***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots-The Memphis Jug Band- K.C. Moan -An Encore By Request From Judy J, North Adamsville Class Of 1964

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Folk Blues Revival Night- The 1964 American Folk Blues Festival- A CD Review

A YouTube film clip of the Robert Johnson/Elmore James electric blues classic, Dust My Broom.

CD Review

American Folk Blues Festival ‘64, various artists, Optimism Records, 1982
Let’s go by the numbers, the musical year numbers for my generation, the generation of ’68. We all came of musical age, more or less with Elvis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee in the mid-1950s when the music was hot, we were naïve (or worst), and just let it go from there. After a musical counter-revolution in the late 1950s where we put up with some awful Bobby Vee/Fabian/Johnny Somebody stuff we stepped right into the hard rock and roll of the Rolling Stones and later groups that based their early work on the blues, the American etched blues. You cannot listen to early Stones with thinking about Little Red Rooster, Baby Don’t Go, Hoochie Goochie Man, and a million other Chess Record classics. Go figure.

Yes, go figure. Go figure that much of early rock and roll was derived from the blues, city blues mainly, Chicago mainly, but those self-same city blues were derived from you guessed it, the old country blues from down in the Delta, the North Carolina Piedmont and the hills and hollows of Appalachia where all the hip Chicago cats (Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Well, etc.,) came from. All of this is just around about way to pay tribute to the roots, or one of the significant roots, of our generational genre. Hell Elvis, Jerry Lee, and you know for sure that Chuck was listening, listening hard, at the juke joint doors when Saturday night turned into Sunday. And then they listened to the sanctified music that was meant to wash away that Devil’s music blues. But never quite did.

But more than that search for roots business it was a question of revivals, here the American Folk Blues Festival of 1964, which was indirectly brought about by our generation of ’68’s search for roots to explain our angst and alienation, including the search for authentic roots music. See once rock and roll hit our mid-1950s brains like an, well like an atomic bomb, we lost sight of where the music had come from. We just wanted to dance, or think we could dance so we could more smoothly be around that certain she (or he for she) without having to learn the fox trot or some old fogey dance. And not have to get sweaty-palms, strange-smeeling breathe close and be cool at the same time.

More importantly we didn’t “hit the books” to find out what happened to those who created the music that once was the staple of hip music. It was only after we figured out the social graces stuff and needed to do more than dance cool with that certain she (oh yes, and he for she) that we went root hunting. And guess what? Some of the boys (mainly) were still around in places like Maxwell Street in Chicago or down picking cotton in the Delta or holed up in some skid row hotel just waiting to be “discovered,” or really rediscovered.

That may not be the exact genesis of the folk blues revival when that movement hit high stride in the Newport folk festivals of the early 1960s reintroducing a young audience to the likes of Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Son House but it will do here. And of course the artists on this CD-the likes of Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, the legendary producer and writer Willie Dixon, and the “max daddy of them all,” Howlin’ Wolf. This is history, maybe not world-shaking, change-the course-of civilization history but a very important slice of the people’s history. Listen up.

***Once Again On The Causes Of The English Revolution- Professor Lawrence Stone’s  View

The Causes Of The English Revolution, 1529-164, Lawrence Stone, Harper Torchbooks, New York 1972

The last time that the name of Professor Lawrence Stone came up in this space was a review of his magisterial study of the rise and triumph of bourgeois family structure and its mores in England, The Family, Sex And Marriage In England 1500-1800(the study centered on English changes, which as the vanguard of capitalism made a study of the bourgeois family structure quite sensible) from 1500 to 1800 so the good professor is certainly familiar with the period under discussion in this book. The bourgeois family study, some 500 pages, abridged, is contrasted here by a much shorter work of less than two hundred pages. But don’t be thrown off by the shortness of this work, given the expansiveness of the subject, because this is a serious concise work that lays out for the beginner and the more knowledgeable a very nice grab bag of causes for the 17th century English revolution that gives one a jumping off point for further investigation. For the more advanced devotees of the study of the English revolution there are plenty of footnotes and a bibliography at the end that will provide helpful for that further study.

Of course any speculation on the cause or, more correctly, the causes of the English revolution (like any revolution, or other world historic event) is, for the most part, a matter of hindsight, and therefore ready material for an historian’s “cherry-picking” to suit his or her predilections. And also a cause, as in the English case described here by Professor Stone in the first section of the book, for all sorts of “flare-ups” back in the 1950s and 1960s in British academic circles. From such questions as whether the 1640-60 events were even a revolution ( a question pretty much now resolved in favor of revolution) to which class lead and benefited from it to more esoteric questions about whether the gentry (the big landowners, for the most part) benefited from the revolution or not there was something of a field day on this period and Professor Stone seems to have been right in the middle of it along with such English revolution luminaries as Professors Tawney and Trevor-Roper. And as long as it is kept to the academic milieu ( as is the usual situation) such infighting can, and in this case did, produce some useful insights.

After the academic “fireworks” settle down from the first section Professor Stone, in the second and third sections, gets to his laundry list of causes for the revolution, some worth further investigation, some that seem more speculative (like the question of the rise and fall of the gentry, or parts of it, in the rush to revolution). He breaks down the period from 1529 to 1642 into smaller segments in order to separate longer term causes from shorter and more direct causes. Obviously any study of long term trends toward revolution in England in this period has to include changes in agricultural production toward more capitalist methods of growing for the market, the role of demographic spreads and population growth (especially London’s growth) and, probably most importantly, the fall out from the Protestant Reformation as it played out in there.

Shorter term reasons include the rise of Puritanism in the wake of the religious and political policies the James I and Charles I regimes, the vast increase in literacy, education, and lay authority in church matters, changes in the legal and state church structure, particularly by Charles I promoting a more authoritarian regime in the face of more democratic church movements, and, as always, the personal factor, of Charles I’s eagerness to shoot himself in the foot every time some controversy came up so that in the end he alienated, and made indifferent or hostile , the elements of society that stool closest to him, especially the merchants and nobility. This is hardly exhaustive of Professor Stone’s presentation but should be enough to whet the appetite.

Of course for revolutionaries, as well as thoughtful historians, the causes of revolution and the pre-revolutionary period are important in their own right. Just as today we can see, even if we cannot right this minute do anything about it, that conditions in America and Europe are ripe for revolution, a socialist revolution, and we can point to unemployment, the gaps between the rich and poor, extensive deindustrialization, cuts in public social welfare budgets and the like as the precursors we can look at the English, French Russian and Chinese revolutions for some insights. The English revolution, as the first great Western one, is particularly important to study because of the links to America and because something in the English-American psyche (at least in the past) has acted almost as a barrier to further revolutions among English-speaking Anglo-American people.

***In Honor Of George Jackson And The Soledad Brothers- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Ruchell Cinque Magee (Co-defendant from the Angela Davis case, the forgotten one when CP defense publicity time came)

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.

That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.

Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
************
Markin comment from June 8, 2011 entry:

From The Partisan Defense Committee "Class Struggle Defense" Archives- What Defense Policy for Revolutionaries?-"An Injury To One Is An Injury To All"

Markin comment:
The several documents presented in this compilation cover a wide range of issues that confront any serious left-wing class struggle defense organization committed to non-sectarian defense based on the old Wobblie (and maybe before the Wobblies, around the time of the Haymarket martyrs if an article that I have read lately is any indication) of “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Most of those issues have been adequately addressed in one form or another by the writers and/or editors of the documents.

There is one point, however, mentioned here that I would like to highlight a little more based on my own long- time experience with legal defense cases, work, given the dearth of more direct class-struggle issues, that has consumed much more of my political time (and that of others who I have spoken to on the matter) lately than I would have expected. That is the question of “hiding” the relationship between the defense organization and the political organization leading up the case, the question of front groups. Most of these radical legal cases from defense of the Panthers back in the 1960s to the latest death penalty cases start with some leftist organization’s impetus.

Those seeking to center their campaigns on beseeching hard-core liberal support (and some vital cash nexus that goes with seeking such support) will “hide’ their “parent” organizational affiliations and “pretend” the cause is a simple democratic one. The Stalinists of the Communist Party, after their short bout with “third period” purity in the late 1920s were past masters of this technique. The clearest example of this that I can give, and that radicals today might either remember or be somewhat familiar with, was the Angela Davis case in connection with her involvement with the Jonathan Jackson (George Jackson’s brother)/Sam Melville Brigade. Now Angela Davis was then, and now, a hard Stalinist and then a leading public member of the party. One would have thought that her party affiliation would have been front and center since everybody knew it anyway.

And, more importantly, that those Communist Party members working on this important campaign would have identified themselves proudly with their fellow comrade. Well, I guess you cannot teach an old dog new tricks as the worn-out adage goes. At least a Stalinist old dog. One meeting that I went to concerning her defense had about fifty people in attendance. Some liberals, known to me. Some unaffiliated radicals, also known to me. And the rest CPers. Except, if you were not politically savvy you would not have known that last fact because not one CPer, not one identified him or herself as such. Oh sure there were representatives from the Croatian Anti-Fascist League, The League For International Peace, Mothers for Peace and the like. Yes, you guessed it all CPers. And to what end? You see, maybe the liberals could be fooled, or wanted to be, and maybe even a few radicals who believe in some “family of the left” notion of politics, as well. But when the deal goes down the bourgeoisie is not fooled, not by a long shot. And then not only are you defending one comrade but the whole organization. So learn a new trick, okay?

Note:
An additional twist on the CP's catering to the liberals in the Angela Davis case was that they left class-war prisoner Ruchell McGee, Ms. Davis' co-defendant, to basically fend for himself. His profile would not have gone down as well with such elements enamored with celebrity Davis. I also note that forty years later I am still calling for Ruchell McGee's freedom as part of my June Class-War Prisoners series. Enough said.
 

***Philip Marlowe Lives- On One Nick Charles (Okay, Nora Too), Private Eye- The (Real) Thin Man Case

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman –with kudos to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler

Disclaimer: Of course Philip Marlowe is not alive. Christ, he would be over one hundred years old, although seeing the way private eyes today use the latest DNA samples, the Internet, techno-photography, enhanced this and that, and the ubiquitous GPS and still come up empty-handed, still can’t solve the damn case in front of them Marlowe would still give them a run for their money if he were alive. Especially if some rough stuff was at hand. No, what the “Philip Marlowe lives” means is that there is a Marlowe, Tyrone, Philip’s son, who has taken up the profession and is carrying on with his father’s work.

This may surprise many, including Philip’s father, uh, step-father, a guy named Raymond Chandler who did not know that Philip had a son, thought he was strictly a loner, a middle-aged loner and who was strictly a love them and leave them guy with the women. Chandler can be excused for being unaware of Marlowe’s family status since he had lost touch with Marlowe before he, Chandler, died in 1959. See Marlowe kept it all hush-hush about his big affair with Fiona Fallon, yes, that Fiona, who gave the likes of Gene Tierney, Lauren Bacall and Rita Hayworth a run for their money in the femme fatale department back when they were lighting up the screens in the 1940s with a smile and a come hither look that every guy thought, no, knew was meant for him (keep that quiet just in case those guys married, and are still married to, the dish they took to that show).

They were having an affair on the sly after Marlowe saved a producer’s bacon, a well-known producer who is still working so we will use some discretion, on a kidnapping case (of his daughter) who wrapped up the thing with no loss of life and no ransom paid and to show his gratitude he introduced them to each other. Fiona, a shapely green-eyed red-head, and Marlowe hit it off right away. A child was born of their love, Tyrone, in 1946. It was never clear whether they had been married, nobody could find a marriage certificate (maybe today’s techno-dicks could find one, at least they should be able to do that). What is not in dispute is that on the QT Marlowe acknowledged his son, and came through with child support when Fiona’s star started fade in the 1950s when shapely red-heads were being pushed out of Hollywood by curvaceous buxom blondes, as were those who like Fiona had been too close to Hollywood Ten-types as well. More importantly, as Marlowe wound down his personal involvement in his agency, Philip Marlowe and Associates, leaving the day to day operations to a guy named Miles Archer, a skirt-chaser but good on divorce work, work which brought in the serious 1950s Hollywood dough, he spent more time with Tyrone.

The pair, to use today’s term, bonded, bonded over Marlowe’s endless tales about his own cases, and cases of guys that he worked with, or in competition with. After Philip died in 1970, died the way he lived, by the way, taking two slugs to the heart from some two-bit gunsel, Elisha Cook I think his name was, who was ordered by old time gangster boss of bosses Max Webber to “hit” Webber’s ex-girlfriend who had hired Marlowe to protect her, Tyrone got “religion,” got the shamus bug that must have been DNA-embedded in his cells. Funny though Tyrone never used his father’s name when he went private, using his mother’s name Fallon instead. His reason, like lots of children of the famous, was that he wanted to succeed or fall on his own ass. Besides more people, people who counted in Hollywood, remembered the beautiful if wild Fiona Fallon than some two-bit key-hole peeper (Philip’s term not Tyrone’s). Moreover lone wolf shamuses with quirky habits, quick fists, and fast trigger fingers were not what serious money Hollywood was looking for in the 1970s. They wanted work done quietly, very quietly.

One day somebody, somebody I know quite well, Joshua Lawrence Breslin the old time radical journalist (The East Bay Eye and other small newspapers and journals) asked Tyrone to tell him some of the stories that Marlowe told him about the old days, the days when private eyes were made of steel, steely stuff anyway. One thing Josh wanted to know was about Marlowe’s take on a famous gumshoe, a society guy named Nick Charles, who had solved one of the biggest murder cases around, the one they called the Thin Man case. Tyrone laughed, laughed heartily when he was asked that question because Marlowe would always bring that guy, Nick Charos he called him, and that case, up when he wanted to make a point about guys who should have taken up some trade, plumbing maybe, rather than private detection. Here is the way Tyrone explained the case to Josh who explained it to me one night not long ago over a few drinks, although I take full responsibility for what is written here.

**************

Tyrone Fallon started the story out by saying that one thing his father always said, said the thing almost every time he spoke of a case, spoke of it like some mantra, was don’t believe everything you hear around or read in the damn newspapers. And Tyrone remembered that Marlowe (let’s call him that for convenience, besides everybody except a few flames, including Fiona, called him the manly Marlowe surname rather than the wimpy Philip, Philip with one “l”)punctuated that remark, punctuated it by digging a finger into Tyrone’s chest about one Nick Charos, strictly a creation of the tabloids and society swells.

(Nick Charles, born Nicholas Charos, a Greek guy from the old neighborhood who could hardly wait to Anglicize his name like half the other sons and daughters of immigrants who stepped off the boat from Ellis Island back in the day in order to move in with the uptown crowd, the WASPs, when they, he, came of age )

The media went crazy when Nick solved what all the newspapers and radio reports called, for lack of a better moniker, the Thin Man case, the case of the murder of Lawrence Winot the big inventor/ industrialist, right under noses of New York’s finest. But Marlowe, after he daily read the doings in the case in the Timesgot curious, very curious about how a guy, a society guy like Charles could have done such a feat, a feat that even he would have been hard pressed to solve from what he knew of the few facts provided by the press. So he started to make some connections with his sources in New York City to find out what was what because something was out of whack.

Those connections led him to NYPD Detective Lieutenant Tom Mallory, the cop in charge of the day to day operations of the case who told him over the telephone in several conversations exactly what did and did not happen in that case. Once Detective Mallory found out he was dealing with a real private eye, Jesus, the guy who solved, or rather wrapped up with a bow the famous Galton case, the Hollywood kidnap and ransom case with no loss of innocent life, and no ransom given he was more than happy to share the real facts of his case. All he asked of Marlowe was that he keep the stuff under his hat, keep it between professionals since the media now that the dust had settled could have cared less about facts anyway. Mallory said that straight out at the beginning of their first conversation because the papers, radio too, had just cribbed the AP-UPI ticker, had gotten it all balled up. Especially the guy from the Gazette, Dashiell Hammett, who was mainly the flak-catcher on the case, apparently the only guy at that newspaper who could walk on two feet Mallory guessed. He cynically used the case to try to make a big name for himself, trying to move up in the business, and trying to win a by-line over the dead body of Winot.

The guy, Winot, apparently carried a lot of water in New York, whatever little quirks he might have exhibited which were learned as the case unfolded, so you knew there would be plenty of publicity. Hammett was nothing but a two-bit cub reporter trying to cash in. Christ, Hammett had previously spent his time at the paper writing some advice or “how to” column or something like that, you know “Should I wear brown shoes with a grey suit-coat?” that kind of stuff, lightweight stuff, for the Gazette newspaper before the police beat reporter, old reliable Glenn Hubbard, passed away and they needed somebody to cover the spot until they got a real beat reporter.

This Hammett was nothing but a bother, soaking up other guys’ material, real reporters, and just re-writing the stuff in that awful hard-boiled cop manner that he thought was the real thing, thought was the way cops, victims, or witnesses talked, gruff talk. You know, highlighting some cop, some cop he slipped a fiver to, telling the reading public about how the cop saved somebody’s bacon, or gunned down some desperado with no thought to his own safety. Not worrying about truth or anything like that, that’s for sure. The situation was awful until Mallory and his buddies threw him out of the reporters’ pit down at Precinct. But that only made things worse as Hammett started making stuff up out of whole cloth as he went along grabbling stuff of off the police channel and embellishing it. He was the guy who coined it the Thin Man case since when NYPD found Winot’s body it turned to be that of a tall thin guy. Why not the Tall Man case. Jesus, Marlowe could see what Mallory meant.

So you know Hammett was nothing but putty in a smoothie like Nick Charles’ hands. Nick wouldn’t even have to work up a sweat just throwing out whatever “evidence” came into his alcohol-addled head. And Hammett lapped it up, all of it just like a dog. And printing whatever his wife, Nora, had to say for that matter who Mallory guessed had nothing better to do that clipping stock dividend coupons and decided that wouldn’t it be lovely to be crime-busters for a while, until the social season started anyway. So Nick Charles, or wife Nora, or the both of them gave Hammett all the information they wanted planted (and drinks at their favorite afternoon watering hole over at the Alhambra, the one on 54^th Street not the one on 42^nd). Hammett never checked any of it out and wound up with egg on his face when Nick, drunk probably, swore he had dinner with Winot one afternoon. It must have been a very quiet dinner on that date he gave out since according to the coroner’s report, an official report, Winot had been dead a couple of weeks by that time. Of course once NYPD, Mallory and his partners, solved the case all of that was water under the bridge and Nick came up, like every Mayfair swell, smelling of roses. Here’s the real story, the unvarnished story, if you can stand it.

This Nick Charles was a Greek kid from Mallory’s old neighborhood, from the only Greek family in an Irish neighborhood, his father ran the corner market is why. Mallory had run with his older brother, Samos, stealing hubcaps, batteries from cars and stuff, doing five-finger discounts of almost anything with some value from stores for a while before he got on the force. (Truth: Mallory said he got nabbed a couple of times but his father, a twenty- year cop himself got it squashed, squashed real good. The fact that Mallory disclosed that tidbit without having to do so impressed Marlowe.) Nick later got on the force too through Mallory’s father who liked the kid, and he was likable in an Irish sort of way for a guy who wasn’t Irish but pure Greek. He left the force after a few years because he didn’t like the red tape and the paper work or something, didn’t get the big cases but was walking some beat out in Five Points before that place got too rough for cops to walk around in. Mallory heard the real reason he left was he was not getting what he thought was his proper cut of the graft from the bookies, tavern owners, and dope-peddlers on his beat and made a stink about it but let’s leave it at the reason Nick gave Hammett since that is what everybody will believe of Saint Nick anyway.

After a couple of years of bumming around, riding the rails (to get a feel for the country according to Hammett like running from railroad bulls with blackjacks and eating “jungle” stew was some kind of lark to see how the other half lived) Nick went private. Yeah, became a private key-hole peeper, a shamus, a gumshoe and every other put down name you can think of that real cops call home-wreckers, divorce work guys mainly, or just plain leeches. No offense, Marlowe. Hell in those days all you needed was a cheapjack license from the real cops (Mallory’s father helping again in his behalf) and five bucks and you were ready to go so nobody should make more out it than that, make it like you had to grind away at some four- year college to get going.

Mallory had worked a couple of cases with Nick when he was around New York, nothing big, some stolen jewelry from a department store (He said he used his old time expertise as a five-finger discounter to wrap that one up. Nick wanted to fingerprint every kid under twenty who came the store for any reason, Jesus.). Another time a guy who skipped out of his wife and who NYPD was interested in on a Bunco charge, nothing stuff. Mallory forgot whether they ever nabbed that guy, maybe not. Then Mallory didn’t hear about Nick for a while until he ran into Samos one day back in the old neighborhood where he went to visit his mother. He stepped into the market that Samos had taken over from his father when he got too old to do it. By the way, and this is what Marlowe liked about Mallory, his honesty which counted for a lot with him, especially the few cops who were not totally on the “take,” Mallory had also stepped by in order to collect some protection money since Samos was running a betting parlor out of the back of the store. If you want to do such an illegal activity you best pay some protection money to the men in blue or you will find out fast that such activity is against the law. Samos was wise to that and paid up, paid up regularly and on time, no problem.

Samos said Nick had gone to the West Coast to try his luck there after he heard about a guy named Philip Marlowe, none other than Tyrone’s father, nothing but a private dick but with some street smarts. Marlowe Tyrone said was making a bundle solving cases, especially one big Hollywood case where he saved some producer’s bacon after a busted kidnap ransom on his daughter went sour, and he was getting some silky sheets action from the starlets (courtesy of that grateful producer) down in Los Angeles. Marlowe hemmed and hawed as he said all this to Tyrone, kind of wanted to pass the starlet and silky sheets stuff off as just publicity. Tyrone bailed Marlowe out by saying he understood that was Los Angeles before the war, before everything went crazy out there, before everybody and their brother and sister was crazy to go to Babylon.

So Nick tried his luck up north in Frisco. Mallory didn’t see his name or photograph in the papers in New York like you would about every other week with Marlowe escorting some starlet at an opening night so he figured Nick busted. Later he heard that Nick had given up the private dick game and had gotten married to some frill with dough out there, Nora Allen, that he had met on some case. He found out later (from Nora’s maid, maids always a good source for information) that Nick had actually dropped the ball on the case, an embezzlement of one of her father’s companies by a trusted employee, who got away to some Pacific island and was never caught. The father had subsequently had a heart attack and Nick was there to hold the daughter’s, Nora’s, hand before he passed on.

Then one night Mallory was working the Club Soto, looking for a couple of guys, wise guys that he had questions, third –degree questions, to ask about a certain robbery at Kay’s Jewelry Store over on 42^nd Street, when he spied Nick and that wife, Nora, a real looker. They had come to town for some stockholders’ meeting or something and were enjoying the night life while they were here. He had been drinking heavily and maybe she had too although she carried it better. They greeted, Nick introduced Mallory to Nora, cut up a few old torches and then they parted. That was the last he had heard of them until the Thin Man case broke a couple of months later, around Christmas. The Chief told Mallory, no ordered him, to bring Nick (and as it turned out this Nora who was the one with the real pull, with the dough to do the pulling) into the case since he, they, had bought a whole block of tickets to the upcoming Policemen’s Ball. So that was that. But already, and he hadn’t even told Marlowe thing one about the case, you could see where bringing in Mayfair swells, even if one of them was a busted-down gumshoe who got lucky, would ball the whole thing up. Would make more work for NYPD before he, they, were through. That stuff, filler really when Marlowe thought back on it, was okay but after about two long telephone calls he was itchy to get the details of the case, as a matter of professional curiosity.

So Mallory spilled it out on the third conversation especially when Marlowe pulled his chain about who, or who did not have the investigative smarts to round the killer up. This thin man, this Lawrence Winot, who even now people, people with cars, everybody, he was sure Marlowe had have heard of (he had), or somebody you know has heard of, was a giant in the invention game, mostly about making automobiles faster and safer, and then producing the cars at one of his plants. Naturally a guy who can make cars safer and faster in this car-crazy world would have nothing but money hanging off of him. And he did, except that was not what pulled his chain. Thinking up new inventions was what made him tick. His family, his wife, really ex-wife and three young marriage-eligible daughters though were another matter, they wanted dough and plenty of it. But him, people would see him around town and kind of laugh at him, privately laugh averting his face since you don’t laugh out loud when that much money is walking down the street and someday you might need a job, or a favor. The reason that they laughed though was that this Winot, about sixty years old was gangly, was a tall skinny guy who always looked a little disheveled, a little too long- haired and with a bleary-eyed look and like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. But the biggest laugh was that he was kind of an absent-minded professor-type. You know head down and bumping into people or tripping and falling off a curbstone. That is why nobody, nobody meaning the family since his companies were managed by professionals who kept him away from production and company finances leaving him a toy- box laboratory to fiddle around in in one of the downtown buildings off of Seventh Avenue where he could be found at all hours, was nervous when he didn’t show up for a couple of weeks.

Oh yeah, once NYPD was on the case, although it was like pulling teeth to get the family to provide that information, that like a lot of guys with money and some old time reversion to a young man’s sexual dreams Winot was keeping company with his secretary. This secretary, this Janet, was a looker although Mallory said he didn’t know how she was at dictation or whether it mattered to Winot but she was all blonde and curves. Mallory had her down as nothing but a gold-digger anyway, or high ticket call girl but that was not important. What was important was everybody, family, company executives, his lawyer, thought he was either with Janet under the silky sheets somewhere or out in some desolate, isolated spot inventing something on the QT. When Janet showed up one day at the office after coming back from vacation and said she hadn’t seen Winot for a couple of weeks and nobody could figure out from any evidence his whereabouts then the family, really Winot’s oldest daughter, Dorothy, filed a missing person’s report and that was how Mallory lammed onto the case.

Now this Winot family was buggy, buggy as Winot himself. Seems that Winot divorced his wife, Ida, in order to play with Janet. Such things happen all the time in and around New York, it’s that kind of city just like Marlowe’s L.A. except there in real money in the former, but she had gotten remarried on the rebound to some gigolo, a guy named Roman Griffin who NYPD had a book on for pandering and some Bunco activities. Nothing big but enough to figure he was working some scam and for a while they had him set in stone for the big step-off. Ida, Mrs. Winot, ah, Mrs. Griffin thought Roman had dough, dough being very necessary to her up-town lifestyle which was threatened since Janet made sure that Winot cut Ida off after the alimony settlement. Griffin though was nothing but a gold-digger, male version. This Dorothy thought Roman had something to do with her father’s disappearance (as Mallory said so did he once they had a look at Roman’s rap sheet) and convinced her two younger sisters to go along with her on the story.

Jesus those two were nuts, nuts plain and simple, a couple of wayward nubiles with time on their hands while waiting for some guy to spring a wedding ring on them They, night and day, began spying on Roman, sending goofy notes, and threatening murder and mayhem if he did not confess to kidnapping their father. And that is where this Hammett guy, this cub reporter came into the picture. They, the sisters egged on by Dorothy who hunted down some information about Griffin and his previous shady life, had called him and as much as said Roman was the one. Hammett printed their sad-ass story and the whole town was ready to lynch Roman. But see Roman was known to NYPD , very well-known and so after a little friendly third –degree grilling they put him on ice as a material witness like they do all the time when they are not sure who did what and to whom. Just so you aren’t in suspense and get an example of how Mallory was in charge right from the beginning this Roman was cleared early, was nothing but a pretty boy con man, and in any savvy detective’s long experience con men don’t go in for murder, no way.

In all the uproar it turned out that Nick Charles, once he got sober enough to read, or have the newspaper read to him from what everybody heard about the wild parties at his place over at The Duchess Hotel where they were staying for their over-extended visit to the city, had been on a case for Winot back when he worked the New York City shamus streets. An industrial espionage case where Winot suspected an ex-partner, a guy named Livermore, of selling his plans to General Motors that Nick could never solve, but which gave him entrée with the Winot family. So between that big block of Ball tickets and his knowing the family Nick wormed his way into the case. (Apparently the Winot sisters were not the only ones with time on their hands or were looking for an off-handed thrill since Nora, charming, good-looking Nora, egged Nick on to take the case so they would have something to tell people at their next party, or something like that.)

Mallory said even with pressure from higher up they kept Nick at arm’s length most of the time, and he kept himself supplied with enough liquor to waltz through the thing. It was this flak-catcher Hammett and his daily bull that got all the attention while NYPD was hunkered down doing the real work. Every day page one in the Gazette Nick Charles this, Nora Charles that. Nick suspected some gangster one day or some ex-lover, or Janet the next while they were really either throwing some party for half of Nick’s old crumb bum friends from the old days or were out on the town drinking from slippers or something.

Truth, he, they, never were a factor in the case at all until that last night when Mallory had all the suspects up to the Charles’ apartment for a final grilling. See Winot had not disappeared, at least not on his own disappeared to silky sheets or to inventive isolation. One day the cops got a warrant and searched Winot’s lab looking for evidence that might help them find him if he was out inventing something once the silky sheets with Janet angle blew up after she surfaced at the office. In one corner of the lab, a wall really, they “found”Winot, found his bones anyway, found him very dead, okay. So that was when Mallory came up with the idea of using a party at Nick’s place to nail the killer since he had a pretty good idea what happened at the lab, and who did the nasty deed. The way Hammett reported it after the dust settled was based on the idea that because it was Nick’s party where the killer was apprehended then it was Nick’s collar. Hammett was clueless that the “party” was a trap, had been set up that way not that somehow between martinis, dry, that Nick out of the blue exposed the killer and he crumbled before the great man’s deductive reasoning. Mallory was steaming for a month over that one.

Oh yeah how did they find that killer. Simple police work, simple tax-payer public police work. They figured foul play from the time Janet surfaced without Winot. They had followed her, followed her for a couple of weeks until one afternoon she met at the Automat with a guy, a guy who was later identified as James Livermore, a competitor and ex-partner of Winot’s when they both were starting out after studying at MIT and who was a man with a grudge since he believed that Winot had stolen some patent, some patent for automobile transmissions and which had made Winot a bundle. This Livermore got nothing, nothing except for living out in the open air bumming and thumbing most of his life. This Janet was his daughter whom he had convinced to seduce Winot and then after he was perfume-crazed grab his dough while doing her job in the office.

That strategy proved too slow though, and Winot was kind of crafty and a cheapskate always hovering around when it came down to it, so they hatched a kidnap-ransom gag that has been used since about Adam and Eve, maybe before. The problem was that Winot recognized Livermore’s voice during the abduction at the lab and so old Winot’s days were numbered. Very numbered. NYPD checked every place Livermore or Janet might have been where Winot might have also been, checked carefully and they hit pay-dirt when they checked Winot’s workshop area and noticed that what looked like a fresh digging in one corner of the shop. They had that section of the wall dug up and there they found the remains of a man, a tall, skinny man. Winot.

It is one thing to suspect a guy of a crime, even murder, it is another to have a case against him, although a few times Mallory admitted the cops have had to frame a guy just to close a case (and Marlowe knew that as well from his own checkered dealing with West Coast cops). But not this one, not with the Chief looking over everybody’s shoulder, not with Nick snooping around when he was dead drunk, and not with Hammett printing every fool theory that Charles threw his way. That is when Mallory decided to spring his trap at Nick’s house while everybody of interest was at his dinner party. Mallory had arranged the guest list to include the Winot family in toto, Julia, Winot’s lawyer, a few yeggs, and of course the Charles pair and their lapdog Hammett. Of course he had a few coppers acting as waiters and doormen to keep order and prevent the targeted guy from getting away. And the guest of honor although he didn’t know it? One James Livermore whom Mallory was able to get there using the ruse that Winot’s lawyer had information about settling up with him through his will.

When Mallory had everybody gathered and a couple of courses served he played a little game. He asked Nick to eliminate anybody that he was sure was not involved in Winot’s disappearance and for a dipso he did pretty good, getting it down to Janet Livermore and an old yegg, John “Studs” Murphy. At that point James flipped out, flipped out badly yelling that Janet had nothing to do with Winot’s disappearance. He drew a gun and naturally Mallory had to put two slugs into him.

As for Janet, well they left Janet alone although they could have charged her with kidnapping pure and simple, felony murder too. The last anybody heard she was married to some big money stockbroker who liked blondes with curves and who maybe had murder in their hearts. As for Nick and Nora Charles they took the fastest train out of town that night, right after the gun play started. They boarded the Red-Eye Special that left around midnight and the last anybody had heard of them was they were back clipping stock coupons out in Frisco while using the lounge at the Drake Hotel as their favorite watering hole. Hammett, well, Hammett gave up the newspaper dodge and the last anybody heard he was writing detective novels based on Nick and Nora’s exploits in that Thin Man case. Mallory grumbled into the telephone at that idea-“What a laugh.”

***Out In The Be-Bop Night- Saturday Night With “Roy The Boy”- Roy Orbison-Take Three

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

DVD Review

Roy Orbison: Black and White Nights, Roy Orbison, various all-star musicians and backup singers including Bruce Springsteen and T-Bone Burnett, 1987

Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis come easily to mind when thinking about classic rock ‘n’ roll (yah, the early 1950s stuff- not the my-1960s- coming- of- age stuff, although that is good too, mostly). And about where you were, and who you were with, and what you were doing when you heard those voices on the radio, on the television, or when you were "spinning platters" (records, for the younger set, okay, nice expression, right?). The artist under review, Roy Orbison, although clearly a rock legend, and rightly so, does not evoke that same kind of memory for me.

Oh sure, I listened to Blue Bayou,Pretty Woman, Running Scared, Sweet Dreams, Baby and many of the other songs that are performed on this great black and white concert footage. And backed up by the likes of T-Bone Burnett, who may be the top rhythm guitarist of the age (and who has also gotten well-deserved kudos for his work on Jeff Bridges’ Crazy Hearts), Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Bruce Springsteen. With vocal backups by k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt. All who gave energized performances and all who were deeply influenced by Roy’s music. That alone makes this worth viewing.

Still, I had this gnawing feeling about Roy’s voice after viewing this documentary and why it never really“spoke” to me like the others. Then it came to me, the part I mentioned above about where I was, and who I was with, and what I was doing when I heard Roy.

Enter one mad monk teenage friend, Frankie, Frankie Riley from the old neighborhood, North Adamsville. Frankie of a thousand stories, stories, well, what do you think stories, girls won and lost, cars owned or wish owned, grabbing dough in odd-ball ways, and dreams, mainly his, but he spoke for a lot of us, his corner boys, about a big jail-break from the confines of the town, about kicking the dust of the town off our shoes and seeing the great big world and making a name, a name up in lights even. A few stories, in addition, were even true although I personally discounted them if I was no there physically as an eye-witness. Frankie of a thousand treacheries too, leaving others, leaving me if you believe that, in the lurch when some twist (read: girl in Frankie corner boy speak) turned his head, some swell from the right side of the tracks gave him the time of day or just as acts of hubris (although even if we knew the word then we would not have used it, used certainly in relationship to Frankie, wiry Frankie who would have pummeled us for such an affront). Yeah he was that kind of guy. Oh yah, and Frankie, my bosom friend in high school. Frankie who I was essentially a flak (and flak-catcher) for back in those days when he was the king of the high school night around our town. And who pulled me out of more scrapes, hipped me to more girls, and who chased away more home-grown blues than you could shake a stick at. Yeah, that Frankie.

But back to Roy, Roy via Frankie. See when Roy was big, big in our beat down around the edges, some days it seemed beat six ways to Sunday, working- class neighborhood in the early 1960s, we all, meaning Frankie and his corner boys all, used to hang around the town pizza parlor, or one of them anyway that was also conveniently near our high school. Maybe this place, Salducci’s, was not the best one to sit down and have a family-sized pizza with salad and all the fixings in, complete with family, or if you were fussy about décor but the best tasting pizza, especially if you let it sit for a while and not eat it when it was piping hot right out of the oven. (People who know such things told me later that kind of cold is the way you are supposed to eat pizza anyway, and as an appetizer not as a meal.)

Moreover, this was the one where the teen-friendly owner, a big old balding Italian guy, Tonio Salducci, at least he said he was Italian and there were plenty of Italians in our town in those days so I believed him but he really looked Greek or Armenian to me, let us stay in the booths if it wasn’t busy, and we behaved like, well, like respectable teenagers. And this guy, this old Italian guy, could make us all laugh, even me, when he started to prepare a new pizza and he flour-powdered and rolled the dough out and flipped that sucker in the air about twelve times and about fifteen different ways to stretch it out. Sometimes people would just stand outside in front of the big picture window of the shop and watch his handiwork in utter fascination. Jesus, he could flip that thing.

One time, and you know this is true because you probably have your own pizza on the ceiling stories, he flipped the sucker so high it stuck to the ceiling and it might still be there for all I know (the place still is, although not him). But this is how he was cool; he just started up another without making a fuss. Let me tell you about him, about Tonio, sometime but right now our business to get on with Frankie and the Roy question, alright.

There nothing unusual, and I don’t pretend there, in just hanging out having a slice of pizza (no onions, please, which Tonio liked to smother as an additional topping over many of his pizzas, he said it gave that old world taste, and maybe it did but I was a teenage boy and so wanted to remain chaste, breathe chaste, in case I might have a lucky night and that certain she came in, the one that sat across from me in class and who I had been eying until my eyes have become sore), some soft drink (which we called tonic in New England in those days but which you called (call), uh, soda), usually a locally- bottled root beer, Robb’s, and, incessantly, dropping nickels, dimes and quarters in the jukebox. That “incessantly,” by the way, allowed us to stay in those booths since we were “paying” customers with all the rights and dignities that entailed, unless Tonio needed our seats and we had to take the air. Had to move outside and hang, one foot on the ground the other bent up against Tonio’s wall, looking for the heart, looking for the heart of something.

Here is the part that might really explain things though. Frankie had this girlfriend (he always had a string of them, which what was cool about him, but this was his main squeeze, his main honey, his main twist, his main flame and about sixty-seven other names he had for them in Frankie-speak and which we naturally followed and called them as well, although I favored “chick”). The divine Joanne, Joanne Murphy, Irish of course since we were purists in those days (read: they were the only ones who would talk to us, trying to “reform,” church reform us or something) and only dealt with neighborhood girls, and so Irish of course. Now this “divine”Frankie description was strictly his own except when I had to write something about her then mine as well, see I really was a flak for the king. No question she was a looker, one of those dewy fresh roses that disturbed my younger dreams, but I could take or leave her, questioned her “fit” for Frankie so I questioned the divine part, questioned it thoroughly, on more than one occasion. But divine so you know who won in the end.

See though Frankie, old double standard, maybe triple standard Frankie, was crazy about her, although in tribal corner boy manner would never express such an emotion in public, not in the North Adamsville corner boy night, and maybe not in yours either. But he was always worried, worried to perdition, that she was “seeing” someone else (she wasn’t, she was stuck on him too and that lasted all through high school, Jesus). You know guys like that, guys that have all the angles figured, have some things, no, a lot of things, going their way but need, desperately need, that one more thing, that constant reassurance to “complete” them.

But sweet old clever “divine” Joanne used that Frankie fear as a wedge. She would always talk (and talk while I was there, just to kind of add to the trauma drama, Frankie’s drama) about all the guys that called up bothering her (personally I didn’t see it, she was a looker like I said, for sure, and with a nice figure but I wouldn’t have jumped off a bridge if she turned me down, others in those days yes, and gladly, but not her). This would get Frankie steaming, steaming so he couldn’t see straight. Once he actually couldn’t eat his pizza slice he was so upset and Frankie, Frankie from the old neighborhood, ALWAYS ate his pizza. Even fatherly Tonio took notice.

Worst, was when old doll, old sweetheart, Joanne would drop coins in the jukebox to play, play … Roy Orbison’sRunning Scared over and over. And make Frankie give her the good coin, his good coin to boot. It got so bad that old Frankie, when Joanne wasn’t around, would play it on his own. With his own money, no less. So, I guess, I just got so sick of hearing that song and that trembling rising crescendo voice to increase the lyrical power of the song that I couldn’t see straight. But, really, you can’t blame Roy for that, or shouldn’t.

Watch this DVD. Watch it like I did and just turn the old volume on the remote down when that song comes on. And think of poor old lovesick Frankie and his divine Ms. Joanne. Yeah , that’s the ticket.

**********

Running Scared- Roy Orbison, Joe Melson

Just running scared, each place we go

So afraid that he might show

Yeah, running scared, what would I do

If he came back and wanted you

Just running scared, feeling low

Running scared, you love him so

Yeah, running scared, afraid to lose

If he came back which one would you choose

Then all at once he was standing there

So sure of himself, his head in the air

And my heart was breaking, which one would it be

You turned around and walked away with me

Attention Peace Activists:

Please Join Veterans For Peace and our “Outhouse House Band” The Leftist Marching Band for

Armistice / Veterans

Day for Peace

November 11, 2013

Parade & Faneuil Hall Event

Veterans for Peace will once again proudly walk behind the street sweepers in the Veterans Day Parade in Boston. Please join us as we show our opposition to the on-going war in Afghanistan and our undeclared Drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

More information to follow

We will gather at 12:30 on the corner of Charles and Beacon Streets.

1st Parade steps off at 1:00 pm – our parade will follow

Our Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace Parade will follow the first parade which steps off at 1:00 pm on the corner of Boylston and Tremont Street and continue along the Boston Common. Our parade then will weave it’s way to Faneuil Hall for the Armistice / Veterans Day for Peace event.

From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of The 96^th Anniversary Of The Russian October Revolution- “Young People, Study Politics!”-From May Day Speech by Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky On The Lessons Of The Russian Revolution

Workers Vanguard No. 968
5 November 2010

In Honor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

For New October Revolutions!

(From the Archives of Marxism)
November 7 (October 25 by the calendar used in Russia at the time) marks the 93rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the workers’ seizure of power in Russia gave flesh and blood reality to the Marxist understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Despite the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet workers state, culminating in its counterrevolutionary destruction in 1991-92, the October Revolution was and is the international proletariat’s greatest victory; its final undoing, a world-historic defeat. The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) fought to the bitter end in defense of the Soviet Union and the bureaucratically deformed workers states of East Europe, while calling for workers political revolutions to oust the parasitic nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies that ruled these states. This is the same program we uphold today for the remaining workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

Having been expelled from the USSR in 1929 by Stalin, Trotsky spent the remainder of his life in exile. In November 1932, he gave a speech to a Danish social-democratic student group in Copenhagen. He outlined the political conditions and the social forces that drove the Russian Revolution, stressing the decisive role of the Bolshevik Party. Illuminating the worldwide impact of the Russian Revolution and its place in history, Trotsky underlined the necessity of sweeping away the decaying capitalist order and replacing it with a scientifically planned international socialist economy that will lay the material basis for human freedom.

The ICL fights to forge workers parties modeled on Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks to lead the struggle for new October Revolutions around the globe.

* * *

Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is on the rise....

Without the armed insurrection of November 7, 1917, the Soviet state would not be in existence. But the insurrection itself did not drop from Heaven. A series of historical prerequisites was necessary for the October revolution.

1. The rotting away of the old ruling classes—the nobility, the monarchy, the bureaucracy.

2. The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the people.

3. The revolutionary character of the peasant question.

4. The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nations.

5. The significant social weight of the proletariat.

To these organic pre-conditions we must add certain conjunctural conditions of the highest importance:

6. The Revolution of 1905 was the great school, or in Lenin’s words, the “dress rehearsal” of the Revolution of 1917. The Soviets, as the irreplaceable organizational form of the proletarian united front in the revolution, were created for the first time in the year 1905.

7. The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of their immobility and thereby prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

But all these conditions, which fully sufficed for the outbreak of the Revolution, were insufficient to assure the victory of the proletariat in the Revolution. For this victory one condition more was needed:

8. The Bolshevik Party....

In the year 1883 there arose among the emigres the first Marxist group. In the year 1898, at a secret meeting, the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party was proclaimed (we all called ourselves Social-Democrats in those days). In the year 1903 occurred the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In the year 1912 the Bolshevist fraction finally became an independent Party.

It learned to recognize the class mechanics of society in struggle, in the grandiose events of twelve years (1905-1917). It educated cadres equally capable of initiative and of subordination. The discipline of its revolutionary action was based on the unity of its doctrine, on the tradition of common struggles and on confidence in its tested leadership.

Thus stood the Party in the year 1917. Despised by the official “public opinion” and the paper thunder of the intelligentsia press, it adapted itself to the movement of the masses. Firmly it kept in hand the control of factories and regiments. More and more the peasant masses turned toward it. If we understand by “nation,” not the privileged heads, but the majority of the people, that is, the workers and peasants, then Bolshevism became in the course of the year 1917 a truly national Russian Party.

In September 1917, Lenin, who was compelled to keep in hiding, gave the signal, “The crisis is ripe, the hour of the insurrection has approached.” He was right. The ruling classes had landed in a blind alley before the problems of the war, the land and national liberation. The bourgeoisie finally lost its head. The democratic parties, the Mensheviks and social-revolutionaries, wasted the remains of the confidence of the masses in them by their support of the imperialist war, by their policy of ineffectual compromise and concession to the bourgeois and feudal property-owners. The awakened army no longer wanted to fight for the alien aims of imperialism. Disregarding democratic advice, the peasantry smoked the landowners out of their estates. The oppressed nationalities at the periphery rose up against the bureaucracy of Petrograd. In the most important workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets the Bolsheviki were dominant. The workers and soldiers demanded action. The ulcer was ripe. It needed a cut of the lancet.

Only under these social and political conditions was the insurrection possible. And thus it also became inevitable. But there is no playing around with the insurrection. Woe to the surgeon who is careless in the use of the lancet! Insurrection is an art. It has its laws and its rules.

The Party carried through the October insurrection with cold calculation and with flaming determination. Thanks to this, it conquered almost without victims. Through the victorious Soviets the Bolsheviki placed themselves at the head of a country which occupies one sixth of the surface of the globe....

Let us now in closing attempt to ascertain the place of the October Revolution, not only in the history of Russia but in the history of the world. During the year 1917, in a period of eight months, two historical curves intersect. The February upheaval—that belated echo of the great struggles which had been carried out in past centuries on the territories of Holland, England, France, almost all of Continental Europe—takes its place in the series of bourgeois revolutions. The October Revolution proclaims and opens the domination of the proletariat. It was world capitalism that suffered its first great defeat on the territory of Russia. The chain broke at its weakest link. But it was the chain that broke, and not only the link.

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfill its essential mission, the increase of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot stand still at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive force and a sound, planned, that is, Socialist organization of production and distribution can assure humanity—all humanity—of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses—first of all, man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical labor. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the blind and dark forces which have grown up behind his back. He will build up his economy freely, that is, according to a plan, with compass in hand. This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason and the will of collective humanity. In this sense, Socialism must become a new step in the historical advance of mankind. Before our ancestor, who first armed himself with a stone axe, the whole of nature represented a conspiracy of secret and hostile forces. Since then, the natural sciences, hand in hand with practical technology, have illuminated nature down to its most secret depths. By means of electrical energy, the physicist passes judgment on the nucleus of the atom. The hour is not far when science will easily solve the task of the alchemists, and turn manure into gold and gold into manure. Where the demons and furies of nature once raged, now rules ever more courageously the industrial will of man.

But while he wrestled victoriously with nature, man built up his relations to other men blindly, almost like the bee or the ant. Belatedly and most undecidedly he approached the problems of human society. He began with religion, and passed on to politics. The Reformation represented the first victory of bourgeois individualism and rationalism in a domain which had been ruled by dead tradition. From the church, critical thought went on to the state. Born in the struggle with absolutism and the medieval estates, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and of the rights of man and the citizen grew stronger. Thus arose the system of parliamentarism. Critical thought penetrated into the domain of government administration. The political rationalism of democracy was the highest achievement of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.

But between nature and the state stands economic life. Technology liberated man from the tyranny of the old elements—earth, water, fire and air—only to subject him to its own tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature, to become a slave to the machine, and, still worse, a slave to supply and demand. The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rises up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves with the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and—every man and every woman, not only a selected few—become a full citizen in the realm of thought.

—“Leon Trotsky Defends the October Revolution” (Militant, 21 January 1933)
**********

Workers Vanguard No. 1001 27 April 2012 From the Archives of Marxism   “Young People, Study Politics!”-From May Day Speech by Leon Trotsky   Below is an excerpt from a 1924 speech on the eve of May Day delivered to young Communist workers and Red Army veterans by Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the October Revolution of 1917. May Day originated in the 1880s in the U.S. with the struggle for the eight-hour day and was soon adopted by the Second (Socialist) International as an annual workers celebration. However, the Second International would go on to definitively betray the interests of the working class when its parties (with the notable exceptions of the Russian Bolsheviks, Serbian Social Democrats and the Bulgarian “Narrow” Socialists) supported their “own” bourgeois rulers in the interimperialist World War I. To this day, the struggle for the eight-hour day remains a vital task of the labor movement in the U.S. and elsewhere, as workers are increasingly driven by the capitalists to risk life and limb by

Workers Vanguard No. 1001	27 April 2012

From the Archives of Marxism

“Young People, Study Politics!”

From May Day Speech by Leon Trotsky

Below is an excerpt from a 1924 speech on the eve of May Day delivered to young Communist workers and Red Army veterans by Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the October Revolution of 1917. May Day originated in the 1880s in the U.S. with the struggle for the eight-hour day and was soon adopted by the Second (Socialist) International as an annual workers celebration. However, the Second International would go on to definitively betray the interests of the working class when its parties (with the notable exceptions of the Russian Bolsheviks, Serbian Social Democrats and the Bulgarian “Narrow” Socialists) supported their “own” bourgeois rulers in the interimperialist World War I. To this day, the struggle for the eight-hour day remains a vital task of the labor movement in the U.S. and elsewhere, as workers are increasingly driven by the capitalists to risk life and limb by working eleven- and twelve-hour days or taking multiple jobs to make ends meet.

Trotsky’s speech addressed the need for political and technical training of young workers and soldiers in the Soviet workers state, which throughout its existence faced imperialist powers intent on its destruction. Trotsky was Soviet Commissar of War at the time, but he would soon be driven from that position by the developing bureaucracy under J.V. Stalin. The speech appears in Trotsky’s Problems of Everyday Life (Monad Press, 1973).

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Who inaugurated the celebration of May Day thirty-five years ago? The Social Democrats. Who is at the head of the German Republic? The Social Democrat Ebert. What is the point? The point is that the new revolutionary generation of the working class in Europe is growing more and more thoroughly filled with hatred for the rule of the bourgeoisie, and that over there in Europe, democratic Menshevism is the last instrument the bourgeoisie has for keeping the working masses down.

And we see that those very governments that reproached us communists for openly saying that only the transfer of power into the hands of the working people could abolish the rule of capital, those very same governments that belong to the parties that inaugurated the May Day celebrations, are forbidding the workers to go into the streets with the slogans of international brotherhood and the eight-hour working day. And the same telegrams report that the German Young Communists, the young people of Germany and those of France, too, are nevertheless doing all they can to be able to go out into the streets of their cities with slogans of protest and struggle.

What are these slogans? The slogan laid down for May Day thirty-five years ago—the eight-hour working day—was achieved almost everywhere in Europe after the war; but in recent years the working day has been lengthened. If there were a country that had the right, if there were a working class that had the right to demand of itself and of its sons a working day longer than eight hours, then it would be our country, exhausted and devastated, working not for the bourgeoisie but for itself—and yet in our country the eight-hour working day remains a precondition, based on the laws of the republic, for the moral and spiritual advance and development of the working masses.

And on May Day we hurl this fact in the face of Europe’s capitalist, lying, thoroughly hypocritical bourgeois democracy. What sort of democracy is it for the working people if they are merely promised the eight-hour working day? And what of the fraternity of the peoples, respect for the working people of other nationalities, who speak other languages, fraternal feelings which we must absorb from our earliest years, because national chauvinism and national hatred are the poison with which the bourgeoisie pollutes the minds of the working people? I demand to know where this slogan of the May Day celebration has been put into effect more fully than in our country. I have been in Caucasia, that backward region. There are three main republics there and dozens of backward nationalities. That region was bled white by wars. But now the young generation there is learning to work and to create culture on the basis of cooperation among all the different nationalities. Have not we, the workers’ republic, the right to contrast, with justified pride, this backward Caucasia, which has been restored and given new life by the Soviet power, to any of the cultured countries of Europe, where on every frontier there is hatred, enmity, and danger of new armed conflicts?

And the third slogan by which the Social Democrats swore thirty-five years ago, the slogan of struggle against militarism? Now in power in Britain is the Menshevik Labour Government of MacDonald. What is it spending on arms? It is spending 1,150 million gold rubles a year. That is four or five times as much as we spend. Britain has 40 million people, we have 130 million. MacDonald may say that we are the poorer country and so, of course, we spend less. But, Comrades, if we are the poorer, that means that we are threatened by greater danger, for throughout history it has always happened that rich peoples, led by their rich ruling classes, have conquered and subjected poorer and more backward ones. China will not fall upon Britain and the United States, but the wealthy United States and Britain may crush China.

If we did not have Soviet power—the power of the workers and peasants, of the Communist Party boldly marching onward to battle—our country, weakened and exhausted by the imperialist war, would long ago have been torn to pieces by the barbarians of world imperialism. And when those very same Mensheviks reproach us for giving military training to our young people, for building the Red Army, when they tell us: “You, too, are militarists,” then it is sufficient for us to contrast the states that surround us with the first republic of labor in the world, surrounded for the last seven years by irreconcilable and ruthless foes.

If they are recognizing us now, and if we are carrying on negotiations in London today, it must not be supposed that the world bourgeoisie has become better disposed towards the republic of workers and peasants. A change of tactics does not do away with the hatred felt by the bourgeoisie of all countries for the republic where the rising generation of working people is growing up in a new atmosphere, with new ideals—for we are overthrowing the old ideals in so far as we are teaching the young generation to have confidence in the power of the world working class. The world bourgeoisie will never reconcile itself to this.