Click on the headline to link to the Communication Workers Of America website for the latest in their strike action against "fat cat" Verizon.
Markin comment:
The issues: wages, health care, conditions of work, pensions and out-sourcing a now familiar litany of things that used to be negotiated without much muse or fuse but now entail a "cold" civil war in the class struggle. We need a win here, especially after the last few years. Victory to the Verizon workers! All out in solidarity with the Verizon workers!
Monday, August 08, 2011
From The "Jobs With Justice" Website- The Issues In The Verizon Strike- Victory To The Verizon Workers!
Verizon on Strike!
by workersrights
(No verified email address) 07 Aug 2011
http://www.massjwj.net/node/59779
As you have heard, the IBEW and CWA are on strike against Verizon, including Verizon Wireless. The unions will picket all locations including the wireless stores and will be calling for a boycott. Though they approached bargaining with the intention to reach a fair deal, Verizon had a different agenda. The compny began bargaining by proposing a series of demands that would shift the cost of healthcare, eliminate pensions, and eliminate job security. The company has also made it clear that they wish to transfer more work out of the bargaining unit and most likely out of the country. For good measure, Verizon has proposed slashing paid sick days and removing Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Veteran's day as paid holidays. As bargaining approached it's final hours, the company refused to have any real discussions about these vital issues. Instead, they stalled until the final minutes and simply reiterated their intention to achieve more profits on the backs of the workers. The solidarity that has been on display in recent weeks is truly humbling to the men and women who are in this struggle. Now these folks are on strike and need to ask for your continued support. Verizon is now ground-zero for the war on workers. We intend to fight with great vigor and a righteous anger against the greed that is crushing our middle class. We will win, and we will stop this war on workers right here at Verizon. It's our time and we will Stand Up! We will Rise Up! And we will most certainly Act UP! We ask you to join with us!
Jobs with Justice wll be helping at FIOS sites, Wireless Sites and their Headquarters. If you can, please stop by 185 Franklin Street in Boston today.
Verizon Workers Need your Support!
Highly profitableVerizon wants major concessions from its employees in contract talks that expired August 6th
Verizon Is Proposing:
Major Reductions in Wages:
* Raises will be tied to yearly evaluation, which means if you receive a “Does Not Meet Position Requirements” you will not receive an increase. This leaves workers at the mercy of their supervisors, much like workers who don’t have a union.
* Eliminate Night Differential pay for workers on the night shift and second shift
* Eliminate Sunday premium pay and all overtime limitations.
* Create new job titles for the consumer and business call centers that would work on a commission based wage schedule.
Destruction of workers’ pensions:
* Eliminate pensions going forward. For anyone currently on the payroll pensions will be frozen as of December 31, 2011 and after that, there will be no more pension plan.
* Eliminate the Pension Cash-Out option. , Modify the 401(k) plan, and eliminate the Sickness & Death Benefit.
Weakening of health care provisions:
* Eliminate the current health care, prescription, dental, and vision plans and offer plans with high deductibles and co-pays.
* Eliminate accident disability benefits.
* Cut in half the sickness disability benefits.
* Reduce sick time pay to 5 days per year for those members with 20 or more years, 4 days for those with 15 - 20 years, 3 days for those with 7- 15 years, 2 days for those with 2 – 7 years and 0 days for those with less than 2 years.
Elimination of some paid holidays:
* Reduce Paid Holidays to seven by eliminating such “unimportant” holidays such as Martin Luther King Day and Veterans Day.
* Eliminate the half day on Christmas Eve
Reduction of child care support:
* Eliminate the Dependent Care Reimbursement Fund. Every year Verizon is voted one of the best places for working mothers by Working Mothers magazine for this benefit that helps workers pay for childcare.
Gutting of job security provisions:
* Eliminate the Job Security Provisions for all employees and eliminate the Movement of Work Protection. In other words Verizon can now outsource jobs and not have to negotiate the impact on workers.
Last year Verizon made $3.6 billion in profit in 2010 and paid the top 10 executives handsomely. They paid zero in federal income tax. Their proposals seek to eliminate good jobs. The standards that Verizon workers have are the standards that we should seek for all workers, not a race to the bottom. We need to send a very clear message that unchecked corporate greed is not acceptable in our community and that we will not stand by as they seek to undo progress made over the past twenty years. We need to stand unified and ready to fight for good jobs and a future for workers at highly profitable companies like Verizon.
This work is in the public domain
by workersrights
(No verified email address) 07 Aug 2011
http://www.massjwj.net/node/59779
As you have heard, the IBEW and CWA are on strike against Verizon, including Verizon Wireless. The unions will picket all locations including the wireless stores and will be calling for a boycott. Though they approached bargaining with the intention to reach a fair deal, Verizon had a different agenda. The compny began bargaining by proposing a series of demands that would shift the cost of healthcare, eliminate pensions, and eliminate job security. The company has also made it clear that they wish to transfer more work out of the bargaining unit and most likely out of the country. For good measure, Verizon has proposed slashing paid sick days and removing Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Veteran's day as paid holidays. As bargaining approached it's final hours, the company refused to have any real discussions about these vital issues. Instead, they stalled until the final minutes and simply reiterated their intention to achieve more profits on the backs of the workers. The solidarity that has been on display in recent weeks is truly humbling to the men and women who are in this struggle. Now these folks are on strike and need to ask for your continued support. Verizon is now ground-zero for the war on workers. We intend to fight with great vigor and a righteous anger against the greed that is crushing our middle class. We will win, and we will stop this war on workers right here at Verizon. It's our time and we will Stand Up! We will Rise Up! And we will most certainly Act UP! We ask you to join with us!
Jobs with Justice wll be helping at FIOS sites, Wireless Sites and their Headquarters. If you can, please stop by 185 Franklin Street in Boston today.
Verizon Workers Need your Support!
Highly profitableVerizon wants major concessions from its employees in contract talks that expired August 6th
Verizon Is Proposing:
Major Reductions in Wages:
* Raises will be tied to yearly evaluation, which means if you receive a “Does Not Meet Position Requirements” you will not receive an increase. This leaves workers at the mercy of their supervisors, much like workers who don’t have a union.
* Eliminate Night Differential pay for workers on the night shift and second shift
* Eliminate Sunday premium pay and all overtime limitations.
* Create new job titles for the consumer and business call centers that would work on a commission based wage schedule.
Destruction of workers’ pensions:
* Eliminate pensions going forward. For anyone currently on the payroll pensions will be frozen as of December 31, 2011 and after that, there will be no more pension plan.
* Eliminate the Pension Cash-Out option. , Modify the 401(k) plan, and eliminate the Sickness & Death Benefit.
Weakening of health care provisions:
* Eliminate the current health care, prescription, dental, and vision plans and offer plans with high deductibles and co-pays.
* Eliminate accident disability benefits.
* Cut in half the sickness disability benefits.
* Reduce sick time pay to 5 days per year for those members with 20 or more years, 4 days for those with 15 - 20 years, 3 days for those with 7- 15 years, 2 days for those with 2 – 7 years and 0 days for those with less than 2 years.
Elimination of some paid holidays:
* Reduce Paid Holidays to seven by eliminating such “unimportant” holidays such as Martin Luther King Day and Veterans Day.
* Eliminate the half day on Christmas Eve
Reduction of child care support:
* Eliminate the Dependent Care Reimbursement Fund. Every year Verizon is voted one of the best places for working mothers by Working Mothers magazine for this benefit that helps workers pay for childcare.
Gutting of job security provisions:
* Eliminate the Job Security Provisions for all employees and eliminate the Movement of Work Protection. In other words Verizon can now outsource jobs and not have to negotiate the impact on workers.
Last year Verizon made $3.6 billion in profit in 2010 and paid the top 10 executives handsomely. They paid zero in federal income tax. Their proposals seek to eliminate good jobs. The standards that Verizon workers have are the standards that we should seek for all workers, not a race to the bottom. We need to send a very clear message that unchecked corporate greed is not acceptable in our community and that we will not stand by as they seek to undo progress made over the past twenty years. We need to stand unified and ready to fight for good jobs and a future for workers at highly profitable companies like Verizon.
This work is in the public domain
Photos From The August 4th Boston Union Solidarity Rally In Support Of The Now Striking Verizon Workers- Victory To The Verizon Workers! All Out In Support Of tHe Verizon Picket Lines!
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indymedia entry for a August 4th Boston union rally in support of the demands of the now striker Verizon workers.
Markin comment:
Victory to the Verizon workers! All out in support of the Verizon picket lines!
Markin comment:
Victory to the Verizon workers! All out in support of the Verizon picket lines!
From The "Partisan Defense Committee" Website- Defend Chicano Activist Carlos Montes!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Workers Vanguard No. 982
10 June 2011
FBI Raids Hit LA
Defend Chicano Activist Carlos Montes!
Broadening the government’s witchhunt of leftist activists, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s SWAT team and the FBI invaded the Alhambra home of Carlos Montes, a veteran Chicano activist, in the pre-dawn hours of May 17, breaking down the door and tearing his house apart. Using reactionary gun control laws, the agents arrested Montes on a pretext of violating a firearms code. What is clear is that he was targeted for his 44-year history of leftist political activism. A founder of the Chicano Moratorium Movement Against the Vietnam War and cofounder of the Brown Berets, Montes is a supporter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and writes for its newspaper, Fight Back! He is also a leader of the Southern California Immigration Coalition.
Montes had recently worked with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, which was formed to defend 23 Midwestern leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists targeted by the FBI since September 2010 for the “crime” of solidarity with the oppressed in Latin America and the Near East (see WV No. 966, 8 October 2010). Many of the activists had helped to organize protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention. These included Montes, who was named in the subpoena at the time of the September FBI raid. Others were active in the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society and FRSO. Courageously, the 23 activists have refused to testify before the Chicago grand jury.
Released on bail, Montes described the raid to EGP News (27 May). He stated that the FBI and SWAT squad “tore down the door and ransacked my house, took my computer, took my computer files, took my cell phone. They looked at my family albums from the movement, from the Chicano Moratorium, the Community Service Organization, May 1st Southern California Immigration Coalition. It’s political persecution.” The FBI tried to question Montes about the FRSO as he was being taken to jail. The Los Angeles Times and other bourgeois news sources have blacked out coverage of Montes’ frame-up arrest.
In vastly expanding the state’s repressive powers in the name of the “war on terror” over the last decade, the capitalist government has slashed fundamental rights of association and speech. In June 2010, the Supreme Court expanded the definition of what legally can be considered “material support to terrorism” to include a wide range of activities deemed as somehow aiding proscribed foreign organizations, from giving money to Muslim charities to publishing interviews with leftist guerrilla fighters. Three months later, the Feds launched their attack against the Midwestern leftists and labor activists.
During the 2008 elections, liberals and reformist leftists, including the FRSO, pushed the dangerous myth that the election of Obama would reverse the worst policies of George W. Bush. But as the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, Obama has amply shown that his promises to clean up the “excesses” of the Bush administration were nothing other than a statement to wage the “war on terror” more effectively. With the FBI raids against leftists, the Obama White House has trumped the Bush regime’s assault on civil liberties.
The purpose of the “anti-terror” witchhunt is to terrorize the population, which in turn is supposed to accept the expansion of police powers at home while supporting predatory wars abroad. The ultimate target of the capitalist state’s repressive measures is the multiracial working class, which alone has the social power and interest in smashing capitalist rule and replacing it with a workers state.
It is in the vital interests of the labor movement to defend Carlos Montes and all those caught up in the “anti-terror” witchhunts. The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the SL, demand that the charges against Montes and the Midwestern activists be dropped, that the subpoenas be withdrawn, and that all seized materials be returned to them. A protest is being called for Carlos Montes’ first court appearance on June 16. It will take place outside the Alhambra Court House, located at 150 West Commonwealth Avenue, at 7:30 a.m. Down with the imperialists’ “war on terror”! An injury to one is an injury to all!
Workers Vanguard No. 982
10 June 2011
FBI Raids Hit LA
Defend Chicano Activist Carlos Montes!
Broadening the government’s witchhunt of leftist activists, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s SWAT team and the FBI invaded the Alhambra home of Carlos Montes, a veteran Chicano activist, in the pre-dawn hours of May 17, breaking down the door and tearing his house apart. Using reactionary gun control laws, the agents arrested Montes on a pretext of violating a firearms code. What is clear is that he was targeted for his 44-year history of leftist political activism. A founder of the Chicano Moratorium Movement Against the Vietnam War and cofounder of the Brown Berets, Montes is a supporter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and writes for its newspaper, Fight Back! He is also a leader of the Southern California Immigration Coalition.
Montes had recently worked with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, which was formed to defend 23 Midwestern leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists targeted by the FBI since September 2010 for the “crime” of solidarity with the oppressed in Latin America and the Near East (see WV No. 966, 8 October 2010). Many of the activists had helped to organize protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention. These included Montes, who was named in the subpoena at the time of the September FBI raid. Others were active in the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society and FRSO. Courageously, the 23 activists have refused to testify before the Chicago grand jury.
Released on bail, Montes described the raid to EGP News (27 May). He stated that the FBI and SWAT squad “tore down the door and ransacked my house, took my computer, took my computer files, took my cell phone. They looked at my family albums from the movement, from the Chicano Moratorium, the Community Service Organization, May 1st Southern California Immigration Coalition. It’s political persecution.” The FBI tried to question Montes about the FRSO as he was being taken to jail. The Los Angeles Times and other bourgeois news sources have blacked out coverage of Montes’ frame-up arrest.
In vastly expanding the state’s repressive powers in the name of the “war on terror” over the last decade, the capitalist government has slashed fundamental rights of association and speech. In June 2010, the Supreme Court expanded the definition of what legally can be considered “material support to terrorism” to include a wide range of activities deemed as somehow aiding proscribed foreign organizations, from giving money to Muslim charities to publishing interviews with leftist guerrilla fighters. Three months later, the Feds launched their attack against the Midwestern leftists and labor activists.
During the 2008 elections, liberals and reformist leftists, including the FRSO, pushed the dangerous myth that the election of Obama would reverse the worst policies of George W. Bush. But as the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism, Obama has amply shown that his promises to clean up the “excesses” of the Bush administration were nothing other than a statement to wage the “war on terror” more effectively. With the FBI raids against leftists, the Obama White House has trumped the Bush regime’s assault on civil liberties.
The purpose of the “anti-terror” witchhunt is to terrorize the population, which in turn is supposed to accept the expansion of police powers at home while supporting predatory wars abroad. The ultimate target of the capitalist state’s repressive measures is the multiracial working class, which alone has the social power and interest in smashing capitalist rule and replacing it with a workers state.
It is in the vital interests of the labor movement to defend Carlos Montes and all those caught up in the “anti-terror” witchhunts. The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the SL, demand that the charges against Montes and the Midwestern activists be dropped, that the subpoenas be withdrawn, and that all seized materials be returned to them. A protest is being called for Carlos Montes’ first court appearance on June 16. It will take place outside the Alhambra Court House, located at 150 West Commonwealth Avenue, at 7:30 a.m. Down with the imperialists’ “war on terror”! An injury to one is an injury to all!
FromThe "Partisan Defense Committee" Website-Drop the Charges Against Norberto González Claudio!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Drop the Charges Against Norberto González Claudio!
On June 27, the Partisan Defense Committee sent the following letter of protest to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
The Partisan Defense Committee condemns the arrest and prosecution of Puerto Rican nationalist Norberto González Claudio and demands his freedom.
The 66-year-old Mr. González Claudio faces over 200 years in prison—a death sentence—for the crime of dedicating his life to opposing U.S. colonialism in his native Puerto Rico. He is reputed to be a leader of the group Ejército Popular Boricua or Puerto Rican Popular Army, popularly known as Los Macheteros, which took credit for the 1983 robbery of $7 million from a Wells Fargo armored car depot in Connecticut.
Given the more than 100-year history of U.S. occupation, deprivation of democratic rights, brutal terror and frame-up prosecutions of those fighting for Puerto Rico’s independence, there is no reason to believe any of the charges against Mr. González Claudio. At the same time, we recall that money expropriated from Wells Fargo was used to buy and distribute toys to the impoverished children of Puerto Rico.
In their heyday, the Macheteros were widely admired across the Puerto Rico colony nation, a respect displayed by the outpouring of opposition six years ago, when dozens of FBI agents equipped with helicopters, military vehicles and machine guns participated in the coldblooded execution of one of the founders of that group, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. The U.S. government’s efforts to condemn Mr. González Claudio to a prison death for a bank robbery over 25 years ago is part of campaign to criminalize all who would oppose U.S. imperialism and its more than a century of domination of that strategic island. We vigorously defend Puerto Rico's right to demand an end to U.S. colonialism.
We demand that all charges against Norberto González Claudio be dropped and he be released immediately and unconditionally.
Drop the Charges Against Norberto González Claudio!
On June 27, the Partisan Defense Committee sent the following letter of protest to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
The Partisan Defense Committee condemns the arrest and prosecution of Puerto Rican nationalist Norberto González Claudio and demands his freedom.
The 66-year-old Mr. González Claudio faces over 200 years in prison—a death sentence—for the crime of dedicating his life to opposing U.S. colonialism in his native Puerto Rico. He is reputed to be a leader of the group Ejército Popular Boricua or Puerto Rican Popular Army, popularly known as Los Macheteros, which took credit for the 1983 robbery of $7 million from a Wells Fargo armored car depot in Connecticut.
Given the more than 100-year history of U.S. occupation, deprivation of democratic rights, brutal terror and frame-up prosecutions of those fighting for Puerto Rico’s independence, there is no reason to believe any of the charges against Mr. González Claudio. At the same time, we recall that money expropriated from Wells Fargo was used to buy and distribute toys to the impoverished children of Puerto Rico.
In their heyday, the Macheteros were widely admired across the Puerto Rico colony nation, a respect displayed by the outpouring of opposition six years ago, when dozens of FBI agents equipped with helicopters, military vehicles and machine guns participated in the coldblooded execution of one of the founders of that group, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos. The U.S. government’s efforts to condemn Mr. González Claudio to a prison death for a bank robbery over 25 years ago is part of campaign to criminalize all who would oppose U.S. imperialism and its more than a century of domination of that strategic island. We vigorously defend Puerto Rico's right to demand an end to U.S. colonialism.
We demand that all charges against Norberto González Claudio be dropped and he be released immediately and unconditionally.
From The "Partisan Defense Committee" Website- Free the MOVE 9! Free Them Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website
Free the MOVE 9!
The following June 27 protest letter was sent by the Partisan Defense Committee to Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole chairman Catherine C. McVey.
The Partisan Defense Committee yet again joins with those supporting the release of the eight surviving political prisoners who have been collectively known as the MOVE 9.
By any of your standards—ties to the community and a support network outside to “ease their transition”—there is absolutely no reason that any one of these men and women should be denied parole.
Up to this point, the pretext for keeping the MOVE members locked behind bars is their refusal to express “remorse” for the killing of police officer James Ramp. This is a well-known ruse to deny parole to those who have been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. After the trial, when presiding judge Edwin Malmed was asked, “Who shot James Ramp?” he replied, “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Evidence released over time has clearly shown that Officer Ramp was killed in the massive crossfire by nearly 600 police officers who besieged the MOVE home on 8 August 1978.
It is an injustice that these men and women were ever incarcerated at all. Their continued confinement compounds that injustice on a daily basis. We call once more for the immediate, unconditional release of Debbie Africa, Janine Africa, Janet Africa, Chuck Africa, Eddie Africa, Phil Africa, Delbert Africa and Mike Africa.
Free the MOVE 9!
The following June 27 protest letter was sent by the Partisan Defense Committee to Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole chairman Catherine C. McVey.
The Partisan Defense Committee yet again joins with those supporting the release of the eight surviving political prisoners who have been collectively known as the MOVE 9.
By any of your standards—ties to the community and a support network outside to “ease their transition”—there is absolutely no reason that any one of these men and women should be denied parole.
Up to this point, the pretext for keeping the MOVE members locked behind bars is their refusal to express “remorse” for the killing of police officer James Ramp. This is a well-known ruse to deny parole to those who have been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. After the trial, when presiding judge Edwin Malmed was asked, “Who shot James Ramp?” he replied, “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Evidence released over time has clearly shown that Officer Ramp was killed in the massive crossfire by nearly 600 police officers who besieged the MOVE home on 8 August 1978.
It is an injustice that these men and women were ever incarcerated at all. Their continued confinement compounds that injustice on a daily basis. We call once more for the immediate, unconditional release of Debbie Africa, Janine Africa, Janet Africa, Chuck Africa, Eddie Africa, Phil Africa, Delbert Africa and Mike Africa.
From The Partisan Defense Committee-Down With Solitary Confinement of Leonard Peltier! -Free Leonard Peltier Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website
Down With Solitary Confinement of Leonard Peltier!
On July 9, the Partisan Defense Committee sent the following letter of protest to Thomas Kane, Acting Director of U.S. Prisons.
It has come to our attention that political prisoner Leonard Peltier has been placed in solitary confinement at USP Lewisburg. This is an outrage especially given this courageous man's serious medical conditions. This vindictive treatment puts his very life at risk.
Mr. Peltier is an innocent man who has been unjustly incarcerated for over 35 years because of his activism in defense of the rights of Native Americans. During that period his health has seriously deteriorated. He suffers from high blood pressure, a heart condition, failing eyesight and diabetes. As he is at risk for kidney failure, blindness and/or amputation, it is critical that Mr. Peltier be released from solitary confinement immediately and afforded all necessary medical treatment.
We, along with millions of others, do not believe that Leonard Peltier should have been incarcerated at all. We demand his unconditional release from prison.
Down With Solitary Confinement of Leonard Peltier!
On July 9, the Partisan Defense Committee sent the following letter of protest to Thomas Kane, Acting Director of U.S. Prisons.
It has come to our attention that political prisoner Leonard Peltier has been placed in solitary confinement at USP Lewisburg. This is an outrage especially given this courageous man's serious medical conditions. This vindictive treatment puts his very life at risk.
Mr. Peltier is an innocent man who has been unjustly incarcerated for over 35 years because of his activism in defense of the rights of Native Americans. During that period his health has seriously deteriorated. He suffers from high blood pressure, a heart condition, failing eyesight and diabetes. As he is at risk for kidney failure, blindness and/or amputation, it is critical that Mr. Peltier be released from solitary confinement immediately and afforded all necessary medical treatment.
We, along with millions of others, do not believe that Leonard Peltier should have been incarcerated at all. We demand his unconditional release from prison.
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-Workers' Action- April-May 1971
Click on the headline to link to a an online copy of Workers Action, an early labor-oriented newspaper of the International Communist League's Spartacist League/U.S. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1970, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle against the Nixon government around the effects of the cost of the Vietnam on the economic well-being of the American working class and support to then important strike actions. This issue, as importantly, poses the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1970 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
Another section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The last section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of organizing a union caucus. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1970, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle against the Nixon government around the effects of the cost of the Vietnam on the economic well-being of the American working class and support to then important strike actions. This issue, as importantly, poses the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1970 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
Another section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The last section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of organizing a union caucus. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night-Watch Out, Watch Way Out For Two-Timing Dames-“Human Desire”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Fritz Lang-directed film, Human Desire.
DVD Review
Human Desire, starring Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, based on a novel by Emil Zola, directed by Fritz Lang, Columbia Pictures, 1954
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, as here femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from 1954, Human Desire, offer both those and, additionally, the pedigree of a story-line based closely on the work of 19th century French writer, Emil Zola (he of Dreyfus case fame), and directed by German expressionist film director, Fritz Lang, with his flare for great and dramatic use of black and white cinematography. This film while not right up there with the top of the line Out Of The Past, Gilda and The Big Sleep, partially for chemistry factors between the lead characters and heaviness of plot line in places, is just a notch below. In other words you had better take an hour and a half and watch this thing.
A little summary of the plot line is in order to set the stage. Obviously Zola’s work was set in 19th century emerging bourgeois society France rather than 1950s post- World War II red scare America. But the tale he had to tell of thwarted love. love gone wrong, love never on the right track, and in the end, a cautionary tale of how far certain people will go, dare I say even to murder, sums up the range of human conditions, when the human body heat is up. And the body heat rising here is nothing less than sexual desire. Of course. Simply said a certain femme fatale, a certain speedy femme fatale as it turns out, played by 1950s B-movie fixture, Gloria Grahame, tired of trying to make do behind a cigarette counter does what any girl would do in the situation, marries a "big lug," a railroad middle-level management big lug guy who loves his booze, played by Broderick Crawford (he of All The King’s Men fame), in order to get out from under. But speedy femme fatales are not built for the slow, big lug life, especially when they have a little past, a little past as they always do, here as a former, maybe former, mistress of a Mayfair swell. Needless to say he, as the plot unrolls and big lug Crawford proves to be less a catch than anticipated, gets jealous when he finds out that said wifey has two-timed him. And big lugs know only one way, or seem to know only one way too deal with their two-timing wives, kill the lover, naturally, kill him here right in front of wifey and make her complicit in the murder, holding a certain piece of evidence to put the frame on her, put the frame on her big time, if she crosses him.
All of that is so much lead-up to the real story though. Two-timing femme fatales, whether they got their start behind a candy counter, a hat-check counter or cigarette counter, do not survive in this wicked old world without being primo man-traps. Man-traps that can wrap a guy, wrap a guy tight, very tight, and get him to do anything, anything at all, including, dare I say it, murder. Enter one returning Korean War GI, played by Glenn Ford, who on returning home to small-town Anytown, U.S.A. just wants to wash the grit of that experience off and continue his prior work as a railroad engineer moving goods and passengers along the quickly declining rails of 1950s America. And dream the dream of finding a good woman and grabbing a slice of the little white house with a picket fence, 2.2 kids and a dog, named Rover, probably. And, of course, she is there in the background.
But enter one two-timing femme fatale trying to get out from under a possible murder rap, out from under a loser husband, and who, well, looks like she might be a very nice little adventure, a very nice little adventure, indeed, especially once Glenn gets a whiff of that perfume, lights that cigarette, and takes dead aim at those ruby red lips (I assume they are ruby red, this is after all a black and white noir). Ya, she has him hook, line and sinker. Has him that is until “crunch time.” Then we shall see.
Naturally, in these crime noir melodramatic plots the need to put a big gap between good and evil is usually served up by there being a “good girl” counterposed to the femme fatale. That is the case here and is, in the end what stops old Glenn from going over the edge. But still I blame Glenn for most of the problems here. Yes, sure I wouldn’t have minded taking dead aim at those Grahame lips, who could blame a guy, a small town America guy, especially once she put on the full-court press with that cooing voice. Whee! But see Glenn has already been down this road before. He played Johnny to Rita Hayworth’s Gilda in the 1946 movie of the same name so he knows, or should be presumed to know, what happens when you take dead aim at those femme fatale lips. Here’s the “skinny” though- average joes, very average train engineer joes included, should keep fifty yards, no fifty miles, away from blonde (although they are not always blondes) femme fatales when they get that “come hither” look in their eyes. You have been warned.
DVD Review
Human Desire, starring Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, based on a novel by Emil Zola, directed by Fritz Lang, Columbia Pictures, 1954
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, as here femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from 1954, Human Desire, offer both those and, additionally, the pedigree of a story-line based closely on the work of 19th century French writer, Emil Zola (he of Dreyfus case fame), and directed by German expressionist film director, Fritz Lang, with his flare for great and dramatic use of black and white cinematography. This film while not right up there with the top of the line Out Of The Past, Gilda and The Big Sleep, partially for chemistry factors between the lead characters and heaviness of plot line in places, is just a notch below. In other words you had better take an hour and a half and watch this thing.
A little summary of the plot line is in order to set the stage. Obviously Zola’s work was set in 19th century emerging bourgeois society France rather than 1950s post- World War II red scare America. But the tale he had to tell of thwarted love. love gone wrong, love never on the right track, and in the end, a cautionary tale of how far certain people will go, dare I say even to murder, sums up the range of human conditions, when the human body heat is up. And the body heat rising here is nothing less than sexual desire. Of course. Simply said a certain femme fatale, a certain speedy femme fatale as it turns out, played by 1950s B-movie fixture, Gloria Grahame, tired of trying to make do behind a cigarette counter does what any girl would do in the situation, marries a "big lug," a railroad middle-level management big lug guy who loves his booze, played by Broderick Crawford (he of All The King’s Men fame), in order to get out from under. But speedy femme fatales are not built for the slow, big lug life, especially when they have a little past, a little past as they always do, here as a former, maybe former, mistress of a Mayfair swell. Needless to say he, as the plot unrolls and big lug Crawford proves to be less a catch than anticipated, gets jealous when he finds out that said wifey has two-timed him. And big lugs know only one way, or seem to know only one way too deal with their two-timing wives, kill the lover, naturally, kill him here right in front of wifey and make her complicit in the murder, holding a certain piece of evidence to put the frame on her, put the frame on her big time, if she crosses him.
All of that is so much lead-up to the real story though. Two-timing femme fatales, whether they got their start behind a candy counter, a hat-check counter or cigarette counter, do not survive in this wicked old world without being primo man-traps. Man-traps that can wrap a guy, wrap a guy tight, very tight, and get him to do anything, anything at all, including, dare I say it, murder. Enter one returning Korean War GI, played by Glenn Ford, who on returning home to small-town Anytown, U.S.A. just wants to wash the grit of that experience off and continue his prior work as a railroad engineer moving goods and passengers along the quickly declining rails of 1950s America. And dream the dream of finding a good woman and grabbing a slice of the little white house with a picket fence, 2.2 kids and a dog, named Rover, probably. And, of course, she is there in the background.
But enter one two-timing femme fatale trying to get out from under a possible murder rap, out from under a loser husband, and who, well, looks like she might be a very nice little adventure, a very nice little adventure, indeed, especially once Glenn gets a whiff of that perfume, lights that cigarette, and takes dead aim at those ruby red lips (I assume they are ruby red, this is after all a black and white noir). Ya, she has him hook, line and sinker. Has him that is until “crunch time.” Then we shall see.
Naturally, in these crime noir melodramatic plots the need to put a big gap between good and evil is usually served up by there being a “good girl” counterposed to the femme fatale. That is the case here and is, in the end what stops old Glenn from going over the edge. But still I blame Glenn for most of the problems here. Yes, sure I wouldn’t have minded taking dead aim at those Grahame lips, who could blame a guy, a small town America guy, especially once she put on the full-court press with that cooing voice. Whee! But see Glenn has already been down this road before. He played Johnny to Rita Hayworth’s Gilda in the 1946 movie of the same name so he knows, or should be presumed to know, what happens when you take dead aim at those femme fatale lips. Here’s the “skinny” though- average joes, very average train engineer joes included, should keep fifty yards, no fifty miles, away from blonde (although they are not always blondes) femme fatales when they get that “come hither” look in their eyes. You have been warned.
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-Workers' Action- November-December 1970
Click on the headline to link to a an online copy of Workers Action, an early labor-oriented newspaper of the International Communist League's Spartacist League/U.S. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
**********
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1970, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle against the Nixon government around the effects of the cost of the Vietnam on the economic well-being of the American working class. This issue, as importantly, poses the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1970 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
Another section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The last section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of organizing a union caucus. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
**********
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1970, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle against the Nixon government around the effects of the cost of the Vietnam on the economic well-being of the American working class. This issue, as importantly, poses the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1970 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
Another section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The last section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of organizing a union caucus. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-Workers' Action- October 1970
Click on the headline to link to a an online copy of Workers Action, an early labor-oriented newspaper of the International Communist League's Spartacist League/U.S. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1970, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle against the Nixon government around the effects of the cost of the Vietnam on the economic well-being of the American working class. This issue, as importantly, poses the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1970 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
Another section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The last section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of organizing a union caucus. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1970, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle against the Nixon government around the effects of the cost of the Vietnam on the economic well-being of the American working class. This issue, as importantly, poses the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1970 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
Another section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The last section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of organizing a union caucus. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
He’s Got You- With Kudos to Miss (Ms.) Patsy Cline
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Patsy Cline performing ht every appropriate (for this entry, juts reverse it) She's Got You.
CD Review
Patsy Cline: The Definitive Collection, Patsy Cline, MCA, 1991
Rick Roberts wanted to cry, wanted to just go into a corner and cry. Of course, as a man of the 1950s, of the hard-hearted Cold War shoulder-to-the-wheel, no prisoners taken love wars of the 1950s that was impossible. Impossible as well because although he felt himself a man in many ways, large, strong, virile and smart enough to make it to sixteen without too many mishaps he was still a boy, a Clintondale High junior boy. And that was the crux of the matter. No self-respecting boy (and, maybe, no self-not respecting boy if it came to it) would dream of going to a corner, or anywhere else, and cry, or let it be known that he was about to cry, or that he had cried at all past the age of six, maybe earlier . But Rick still wanted to cry. And it took no deep thought, no deep insight, no nothing to know the reason- a woman, well really a girl. June Davis, his "June Bug" (his pet name for her, although he would be the first to tell you do not, under any circumstances, call her that, or else-the “or else” part related to his being large, strong, virile and sixteen).
And, of course, if it’s a woman driving you to tears then it is almost a certainty that there is some guy behind the scenes stealing your time. And the name of the thief in this case is one Freddie Jackson, June’s elementary school flame, or something like that, but back a while ago. For christ sakes. And the way that Freddie did it was not so sneaky, well not sneaky, backdoor sneaky, but right in front of Rick at the last school dance. Freddie, for old time’s sake he said, asked Rick if it was okay for him to dance with June Bug when they played Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces. Rick didn’t think anything of it, he wasn’t much of a slow dancer and June liked the song and wanted dance.
What Rick didn’t know was the song was something like “their” song, their song for christ sake, along with Patsy’s Always and So Wrong. Rick thought Patsy was okay but not enough to make her songs “their” songs. Jerry Lee’s Breathless, for very private reasons, don’t ask or else, was their song (and for fun, as joke between them, since they met at the Wash-All Laundromat, Leader of the Laundromat). And now he is poring though every Patsy record he can find like Crazy, She’s Got You, Why Can’t He Be You, Back In Baby’s Arms, and Sweet Dreams Of You to figure out where he went wrong, and how to get his June Bug back. Back from that Freddie Jackson, for christ sakes.
CD Review
Patsy Cline: The Definitive Collection, Patsy Cline, MCA, 1991
Rick Roberts wanted to cry, wanted to just go into a corner and cry. Of course, as a man of the 1950s, of the hard-hearted Cold War shoulder-to-the-wheel, no prisoners taken love wars of the 1950s that was impossible. Impossible as well because although he felt himself a man in many ways, large, strong, virile and smart enough to make it to sixteen without too many mishaps he was still a boy, a Clintondale High junior boy. And that was the crux of the matter. No self-respecting boy (and, maybe, no self-not respecting boy if it came to it) would dream of going to a corner, or anywhere else, and cry, or let it be known that he was about to cry, or that he had cried at all past the age of six, maybe earlier . But Rick still wanted to cry. And it took no deep thought, no deep insight, no nothing to know the reason- a woman, well really a girl. June Davis, his "June Bug" (his pet name for her, although he would be the first to tell you do not, under any circumstances, call her that, or else-the “or else” part related to his being large, strong, virile and sixteen).
And, of course, if it’s a woman driving you to tears then it is almost a certainty that there is some guy behind the scenes stealing your time. And the name of the thief in this case is one Freddie Jackson, June’s elementary school flame, or something like that, but back a while ago. For christ sakes. And the way that Freddie did it was not so sneaky, well not sneaky, backdoor sneaky, but right in front of Rick at the last school dance. Freddie, for old time’s sake he said, asked Rick if it was okay for him to dance with June Bug when they played Patsy Cline’s I Fall To Pieces. Rick didn’t think anything of it, he wasn’t much of a slow dancer and June liked the song and wanted dance.
What Rick didn’t know was the song was something like “their” song, their song for christ sake, along with Patsy’s Always and So Wrong. Rick thought Patsy was okay but not enough to make her songs “their” songs. Jerry Lee’s Breathless, for very private reasons, don’t ask or else, was their song (and for fun, as joke between them, since they met at the Wash-All Laundromat, Leader of the Laundromat). And now he is poring though every Patsy record he can find like Crazy, She’s Got You, Why Can’t He Be You, Back In Baby’s Arms, and Sweet Dreams Of You to figure out where he went wrong, and how to get his June Bug back. Back from that Freddie Jackson, for christ sakes.
Friday, August 05, 2011
For Margaret Gilbert-In Lieu Of A Letter-For The Adamsville South Elementary Class of 1958
Click on the headline to link to The Literature Networks online copy of Edgar Allen Poe's, Ullalume. Sorry, the Mayakovsky poem that I followed in writing the post below is not available in English on the Internet. Poe's poem gives the dreamy mood I [Markin] was trying to evoke, though.
Ulalume (1847)
by Edgar Allan Poe
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll—
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere,—
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)—
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here)—
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn—
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs—
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies—
To the Lethean peace of the skies—
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes—
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust—
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty tonight!—
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright—
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom—
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied: "Ulalume -Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere—
As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed -I journeyed down here!—
That I brought a dread burden down here—
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—
This misty mid region of Weir—
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
{Said we, then — the two, then —" Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls —
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls —
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds —
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds —
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls —
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls ?")
********
Johnny Silver comment:
My old pal from North Adamsville high school days and before that down in the old- time Adamsville housing project (the infamous “projects”) where we went to elementary school together, Peter Paul Markin, recently asked me to write about my take on his “love affair,” his first time puppy-love affair (from afar to boot) with Margaret Gilbert in fourth grade down at Adamsville South Elementary School. I accepted with the proviso that whatever I wrote was not to be “edited” by him. See, I know he is a fast man with the delete button when things don’t come out just right in his rose-colored glasses world. So I am “trusting” him, as a man of honor, some old-time corner boy man of honor anyway, or rather I am holding certain information that he would no like to see in the public eye to make sure I get my say.
Why he is suddenly inflamed by the desire to stir the ashes of the past is beyond me. What he asked me is anybody’s guess. We hadn’t seen each for years until several years ago and I had, almost, well kind of almost, forgotten her name when he mentioned it. I guess he figured that since I went through the experience with him that I would tell the truth. Well, the truth of the matter was that while he was doing his mooning act, getting all misty-eyed every time she came within fifty yards of us, and endlessly “crying” on my shoulder about whether he should approach her, you know boy meets girl stuff that has been going on since Adam tried to date up Eve, I was holding the “torch” for her myself.
As was true of every non- juvenile delinquent guy in the school with enough sense to come in out of the rain on Tuesdays (jesus, I haven’t said that old-time schoolboy expression in ages, well since elementary school). Ya, she was like that, ten-years old like that, with that what was it, damn, gardenia scent or some exotic soap thing that drove me crazy any time she came within fifty yards of me. Had me mumbling to myself, mumbling distractedly. But see Markin, sweet old goof Peter Paul, couldn’t see I was hurting, hurting bad myself. Now some fifty years later turnabout is far play so I am just going to turn his little “in lieu of” around as my own valentine to Margaret Gilbert. Margaret, did you later drive half the men who came within fifty yards of you to distraction without even meaning too. The worst part not even aware of it. Lordy, lordy.
The best way to read, really read Peter Paul’s screed is wherever the idea seems to suggest some action (or inaction) by him just think old Johnny Silver. You too, Margaret Gilbert if you every see this. The asides “speak" for themselves:
“I make no claim to any literary originality [christ, the guy use to carry around index cards all through school with ideas on them, all unattributed, although none of us knew that at the time we just though they were all his ideas. It was not until later when I started to get serious about reading and would run across certain Markinisms I got hip to what he had done.] I will shamelessly ‘steal’ any idea, or half-idea that catches my fancy in order to make my point. [See aside above.] That is the case today, as I go back in time to my elementary school days down at the old Adamsville South Elementary School in the Adamsville projects. Part of the title for today’s entry and the central idea that I want to express is taken from a poem by the great Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. [Everybody and his brother knew Markin was crazy for Russian writers like Dostoevsky and poets like Pushkin in high school. We just thought he was a “red,” some kind of bolshevik creep who would get caught by the FBI soon enough. They never got him, I guess, and I ain’t a squealer, no way. Old Coach Duffy had his number in high school though. He called him a Bolshevik with a capital B right in front of the whole history class one day.]
So what do a poet who died in 1930 and a moonstruck kid from the Adamsville projects, growing up haphazardly in 1950s have in common? We have both been thrown back, unexpectedly, to childhood romantic fantasies of the “girl who got away.” [I already mentioned that I was clueless about why he is in a craze mode now about it so that covers me on this.] In my case, Margaret G. [nee Gilbert], as the title to this entry indicates. [See, that is where Markin’s weird sense of honor, romance, or just plain fear of girls got him nowhere. Fifty years later he is playing the gallant by not divulging her name like it was some state secret or like she hadn’t gotten married (if some guy was brave enough to get within fifty yards of her and survived the enveloping fragrances, lucky guy) or something.] I do not remember what triggered Mayakovsky’s memories but mine have been produced via an indirect North Adamsville Internet connection seeing her last name mentioned on a profile page. In this instance, damn the Internet. I do not know the fate of Margaret G., [Gilbert, okay for the slow-witted] although I fervently hope that life has worked out well for her. This I do know. For the time that it will take to write this entry I return to being a smitten, unhappy boy. [Ya, sometimes, every once in a blue moon, Markin catches a hold on the truth, the bone-dry truth. Margaret G., ah, nee Gilbert, Johnny Silver wishes you well too. Ya, he is a little unhappy too]
Mayakovsky would, of course, now dazzle us with his intoxicating use of language, stirring deep thoughts in us about his unhappy fate. I will plod along prosaically, as is my fate. Through the dust of time, sparked by that Internet prod, I have hazy, dreamy memories of the demure Margaret G., mainly as seemed from afar through furtive glances in the old schoolyard at Adamsville South (which is today in very much the same condition as back then) . This is a very appealing memory, to be sure, of a fresh, young girl full of hopes and dreams, and who knows what else. [Ya, Markin is on fire here, go brother speak some truth, speak some Margaret Gilbert truth.]
But a more physical description is in order that befits the “real time” of my young ‘romance’ fantasies. Margaret G. strongly evoked in me a feeling of softness, soft as the cashmere sweaters that she wore and that reflected the schoolgirl fashion of those seemingly sunnier days. And she almost always wore a slight suggestion of a smile, working its way through a full-lipped mouth. And had a voice, just turning away from girlishness to womanhood, which spoke of future conquests. I should also say that her hair… But enough of this. [Thanks, for stopping, stopping right there Brother Markin] This is now getting all mixed up with adult dreams of childhood. Let the fact of fifty plus years remembrances speak to her charms.
Did I ‘love’ Margaret G.? [Did you love her more than me, Peter Paul?]That is a silly thought for a bashful, ill-at-ease, ragamuffin of a project boy and a ‘princess’ who never uttered two words, if that, to each other, ever. Did I ‘want’ Margaret G.? Come on now, that is the stuff of adult dreams. Did Margaret G. disturb my sleep? Well, yes, she was undoubtedly the subject of more than one chaste dream, although perhaps not so innocent at that. But know this. Time may bury many childhood wounds but there are not enough medicines, not enough bandages on this good, green earth to stanch some of them. So let’s just leave it at that. Or rather, as this. For the moment it takes to finish this note I am an unhappy man and… maybe, for longer. [Ditto, Brother].”
I guess I didn’t turn the tables on Markin after all. Sweet dreams, Margaret Gilbert wherever you landed. Johnny Silver blows you a kiss.
Ulalume (1847)
by Edgar Allan Poe
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll—
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere,—
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)—
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here)—
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn—
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs—
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies—
To the Lethean peace of the skies—
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes—
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust—
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty tonight!—
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright—
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom—
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied: "Ulalume -Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere—
As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed -I journeyed down here!—
That I brought a dread burden down here—
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—
This misty mid region of Weir—
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
{Said we, then — the two, then —" Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls —
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls —
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds —
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds —
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls —
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls ?")
********
Johnny Silver comment:
My old pal from North Adamsville high school days and before that down in the old- time Adamsville housing project (the infamous “projects”) where we went to elementary school together, Peter Paul Markin, recently asked me to write about my take on his “love affair,” his first time puppy-love affair (from afar to boot) with Margaret Gilbert in fourth grade down at Adamsville South Elementary School. I accepted with the proviso that whatever I wrote was not to be “edited” by him. See, I know he is a fast man with the delete button when things don’t come out just right in his rose-colored glasses world. So I am “trusting” him, as a man of honor, some old-time corner boy man of honor anyway, or rather I am holding certain information that he would no like to see in the public eye to make sure I get my say.
Why he is suddenly inflamed by the desire to stir the ashes of the past is beyond me. What he asked me is anybody’s guess. We hadn’t seen each for years until several years ago and I had, almost, well kind of almost, forgotten her name when he mentioned it. I guess he figured that since I went through the experience with him that I would tell the truth. Well, the truth of the matter was that while he was doing his mooning act, getting all misty-eyed every time she came within fifty yards of us, and endlessly “crying” on my shoulder about whether he should approach her, you know boy meets girl stuff that has been going on since Adam tried to date up Eve, I was holding the “torch” for her myself.
As was true of every non- juvenile delinquent guy in the school with enough sense to come in out of the rain on Tuesdays (jesus, I haven’t said that old-time schoolboy expression in ages, well since elementary school). Ya, she was like that, ten-years old like that, with that what was it, damn, gardenia scent or some exotic soap thing that drove me crazy any time she came within fifty yards of me. Had me mumbling to myself, mumbling distractedly. But see Markin, sweet old goof Peter Paul, couldn’t see I was hurting, hurting bad myself. Now some fifty years later turnabout is far play so I am just going to turn his little “in lieu of” around as my own valentine to Margaret Gilbert. Margaret, did you later drive half the men who came within fifty yards of you to distraction without even meaning too. The worst part not even aware of it. Lordy, lordy.
The best way to read, really read Peter Paul’s screed is wherever the idea seems to suggest some action (or inaction) by him just think old Johnny Silver. You too, Margaret Gilbert if you every see this. The asides “speak" for themselves:
“I make no claim to any literary originality [christ, the guy use to carry around index cards all through school with ideas on them, all unattributed, although none of us knew that at the time we just though they were all his ideas. It was not until later when I started to get serious about reading and would run across certain Markinisms I got hip to what he had done.] I will shamelessly ‘steal’ any idea, or half-idea that catches my fancy in order to make my point. [See aside above.] That is the case today, as I go back in time to my elementary school days down at the old Adamsville South Elementary School in the Adamsville projects. Part of the title for today’s entry and the central idea that I want to express is taken from a poem by the great Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. [Everybody and his brother knew Markin was crazy for Russian writers like Dostoevsky and poets like Pushkin in high school. We just thought he was a “red,” some kind of bolshevik creep who would get caught by the FBI soon enough. They never got him, I guess, and I ain’t a squealer, no way. Old Coach Duffy had his number in high school though. He called him a Bolshevik with a capital B right in front of the whole history class one day.]
So what do a poet who died in 1930 and a moonstruck kid from the Adamsville projects, growing up haphazardly in 1950s have in common? We have both been thrown back, unexpectedly, to childhood romantic fantasies of the “girl who got away.” [I already mentioned that I was clueless about why he is in a craze mode now about it so that covers me on this.] In my case, Margaret G. [nee Gilbert], as the title to this entry indicates. [See, that is where Markin’s weird sense of honor, romance, or just plain fear of girls got him nowhere. Fifty years later he is playing the gallant by not divulging her name like it was some state secret or like she hadn’t gotten married (if some guy was brave enough to get within fifty yards of her and survived the enveloping fragrances, lucky guy) or something.] I do not remember what triggered Mayakovsky’s memories but mine have been produced via an indirect North Adamsville Internet connection seeing her last name mentioned on a profile page. In this instance, damn the Internet. I do not know the fate of Margaret G., [Gilbert, okay for the slow-witted] although I fervently hope that life has worked out well for her. This I do know. For the time that it will take to write this entry I return to being a smitten, unhappy boy. [Ya, sometimes, every once in a blue moon, Markin catches a hold on the truth, the bone-dry truth. Margaret G., ah, nee Gilbert, Johnny Silver wishes you well too. Ya, he is a little unhappy too]
Mayakovsky would, of course, now dazzle us with his intoxicating use of language, stirring deep thoughts in us about his unhappy fate. I will plod along prosaically, as is my fate. Through the dust of time, sparked by that Internet prod, I have hazy, dreamy memories of the demure Margaret G., mainly as seemed from afar through furtive glances in the old schoolyard at Adamsville South (which is today in very much the same condition as back then) . This is a very appealing memory, to be sure, of a fresh, young girl full of hopes and dreams, and who knows what else. [Ya, Markin is on fire here, go brother speak some truth, speak some Margaret Gilbert truth.]
But a more physical description is in order that befits the “real time” of my young ‘romance’ fantasies. Margaret G. strongly evoked in me a feeling of softness, soft as the cashmere sweaters that she wore and that reflected the schoolgirl fashion of those seemingly sunnier days. And she almost always wore a slight suggestion of a smile, working its way through a full-lipped mouth. And had a voice, just turning away from girlishness to womanhood, which spoke of future conquests. I should also say that her hair… But enough of this. [Thanks, for stopping, stopping right there Brother Markin] This is now getting all mixed up with adult dreams of childhood. Let the fact of fifty plus years remembrances speak to her charms.
Did I ‘love’ Margaret G.? [Did you love her more than me, Peter Paul?]That is a silly thought for a bashful, ill-at-ease, ragamuffin of a project boy and a ‘princess’ who never uttered two words, if that, to each other, ever. Did I ‘want’ Margaret G.? Come on now, that is the stuff of adult dreams. Did Margaret G. disturb my sleep? Well, yes, she was undoubtedly the subject of more than one chaste dream, although perhaps not so innocent at that. But know this. Time may bury many childhood wounds but there are not enough medicines, not enough bandages on this good, green earth to stanch some of them. So let’s just leave it at that. Or rather, as this. For the moment it takes to finish this note I am an unhappy man and… maybe, for longer. [Ditto, Brother].”
I guess I didn’t turn the tables on Markin after all. Sweet dreams, Margaret Gilbert wherever you landed. Johnny Silver blows you a kiss.
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-Workers' Action- Spring 1970
Click on the headline to link to a an online copy of Workers Action, an early labor-oriented newspaper of the International Communist League's Spartacist League/U.S. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
***********
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle around the effects of containerization of shipping on the West Coast docks, a question that we now know costs many union jobs by the failure of longshoremen’ union to tie in technological improvement with unionized labor employment. And, of course, the union bureaucracy’s penchant for making “sweetheart” deals rather than a class struggle fight over the issue.
This issue does, forthrightly, pose raised in the last isse-the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1969 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later, in 1970, take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
One section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The other section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of a strike The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
***********
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle around the effects of containerization of shipping on the West Coast docks, a question that we now know costs many union jobs by the failure of longshoremen’ union to tie in technological improvement with unionized labor employment. And, of course, the union bureaucracy’s penchant for making “sweetheart” deals rather than a class struggle fight over the issue.
This issue does, forthrightly, pose raised in the last isse-the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1969 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later, in 1970, take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
One section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the ten point … And What We Stand For. With a an obvious need for some technical updating, like replace Vietnam War with Iraq and Afghan Wars, the thing reads as a very presentable program for a revolutionary labor party, or a caucus in a reformist labor party in a period of left-wing motion in 2011. The other section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, the lessons of a strike The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. This says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Poet's Corner- Yevgeny Yevtushenko-"Babi Yar"
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Russian(Soviet)poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Markin comment:
No question Yevgeny Yevtushenko knew how to twist and turn with the Soviet Stalinist Cold War winds. He had no Lenin-Trotsky Bolshevik flame within. However he could write a few very good poems that captured part of Russian culture. Babi Yar is one of the better ones.
Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
Dreyfus.
The Philistine
is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
Beset on every side.
Hounded,
spat on,
slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The barroom rabble-rousers
give off a stench of vodka and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
"Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.
0 my Russian people!
I know
you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these anti-Semites-
without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!
I seem to be
Anne Frank
transparent
as a branch in April.
And I love.
And have no need of phrases.
My need
is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much --
tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.
They're coming here?
Be not afraid. Those are the booming
sounds of spring:
spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
No, it's the ice breaking ...
The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning gray.
And I myself
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
each old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead.
Nothing in me
shall ever forget!
The "Internationale," let it
thunder
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all anti-Semites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
I am a true Russian!
Markin comment:
No question Yevgeny Yevtushenko knew how to twist and turn with the Soviet Stalinist Cold War winds. He had no Lenin-Trotsky Bolshevik flame within. However he could write a few very good poems that captured part of Russian culture. Babi Yar is one of the better ones.
Babi Yar by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
Dreyfus.
The Philistine
is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
Beset on every side.
Hounded,
spat on,
slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The barroom rabble-rousers
give off a stench of vodka and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
"Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.
0 my Russian people!
I know
you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these anti-Semites-
without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!
I seem to be
Anne Frank
transparent
as a branch in April.
And I love.
And have no need of phrases.
My need
is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much --
tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.
They're coming here?
Be not afraid. Those are the booming
sounds of spring:
spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
No, it's the ice breaking ...
The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning gray.
And I myself
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
each old man
here shot dead.
I am
every child
here shot dead.
Nothing in me
shall ever forget!
The "Internationale," let it
thunder
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all anti-Semites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
I am a true Russian!
The Times Are Out Of Joint- The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1965-1966
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Percy Sledge performing his classic When A Man Loves A Woman.
CD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1965-1966, various artist, Time-Life Music, 1997
Susie Roberts, Rick’s youngest sister was stuck. No, not stuck in some car stuck place on some desolate road looking for sir galahad to show up and rescue the fair damsel, pulling might and main to win her favors. And, decidedly, not stuck on some Clintondale High Math class Pythagorean Theorem math problem looking for the square root of some distance from point A to point B. She had Lenny Linsky for that, and for any other mathsciencehistoryenglish problem that she needed resolved. Yes, Lenny was that way about her. As were a few others, a few hopeless others, not willing however to join Lenny in the slave quarters. Everyone, hopeless or hopeful agreed, that while Susie was not up to speed in the mechanical or smarts departments she was cute (not knock-down drag-out beautiful but pretty enough, pretty enough not to have to worry about mechanics or math now, and probably ever), tall, blonde, real blonde if you can believe that in this day, this 1966 day in age, pert, and miss personality. And in the final analysis isn’t that what you want in a high school honey?
That though is exactly where Susie’s stuck problem comes in. See she is stuck on a soda jerk over at Doc’s Drugstore in North Adamsville. And not just any of Doc’s five jerks (yes, I know soda jerks, but let’s just shorthand this thing as jerks, no slander intended, okay) but Jeff Brigham. Yes, Jeff Brigham the big time politico, student body version, who had his picture taken with Robert Kennedy at some Northeast anti-war student conference where they were mapping out ways to end the war in Vietnam. And that is really where the problem comes in. Jeff, bright, agile, good-looking Jeff, these days has no time for Susie, well, Susie no brains, although not really no brains but more no political brains. And why should a sophomore, a good-looking sophomore girl in the year of our lord, 1966, have to care about war, about black civil rights, about whether Red China should be in the United Nations or not, or about which way America should be going just to keep up to speed with a jerk.
Something is out of whack and Susie can’t figure an angle to get to Jeff. Hey, any other time Jeff would be so much putty. Jerk proud, like the others at Doc’s, just to have Susie come in and talk to them. But, damn, Susie muttered under her breath they aren’t Jeff. And as many signals as she has given Jeff when she plays Doc’s juke box, plays it to perdition, and tries to interest him in talking about songs like The Temptations’ crooning My Girl; Otis Redding’s be-bopping I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Barbara Lewis practically begging her man to get what he wants on Baby, I’m Yours; and when she turns the volume up for Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman he just smiles his non-committal smile and starts talking about whether Robert Kennedy should, or should not, run for President in 1968, or some such thing. And then Susie fumes under her breath, the times are damn well out of joint.
CD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1965-1966, various artist, Time-Life Music, 1997
Susie Roberts, Rick’s youngest sister was stuck. No, not stuck in some car stuck place on some desolate road looking for sir galahad to show up and rescue the fair damsel, pulling might and main to win her favors. And, decidedly, not stuck on some Clintondale High Math class Pythagorean Theorem math problem looking for the square root of some distance from point A to point B. She had Lenny Linsky for that, and for any other mathsciencehistoryenglish problem that she needed resolved. Yes, Lenny was that way about her. As were a few others, a few hopeless others, not willing however to join Lenny in the slave quarters. Everyone, hopeless or hopeful agreed, that while Susie was not up to speed in the mechanical or smarts departments she was cute (not knock-down drag-out beautiful but pretty enough, pretty enough not to have to worry about mechanics or math now, and probably ever), tall, blonde, real blonde if you can believe that in this day, this 1966 day in age, pert, and miss personality. And in the final analysis isn’t that what you want in a high school honey?
That though is exactly where Susie’s stuck problem comes in. See she is stuck on a soda jerk over at Doc’s Drugstore in North Adamsville. And not just any of Doc’s five jerks (yes, I know soda jerks, but let’s just shorthand this thing as jerks, no slander intended, okay) but Jeff Brigham. Yes, Jeff Brigham the big time politico, student body version, who had his picture taken with Robert Kennedy at some Northeast anti-war student conference where they were mapping out ways to end the war in Vietnam. And that is really where the problem comes in. Jeff, bright, agile, good-looking Jeff, these days has no time for Susie, well, Susie no brains, although not really no brains but more no political brains. And why should a sophomore, a good-looking sophomore girl in the year of our lord, 1966, have to care about war, about black civil rights, about whether Red China should be in the United Nations or not, or about which way America should be going just to keep up to speed with a jerk.
Something is out of whack and Susie can’t figure an angle to get to Jeff. Hey, any other time Jeff would be so much putty. Jerk proud, like the others at Doc’s, just to have Susie come in and talk to them. But, damn, Susie muttered under her breath they aren’t Jeff. And as many signals as she has given Jeff when she plays Doc’s juke box, plays it to perdition, and tries to interest him in talking about songs like The Temptations’ crooning My Girl; Otis Redding’s be-bopping I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Barbara Lewis practically begging her man to get what he wants on Baby, I’m Yours; and when she turns the volume up for Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman he just smiles his non-committal smile and starts talking about whether Robert Kennedy should, or should not, run for President in 1968, or some such thing. And then Susie fumes under her breath, the times are damn well out of joint.
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-Workers' Action- Winter 1969-1970
I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle around the effects of containerization of shipping on the West Coast docks, a question that we now know costs many union jobs by the failure of longshoremen’ union to tie in technological improvement with unionized labor employment. And, of course, the union bureaucracy’s penchant for making “sweetheart” deals rather than a class struggle fight over the issue.
This issue does pose the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1969 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later, in 1970, take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
The other section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, union caucus organizing. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. Once again this says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the struggle around the effects of containerization of shipping on the West Coast docks, a question that we now know costs many union jobs by the failure of longshoremen’ union to tie in technological improvement with unionized labor employment. And, of course, the union bureaucracy’s penchant for making “sweetheart” deals rather than a class struggle fight over the issue.
This issue does pose the question of questions centered on the labor movement and war that is currently very much with us with the Iraq, Afghan and whatever other hellish wars the American imperialist are raising around the world. For the anti-war movement, after trying everything but labor action in the previous period, 1969 represented a turning point where even the working class was getting fed up with the Vietnam War. No only by providing the mass base of “cannon fodder” but taking a beating on the economic front as well. The call for labor strikes against the war would later, in 1970, take on a more than propagandistic possibility when important sections of the working class began to take strike action over economic issues. While today, and maybe just today, the slogan has purely propaganda value it is always part of the arsenal of left-wing anti-war work.
The other section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, union caucus organizing. The point about standing on a left-wing militant program is the most important and dovetails with the struggle for the labor party to take state power when the time comes. Once again this says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night-Come On Now, Get With The Program- Crime, I Repeat, Crime Does Not Pay- Richard Basehart’s “Tension-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a site that reviews and details the plot lines of crime noir films
DVD Review
Tension, starring Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Barry Sullivan, Paramount Pictures, 1950
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) The film under review, 1950’s Tension, falls somewhere in the grey area, the plot line while it started out with a certain amount of promise got dragged in the end toward a standard police procedural, a kiss of death for most crime noir films in my book. And the femme fatale is neither fetching (a la Rita) nor wicked (except for an involvement in murder and mayhem, but they all, the femme fatales that is, are involved in that, one way or the other, it comes with the territory).
A quick review of the plot will explain my bewilderment at where to place this one in the crime noir pantheon. Warren (Richard Basehart), a Walter Middy-type, married to Claire (Audrey Totter), a second-rate gold-digger who attached herself to Warren in harder times (her harder times) out in Southern California when that locale was becoming the homeland of the dreams- the post-World War II suburban sun-drenched tract dreams. And Warren is a prime number one prospect for that dream working nights like a mad man to get Claire those things he promised her, or half of them anyway. But Claire, the little round-heels, is looking for speedier stuff now that she is settled into a good thing, and a plaint husband. And sweetheart Claire is flouting her stuff right in front of Warren with a guy of unknown resources (Barney) with some dough, a nice car, and a place on the beach in up-scale Malibu to sun herself. Well, a girl has to look out for herself, a round-heels girl anyway, right?
The plot thickens when Warren, no longer content to be a door-mat, decides to kill somebody over this transgression (Barney, heaven’s no, not lovely, wicked, maybe just misunderstood Claire). The long and short of it is that after planning the perfect murder by changing his identity (new idea, right?) he gets cold feet, as Walter Middys do, or maybe a slug of rationality that maybe, just maybe, sweet Claire ain’t worth it and good riddance. Especially after, as part of his change of identity, he meets a honey, Mary (played by the leggy Cyd Charisse), who is more his speed and, well, is happy to think about that suburban house and that white picket fence with 2.2 kids, and a dog, one dog.
But see the story would become really tedious if somebody didn’t kill somebody, and so old Barney winds up dead. And of course Warren (or his changed identity self, Paul) is fit six ways to Sunday for the frame. Someone is going to the chair for this one, this murder one job, and Warren better start making a list of his last requests.
Except of course, crime noir or not, guys who don’t commit murder and mayhem are not stepping off for such crimes, at least in 1950s movies. And that is where the tedious police procedural aspect of this film meets low-rent femme fatale when L.A.’s finest get on the case and “entrap” if you can believe that about the police in 1950, or now, everybody connected with the crime (except of course, the deceased Barney, although he too might have had a motive, who knows). And guess who is going to take the fall for this one? Well, guess. But you could see where this one was headed from a long way off. Hey didn’t Phillip Marlowe work these slumming L.A. streets in those days. Taking a little off-hand beating before swinging the scales of justice back where they belong. He could have been used here to tell Claire what’s what, and to spice this one up.
DVD Review
Tension, starring Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Barry Sullivan, Paramount Pictures, 1950
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) The film under review, 1950’s Tension, falls somewhere in the grey area, the plot line while it started out with a certain amount of promise got dragged in the end toward a standard police procedural, a kiss of death for most crime noir films in my book. And the femme fatale is neither fetching (a la Rita) nor wicked (except for an involvement in murder and mayhem, but they all, the femme fatales that is, are involved in that, one way or the other, it comes with the territory).
A quick review of the plot will explain my bewilderment at where to place this one in the crime noir pantheon. Warren (Richard Basehart), a Walter Middy-type, married to Claire (Audrey Totter), a second-rate gold-digger who attached herself to Warren in harder times (her harder times) out in Southern California when that locale was becoming the homeland of the dreams- the post-World War II suburban sun-drenched tract dreams. And Warren is a prime number one prospect for that dream working nights like a mad man to get Claire those things he promised her, or half of them anyway. But Claire, the little round-heels, is looking for speedier stuff now that she is settled into a good thing, and a plaint husband. And sweetheart Claire is flouting her stuff right in front of Warren with a guy of unknown resources (Barney) with some dough, a nice car, and a place on the beach in up-scale Malibu to sun herself. Well, a girl has to look out for herself, a round-heels girl anyway, right?
The plot thickens when Warren, no longer content to be a door-mat, decides to kill somebody over this transgression (Barney, heaven’s no, not lovely, wicked, maybe just misunderstood Claire). The long and short of it is that after planning the perfect murder by changing his identity (new idea, right?) he gets cold feet, as Walter Middys do, or maybe a slug of rationality that maybe, just maybe, sweet Claire ain’t worth it and good riddance. Especially after, as part of his change of identity, he meets a honey, Mary (played by the leggy Cyd Charisse), who is more his speed and, well, is happy to think about that suburban house and that white picket fence with 2.2 kids, and a dog, one dog.
But see the story would become really tedious if somebody didn’t kill somebody, and so old Barney winds up dead. And of course Warren (or his changed identity self, Paul) is fit six ways to Sunday for the frame. Someone is going to the chair for this one, this murder one job, and Warren better start making a list of his last requests.
Except of course, crime noir or not, guys who don’t commit murder and mayhem are not stepping off for such crimes, at least in 1950s movies. And that is where the tedious police procedural aspect of this film meets low-rent femme fatale when L.A.’s finest get on the case and “entrap” if you can believe that about the police in 1950, or now, everybody connected with the crime (except of course, the deceased Barney, although he too might have had a motive, who knows). And guess who is going to take the fall for this one? Well, guess. But you could see where this one was headed from a long way off. Hey didn’t Phillip Marlowe work these slumming L.A. streets in those days. Taking a little off-hand beating before swinging the scales of justice back where they belong. He could have been used here to tell Claire what’s what, and to spice this one up.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
*A Confession, Of Sorts-For Joyce D., Hunter College High School, NYC, Class Of 1966, Out There Somewhere In Cyberspace
Peter Paul Markin comment:
We live in an age, thanks to Internet technology, where one is able to tell-all in an instant pushing the limits of an already previously burgeoning confessional ethos well beyond what the average person needs to know. Needs to know, frankly, even on the high side of the “information super-highway.” Needs to know about anyone else’s personal business, okay. Well, here is my little contribution to the genre with a half-fictional, half-whimsical tale. But only half...
Okay, okay I have a confession to make. I am being forced to do so, kicking and screaming, and not your average kicking and screaming but door-kicking and banshee- screaming so you know, know deep down, that I do not want do this, by my "soul mate." A woman who I have trusted, trust, and will continue to trust until I can trust no more, although this request stretches that trust thing more than a little. Her telling me, moreover, something about coming clean for the good of my soul. I hate that imperative moral tone but I have learned a thing or two over time. One of the things being that you ignore than “tone” of hers at your peril.
In any case one and all should now know that I am on this North Adamsville Class of 1964 classmate site under false pretenses. [Referring to a site set up by do-gooder members of the class to run amok in our sweetly and quietly aging lives, going gentle into that good night, by peppering anyone they could round up via the Internet with endless questions about what we have been doing for the past almost fifty years-jesus, get lives, get lives please, and let me return to writing political stuff-PPM].
Oh, sure, when I originally came on I, like everybody else, was just trying to take a little nostalgic trip down memory lane to the good old high school days. However, once here, I started to spew forth about the fates of various sports figures like the fleet-footed long distance runner, Billy Bailey, and the behemoth football player, Thundering Timmy Riley, and his heroic partners in the victorious 1964 football season. And high school dances, corner boy life, boy meets girls dates and stuff, “watching the submarine” races down at old Adamsville Beach, drive-in movies and restaurants, be-bop nights and not be-bop nights. Kids’ stuff ready, harmless kids’ stuff.
Then, seemingly as an act of hubris, I felt compelled to investigate various aspects of our common past using a very handy copy, a copy made handy by one Bill Bailey, of the North Adamsville Magnet, our class yearbook, as a guide. I ran through a whole series of investigations from rather simple ones like the pressing question of the rationale for white socks and white shorts in gym (and white socks elsewhere) to the more urgent one of the rationale for separate boys' and girls' bowling teams and, ultimately, stumbling on to the apparently nefarious doings of Tri-Hi-Y. Well, you get the drift- a guy with a little time on his hands and a decided penchant for mischief.
Well those would all be good and sufficient reasons for being on the site, if those were indeed the reasons. But here is where the confessional part comes in. The REAL reason I am on the site is the generic class homepage. Apparently in order to finance the website those curmudgeonly class do-gooders rented out space for cyber-advertising, helter-skelter advertising. Also, apparently, unconcerned about heart attacks and other medical problems for their fellow male AARP-worthies (and maybe female as well), they “permitted” advertising by online dating services. Thus, I am very, very curious, among other things, about those 833 nubile young women, courtesy of one such online dating service, who live near my town and who are just dying to meet an old geezer. (Fellow women classmates, I am sure, get the same pitch with hulky, beefcake young guys.) The slender, slinky, saucy (and intelligent, of course) Kerry, in particular, has my attention. But enough of talking about such things. That above-mentioned "soul mate" would take a very dim view on this subject since I am here merely to confess not to speak of ogling. However now I know why the expression "dirty old man" and the word "lecher" were created in the English language long ago, long before the Internet reared its ugly head into our lives.
That hardly ends this sordid tale though. Other, admittedly, lesser kinds of information also intrigued me like my credit rating. Hell, apparently, my credit is too good. I can't raise a bank loan for hell nor high water. Seemingly only GM, Goldman Sachs, AIG and that bankrupt-prone crowd gets the nod these days. (Now, let's not get political here Peter Paul. Save that for another day.) More appropriately, if ominously, our brethren at AARP have seen fit to extol the virtues of long-term care insurance. So you can see how one can get easily sidetracked. So be it. However, here is the good part. I have taken, and I hope others will join me, the PLEDGE. From here on in I will keep my eyes straight forward on my profile page [each member, as in many social networking sites, has his or her own page, for better or worst], the Class Of 1964 home page and only click on the Message Board section. Well, except for one little, little peek at... winsome Kerry.
We live in an age, thanks to Internet technology, where one is able to tell-all in an instant pushing the limits of an already previously burgeoning confessional ethos well beyond what the average person needs to know. Needs to know, frankly, even on the high side of the “information super-highway.” Needs to know about anyone else’s personal business, okay. Well, here is my little contribution to the genre with a half-fictional, half-whimsical tale. But only half...
Okay, okay I have a confession to make. I am being forced to do so, kicking and screaming, and not your average kicking and screaming but door-kicking and banshee- screaming so you know, know deep down, that I do not want do this, by my "soul mate." A woman who I have trusted, trust, and will continue to trust until I can trust no more, although this request stretches that trust thing more than a little. Her telling me, moreover, something about coming clean for the good of my soul. I hate that imperative moral tone but I have learned a thing or two over time. One of the things being that you ignore than “tone” of hers at your peril.
In any case one and all should now know that I am on this North Adamsville Class of 1964 classmate site under false pretenses. [Referring to a site set up by do-gooder members of the class to run amok in our sweetly and quietly aging lives, going gentle into that good night, by peppering anyone they could round up via the Internet with endless questions about what we have been doing for the past almost fifty years-jesus, get lives, get lives please, and let me return to writing political stuff-PPM].
Oh, sure, when I originally came on I, like everybody else, was just trying to take a little nostalgic trip down memory lane to the good old high school days. However, once here, I started to spew forth about the fates of various sports figures like the fleet-footed long distance runner, Billy Bailey, and the behemoth football player, Thundering Timmy Riley, and his heroic partners in the victorious 1964 football season. And high school dances, corner boy life, boy meets girls dates and stuff, “watching the submarine” races down at old Adamsville Beach, drive-in movies and restaurants, be-bop nights and not be-bop nights. Kids’ stuff ready, harmless kids’ stuff.
Then, seemingly as an act of hubris, I felt compelled to investigate various aspects of our common past using a very handy copy, a copy made handy by one Bill Bailey, of the North Adamsville Magnet, our class yearbook, as a guide. I ran through a whole series of investigations from rather simple ones like the pressing question of the rationale for white socks and white shorts in gym (and white socks elsewhere) to the more urgent one of the rationale for separate boys' and girls' bowling teams and, ultimately, stumbling on to the apparently nefarious doings of Tri-Hi-Y. Well, you get the drift- a guy with a little time on his hands and a decided penchant for mischief.
Well those would all be good and sufficient reasons for being on the site, if those were indeed the reasons. But here is where the confessional part comes in. The REAL reason I am on the site is the generic class homepage. Apparently in order to finance the website those curmudgeonly class do-gooders rented out space for cyber-advertising, helter-skelter advertising. Also, apparently, unconcerned about heart attacks and other medical problems for their fellow male AARP-worthies (and maybe female as well), they “permitted” advertising by online dating services. Thus, I am very, very curious, among other things, about those 833 nubile young women, courtesy of one such online dating service, who live near my town and who are just dying to meet an old geezer. (Fellow women classmates, I am sure, get the same pitch with hulky, beefcake young guys.) The slender, slinky, saucy (and intelligent, of course) Kerry, in particular, has my attention. But enough of talking about such things. That above-mentioned "soul mate" would take a very dim view on this subject since I am here merely to confess not to speak of ogling. However now I know why the expression "dirty old man" and the word "lecher" were created in the English language long ago, long before the Internet reared its ugly head into our lives.
That hardly ends this sordid tale though. Other, admittedly, lesser kinds of information also intrigued me like my credit rating. Hell, apparently, my credit is too good. I can't raise a bank loan for hell nor high water. Seemingly only GM, Goldman Sachs, AIG and that bankrupt-prone crowd gets the nod these days. (Now, let's not get political here Peter Paul. Save that for another day.) More appropriately, if ominously, our brethren at AARP have seen fit to extol the virtues of long-term care insurance. So you can see how one can get easily sidetracked. So be it. However, here is the good part. I have taken, and I hope others will join me, the PLEDGE. From here on in I will keep my eyes straight forward on my profile page [each member, as in many social networking sites, has his or her own page, for better or worst], the Class Of 1964 home page and only click on the Message Board section. Well, except for one little, little peek at... winsome Kerry.
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-Workers' Action- January 1969
Click on the headline to link to a an online copy of Workers Action, an early labor-oriented newspaper of the International Communist League's Spartacist League/U.S. I am not familiar with the Riazanov Library as a source, although the choice of the name of a famous Russian Bolshevik intellectual, archivist, and early head of the Marx-Engels Institute there, as well as being a friend and , at various points a political confederate of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, sits well with me.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the attempt by the Black Panthers to set up a caucus in the then huge and left-wing politically friendly (friendly workers that is) GM auto plant at Fremont, California. This could have been an important joining together of the race and class questions in a milieu where both issues were being hotly talked about by every ostensibly revolutionary organization on the Left Coast that had anything to say on either issue. It never really got off the ground for many reasons including many Panther mistakes once they got “off the streets” and into the factories.
The one section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, college campus trade unionism (white collar unionism, then not so important but today the leading edge of the organized labor movement)and the vital question of honoring pickets lines, a hard- nosed point that every labor militant need to etch into his or her brain today- picket lines mean don’t cross. Once again this says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
*******
Thanks to the Riazanov Library for their efforts in digitizing Workers Action. The works provided by the Riazanov Library are © copyrighted by the Riazanov Library in 2010 for the document formatting and editing as they appear here in their PDF format, on the ETOL. The actual content itself remains in the public domain pursuant to US and International copyright conventions.
*****
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts runs a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*******
Markin comment on this issue:
Obviously a propagandistic left-wing, pro-labor newspaper from 1969, driven by current events, is going to contain a lot of material now of just historic interest like the attempt by the Black Panthers to set up a caucus in the then huge and left-wing politically friendly (friendly workers that is) GM auto plant at Fremont, California. This could have been an important joining together of the race and class questions in a milieu where both issues were being hotly talked about by every ostensibly revolutionary organization on the Left Coast that had anything to say on either issue. It never really got off the ground for many reasons including many Panther mistakes once they got “off the streets” and into the factories.
The one section that still bears reading for today’s audience is the last article on, well, college campus trade unionism (white collar unionism, then not so important but today the leading edge of the organized labor movement)and the vital question of honoring pickets lines, a hard- nosed point that every labor militant need to etch into his or her brain today- picket lines mean don’t cross. Once again this says to me that we had better be getting a move on about the business of creating that revolutionary labor party-enough is enough. Break with the Democrats! Build a workers party that fights for our communist future.
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