***Watch Out For Jilted Lovers- The Thin Man Series-William Powell and Myra Loy’s’ After The Thin Man-With Kudos To Dashiell Hammett

 

Watch Out For Jilted Lovers- The Thin Man Series-William Powell and Myra Loy’s’ After The Thin Man-With Kudos To Dashiell Hammett

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

After the Thin Man, starring William Powell, Myra Loy and Asta, based on the crime detection novel by Dashiell Hammett, 1936

Long before Jaws, long before Halloween X, long before Ocean’s X  Hollywood has cashed in on sequelling any film idea that showed the least bit of staying power. One of the early example of that trend was the five (I believe) run Thin Man series starring William Powell, Myra  and of course their faithful dog Asta. While the subsequent four after the initial fairly straightforward film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s classic crime detection novel The Thin Man running from the mid-1930s into the early 1940s are a mixed bag the film under review here, After The Thin Man, except for a bit too much length and confusing filler is one of the better ones.   

No question that every crime detection novel (and film noir ) aficionado owes Dashiell Hammett (and Raymond Chandler) a great debt for providing us with professional private detectives we can get behind and root for after a long run of amateur Saturday afternoon parlor detectives was snapped in the late 1920s and 1930s. Hammett’s Sam Spade may be the max daddy of all the tough private no question  but Hammett’s more measured attempt to mix a plebian ex-copper Nick Charles and patrician, meaning the one with the dough, Nora (with Asta thrown in) to solve the hard city murders that they wound up solving is interesting as well. Those sleuthing virtues are more apparent in the book than on the various film adaptations but with the exception of the over-the-top use of liquor to loosen up old Nick and Nora’s brains the pains-taking crime detection methodology behind the facile façade come through.      

Take this last case, the one under review, and the one that begs the question about being careful with jilted lovers listed in the title of this piece. There is murder about in old Frisco town where the Charles’ had been based at one time and the place where Nora’s Mayfair swells money and family reside. Seemed that one of Nora’s female cousins married a ne’er-do-well male gold-digger who was putting the squeeze for twenty-five grand on that cousin’s ex-boyfriend who was still madly in love with her (played by a young Jimmy Stewart by the way). The reason for the squeeze was that that ne’er-do-well was playing footsies with a torch singer down at one of the better gin joints in town. Problem is said footsie-player was working with the nefarious gangster-type club-owners to do our gigolo out of his ill-gotten gains after the ex-boyfriend ponies up the dough.    

There is a bigger problem when our gigolo is found face down with a bullet in his back and it looks like his Brahmin wife (Nora’s cousin) was going to take the big step-off for it up at Q or wherever they throw female murderers. Enter Nick and Nora after a tiring night of New Year’s Eve nightclubbing to save day. It looked bad for several parties since we know that scorned wife was not taking the fall, not in Frisco town, and not while the Charles’ had breathe to protect one of their own. It looked bad for the torch singer, the two gangster club owners and assorted other decoys for a while. Hey, what about a society guy who has felt nothing but unrequited rage ever since his sweetie took up with a male gold-digger. Nice work Nick and Nora.

 

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

After the Thin Man, starring William Powell, Myra Loy and Asta, based on the crime detection novel by Dashiell Hammett, 1936

Long before Jaws, long before Halloween X, long before Ocean’s X  Hollywood has cashed in on sequelling any film idea that showed the least bit of staying power. One of the early example of that trend was the five (I believe) run Thin Man series starring William Powell, Myra  and of course their faithful dog Asta. While the subsequent four after the initial fairly straightforward film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s classic crime detection novel The Thin Man running from the mid-1930s into the early 1940s are a mixed bag the film under review here, After The Thin Man, except for a bit too much length and confusing filler is one of the better ones.   

No question that every crime detection novel (and film noir ) aficionado owes Dashiell Hammett (and Raymond Chandler) a great debt for providing us with professional private detectives we can get behind and root for after a long run of amateur Saturday afternoon parlor detectives was snapped in the late 1920s and 1930s. Hammett’s Sam Spade may be the max daddy of all the tough private no question  but Hammett’s more measured attempt to mix a plebian ex-copper Nick Charles and patrician, meaning the one with the dough, Nora (with Asta thrown in) to solve the hard city murders that they wound up solving is interesting as well. Those sleuthing virtues are more apparent in the book than on the various film adaptations but with the exception of the over-the-top use of liquor to loosen up old Nick and Nora’s brains the pains-taking crime detection methodology behind the facile façade come through.      

Take this last case, the one under review, and the one that begs the question about being careful with jilted lovers listed in the title of this piece. There is murder about in old Frisco town where the Charles’ had been based at one time and the place where Nora’s Mayfair swells money and family reside. Seemed that one of Nora’s female cousins married a ne’er-do-well male gold-digger who was putting the squeeze for twenty-five grand on that cousin’s ex-boyfriend who was still madly in love with her (played by a young Jimmy Stewart by the way). The reason for the squeeze was that that ne’er-do-well was playing footsies with a torch singer down at one of the better gin joints in town. Problem is said footsie-player was working with the nefarious gangster-type club-owners to do our gigolo out of his ill-gotten gains after the ex-boyfriend ponies up the dough.    

There is a bigger problem when our gigolo is found face down with a bullet in his back and it looks like his Brahmin wife (Nora’s cousin) was going to take the big step-off for it up at Q or wherever they throw female murderers. Enter Nick and Nora after a tiring night of New Year’s Eve nightclubbing to save day. It looked bad for several parties since we know that scorned wife was not taking the fall, not in Frisco town, and not while the Charles’ had breathe to protect one of their own. It looked bad for the torch singer, the two gangster club owners and assorted other decoys for a while. Hey, what about a society guy who has felt nothing but unrequited rage ever since his sweetie took up with a male gold-digger. Nice work Nick and Nora.

In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2014 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?- Frank Jackman's War-Take Two 

 

From The American Left History Blog Archives –May Day 1971

 

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let- her-rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some Iowa/Kansas wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war America (post-World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were (are), had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think) but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.’s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

********

Frank Jackman awoken from his light sleep with a start. Someone, a blurry figure, had placed a blanket, an Army blanket of all things, over him as he had sat dozing in front of the small campfire that was doing double-duty keeping the refugees in front of it warm. He shook himself awake, awake as anybody who had not slept in over twenty-four hours could be with only this cat nap to relief his sleepiness. He then began to think about the long chain of events that had brought him down to Washington in this late spring of 1971 after having been released from the Army stockade only a couple of  months before. Then he remembered the events he had begun to recount before he dozed off earlier. Let’s pick his story up from there.

No question one Private Francis Alan Jackman, US5034567859, with fresh orders for Fort Lewis, Washington in transit to RVN (Vietnam) was in a world of confusion in the summer of 1969. While he had not been a vociferous opponent of the war he had acquired definite views, had gotten “religion” on the subject, that he would not let himself be used as cannon fodder for a war that he deep-down opposed. Being a kid from a working-class neighborhood in his hometown of North Adamsville where guys, when called to military service kicking and screaming or not, went. So Frank had no model for oppositional behavior. In a panic he had heard from some source that he had now forgotten that the Quakers over in Cambridge had information and services for those who were opposed to the war (or rather in the case, all wars).He knew the Quakers but also knew that he was not one of them having been brought up a Roman Catholic with its ill-defined “just war theory,” meaning in practice supporting whatever war the state was up to, at least that was what he had constantly heard from the pulpit and on the street.        

After some counselling of his options, including a veiled option to go AWOL (absent without leave) for a period in order to be dropped from the rolls out in Fort Lewis, Frank ran through what he would wind up doing. And he pretty much kept to the Quaker- offered script for the first part of his odyssey. He found himself AWOL for a long enough period to have been dropped from the rolls (he was in communication with a Replacement Company clerk out there) so that when he turned himself in that he was able to go to nearby Fort Devens for any future action. He went through the formal military conscientious objector application finally being turned down for the very simple reason that according to military standards an applicant must come from a religious background that held all wars immoral and not just some unjust. He was thus place back in line to be reassigned to Fort Lewis for transit to Vietnam.

One of the other options presented to Frank was to seek legal redress through the federal courts once his CO application was turned down as he and the military counsellors in Cambridge assumed would happen.

This track involved seeking a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court of Massachusetts on the basis that the military’s decision in his case was arbitrary and capricious in light of a civilian CO case (the Welch decision) where the Supreme Court ruled that other ethical and non-traditional anti-war religious expressions could be considered by the authorities. One day soon after his rejection he went Cambridge to seek that option by hiring a “movement”-friendly lawyer who knew the ins and outs of this procedure. An option exercised that saved his life as it turned out since a judge in Boston agreed to hear the case and placed a restraining order on the military authorities at Fort Devens from moving him from the jurisdiction of the court. Since he had become something of an on base rabble-rouser the military authorities had tried to hustle him off base under guard. The restraining order arrived in just a nick of time (about two hours before they were closing in to round him up he had heard later from a friendly clerk in the Provost Marshall’s office.)

With the fire beginning to blaze brightly against the coming dark of night Frank, hungry from not having eaten for a several hours and tired of thinking about all those legal steps he had taken that would only interest a legal aficionado, went looking for something to eat…  

 

NATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION

NO KILLER DRONES!  NO SPY DRONES!

 

TUESDAY, MAY 6, NOON – 2:00 PM

 

MIT MAIN ENTRANCE, 77 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., CAMBRIDGE

 

Thousands of innocent people have been killed by U.S. drones.  We will read the names of victims and speak out against the new forms of warfare and the surveillance state.  We are gathering at MIT, a major center of drone research.

Spread the word and

JOIN US

 

Eastern Massachusetts Anti-Drone Network & Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

 

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In Honor Of International Workers’ Day- May Day 2014 -Ancient dreams, dreamed-The Risen People?

 

 

From The American Left History Blog Archives –May Day 1971

 

Endless, dusty, truck heavy, asphalt steaming hitchhike roads travelled, Route 6, 66, maybe 666 and perdition for all I know, every back road, every Connecticut highway avoiding back road from Massachusetts south to the capital for one last winner-take-all, no prisoners taken show-down to end all show-downs. And maybe, just maybe, finally some peace and a new world a-borning, a world we had been talking about for at least a decade (clueless, as all youth nations are clueless, that that road was well-travelled, very well- travelled, before us). No Jack Kerouac dharma bum easy road (although there were dharma bums, or at least faux dharma bums, aplenty on those 1971 roads south, and west too) let- her-rip cosmic brakeman Neal Cassady at the wheel flying through some Iowa/Kansas wheat field night fantasy this trip.

No this trip was not about securing some cultural enclave in post-war America (post-World War II so as not to confuse the reader) in break-out factory town Lowell or cold water tenement Greenwich Village/Soho New Jack City or Shangri-La West out in the Bay area, east or west, but about mucking up the works, the whole freaking governmental/societal/economic/cultural/personal/godhead world (that last one, the godhead one, not thrown in just for show, no way) and maybe, just maybe sneaking away with the prize. But a total absolute, absolutist, big karma sky fight out, no question. And we, I, am ready. On that dusty road ready.

More. See all roads head south as we, my girlfriend of the day, maybe more, maybe more than a day, Joyell, but along this time more for ease of travelling for those blessed truck driver eye rides, than lust or dream wish and my sainted wise-guy amigo (and shades of Gregory Corso, sainted, okay), Matty, who had more than a passing love or dream wish in her and if you had seen her you would not have wondered why. Not have wondered why if your “type” was Botticelli painted and thoughts of butterfly swirls just then or were all-type sleepy-eyed benny-addled teamster half-visioned out of some forlorn rear view mirror.

Yah, head south, in ones, twos, and threes (no more, too menacing even for hefty ex-crack back truckers to stop for) travelling down to D.C. for what many of us figure will be the last, finally, push back against the war, the Vietnam War, for those who have forgotten, or stopped watching television and the news, but THEY, and you knew (know) who they were (are), had their antennae out too, they KNEW we were coming, even high-ball fixed (or whiskey neat she had the face for them) looking out from lonely balconies Martha Mitchell knew that much. They were, especially in mad max robot-cop Connecticut, out to pick off the stray or seven who got into their mitts as a contribution to law and order, law and order one Richard Milhous Nixon-style (and in front of him, leading some off-key, off-human key chorus some banshee guy from Maryland, another watch out hitchhike trail spot, although not as bad as Ct, nothing except Arizona is). And thus those dusty, steamy, truck heavy (remind me to tell you about hitchhiking stuff, and the good guy truckers you wanted, desperately wanted, to ride with in those days, if I ever get a chance sometime).

The idea behind this hitchhiked road, or maybe, better, the why. Simple, too simple when you, I, thought about it later in lonely celled night but those were hard trying times, desperate times really, and just free, free from another set of steel-barred rooms this jailbird was ready to bring down heaven, hell, hell if it came down to it to stop that furious war (Vietnam, for the later reader) and start creating something recognizable for humans to live in. So youth nation, then somewhat long in the tooth, and long on bad karma-driven bloody defeats too, decided to risk all with the throw of the dice and bring a massive presence to D.C. on May Day 1971.

And not just any massed presence like the then familiar seasonal peace crawl that nobody paid attention too anymore except the organizers, although the May Day action was wrapped around that year’s spring peace crawl, (wrapped up, cozily wrapped up, in their utopian reformist dream that more and more passive masses, more and more suburban housewives from New Jersey, okay, okay not just Jersey, more and more high school freshman, more and more barbers, more and more truck driver stop waitresses, for that matter, would bring the b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e (just in case there are sensitive souls in the room) to their knees. No, we were going to stop the government, flat. Big scheme, big scheme no question and if anybody, any “real” youth nation refugee, excepting, of course, always infernal always, those cozy peace crawl organizers, tried to interject that perhaps there were wiser courses nobody mentioned them out loud in my presence and I was at every meeting, high or low. Moreover I had my ears closed, flapped shut closed, to any lesser argument. I, rightly or wrongly, silly me thought “cop.”

So onward anti-war soldiers from late night too little sleep Sunday night before Monday May Day dawn in some vagrant student apartment around DuPont Circle (I think) but it may have been further up off 14th Street, Christ after eight million marches for seven million causes who can remember that much. No question though on the student ghetto apartment locale; bed helter-skelter on the floor, telephone wire spool for a table, orange crates for book shelves, unmistakably, and the clincher, seventeen posters, mainly Che, Mao, Ho, Malcolm etc., the first name only necessary for identification pantheon just then, a smattering of Lenin and Trotsky but they were old guys from old revolutions and so, well, discounted to early rise (or early stay up cigarette chain-smoking and coffee slurping to keep the juices flowing). Out into the streets, out into the small collectives coming out of other vagrant apartments streets (filled with other posters of Huey Newton , George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, etc. from the two names needed pantheon) joining up to make a cohorted mass (nice way to put it, right?). And then dawn darkness surrounded, coffee spilled out, cigarette bogarted, AND out of nowhere, or everywhere, bang, bang, bang of governmental steel, of baton, of chemical dust, of whatever latest technology they had come up with they came at us (pre-tested in Vietnam, naturally, as I found out later). Jesus, bedlam, mad house, insane asylum, beat, beat like gongs, defeated.

Through bloodless bloodied streets (this, after all, was not Chicago, hog butcher to the world), may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. One arrested, two, three, many, endless thousands as if there was an endless capacity to arrest, and be arrested, arrest the world, and put it all in one great big Robert F. Kennedy stadium home to autumn gladiators on Sunday and sacrificial lambs this spring maypole may day basket druid day.

And, as I was being led away by one of D.C.’s finest, I turned around and saw that some early Sunday morning voice, some “cop” voice who advised caution and went on and on about getting some workers out to join us before we perished in an isolated blast of arrests and bad hubris also being led away all trussed up, metal hand-cuffs seemingly entwined around her whole slight body. She said she would stick with us even though she disagreed with the strategy that day and I had scoffed, less than twenty-four hours before, that she made it sound like she had to protect her erring children from themselves. And she, maybe, the only hero of the day. Righteous anonymous sister, forgive me. (Not so anonymous actually since I saw her many times later in Boston, almost would have traded in lust for her but I was still painted Botticelli-bewitched and so I, we, let the moment passed, and worked on about six million marches for about five millions causes with her but that was later. I saw no more of her in D.C. that week.)

Stop. Brain start. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove, these were not such times even with all our unforced errors, and no flame-flecked phoenix raising but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva came a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ would take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart road tramp acting in god’s place could even dream of. But that was later. Just then, just that screwed-up martyr moment, I was longing for the hot, dusty, truck driver stop meat loaf special, dishwater coffee on the side, road back home even ready to chance Connecticut highway dragnets to get there.

********

Frank Jackman wandered across the National Mall, the D.C. National Mall for those who have not been to that locale, the locale where the Washington Monument is, that early April 30^th 1971 evening trying to keep warm against the unseasonable late April chill that was pressing down on the day. Wandered and found a space, a spot, a closed in spot where several people had begun to start a small fire away from the din of the massive crowds who had earlier in the day filled the space with their singed yearnings for peace leaving a less massive crowd ready to battle on the next day, May Day, against the whole freaking government. Frank needed to figure out where he stood on that proposition, needed to figure out if he could take more jail time just then.  

 

And that was no academic question as Frank thought back to just a few months before when he had finally under judicial edict been released from the Fort Dix stockade as a military conscientious objector after almost a collective year in jail. And that was his dilemma doing more jail time, although he was not altogether sure of the effectiveness of the proposed action either. But just that chilled evening he was in a memory mood, a mood to flash back a little and reflect on his own previous small contribution to the struggle against the Vietnam War.

 

He thought first and foremost about what a fool he had been to even allow himself to be drafted in the Army in the first place. While he had not been particularly vocal about his opposition to the war having been, frankly, caught up more with the idea of wine, women and song as befit many a college student lying in wait on the campuses of this country in order to pray that the war would be over before he graduated and his healthy body number was called. In any case he was drafted by his friends and neighborhoods in North Adamsville (as they so quaintly put it on his draft notice) and he was inducted in January, 1969 (after the heavy military action by the North Vietnamese in TET 1968, and the heavy political action in America throughout that year ahd changed the war mood significantly).       

 

From about day three after he had been shipped to the replacement center (nice army term) at Fort Jackson down in South Carolina Frank realized that he had made a grievous mistake and should have refused induction, or something. That only became clearer as he trudged through basic training and then was given his MOS, his job, 11 Bravo, infantryman, grunt in the common parlance, cannon fodder as he would later describe it after he got wised up politically. What was clear from that designation was that he was going to be trained to be doing hard fighting, and just then that hard fighting was only being done en masse in the jungles of Vietnam. That infantry training by the way was done down in high rebellion country (American Civil War rebellion) at Fort McClellan in Alabama. Although he (and a few other Yankees) gave the command fits about possibly refusing to fire machine guns he held his own consul until he could get to friendly ground after he received his orders to proceed to Fort Lewis in Washington State for transport to Vietnam.

 

At that point Frank became a little tired of thinking since he had been up about twenty-four hours straight and so he nodded off for a bit…   

 

Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”

An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized-Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.

* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).

*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria! U.S. Hands Off The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Quality Free Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.

*********
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.” 

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

*********
Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Preacher man, don't tell me,

Heaven is under the earth.

I know you don't know

What life is really worth.

It's not all that glitters is gold;

'Alf the story has never been told:

So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!

Most people think,

Great god will come from the skies,

Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.

But if you know what life is worth,

You will look for yours on earth:

And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!

Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )

Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )

Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )

Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )

Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )

Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )

We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -

Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.

We know when we understand:

Almighty god is a living man.

You can fool some people sometimes,

But you can't fool all the people all the time.

So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),

We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )

So you better:

Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )

Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )

Get up, stand up!

Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )

Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )

Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )

Get up, stand up! (... )

Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-The Troubled Relations between the Communist Workers Party (POC) (Italy) and the Fourth International (1946–48)

 

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The 70th Anniversary Of His Death (2010)-

Markin comment:

The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right?

Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist ( I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s.

I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.

Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

The Troubled Relations between the Communist Workers Party (POC) and the Fourth International (1946–48)

This essay is an edited English translation of Paolo Casciola’s introduction to Diego Giachetti’s booklet Alle origini dei Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari 1947–1950: Una pagina di storia del trotskysmo italiano (Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, Studi e Ricerche series, no. 10, Foligno, 1988, pp. 3–10). The parentheses are in the original text, but material included within quotations in square brackets is the responsibility of the author. The history of the POC at this time has also been covered by Serge Lambert in his Notes sur l’histoire du trotskysme en Italie: le POC, Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no. 29, March 1987, pp. 57–69, of which an English translation by John Archer exists in manuscript form in the archives of Socialist Platform, and the subsequent development of the GCI is the subject of another contribution by Diego Giachetti, I Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari tra analisi e prospettive, Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, Studi e Ricerche series, no. 19. The French original of the Resolution on the Italian POC and the report The POC (Italy) and the Fourth International referred to in the text can be most conveniently consulted in Rodolphe Prager (ed.), Les congrès de la quatrième internationale, Volume 3 (Paris 1988, pp. 337–51). The Resolution on the Italian Situation and the POC and Motion on the Organisation of the POC also mentioned were reproduced in Resolutions and Motions of the Fourth Plenum of the IEC, Internal Bulletin of the Revolutionary Communist Party, September 1947, pp. 19–23. Some of the politics and history of the POC can also be gleaned from the Trotskyist press abroad. The report that appeared in Rinascita accusing Mangano of being connected with the OVRA crops up in GPU in Italy Spreads Vile Frame-Up Slander, Militant (US), 23 June and 21 July 1943. Cf. Norah Hill, Fourth International Notes: Italy, Socialist Appeal, Volume 7, no. 13, September 1945. The Manifesto of the Italian Trotskyists datelined ‘Bari, 15 December 1943’ was printed in Workers International News, Volume 5, no. 7, October 1944, pp. 4–6, followed by the Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Workers Party, Socialist Appeal, Volume 6, no. 10, January 1945; ‘Enrico’, The Rôle of the Communist Party in Italy, supplement to Socialist Appeal, mid-January 1945; International Notes: Italy, a summary of a report by Mangano to the Foggia Labour Council at Bari, Fourth International, Volume 6, no. 5, May 1945, p. 159; and Manifesto of the Italian Trotskyists, Socialist Appeal, no. 26, mid-June 1946. Internal literature also provides The Program of the Workers Communist Party (Italy); Letter of Adherence to the Fourth International from the Italian Party; and Letter of the Secretariat to the Italians, SWP (US) Internal Bulletin, Volume 3, no. 1, February 1945, pp. 15–6. The POC was also in direct contact with the British Left Fraction, and tried to ally with it against the International Secretariat. Substantial correspondence between them exists in the archives of the Workers Revolutionary Party, unfortunately unavailable at the moment, but it is reflected by a leaflet put out at the time, Hands Off the Italian Revolution, a pamphlet by Gibbie Russell and Hugh Brannan, The Italian Revolution, and Resolution on the Italian Situation, which was drafted in December 1943 for submission to the founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist Party. General reports printed in Socialist Appeal that allow us to grasp the broad sweep of events are those of Carlo Bivanco, Italian Elections (no. 26, mid-June 1946); and Italian Strikes: “We Want Work, Not Charity!” (no. 38, February 1947); an editorial, Wolves Over Italy (no. 29, mid-August 1946); N. Pentland, Italian Workers Strike to Live (no. 50, October 1947); an anonymous article, Italian Workers Reply to the Fascists (no. 52, mid-November 1947); and Ted Grant, Wall Street Victory in Italy (no. 58, May 1948). A final piece by Paul G. Stevens, Italian Socialist Youth Move Left, reports the split of Livio Maitan from the youth organisation of the Saragat Socialists (no. 57, April 1948).

---

THE RECONSTRUCTION of a Trotskyist organisation in Italy in 1948–49 was a predictable event. As a matter of fact, whilst expelling the Partito Operaio Comunista (POC: Communist Workers Party) from the Fourth International, the Second World Congress of April 1948 had called on ‘all comrades of the POC to gather around the magazine which is shortly to appear, with the object of building a genuine Trotskyist organisation in Italy’, and had instructed the International Secretariat to carry on ‘the work of revolutionary regroupment in Italy ... which been entrusted [to the IS] by the IEC [International Executive Committee] at its October 1947 meeting’. [1]

In fact, from the summer of 1947 the possibility of a break between the Fourth International and its Italian section – the POC – began to appear increasingly likely. Born in February 1945 out of an unprincipled fusion between on the one hand the Centro Nazionale Provvisorio per la costruzione del Partito Comunista Internazionalista (IV Internazionale), led by Nicola Di Bartolomeo (Fosco), and on the other hand the Apulian Federation of the Italian Communist Party headed by Romeo Mangano, the POC suffered from the start from a chronic political-organisational crisis due to the principled, tactical and organisational differences existing between the two ‘souls’ of the party, that is, the Trotskyist minority and the Apulian majority, which adhered to a Bordigist-type position. [2]
The conflict between these two tendencies became steadily sharper during 1946, whilst the International Secretariat planned to send a delegate of its own to Italy [3] in order to achieve ‘not political conciliation, which was already deemed impossible, but merely an organisational “modus vivendi” which would make it possible to integrate the Apulian Federation into real leadership work in order to create the necessary conditions for a quicker organisational expansion’. [4] That delegate, Jérôme (a pseudonym for Michel Raptis, better known under the name of Pablo), attended a session of the POC’s Political Bureau in July 1946, during which, far from seeking to start a process of political clarification, he suggested the adoption of a series of organisational measures, and the recognition of the necessity for the party to extend its influence in northern Italy. Some time later, however, the POC’s leadership – which had been based in Naples since the party’s inception, and which was composed of three members of the Trotskyist minority – was weakened by the resignation ‘for personal reasons’ of Leonardo Iannaccone in August 1946. Thus the burden of leading the Italian section fell upon the shoulders of just two comrades – Bruno Nardini and Libero Villone – and the whole organisational plan agreed upon with the International Secretariat representative became inoperative.
The Second IEC Plenum in October 1946, which was attended by Mangano and Nardini, dealt with the question of the POC. In his report on the various sections of the International, Gabriel (another pseudonym for Raptis-Pablo) mentioned the problems of the Italian section almost incidentally, stating that ‘there are two tendencies, one of them wavering towards Bordigism’. [5] But the leading members of the Fourth International once more decided on merely administrative-organisational solutions. The resolution on the Italian question that was moved jointly by the International Secretariat and the two Italian delegates at the Plenum – and which the plenum passed – ordered Mangano to obey the discipline of the POC and the Fourth International, called both for the cooption of Mangano himself onto the Italian section’s Political Bureau as the third member of that body (together with Nardini and Villone) and for his appointment as the General Secretary of the party, and decided that the POC leadership should move to Milan.
The transfer of these three Political Bureau members to Milan, which was carried out in about December 1946, was nevertheless rather unhappy. According to Mangano’s testimony:

‘During the very first days there was Villone’s defection ... The work fell on Nardini and I. Starting from January [1947] ... we realised that it was impossible ... I, as the representative of the vast majority of the party, withdrew from the Political Bureau, left the General Secretariat to Nardini, and went back to Foggia ... Comrade Nardini ... refused that post and declared himself unqualified. Because of my great attachment to the party and the Fourth International, I remained in Milan as the party’s General Secretary.’ [6]

In the face of this real ‘crisis of leadership’, which exacerbated all the other difficulties, the POC was on the brink of ceasing any type of activity. Its paper, IV Internazionale, which used to be printed in Rome, ceased publication in January 1947, and resumed four months later in Foggia, after the coup by which Mangano, taking advantage of the organisational chaos and the demoralisation of the Trotskyist leading members of the POC, seized the leadership of the Italian section. This coup took place at a ‘national conference’ of the POC which had been called by Mangano, and was held in Naples on 2 March 1947, in spite of the protest of the International Secretariat against its improvised character. The conference rejected the decisions of the Second IEC Plenum, and decided to move the leadership to Foggia, that is, under the direct control of the Apulians. Here is how Mangano described this conference at the Third IEC Plenum in late March 1947:

‘The conference was held, a wonderful conference which all sections of the International should envy us for the interventions of the delegates, for the discussion... and for the liquidation of the bridgeheads of the International Secretariat [Nardini and Villone]. And in all this, I beg you to believe me, no rôle whatsoever was played by the majority and by myself, since at that very conference ... I had declared that I intended to withdraw from the post of party Secretary, and that I would not be unhappy if this post be given to comrade Nardini. Comrade Nardini declared that he wanted to go back to France, that he was tired, and felt harassed by the work in Italy. And comrade Villone stated that he was withdrawing because of health reasons.’ [7]

The conference on 2 March adopted three basic if extremely confused documents which had already been endorsed by the Apulian regional congress of the POC held on 14 April 1946 in Foggia: the Draft Theses on the Fourth International, the Draft Theses on the Italian and World Situation, and the Draft Theses on the POC and the Trade Unions. [8] In each of these texts, the majority of the Italian section revealed itself as being in disagreement with some basic elements of Trotskyist policy. In the first document they denounced the tactics ‘of the united front and the Popular Front [sic] defined by the Third Congress of the Communist International’ as ‘counter-revolutionary’, arguing that only the first two Comintern congresses were valid. The second document rejected the Trotskyist characterisation of Stalin’s USSR as a degenerated workers’ state, and defined it as an ‘orthodox bourgeois state’; it mechanically bound the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat to the changes of orientation of the bourgeoisie; it completely excluded the possibility that any antagonism could arise between the ‘rightist forces’ and the ‘ostensibly leftist’ ones, and denied that any difference existed between bourgeois democracy and Fascism. The third document proclaimed that the unions – not the party – were ‘the organised vanguard of the class of workers and peasants’, whereas the party was considered as a mere ‘ideological component’ of the class, and it traced the origins of the CGIL’s submission to the bourgeois state from the moment in which that union was legally recognised by the state, arguing that, as long as such a recognition did not take place, the POC would fight to bring the CGIL back ‘onto the terrain of the class struggle’.

That same conference also adopted a long series of motions, [9] the first one of which openly contradicted point one of the theses on the Fourth International – ‘The Fourth Communist International is the party, and therefore the revolutionary leadership, of the world proletariat’ – arguing on the contrary that ‘the Apulian federation ... reaffirms its unconditional confidence in the Fourth International, whilst not considering it today as the actual revolutionary leadership of the world proletariat ... as far as its ideology, strategy and tactics are concerned’.
The conference elected an 11-member Central Committee and a new, three-member Political Bureau. Both leading bodies were formed entirely by representatives of the old Apulian federation, and were led by Mangano. The Trotskyists were thus completely eliminated from the party leadership. But they acquiesced to this exclusion. As Nardini was to comment some months later:

‘In the last analysis the clarification did not take place around political differences, but through the successive self-removal of the comrades who represented the Trotskyist tendency within the party; without any political discussion, it was a real forced march that delivered the party into the hands of the present leadership.’ [10]

On the other hand, the Second World Congress stated in 1948 that the Italian Trotskyists were responsible for the outcome of the POC conference, since they had ‘surrendered to a moment of discouragement’. [11]

The situation of the Italian section was discussed again at the Third IEC Plenum late in March 1947, during which Mangano delivered the above-mentioned histrionic report, and, of course, did not fail to repeat his oath of loyalty to the Fourth International. Following this discussion on the Italian section, [12] the IEC unanimously adopted a short resolution which instructed the International Secretariat ‘to reorient the work of the section along the lines discussed during the Plenum of October 1946’, and ‘to follow closely and aid politically the preparation for the coming congress’ of the POC. [13]
The worsening of relations between the Fourth International and the POC is revealed by the letters exchanged between the Italian Political Bureau and the International Secretariat in June and July 1947. On 23 June the International Secretariat informed the POC that an International Secretariat representative would go to Italy in July, and asked for a meeting of the POC Central Committee to be called to discuss the situation of the party, its relations with the International, and the preparation of the first congress of the Italian section. [14] After receiving this letter, Mangano organised a meeting of the Political Bureau on 27 June, during which he claimed that the International Secretariat letter ‘is part of a plan of struggle... against our party’. [15] On that same day he drafted a letter in which he stated:

‘We believe that, until the world congress is held, one cannot speak about a single orientation of the Fourth International; it is only after that congress that all sections should orient according to the line that will be laid down by the congress itself.

‘Whilst the Italian section accepts almost unanimously theoretical and tactical positions that are at odds with those upheld by the International Secretariat majority, this does not mean that a number of groups having the same positions as ourselves do not exist in the International.

‘Consequently, the line of our party must be considered for what it is until the world congress. After the congress there will be the strictest discipline.

‘Our party cannot tolerate organic factions within the party, especially if they are encouraged by you. Our party does not tolerate your interference in its organisational functioning.

‘Our party is quite convinced that you are organising factional work within all sections of the International, and that only in Italy will this be impossible for you.’ [16]

The tone of this letter gives no grounds for doubt. Mangano and the POC majority were acting in two directions: on the national level, towards the expulsion of the Trotskyist ‘organic faction’ that was being ‘encouraged’ by the International Secretariat; on the international level, towards a fight against the leadership and the programme of the Fourth International at the coming world congress, seeking to set up an alliance with all the national factions which stood opposed to the majority line. [17]

Relations had thus already reached rock bottom, and a collision could not be avoided. It was not by chance that the International Secretariat’s delegate Germain (a pseudonym for Ernest Mandel), who was only able to reach Italy in August 1947, was to devote but one single day out of 15 of his stay in Italy to discuss with the POC’s leaders – without having any illusions that he could redress the situation.
In the March of that year, however, something occurred to change the Italian perspectives of the Fourth International. Livio Maitan, the 24 year old leader of the Italian Federazione Giovanile Socialista (FGS: Socialist Youth Federation), which sided with the Saragat-led Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani (Socialist Party of the Italian Workers), travelled to Paris and established contacts with some Trotskyist leaders, including Mandel. These contacts promised to be so fruitful that the International Secretariat representative took advantage of his trip to Italy to tighten them further and to recruit Maitan and some other FGS leaders to the International. Mandel himself informed Mangano about what was in fact the main purpose of his trip. This caused Mangano to write with some disappointment that:

‘The IS has sent a delegate to Italy, comrade Germain, in order to study “at first hand” the situation of our party. Comrade Germain ... presented himself before the party’s leading bodies for just one single day, and only for seven hours, justifying his long stay in Italy away from the party leadership with a certain, mysterious work he had to carry out, outside the party and with people foreign to the party in the Bordigist right wing and the Saragatite left wing. Germain declared that he would frequently come back to Italy to complete his mysterious work ...’ [18]

In fact, over the following months, Mandel returned to Italy at least once, in November 1947. However, on the other hand, the International Secretariat had not yet definitely broken with the POC, which continued to be formally but not in any meaningful way the Italian section of the Fourth International. The Fourth IEC Plenum, held in September 1947, confronted this problem with a lengthy document, a Resolution on the Italian Situation and the POC. [19] This document, after emphasising the POC’s inability to ‘translate into life the Trotskyist programme in Italy as well as establishing a serious pole of attraction for the various currents of radicalisation which are crystallising in the traditional organisations’, and after listing the political differences existing between the Fourth International and its Italian section in detail, concluded, firstly, that the political and organisational conceptions of the POC were fundamentally opposed to the Trotskyist programme; secondly, that a genuine revolutionary party of the Italian proletariat did not exist, and was still to be built; thirdly, that the POC’s leadership should postpone the date of the first party congress to mid-November to enable the Fourth International to submit its programmatic documents and its political line for Italy for pre-conference discussion; and fourthly, that the International Secretariat must intervene at the POC’s congress to defend the positions of the International, to regroup as many POC members as possible on that basis, and to warn the POC that the adoption of the line championed by its leaders would force the IEC and the world congress to re-examine the question of the POC’s affiliation to the Fourth International.

The POC was unable to send delegates of its own to this IEC Plenum because of financial problems. But this time, too, Mangano did not refrain from further exacerbating the tone of the fight through his above mentioned letter dated 3 September, which gave a new, long reprimand to the International Secretariat, where he went so far as to ask for the latter’s resignation, and proposed ‘the candidature of our party for the leadership of the International’!
It was therefore during the summer of 1947 that the leading bodies of the Fourth International eventually began to stress the more political facets of the continuing fight. The decisions of the Fourth IEC Plenum were indeed preceded by a remarkable work of political elaboration, which was carried out by Nardini and Raptis-Pablo in June-July, and which culminated in the drafting of a series of documents on the basis of which a battle against the Italian section’s majority should be waged in order to try and win as many of its members as possible to the Fourth International’s programme. So in these months Nardini and Raptis-Pablo wrote the Draft Action Programme for Italy. [20] Pablo also drafted a long introduction to this document, [21] whereas Nardini prepared a draft resolution entitled The Italian Situation and the Tasks of the POC [22] and a document entitled The Building of the Party in Italy and Its Relations with the International. [23] All these documents were subsequently published by the International Secretariat, together with the letters exchanged between the International Secretariat and the POC’s leadership in that period, in a special Italian-language bulletin, [24] in preparation for the first congress of the POC which had been scheduled for 16-17 November 1947.
The International Secretariat delegate who attended this congress warned the participants that if the POC persevered in its hostile attitude toward the positions of the Fourth International it would put in question the Italian party’s affiliation to the Trotskyist International, and he asked the congress for a formal commitment to obey the political and organisational discipline of the International. Mangano called on the participants to vote in favour of the proposals and the documents presented by the International Secretariat and the Trotskyist minority of the party, and pledged himself to apply and defend publicly the political positions of the Fourth International. Faced with such a patent about-face, the International Secretariat representative asked him ‘whether he felt himself politically and morally able’ to defend a policy with which he was in disagreement, but the Apulian leader replied in the affirmative. [25]
As a matter of fact, however, on the very morrow of the congress, the POC continued to carry on its old policy. Then the International Secretariat sent the leadership and members of the Italian section an ‘open letter of protest’, but Mangano went on breaking ‘in the most cynical way the agreements that had been reached ... and the resolutions that had been solemnly adopted’ at the first congress of the POC. In addition to that, he ‘did not hesitate to declare openly at a Central Committee meeting held in February 1948 that in the struggle against the International, all means were permissible, and that he had urged his comrades to vote for the [International Secretariat’s] resolution ... in order to mislead the IS’. Moreover, the party majority had sabotaged the work of revolutionary regroupment within the FGS initiated in Italy by the International Secretariat by publishing in the POC’s paper ‘a series of articles... that can only be interpreted as real provocations’. [26] In fact, precisely in that period the POC’s organ IV Internazionale carried several articles which mentioned the names of the ‘young Saragatites’ who, after joining the Fourth International, were carrying on ‘underground’ recruiting work inside the FGS, and later inside the Movimento Socialista di Unità Proletaria (MSUP: Socialist Movement for Proletarian Unity), with the aim of winning a majority of the members of these organisations to the programme of the Fourth International.
Such recruiting was part of the activity of revolutionary regroupment that had been started under the leadership of the International Secretariat since the first half of 1947. Sanctioning a definite break with the POC, the Second World Congress foresaw the ‘Italian work’ of the Fourth International within that framework. The magazine 4^a Internazionale, launched in July 1948, was the landmark around which the reconstruction of a Trotskyist organisation in Italy started. And towards the end of that year nearly all the leaders and most of the members of the MSUP joined the International. Thus it was precisely those ‘young Saragatites’, whom Mangano had so much scorned, who united with a few ‘survivors’ of the POC minority and with other activists coming from various leftist groupings, to form the core of the new Italian Trotskyist organisation.

---

Notes

1. Resolution on the Partito Operaio Comunista (POC) of Italy. Adopted by the Second World Congress, Fourth International, Volume 9, no. 6, August 1948, p. 190. The IEC meeting to which this resolution refers actually took place in September, not October, 1947.

2. On the origins of the POC see Paolo Casciola, 1943–1945: Origini del Partito Operaio Comunista’, in Appunti di storia del trotskysmo italiano (1930–1945), Quaderni del Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, Serie: Studi e ricerche, no. 1, May 1986, pp. 44–8, and Paolo Casciola, Trotskyism and the Revolution in Italy (1943–44), above, pp. 159–72.

3. The sending of an International Secretariat delegate to Italy, first asked for by Bruno Nardini during his trip to Paris in October 1945, was repeatedly postponed between November 1945 and the summer of 1946. It eventually took place in July–August 1947 (Minutes of the International Secretariat meetings of 29 October 1945, 12 November 1945, 30 January 1946, 16 April 1946 and 22 June 1946). In the same period the International Secretariat thought of sending a reliable comrade to Italy to act as the International Secretariat’s representative in the POC’s leadership. They suggested the name of a member of the British section, Charlie Van Gelderen, who had taken part with Nicola Di Bartolomeo in the first discussion with the Apulian Federation in 1944, but for whatever reason this did not materialise (Minutes of the International Secretariat meetings of 4 July 1946, 4 September 1946 and 2 October 1946).

4. Le Parti Ouvrier Communiste (Italie) et la IVè Internationale (Rapport présenté au Congrès Mondial), Quatrième Internationale, Volume 6, nos. 3–4–5, March–May 1948, p. 106.

5. Gabriel [Michel Raptis], Rapport sur les sections (Third IEC Plenum, March 1947).

6. Question italienne. Rapport de Mangano (Third IEC Plenum, March 1947).

7. Ibid..

8. Schéma des thèses sur la IVè Internationale, Schéma des thèses sur la situation italienne et internationale, and Projet des thèses sur le POC et les syndicats (typescripts).

9. Motions, ordres du jour, résolutions votées à la première conférence du POC (typescripts).

10. Bruno [Nardini], La construction du parti en Italie et les rapports avec l’Internationale (undated), Bulletin Intérieur du Secrétariat International, no. 17, August 1947, p. 22.

11. Le Parti Ouvrier Communiste (Italie) ..., op. cit., p107.

12. The discussion was introduced by Michel Raptis-Pablo. See Question italienne. Rapport de Jérôme (Third IEC Plenum, March 1947).

13. Resolution on the Italian Section, Third IEC Plenum, March 1947: Record of resolutions, motions, etc., p. 11.

14. Lettre du SI du 23 juin, Bulletin Intérieur du Secrétariat International, no. 17, p. 17.

15. Procès-verbal du BP (27 June 1947), ibid., p. 18.

16. Lettre du BP du POC du 27 juin, ibid. (original emphasis).

17. This ‘manoeuvrist’ approach to the Fourth International was confirmed in 1978 by Mangano himself: ‘We did not merge with the Trotskyists, but thought it useful to go along with the Trotskyists because of the opportunities that an international organisation offered us.’ (Quoted by Arturo Peregalli in L’altra Resistenza. Il PCI e le Opposizioni di sinistra in Italia 1943–1945 in Quaderni del Centro Studi Pietro Tresso, Serie Studi e ricerche, no. 5, November 1987, p. 93, n10. On Mangano’s awkward attempts to set up an unprincipled alliance with several national minority factions of the Fourth International, see for example his exchange with the British Left Fraction in 1946–48. In a letter sent by Mangano to the leaderships of the French, Belgian, British and Swiss sections on 7 June 1948, the POC leader – who had been expelled from the Fourth International – declared that his party ‘is of the opinion that it would be advantageous to establish personal contact between your leaderships and the delegates of the POC’, and asked the addressees to meet the expenses of a trip of POC delegates to their respective countries; further on the letter states: ‘The POC has become, alas, the black sheep of the IV [International], and cde M [Mangano] has been described as the chief disrupter of the International. This is all false.’ Subsequently, on 23 July 1948, the Apulian leader addressed the Left Fraction, arguing:

‘... we were and are of the opinion that we should not have been denied membership of the International. You know the position of our party, and its outlook tactically and strategically. We stand for the most absolute political intransigence (no united front); we are opposed to the defence of the USSR ... [which should be] regarded as being on the same plane as the imperialist states. We regard the Stalinist parties to be the left wing in the capitalist line-up, that is, bourgeois. We consider that the Fourth International has “yet to be constructed”, and therefore that the organisation “artificially” formed by Trotsky is a parody of a revolutionary International. In short, we accept only the first two congresses of the Third International. We are now organising an international conference of the Left throughout the world. Will your fraction take part?’ (Original emphasis)

18. Romeo Mangano’s letter, To the Members of the International Executive Committee, Foggia, 3 September 1947. This letter is also signed by two other members of the POC PB: Rosa Gaudino and Renato Vassari.

19. Resolution on the Italian Situation and the POC, Resolutions and Motions of the Fourth Plenum of the IEC, September 1947, pp. 19–23. There is also a French version of the same document entitled Résolution du plénum du CEI. La situation italienne et le POC, which differs from the English one.

20. [Michel Raptis-Pablo and Bruno Nardini], Projet d’un programme d’action pour l’Italie (July 1947), Bulletin Intérieur du Secrétariat Internationale, no. 17, p. 25–9.

21. Pablo [Michel Raptis], Pour une politique trotskyste en Italie (June 1947?), ibid., pp. 23–5.

22. Bruno [Nardini], La situation italienne et les tâches du POC (July 1947), ibid., pp. 19–21.

23. Bruno [Nardini], La construction du parti en Italie ..., op. cit.

24. Bollettino Interno del Segretariato Internazionale (Supplemento per l’Italia), September 1947.

25. Le Parti Ouvrier Communiste (Italie) ..., op. cit., p. 108.

26. Ibid.