, real justice for Emmett awaits a socialist society, a society fit for what would have been his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. For now though, as I point out in the headline, in the case of Emmett Till- “Mississippi Goddam, Double Goddam”.

******

“This film is a long overdue appreciation of the life the martyred civil rights figure, fourteen year old Chicago resident Emmett Till, down in deeply segregated Mississippi in 1955 at the hands of at least two white men while visiting relatives. Emmett’s crime- “eyeballing”, or whistling, or some such at a white woman while black. Sounds familiar from other, later contexts, right? (Like today blacks being stopped in white neighborhoods, on the roads by white police, etc.) For that childish indiscretion, however, Emmett paid with his young life. That these men, his later self-proclaimed killers were “white trash”, and considered as such by ‘gentile’ Southern society nevertheless insured that they would not suffer for their crimes. At least not under the Mississippi-style ‘justice’ of the times. They were white. And white was right. Case closed.

This documentary is also is a tribute, a much warranted tribute, to Emmett’s mother, the now deceased Mame Till, whose interview clips go a long way to understanding the nature of the case and her lifelong search for justice for her son- somewhere. As pointed out near the end of the film that event never really occurred in her lifetime or the lifetimes of Emmett’s killers. Along the way the film details the why of that statement; the murder is graphically laid out, the ‘justice’ system in Mississippi is laid bare. The reaction of blacks in Chicago at Emmett’s funeral and later at the verdict, as well as those in the South who were just starting to organize for their rights, had a galvanizing effect. As one of the journalist interviewees noted, Emmett’s case highlighted that blacks were under attack, knew they were in a life and death struggle, and had better start doing something about it. Moreover, this case provided the first solid evidence to the North, blacks and whites alike, that something was desperately wrong with the justice system in the Jim Crow South.

The beginnings of my personal awareness of the central role of the black liberation struggle in any fight for fundamental change in America did not stem from the Till tragedy but rather a little latter from the attempts to integrate the schools of Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. This film and many of the interviewees (journalists, an ex-Governor of Mississippi, field hands who witnessed various aspects of Till’s abduction and/or the cover up of the murder, Southern white liberals, etc.) point to the Till case as the tip of the iceberg that exploded soon after in the famous Rosa Parks bus incident in Montgomery, Alabama. No matter where you trace the beginnings of the modern civil right movement from though, in Emmett Till’s case there is only conclusion- Nina Simone said it best in her song- “Mississippi Goddam”. ’’

Here are the lyrics to Nina Simone's poignant and appropriate "Mississippi Goddam"

Mississippi Goddam
(1963) Nina Simone
The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it!

From The "HistoMat" Blog- Twenty Years After- The Poll Tax Struggle In England- A Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" entry marking the 20th anniversary of the poll tax struggle in Britain.

Markin comment:

This poll tax struggle in Britain 20 years ago is an example of how a seemingly minor democratic struggle can blow up into something greater, depending on circumstances. It is not always the great issues like war, unemployment, hunger, national, sexual and racial oppression that jump-start political struggle-although in the end those great issues will certainly provide the tinder for great social change.

*From "The Rag Blog"- Professor Bill Ayers On His Right To Free Expression- Let Him Speak Wherever He Wants To- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a "The Rag Blog" entry by guest blogger, Professor Bill Ayers (yes, that Bill Ayers), on his trials and tribulations trying to exercise his basic right to free expression (and of those who want to hear him). Let him speak wherever he want to and wherever people want to listen to him. This is a no-brainer.

Markin comment:

I have already written about Professor Ayers problems when he came to, or tried to come to, Boston College in the Spring of 2009. I have reposted that entry below.


Tuesday, April 07, 2009

*Hands Off Professor Bill Ayers- Let Him Speak

Click on title to link to "Boston Globe", April 2, 2009, article on Professor Bill Ayers discussed below.

Commentary

Okay, Okay I know that I have invoked the word professor ironically and in a somewhat tongue in cheek manner in discussing controversial Professor Bill Ayers in this space as an object lesson about the career paths of 1960’s ex-radicals once they have reconciled themselves to bourgeois society. Naturally when his name came up prominently in relation to the emergence of then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama I could not resist sticking a few well-deserved barbs Ayers’ way. But they were rather politically pointed barbs from the left about why an ex-Weatherman would be hanging around with a bourgeois candidate on the make like Obama.

But now news (somewhat dated news as I have been out of town and did not pick up the controversy until after it was over) about Boston College’s thinly- veiled slap at academic freedom by refusing to let the good professor speak in person or via satellite has crossed the line, even for the very arbitrary and capricious of so-called “academic freedom”. This is, moreover, is not solely a case of right wing commentators having a field day with the issue, although a local “Rush Limbaugh” wannabe helped fan the flames. I am sure that the right-wingers were more than happy when the Boston College administration decided to keep the academy and the minds of their young charges there “pure” from the taint of any old time radical. However, this is just one more in an ever- growing line of cases (think of Ward Churchill and the Finklestein case) where a college administration was more than capable, as in the past, of putting the clamps on by itself.

Here are the facts. Apparently, Professor Ayers was scheduled to deliver some kind of lecture on urban education (his specialty) at Boston College during the week of March 29, 2009 at the invitation of some student groups, including the College Democrats of Boston College. Such lectures by newsworthy figures are not unknown events on college campuses and moreover are a rather lucrative proposition for professors on the academic lecture circuit. The Boston College administration balked at that invitation citing a groundswell of opposition from local neighbors. Why? It seems that there is some lingering animosity concerning the shooting of a Boston Police officer by people allegedly connected with Professor Ayers’ old organization, the Weathermen. Professor Ayers, however, has never been charged, much less convicted, with any connection to that crime.

Why the furor then? Well, the Boston College administration, bowing to those inevitable amorphous unknown forces (although we can guess what those forces are now, can’t we), expressed its profound concern for the safety of the student community and “respect” for the local community (where it has been busily buying up real estate in order to expand its campus). Well, ho hum we have heard that ‘justification’ before. The kicker here on this bogus ‘safety’ issue is that when a televised Ayers lecture by satellite was proposed that too was deemed too “hot” to handle.

What really gives here though? One of the students in the article I am using for information (“BC won’t air Ayers lecture by satellite”, Boston Globe, Peter Schworm, April 2, 2009) let the cat out of the bag. This Ayers controversy, while an easy one for the administration to raise holy hell over, is not the first time that the BC administration has vetoed speaking engagements for controversial figures on campus. That interviewed student did not state who else had been banned but we can figure that one out also.

Needless to say birthday boy Charles Darwin might find it hard to get invited to this august university what with his oddball quirky theory of evolution (BC is an old-time Jesuit school). Much less the heroic Kansas Doctor George Tiller, one of the few abortion providers in that state (they would probably have a lynch mob out for him). So much for that vaunted “academic freedom”. Fortunately we never took that profession of freedom as anything but a very vulnerable “right”, although we gladly use it to get our socialist message out when we can. We remember the “red scare” of the 1950’s here in America when the academy knuckled under without a whimper. And, left to its own devises, most of the academy would have loved to have clapped down during the anti-Vietnam war movement; it was just too big and got way beyond the ability of campus administrations to effectively curtail it. Let us not kid ourselves on that score.

But what about Professor Bill Ayers? Apparently this Boston College incident is not the first college where some furor that has dogged him. I do not, at this time, have the details of Ayers’ other problems at other campuses. However, I heard him last November, just after the 2008 elections when he was touting his revised memoir, on the “Terry Gross Show” on NPR (as any Boston College student could have done, as well). He seemed none too radical in his presentation of his current politics which were tired garden variety left-Democratic Party ones that we have become all too familiar with from repentant radicals, although to his credit he did not abase himself in denial of his revolutionary past. Nor should he have. We were dealing with serious war criminals then in the Johnson/Nixon wielding the most powerful military machine/police apparatus the world has ever known in case one has forgotten or wasn’t around then. For now though. Hands Off Professor Ayers! - Let him speak on politics, education or whatever the hell he wants to talk about. Anywhere.

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- The American Revolutionary Socialist Eugene V. Debs On Immigration Policy In His Day

Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" blog entry on early 20th century American socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs, on the immigration policy of the American government, a pressing issue for the American left and labor movement then, and now.


Markin comment:

No question that brother Debs stood, and stands, head and shoulders above those, like England's Gordon Brown, who claim some socialist heritage. I still tip my hat to Debs' 1920 presidential campaign from the Atlanta federal penitentiary. Reason for his imprisonment:opposition to American entry into World War I.

*For The Nationalization Of The U.S. Coal Mines Under Workers Control- For A Workers Party That Fights For A Workers Government

Click on the headline to link to a National Public Radio (NPR)broadcast of "On Point" with host Tom Ashbrook for April 8, 2010 dealing with the question of the West Virginia killer coal mine disaster.

Markin comment:

This latest, tragic killer coal mine disaster down in West Virginia brings up for the nth time the question of who controls those dangerous sites, and whose rules should govern the way that the mines are worked. Clearly, the continued domination of the mines by greedy, profit hungry private energy conglomerations, abetted by slack governmental oversight has, to any rationale mind, had its day. But here I am preaching to the choir. I hope. However, with that thought in mind here is a chance at a ‘teachable’ moment, for our side.

I am, as I have mentioned in a number of previous posts, the son of a coal miner, one in a family line of Hazard, Kentucky coal miners. Or at least I am a son of a coal miner who, as I have also mentioned before, when having a choice between continuing in the mines and volunteering for the Marines at the start of World War II grabbed the latter with both hands. And despite what ever sorrows and privations loomed ahead for him never looked back. Yes, it is that kind of dirty, dangerous work that no one really willingly wants to do. But if you are from small town Appalachia, let’s say, the mines are the only game in town, at least for those who want to get ahead. And that is the point I want to emphasize here.

For now we fight, or rather our brothers and sisters in the miners unions and those greater numbers who remain unorganized, especially in the Western mines, for greater safety measures and control over working conditions, especially health issues. Things like black lung, other respiratory problems and the like. Those have been, and continue to be, historic fights in this industry. That battle will go on unevenly for our side until working people have their own government.

However, even under the early stages of a workers government, assuming that fossil fuel extraction is still a source of energy, coal miners will still face the natural hazards associated with going deep down in the earth. It will still be a dirty, dangerous job that will require extra incentives, including huge wage increases, to make the work attractive to stout-hearted workers. The difference, however, will be that workers will control the flow of work under conditions of their own choosing in coordination with the outlines dictated by a central plan for the industry and for society as a whole. And there is the rub. The nationalizations mentioned in the headlines are under workers control to be sure. This is not, however, some scheme like in Great Britain after World War II when the bankrupt coal industry was nationalized under capitalist control. And as we know since the mid-1980s that is no longer even the case as former Prime Minister Thatcher broke the British miners union and effectively closed the mines. So the teachable moment is that the two ideas presented here have to be linked- nationalizations under workers control created in the wake of the victory of a workers party (or, perhaps, parties) that has fought for and won a workers government. Let’s get going on that dirty, dangerous task.

*The Latest From The "Freedom Road Socialist" Website

Click on the headline to link to the latest from the "Freedom Road Socialist" Website

Markin comment:

One should read an interesting lead article on the old theme of you are what you eat, or don't eat, or have enough of. In the final analysis, as leading Marxists like Marx himself, Lenin, and Trotsky noted, the organized left-wing of the international labor movement has set itself the task of correcting that problem of "not enough of", worldwide. Let's get to it.

*The Latest From The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee- Her Upcoming Sentencing Hearing On July 15th-Free Lynne Stewart And Her Co-Workers

Click on the headline to link to the "Lynne Stewart Defense Committee" Website for an update on her sentencing hearing scheduled for July 15, 2010.

I will merely repost here in April 2010 what I wrote in honor of Lynne Stewart for Women' History Month last month.

March Is Women's History Month.

Markin comment:

On a day when I am honoring the great revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg, the "Rose of the Revolution", it seems very, very appropriate to enter a post from the Lynn Stewart Defense Committee Website. Both women have worked the same side of the street- for the poor, for the working people, for women, for the downtrodden. I will repeat here what has become something of a constant refrain-and will continue so until Lynn Stewart and her co-workers are free. Free Lynne Stewart! Free Mohamed Yoursy! Free Ahmed Abdel Sattar! Lynn Stewart must not die in jail!

*From The "SteveLendmanBlog" -The Latest On Lynne Stewart- Free Lynne Stewart -She Must Not Die In Prison

Click on the headline to link to the "SteveLendmanBlog" for an update entry on the case of Lynne Stewart, the New York "people's lawyer" sitting in jail for merely being a zealous advocate for her clients. A thing that she is suppose to do according to even the obscure bourgeois precepts of law.


I will merely repost here in April 2010 what I wrote in honor of Lynne Stewart for Women's History Month last month.

March Is Women's History Month.

Markin comment:

On a day when I am honoring the great revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg, the "Rose of the Revolution", it seems very, very appropriate to enter a post from the Lynn Stewart Defense Committee Website. Both women have worked the same side of the street- for the poor, for the working people, for women, for the downtrodden. I will repeat here what has become something of a constant refrain-and will continue so until Lynn Stewart and her co-workers are free. Lynn Stewart must not die in jail!

*The Latest From The "Trade Unionist And Socialist Coalition (Britain)" Website- As The British Elections Draw Near

Click on the headline to link to the " Trade Unionist And Socialist Coalition" Website for an update on the pre-election situation in Britain.

Markin comment:

I know this following comment will have more than one New Labor so-called socialist advocate squirming in his or her seat but the beginning of wisdom is a NO vote for New Labor. One can no longer, as a socialist of any stripe, hide behind Vladimir Lenin's old slogan back in the days- Support Labor like a rope supports a dying man- No pull the trap.

*The Latest From The Anti-War Movement in the "Belly Of The Beast"- The Fort Drum- "Different Drummer Internet Cafe" Website

Click on the headline to line to latest from the anti-war movement in the "Belly Of The Beast"- The Fort Drum "Different Drummer Internet Cafe" Website.

Markin comment:

When soldiers turn against the war, haltingly at first, half-fearfully at first, half-shamefacedly at first, then you know when you reach enough of them that that war's days are numbered. Our problem right now is to get that "enough of them". But when we do... watch out!

*UJP's Protest Of President Obama's Afghan War Policy In Boston On April 1st-Troops Out Now

Click on the headline to link to the "United For Justice With Peace" Website for a posting on their anti-Afghan war demonstration against President Barack Obama when he came to Boston in order to raise funds for the Democratic National Committee.


Markin comment:

The stars are not in alignment these days. At least not in alignment in our favor, for those of us who have opposed President Obama, his governance of the American imperial state and , particularly, his Iraq and Afghan war policies from the left. No question that Obama is riding “high” after a few well-published victories for his domestic policies (the truly ugly and poorly thought-out, even by bourgeois standards, health care package that just passed Congress) and an appearance of doing something in foreign policy by taking a “red-eye express” flight to Afghanistan to lay down the law to the “Mayor of Kabul”, the current squirming American puppet, Karzai.

In light of that flourish Obama has deemed it safe to run around the country raising huge sums of cash for his political party. Part of that effort brought him to Boston on April 1st. (No sophomoric jokes necessary here. Moreover, in Obama we are not dealing with a fool like the last guy, uh, Bush, who ran the ship of imperial state into the ground but rather a very capable agent of that state.) In response the local chapter of the United For Justice With Peace Coalition (UJP) sponsored a protest centered on Afghanistan to greet him. And that is the reason that I say for us today that the stars are not aligned.

No question that Obama, for a myriad of reasons, has gotten a free pass, except for the crazies on the right and their front, “The Tea Party Express”, from the general populace. More importantly, he has gotten a free pass on the Afghan question and not just from the general populace but, apparently for now, a fair share of the left. At least, that part of the left that we are interested in making anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist fighters. I offer the response to the UJP demonstration call and who came to the protest as prima facie evidence for that comment.

As the linked post above graphically demonstrates few people (about 100) showed up and those who did had, frankly, a “more in sorrow than anger” perspective in confronting the Democratic Party bigwigs who showed up to rub shoulders with their President. The core of the protest was led by Raging Grannies and Code Pink activists. Now, before I am tarred and feathered, and rightly so for making sport of the efforts of my fellow AARPers and their allies to “bring the war home” let me say that I have worked, of necessity, with these kind of groups all my political life. And where we can agree on an issue, like Afghanistan withdrawal, if not the strategy to accomplish that, I am more that willing to “united front” with them. My point here is rather why, in 2010, are raging grannies, raging mid-life protesters, raging pacifists of all ages standing almost alone along side the remnants of the anti-imperialist left that was so vociferous earlier in the decade. This local configuration reflects the same phenomena that was witnessed in the Washington March 20th anti-war demonstration.

Something is indeed out of alignment when grey hair, grey beards, granny shoes (for real), granny glasses and all the other impedimenta of old age greatly outnumber the single idealist young student, the young working class parents worried about the future of the planet for their kids, and blacks and other minorities who have been beaten down, and beaten down hard in this decade. With no relief in sight. Obviously we continue to organize as best we can but I believe, at least I believe today, that all this “apathy” in the face of serious social destruction here, and internationally, among the young cannot be simply reduced to changes in lifestyle, changing technology, and changes in the way that youth connect socially. I mentioned at one time in a earlier post that I thought, as a rule, the youth that I run into today have no grand dreams, no grand schemes like those that drove my generation in our youth, but try to get by day to day as best they can. I also mentioned that I was perfectly willing to be corrected on that score. And I still am. But in the meantime- Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops From Iraq And Afghanistan!

*The Latest From The "Black Is Back Coalition" Website- A Haiti Rally

Click on the title to link to the latest from the "Black Is Back Coalition" Website- A Haiti Rally

*The Latest From The "HistoMat" Blog- It Time For Class War In England (And America)

Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" blog entry on the need to talk "Bolshevik" to the bosses in...England. Hell, here in America as well.

Markin comment:

The writer of the "HistoMat" blog must be reading my mind. I have been thinking and writing about just this subject very recently. In fact check later today for a comment on the Afghan/Iraq anti-war struggle (or lack of it) in the United States that makes the same general point. Thanks, "HistoMat".

*From "The Rag Blog"- Haiti Looking More Like A War Zone- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a "The Rag Blog" etry concerning the latest from devastated Haiti.

Markin comment:

On this entry a picture speaks one thousand, no one million, words.

*The Latest From Anti-War Movement In The "Belly Of The Beast"- The Fort Lewis "GI Voice" Website

Click on the headline to line to latest from the anti-war movement in the "Belly Of The Beast"- The Fort Lewis "GI Voice" Website.

Markin comment:

When soldiers turn against the war, haltingly at first, half-fearfully at first, half-shamefacedly at first, then you know when you reach enough of them the war's days are numbered. Our problem right now is to get that "enough of them". But when we do... watch out!

*From The "SteveLendmanBlog"-Indoctrinating Israeli Youths to be Warriors -A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to the "SteveLendmanBlog" entry noted in the headline above.

Markin comment:

I am, as I have mentioned before, always happy to link to this blog, especially when the subject is the intractable Palestinian situation, and the ever-expanding, provocative Israeli settlements. Every time that I even think about this situation it is clear that nothing short of socialism, and all that means about the changes in political consciousness on every side that would put that solution on the agenda in this situation, will settle this thing. But let us be clear, today the obligation of every leftist militant is encapsulated in this slogan- "Defend the Palestinian People"- and I would, add, the best way we can. More on this later.

*The Latest From The "An Unrepentant Communist" Blog- The Action in Greece

Click on the headline to link to the "Unrepentant Communist" blog entry for an update on the situationof one old time anti-fascist militant in Greece during th erecent anti-governmental struggles there.

Markin comment:

We had best preserve, and do so quickly, the words, thoughts and comments of heroic old time World War II anti-fascist fighters like Manolis Glezos while they are still alive, whether they fought under the Stalinist banner or ours. In that struggle Stalinist militants like Glezos were our people, even if they were not "our people". I am making some effects to touch base these days with the remnants of the American Abraham Lincoln Batallion of the 15th International Brigade who fought in the Spanish Civil War with that same intention, and there are precious fewer of those "pre-mature" anti-fascists left.

***Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-From The Pages Of "Dissent"- An Irving Howe Literary Criticism Primer

Click on the headline to link to a 'Wikipedia" entry for "Dissent" magazine, a journal that Irving Howe, the social-democratic literary critic was instrumental in producing from the 1950s on until his death.


Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book Review

Irving Howe: Selected Writings 1950-1990, Irving Howe, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1990

A couple of years ago, as part of a series of some youthful recollections triggered by a fellow high school classmate who was looking for a far different type response, more banal and routine family stuff mainly, I dragged out memories of my first associations with the name Irving Howe and his New York-based journal, “Dissent”, that I frequently read at the local branch of the library. The points there can rightly serve as background of Howe’s selected writings, mainly from “Dissent”, under review here:


“In two recent commentaries I have done my fair share of kicking Professor Irving Howe, the late social democratic editor of the intellectual quarterly magazine "Dissent", around. And I am not finished by any means. (See "The Retreat of the “Greatest Generation” Intellectuals" and "Who ‘Lost’ the Sixties?" in the May 2008 archives) But today, as this is as is oft-quoted a confessional age, I have a confession, or rather two confessions, to make about my connections to Irving Howe. So for the time that it takes to write this commentary up I will call an armed truce with the shades of the professor.

Confession #1- in the mist of time of my youth I actually used to like to read "Dissent". The articles were interesting, and as we were too poor for the family to afford a subscription, I spent many an hour reading through back issues at the local public library. I make no pretense that I understood all that was in each article and some that I re-read latter left me cold but there you have it.

Probably the most impressive article I read was Norman Mailer’s "White Negro". I could relate to the violence and sense of 'hipness' that was hidden just under the surface of the article, especially the violence as it was not that far removed from that in my own poor white working class neighborhood, although I probably would not have articulated it that way at the time. Interestingly, Professor Sorin in his Howe biography notes that Howe thought the article was a mistake for "Dissent" to publish for that very homage to violence implicit in the article. That now says it all.

The funny thing about reading "Dissent", at the time, thinking about it now, was that I was personally nothing more than a Kennedy liberal and thought that the magazine reflected that New Frontier liberalism. I was somewhat shocked when I found out later that it was suppose to be an independent 'socialist' magazine. Most of my political positions at the time were far to the left of what was being presented there editorially, especially on international issues. I might add that I also had an odd political dichotomy in those days toward those to the left of my own liberalism. I was very indulgent toward communists but really hated socialists, really social democrats. Go figure. Must have been something in the water.


Confession#2- Irving Howe actually acted, unintentionally, as my recruiting sergeant to the works of Leon Trotsky that eventually led to my embrace of a Trotskyist world view. As I noted last year I have been a Marxist since 1972. But after some 150 years of Marxism claiming to be a Marxist is only the beginning of wisdom. One has to find the modern thread that continues in the spirit of the founders. This year marks my 35th year as a follower of Leon Trotsky. Back in 1972, as part of trying to find a political path to modern Marxism I picked up a collection of socialist works edited by Professor Howe. In that compilation was an excerpt from Trotsky’s "History of the Russian Revolution", a section called "On Dual Power". I read it, and then re-read it. Next day I went out to scrounge up a copy of the whole work. And the rest is history. So, thanks, Professor Howe- now back to the polemical wars- the truce is over.”

That said, it is again time to call a truce, or at least a momentary “ceasefire” as I briefly mention how good Professor Howe can be when he is away from the class struggle and deep in reflection on his specialty, American literary traditions, important Western canon authors and even, occasionally, a gem about the trials and tribulations of past history of the generic socialist movement in America.

This selection includes provocative essays on the benighted William Faulkner; the heroic Soviet writer, Isaac Babel; unkindly digs at the reputation of Theodore Dreiser; the then unjustifiably much neglected Sholom Aleichem; a very justifiably angry Richard Wright, a quirky view of George Eliot; and, Jewish characters in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”. Not bad, right?

And then, less successfully, some more generic essays about his crowd, the malaise of, mainly Jewish, New York intellectuals of the 1950s. Also an objectivist apologia for the failure of socialist ideas to take roots in the mainstream of American political life thus retrospectively (and prospectively as well) absolving himself, and his crowd, from a share of the responsibility for its then current failure by “farming” out the task to the American imperial state, the "State Department socialism' that is still with us. I guess with that last phase the "ceasefire" is over. But read this book if you want to know what high-grade literary criticism was like before the zany deconstructionists held sway.

*What's Up With The Leninist Vanguard Party Concept?- A Discussion Note

Click on the headline to link to the "Lenin Internet Archive" online copy of Lenin's famous, "What Is To Be Done?: Burning Issues Of Our Movement" that will give the entry below some perspective.

Markin comment;

Recently I have mentioned in a number of entries that I have worked in the past with, and now work with, a loose "circle" of local anti-war militants who have decided on a three point program to fight Obama’s war policies over the coming year, highlighted by the struggle to create anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees.
I have also recently placed a number of pieces of historical interest around the World War I anti-imperialist, anti-war work done by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party that he led at the time. A comparison of the differences between the two types of political work as portrayed in my entries, and as was pointed out to me most graphically by a local political opponent who is a supporter of an organization that claims a Leninist organizational heritage, seems to be contradictory. Add in the factor that this blog, in many ways, does not have much meaning or reason for existence except as a vehicle to learn the lessons that Lenin and Trotsky drew about revolutionary politics, and organization, and the contradiction seems even greater.

That said, what is the great to-do about? Just this. The core of Leninist politics has historically evolved around intransigent opposition to non-revolutionary strategic considerations in the struggle for our communist future AND the notion of a vanguard working class party as the vehicle to take power on the road to that future. The organizational form that that party form has taken, for those who today may not be familiar with what in the past was a serious difference of political perspectives, was that this organization would be staffed by, in short, professional revolutionaries and held together by democratic-centralist discipline. That form of discipline, when in right working order allowed for pretty free-wheeling discussion internally between comrades but once a decision was made, right or wrong, in public the party would operate under that majority line. The other, traditional social-democratic form called for a party of the whole class, warts and all, and a basic cavalier attitude toward carrying out the party line, except when you crossed swords with the party bureaucracy. Trotsky had many early disagreements with Lenin over this dispute but, for our purposes here, once he was won over to Lenin’s organizational perspective he held to that view until his assassination by a Stalinist agent in 1940.

That is, in a nutshell, the outline of the historic argument. How does that fit in with the work of a man, this writer, who claims to stand in the Leninist tradition today yet who works in a “circle”, a devise that in Russian revolutionary history was discarded by almost all serious revolutionaries in the late 19th century as inadequate to the tasks at hand for the upcoming revolution that everyone saw as necessary, and was coming in due course? Well, a history of the “circle” is in order. The core of this group, including this writer, came together in the fall of 2001 in response to the threat of then President George W. Bush’s to blow Afghanistan to smithereens in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks.

I have mentioned, I think, in previous entries that there have been quite a few times in my long “street” political career that I have faced all sorts of dangerous situations and that I was very seldom fearful for my person. In those post-Trade Center days being out on the streets in opposition to that Afghan war I was afraid, more often than not. Not from the right wing crazies; that comes with the territory of left wing politics. Nor from the police who see these things all in day’s work whether they get to beat heads or not. Nor, as in past experiences, from some bizarre Stalinist or anarchoid left political "thugs". No this fear stemmed from the reaction of the average placid fellow citizen who was ready to take my scalp and made me realize that while I might have American citizenship I was not an American to them. What got me, and us, through those days was the internal discipline and camaraderie of the "circle". That, my friends, was a baptism of fire that you do not walk way from easily, not should you, all other things being equal.

And what of the political composition of the circle? Well, it was, and is, all over the place from semi-pacifist to ostensibly Leninist, with some quasi-anarchism thrown in for good measure, but the core that has held it together, other than that extreme sense of camaraderie mentioned above, is an anti-American imperialist ethos. A need to see the American “monster” held in check, tamped down. The current “three whales” program is a codification of that- opposition to American military adventures as they pop up; a need to break with the old politics and create a workers party that fights for a workers government; and, as the most overt expression of that need to “tamp down” the “monster”, those anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. That we agree on.

I also wrote in a recent blog that there was internal controversy over the question of putting energies into building the then called-for spring anti-war rallies in Washington, D.C. on March 20th. We are thus emphatically not a democratic- centralism organization. I would, since I have to write about it here, characterize it as an on-going rolling “united front”. Others may, given my description, call it a propaganda bloc. Not Leninist, in any case. Yet, until I see something on the horizon that is more attractive and more coherent that the myriad other "circles", leagues, groups, tendencies, committees and "parties" I am perfectly comfortable with this formation. Lenin may turn over in his mausoleum but that is the case right now