This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Grifter’s Farewell-Paul Newman And Robert Redford’s The Sting I
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Sting, starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, 1973
Every half-baked corner boy and wanna-be grifter knows this wisdom. Con artists, guys who played the suckers from down in the streets three-card Monte, hell, maybe even down to the primitive “clip” up to and including the big time crime bosses pulling in dough from dope to guns to prostitution are more susceptible to the “con” that any rube “mark.” Are more than willing to suspend disbelieve in the interest of raking in the filthy lucre. Without any heavy lifting. And that premise is what drives the movie under review, the grifter’s delight Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s The Sting.
Of course it is one thing to rob the rubes at some third-rate carnival out in the sticks, rubes waiting all year to be fleeced, and another to step up to the biggest grift of all-kicking ass on a crime boss, an evil crime boss, and getting away with it. And takes time as well to set the trap, set it up with ribbons and bows all around. And during this two hour plus film everything from the first street grift by Johnny (played by Robert Redford) which eventually went asunder in which a bagman is conned out of the money he was to deliver to the swells, the serious money guys, “legit” guys who bankroll lots of illegal activity (remember that wisdom in the first sentence here) to the “big con,” doing in a seriously vicious crime boss Doyle Lonnigan (played by Robert Shaw) leads right to that “sting” which is the hallmark of the successful con. (By the way if you don’t think our man Doyle was vicious he ordered both the murder of the guy who Johnny worked the street con with and hence the “went asunder” above and the “hit” of his bagman who was foolish enough to be conned by a wet-behind-the- ears cheapjack grifter. Case closed.)
Of course to pull a big con off on a big-time crime boss in the 1930s (or anytime for that matter) you need more than a desire for revenge for the untimely death of a fellow grifter and more than some small-time street grifter like Johnny who didn’t have sense enough to keep his dough from that street grift and wound up blowing it on some floosy. What you need is a big-time grifter, a guy like Harry (played by Paul Newman) with a big time if discarded plan. A plan involving setting up a big time off-track betting parlor (a bookie joint, okay) with plenty of grifters to fill out the scenario to slowly lure our man Doyle in by feeding him nibbles until his is hooked, until he really believes that Johnny has the “fix” on at the track and he can “invest” four hundred thou and reap profits just like money found on the ground. Or just like taking candy from a baby. Yeah, that is exactly what happened they took Doyle’s money like taking candy from a baby. Beautiful. And in the process Newman and Redford created an aura, a buddy film aura to match their efforts together in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
You know this one had me thinking about refurbishing my corner boy skills but when I thought about the serious crime bosses around today, mainly drug warlords, I didn’t like the idea of living in the Yukon someplace forever. Still a nice sting, a very nice sting on film, boys.
Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama
Pardon Chelsea Now! -Manning represented at Teddy Awards
January 20, 2015 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
The Teddy Awards, an international film award for films with LGBT topics and presented as an official award of Berlin International Film Festival, are featuring Wikileaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning on its poster with several other queer icons. The Teddy Award poster will be seen throughout Berlin during the Belinale and throughout the festival.
The Teddy Award opening and closing party will also feature a Chelsea Manning advocacy booth. The booth, operated by Nadine Nelkin of freechelsea.de, will be located at The Schwuz Club, a center of queer/trans culture in Berlin.
Schwuz & Nelkin’s birthday celebration for Chelsea Manning this past December was attended by many of Berlin’s high profile queer/trans* activists. Click here to view the complete Teddy Award Poster
A section of the Teddy Award poster featuring Chelsea Manning. Manning: top, second from the right
Friday, January 23, 2015
As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner-All Quiet on the Western Front
In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists andSurrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.
And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate….
Paul Bäumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits youngPaul Bäumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other --- if only he can come out of the war alive.
"The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW...more
A Pauper Comes Of Age- For the Seaside Heights South Elementary School Class Of 1958-With Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen In Mind
They're really rockin Boston In Pittsburgh, P. A. Deep in the heart of Texas And 'round the Frisco Bay All over St. Louis Way down in New Orleans All the Cats wanna dance with Sweet Little Sixteen
Sweet Little Sixteen She's just got to have About half a million Framed autographs Her wallet's filled with pictures She gets 'em one by one She gets so excited Watch her look at her run
Oh mommy mommy Please may I go It's such a sight to see Somebody steal the show Oh daddy daddy I beg of you Whisper to mommy It's all right with you
Cause they'll be rockin on bandstand In Philadelphia P.A. Deep in the heart of Texas And 'round the Frisco Bay All over St. Louis Way Down in New Orleans All the Cats wanna dance with Sweet Little Sixteen
Sweet Little Sixteen She's got the grown up blues Tight dress and lipstick She's sportin' high heal shoes Oh, but tomorrow morning She'll have to chang her trend And be sweet sixteen And back in class again
Cause they'll be rockin on bandstand In Philadelphia P.A. Deep in the heart of Texas And 'round the Frisco Bay All over St. Louis Way Down in New Orleans All the Cats wanna dance with Sweet Little Sixteen
This is the way my old corner boy, Fritz Taylor, from down in “the projects” told me the story one night years later when we were sitting on the grey granite steps of our high school, Miller High, in Seaside Heights, that’s in New Hampshire. Those projects by the way, all white projectsunlike the ones you hear about lately which are mostly populated by minorities, had originally been build right after World War II to help stem the heavy demand for housing from returning servicemen with young families and not enough dough to finance a house. The original idea as well was that the housing was temporary and had been built with a certain careless abandon by some low-bidder contractors. Fritz’s and my family had been among those families in the 1950s who did not get to participate in the “golden age” and so we were long time tenants all through our school years until we graduated from Miller High. Between the isolated location of the projects and the high number of kids the place had it had its own elementary school, Snug Harbor (sounds nice right, however, that school was also expected to be temporary and built as such by those same low-bidder contractors), where we both had gone through all six grades together (we started in the time before kindergarten became a step in one’s education). I am telling you about this because the story happened down there long before we got to high school.
So there we were sitting there on the steps, no dough in our pockets, our main guy for a ride out of town, Benny, also a corner boy, on a family vacation up in Maine, no girls in hand, or prospects either since any girls we were interested in had no interest us either because we had not car or because we were from the projects, come to think of it forget that last part it was because we were car-less and that world was filled with guys with cars, “boss cars,” swooping down on the interesting girls, talking slowly. Talking kind of softly for us although loudly or softly no one would have been around to heard us that warm summer night with about six weeks to go before school started again and we could go back and start our junior year, kind of dreamy too really about the first times we had been smitten by a girl, not necessarily a forever smitten thing but with a bug that disturbed our sleep (forever then being maybe a month or six weeks, no more except for some oddball couples who found love and stayed together for the next fifty years if you can believe that in this day in age).
Yeah, that is exactly the way to put it, when some frail disturbed our sleep, the first of many sleepless nights on that subject.(That “frail” a localism for girl, heavily influenced by our corner boy with the car Benny watching too many 1930s and 1940s George Raft or James Cagney gangster and Humphrey Bogart hard-boiled private detective movies.) So we were sitting there thinking about how we were now chasing other dreams, well, maybe not other dreams but older versions, sweet sixteen versions of that same dream.Of course at sixteen it was all about girls but as it turned out that subject had its own pre-history way back when. Just ask Fritz Taylor if you see him.
Fritz Taylor, if he thought about it at all and at times like that dream vision night at sixteen on the steps in front of the high school he might have, probably would have said that he had his history hat on again like when he was a kid, loving history or even the thought of history since Miss Winot blew him away with talk of ancient Greeks and Romans. Blew him away so that when he got in trouble with that teacher for saying something fresh, and it really was, a swear word expression, “what the fuck,” that he heard all the time around his house which he thought everybody said when they were angry, assigned him a paper to write of five hundred words and he wrote an essay about Greek democracy which she actually read to the class she was so impressed. Miss Winot, blew him away more when she freaked him out with talk of Egypt and Pharaoh times with the Pyramids and the slaves and all times he had begged his older brother to drive him all the way down to the art museum in Boston to look at old Pharaoh stuff some guys from Harvard had unearthed. But all that is just stuff to let you know what kind of guy Fritz was in elementary school before he wised up, or kind of wised up, in high school. Funny one time when I wanted to take the bus down to Boston when I got the Pharaoh bug in high school he dismissed me out of hand. Done that, he said. So that night he had his history hat on so I knew I was in for a story, a bloody silly story if I knew Fritz but we had nothing better to do so I let him go on. Let him go on that sixteen years old summer night when out of the blue, the memory time blue, he thought about more modern history, thought about her, thought about fair Rosimund.
No, before you get all set to turn to some other thing, some desperate alternate other thing, to do rather than read Fritz’s poignant little story, this is not some American Revolution founding fathers (or mothers, because old-time Abigail Adams may have been hovering in some background granite-chiseled slab grave in a very old-time Quincy cemetery while the events to be related occurred since Fritz was crazy about her too once he figured out she was the real power behind John and John Quincy) or some bold Massachusetts abolitionist regiment, the fighting 54th, out of the American Civil War 150th anniversary memory history like Fritz used to like to twist the tail around when you knew him, or his like. This is about “first love” so rest easy.
Fritz, that early summer’s night, was simply trying to put his thoughts together and figured that he would write something, write something for those who could stand it, those fellow members of our class who could stand to know that story. Although, at many levels that was a very different experience from that of the average, average Miller High class member the story had a universal quality that he thought might amuse them, amuse them that is until the name, the thought of the name, the mist coming from out of his mouth at the forming of the name, holy of holies, Rosimund, stopped him dead in his tracks and forced him to tell me that story and to write that different story later.
Still, once the initial trauma wore off, Fritz thought what better way to celebrate that milestone on the rocky road to surviving childhood than to take a trip down memory lane, that Rosimund-strewn memory lane. Those days although they were filled with memorable incidents, good and bad, paled beside this Rosimund-related story that cut deep, deep into his brown-haired mind, and as it turned out one that he have not forgotten after all. So rather than produce some hokey last dance, last elementary school sweaty-palmed dance failure tale, some Billie Bradley-led corner boy down in the back of Snug Harbor doo wop be-bop into the night luring stick and shape girls like lemmings from the sea on hearing those doo wop harmonies, those harmonies meant for them, the sticks and shapes that is, or some wannabe gangster retread tale, or even some Captain Midnight how he saved the world from the Cold War Russkies with his last minute-saving invention Fritz preferred to relate a home truth, a hard home truth to be sure, but the truth. Here is his say:
At some point in elementary school a boy is inevitably supposed to learn, maybe required to, depending on the whims of your school district’s supervisory staff and maybe also what your parents expected of such schools, to do two intertwined socially-oriented tasks - the basics of some kind of dancing and to be paired off with, dare I say it, a girl in that activity. After all that is what it is there for isn’t it. At least it was that way a few years back, and if things have changed, changed dramatically in that regard, you can fill in your own blanks experience. But here that is where fair sweet Rosimund comes in, the paired-off part.
I can already hear your gasps, dear reader, as I present this scenario. You are ready to flee, boy or girl flee, to some safe attic hideaway, to reach for some dusty ancient comfort teddy bear, or for the venturesome, some old sepia brownie camera picture album safely hidden in those environs, but flee, no question, at the suggestion of those painful first times when sweaty-handed, profusely sweaty-handed, boy met too-tall girl on the dance floor (age too-tall girls hormone shooting up first, later things settled down, a little). Now for those who are hopped up, or even mildly interested, in such ancient rituals you may be thinking, oh well, this won’t be so bad after all since I am talking about the mid-1950s and they had Dick Clark’s American Bandstand on the television to protect us from having to dance close, what with those funny self-expression dance moves like the Stroll and the Hully-Gully that you see on re-runs. And then go on except, maybe, the last dance, the last close dance that spelled success or failure in the special he or she night so let me tell you how really bad we had it in the plaid 1960s. Wrong.
Oh, of course, we were all after school black and white television-addled and addicted making sure that we got home by three in the afternoon to catch the latest episode of the American Bandstand saga about who would, or wouldn’t, dance with that cute girl in the corner (or that leering Amazon in the front). That part was true, true enough. But here we are not talking fun dancing, close or far away, but learning dancing, school-time dancing, come on get with it. What we are talking about in my case is that the dancing part turned out to be the basics of country bumpkin square-dancing (go figure, for a city boy, right?). Not only did this clumsy, yes, sweaty-palmed, star-crossed ten-year-old boy have to do the basic “swing your partner” and some off-hand “doze-zee dozes(sic)” but I also had to do it while I was paired, for this occasion, with the girl that I had a “crush” on, a serious crush on, and that is where Rosimund really enters the story.
Rosimund see, moreover, was not from “the projects” but from one of the new single-family homes, ranch-style homes that the up and coming middle-class were moving into up the road. In case you didn’t know, or have forgotten, I grew up on the “wrong side of the tracks” down at the Seaside Heights Housing Authority apartments. The rough side of town, okay. You knew that the minute I mentioned the name, that SHHA name, and rough is what you thought, and that is okay. Now. But although I had started getting a handle on the stick "projects" girls I was totally unsure how to deal with girls from the “world.” And Rosimund very definitely was from the world. I will not describe her here; although I could do so even today, but let us leave it at her name. Rosimund. Enchanting name, right? Thoughts of white-plumed knighted medieval jousts against some black-hooded, armored thug knight for the fair maiden’s hand, or for her favors (whatever they were then, mainly left unexplained, although we all know what they are now, and are glad of it)
Nothing special about the story so far, though. Even I am getting a little sleepy over it. Just your average one-of-the-stages-of-the-eternal-coming-of-age-story. I wish. Well, the long and short of it was that the reason we were practicing this square-dancing was to demonstrate our prowess before our parents in the school gym. Nothing unusual there either. After all there is no sense in doing this type of school-time activity unless one can impress one's parents. I forget all the details of the setup of the space for demonstration day and things like that but it was a big deal. Parents, refreshments, various local dignitaries, half the school administrators from downtown whom I will go to my grave believing could have cared less if it was square-dancing or basket-weaving because they would have ooh-ed and ah-ed us whatever it was. But that is so much background filler. Here is the real deal. To honor the occasion, as this was my big moment to impress Rosimund, I had, earlier in the day, cut up my dungarees to give myself an authentic square-dancer look, some now farmer brown look but back then maybe not so bad.
I thought I looked pretty good. And Rosimund, looking nice in some blue taffeta dress with a dark red shawl thing draped and pinned across her shoulders (although don’t quote me on that dress thing, what did a ten-year old boy, sister-less, know of such girlish fashion things. I was just trying to keep my hands in my pockets to wipe my sweaty hands for twirling time, for Rosimund twirling time) actually beamed at me, and said I looked like a gentleman farmer. Be still my heart. Like I said I though I looked pretty good, and if Rosimund thought so well then, well indeed. And things were going nicely. That is until my mother, sitting in a front row audience seat as was her wont, saw what I had done to the pants. In a second she got up from her seat, marched over to me, and started yelling about my disrespect for my father's and her efforts to clothe me and about the fact that since I only had a couple of pairs of pants how could I do such a thing. In short, airing the family troubles in public for all to hear. That went on for what seemed like an eternity.
Thereafter I was unceremoniously taken home by said irate mother and placed on restriction for a week. Needless to say my father also heard about it when he got home from that hard day’s work that he was too infrequently able to get to keep the wolves from the door, and I heard about it for weeks afterward. Needless to say I also blew my 'chances' with dear, sweet Rosimund.
Now is this a tale of the hard lessons of the nature of class society that I am always more than willing to put in a word about? Just like you might have remembered about me back in the day. Surely not. Is this a sad tale of young love thwarted by the vagaries of fate? A little. Is this a tale about respect for the little we had in my family? Perhaps. Was my mother, despite her rage, right? Well, yes. Did I learn something about being poor in the world? Damn right. That is the point. …But, oh, Rosimund.
The Latest From The United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) Website- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops, Mercenaries, Contractors, Etc. From Afghanistan! -Hands Off Syria! No New War In Iraq- Stop The Bombings-Stop The Arms Shipments To The Kurds And Shia-Stay Out Of The Civil War! No Intervention In Ukraine! Defend The Palestinians! No U.S. Aid To Israel! No One Penny, Not One Person For Obama’s War Machine!
Click below for link to the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) website for more information about various anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist actions around the country.
Markin comment: A while back, maybe last year as things seemed to be winding down in the Middle East, or at least the American presence was scheduled to decrease in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and before Ukraine, Syria, Gaza and a number of other flash points erupted I mentioned that every once in a while it is necessary, if for no other reason than to proclaim from the public square that we are alive, and fighting, to show “the colors,” our anti-war colors. I also mentioned at the time that while endless marches are not going to end any war the imperialists decide to provoke the street opposition to the war in what appeared then to be the fading American presence in Afghanistan or whatever else the Obama/Kerry cabal has lined up for the military to do in the Middle East, Ukraine or the China seas as well as protests against other imperialist adventures had been under the radar of late.
Over the summer there had been a small uptick in street protest over the Zionist massacre in Gaza (a situation now in “cease-fire” mode but who knows how long that will last) and the threat of yet a third American war in Iraq with the increasing bombing campaign and escalating troop levels now expanded to Syria. Although not nearly enough. As I mentioned at that earlier time it is time, way beyond time, for anti-warriors, even his liberal backers, to get back where we belong on the streets in the struggle against Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama’s seemingly endless wars. And his surreptitious “drone strategy” to "sanitize" war when he is not very publicly busy revving up the bombers and fighter jets in Iraq, Syria and wherever else he feels needs the soft touch of American “shock and awe, part two.”
The UNAC for a while now, particularly since the collapse of the mass peace movement that hit the streets for a few minutes before the second Iraq war in 2003, appears to be the umbrella clearing house these days for many anti-war, anti-drone, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist actions. Not all the demands of this coalition are ones that I would raise, or support but the key ones of late are enough to take to the streets. More than enough to whet the appetite of even the most jaded anti-warrior. And as we hit the fall anti-war trail: As Obama, His House And Senate Allies, His “Coalition Of The Willing”Beat The War Drums-Again- Stop The Escalations-No New U.S. War In Iraq- No Intervention In Syria! Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!Stop The U.S. And Allied Bombings! –Stop The Arms Shipments …
Frank Jackman comment:
As the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, U.S. President Barack Obama, abetted by the usual suspects in the House and Senate as well as internationally, orders more air bombing strikes in the north and in Syria, sends more “advisers” to “protect” American outposts in Iraq, and sends arms shipments to the Kurds, supplies arms to the moderate Syrian opposition if it can be found to give weapons to, guys who served in the American military during the Vietnam War and who, like me, belatedly, got “religion” on the war issue as a kneejerk way to resolve the conflicts in this wicked old world might very well be excused for disbelief when the White House keeps pounding out the propaganda that these actions are limited when all signs point to the slippery slope of escalation. And all the time saying the familiar (Vietnam era familiar updated for the present)-“we seek no wider war”-meaning no American combat troops. Well if you start bombing places back to the Stone Age, cannot rely on the Iraqi troops who have already shown what they are made of and cannot rely on a now non-existent “Syrian Free Army” which you are willing to get whatever they want and will still come up short what do you think the next step will be? Now not every event in history gets exactly repeated but given the recent United States Government’s history in Iraq those old time vets might be on to something. In any case dust off the old banners, placards, and buttons and get your voices in shape- just in case. No New War In Iraq –Stop The Bombings- No Intervention In Syria!
*** Here is something to think about:
Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.
Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops, Mercenaries, Contractors, Etc. From Afghanistan! Hands Off Syria! No New War In Iraq- Stop The Bombings-Stop The Arms Shipments To The Kurds And Shia-Stay Out Of The Civil War! No Intervention In Ukraine! Defend The Palestinians! No U.S. Aid To Israel! Not One Penny, Not One Person For Obama’s War Machine!
HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor The Historic Leader Of The Bolshevik Revolution-Vladimir Lenin
Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. I will make my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space tomorrow (see also review in American Left History April 2006 archives). I have made some special points here yesterday about the life of Rosa Luxemburg (see review in American Left History January 2006 archives). In this 100th anniversary period of World War I it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, to define himself politically. Probably the best way to do that is to look at Lenin’s experiences through the prism of his fellow revolutionary, early political opponent and eventual co-leader of the Bolshevik Revolution Leon Trotsky.
A Look At The Young Lenin By A Fellow Revolutionary
The Young Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Doubleday and Co., New York, 1972
The now slightly receding figure of the 20th century Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin founder and leader of the Bolshevik Party and guiding light of the October 1917 Russian Revolution and the first attempt at creating a socialist society has been the subject to many biographies. Some of those efforts undertaken during the time of the former Soviet government dismantled in 1991-92, especially under the Stalin regime, bordered on or were merely the hagiographic. Others, reflecting the ups and downs of the post- World War II Cold War, painted an obscene diabolical picture, excluding Lenin’s horns, and in some cases not even attempting to exclude those. In virtually all cases these efforts centered on Lenin’s life from the period of the rise of the Bolshevik Social Democratic faction in 1903 until his early death in 1924. In short, the early formative period of his life in the backwaters of provincial Russia rate a gloss over. Lenin’s fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky, although some ten years younger than him, tries to trace that early stage of his life in order to draw certain lessons. It is in that context that Trotsky’s work contains some important insights about the development of revolutionary figures and their beginnings.
Although Trotsky’s little work, originally intended to be part of a full biography of Lenin, never served its purpose of educating the youth during his lifetime and the story of it discovery is rather interesting one should note that this is neither a scholarly work in the traditional sense nor is it completely free from certain fawning over Lenin by Trotsky. Part of this was determined by the vicissitudes of the furious Trotsky-Stalin fights in the 1920s and 1930s for the soul of the Russian Revolution as Trotsky tried to uncover the layers of misinformation about Lenin’s early life. Part of it resulted from Trotsky’s status of junior partner to Lenin and also to his late coming over to Bolshevism. And part of it is, frankly, to indirectly contrast Lenin’s and his own road to Marxism. That said, this partial biography stands up very well as an analysis of the times that the young Lenin lived in, the events that affected his development and the idiosyncrasies of his own personality that drove him toward revolutionary conclusions. In short, Trotsky’s work is a case study in the proposition that revolutionaries are made not born.
To a greater extent than would be true today in a celebrity-conscious world many parts of Lenin’s early life are just not verifiable. Partially that is due to the nature of record keeping in the Russia of the 19th century. Partially it is because of the necessity to rely on not always reliable police records. Another part is that the average youth, and here Lenin was in some ways no exception, really have a limited noteworthy record to present for public inspection. That despite the best efforts of Soviet hagiography to make it otherwise. Nevertheless Trotsky does an admirable job of detailing the high and low lights of agrarian Russian society and the vagaries of the land question in the second half of the 19thcentury. One should note that Trotsky grew up on a Ukrainian farm and therefore is no stranger to many of the same kind of problems that Lenin had to work through concerning the solution to the agrarian crisis, the peasant question. Most notably, is that the fight for the Russian revolution that everyone knew was coming could only be worked out through the fight for influence over the small industrial working class and socialism.
I would note that for the modern young reader that two things Trotsky analyzes are relevant. The first is the relationship between Lenin and his older brother Alexander who, when he became politicized, joined a remnant of the populist People’s Will terrorist organization and attempted to assassinate the Tsar. For his efforts he and his co-conspirators were hanged. I have always been intrigued by the effect that this event had on Lenin’s development. On the one hand, as a budding young intellectual, would Lenin have attempted to avenge his brother’s fate with his same revolutionary intellectual political program? Or would Lenin go another way to intersect the coming revolutionary either through its agrarian component or the budding Marxist Social Democratic element? We know the answer but Trotsky provides a nicely reasoned analysis of the various influences that were at work in the young Lenin. That alone is worth the price of admission here.
The other point I have already alluded to above. Revolutionaries are made not born, although particular life circumstances may create certain more favorable conditions. Soviet historians in their voluntarist hay day tried to make of Lenin a superhuman phenomenon- a fully formed Marxist intellectual from his early youth. Trotsky once again distills the essence of Lenin’s struggle to make sense of the world, the Russian world in the first instance, as he tries to find a way out the Russian political impasse. Trotsky’s work only goes up to 1892-93, the Samara period, the period before Lenin took off for Petersburg and greener pastures. He left Samara a fully committed Marxist but it would be many years, with many polemics and by using many political techniques before he himself became a Bolshevik, as we know it. And that, young friends, is a cautionary tale that can be taken into the 21st century. Read on.
From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky –Learn
The Lessons Of History Before It Is Too Late- Cops Are Not Workers
In the early
1930s, reformist leaders of the German working class politically disarmed the
workers by preaching reliance on the police to stop Hitler’s Nazis. Those cops
had largely been recruited over the years from among pro-socialist workers.
Leon Trotsky—one of the leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which saw the
proletariat smash the existing capitalist state apparatus and establish their
own state power—sharply warned in What Next? (1932): “The worker who
becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop,
not a worker…. And above all: every policeman knows that though governments may
change, the police remain.”
Workers Vanguard No. 1059
9 January 2015
Amid Protests Against Racist Police Terror
NYC Cop Backlash
Weeks of mass protests that erupted after the policemen who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner got off have left cops across the country seething. These hired guns of the capitalist rulers are howling over any criticism of how they do their job, which in racist capitalist America does include terrorizing and killing unarmed black people. Leading the pack in New York City are the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) and its ilk, which have seized on the December 20 killing of two Brooklyn cops to further push their agenda of bonapartism: that is, to stand above the law as judge, jury and executioner. The nationwide mobilization of police for the funerals of the two cops on consecutive weekends was a chilling show of force. Now the Fraternal Order of Police is building a January 17 “End the Madness: Sea of Blue” march in Washington, D.C.
The NYPD has once again gone ballistic at the very suggestion that there should be some checks on its enforcement of racist “law and order” in the city. The cops want an entirely free hand, and it is no accident the PBA and similar groups are spearheading the backlash to the protests. The PBA is not a union in the sense of a workers organization but a political club reflecting the cops’ awareness of their social role as the guard dogs of the capitalist order.
As the mayor of New York City, which he manages on behalf of the Wall Street plutocrats and real estate barons, Bill de Blasio is commander-in-chief of the NYPD. So when he expressed a little sympathy for those opposing cop terror, de Blasio’s thugs in blue were furious, blaming him for encouraging the protests. The rabid PBA head Patrick Lynch denounced the mayor for supposedly throwing cops “under the bus.”
De Blasio also set off the cops when he stated in a TV interview that he had to warn his 17-year-old son Dante, who is biracial, to be careful not to make any sudden moves when dealing with police—common-sense advice for black youth in this vicious capitalist society that is racist to the core. In response, Ed Mullins, head of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, slammed the mayor: “He may want to think about moving out of New York City completely. He just doesn’t belong here.” Mullins, Lynch and their cohorts insist that de Blasio either tell protesters to stop or get out of the way.
After Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who has been described as mentally unstable, killed the two NYC cops, Lynch went on a tear over the “blood on many hands,” citing “the office of the mayor” and those in the streets protesting police brutality. De Blasio called for a pause to the protests and Police Commissioner William Bratton pronounced the killings their “direct spinoff.” Over 20 people have since been arrested for allegedly threatening cops, including a 16-year-old who was held in jail for a week over Christmas because he posted “Let’s Kill the Cops” on his Facebook page. Despite the NYPD’s sinister ravings and the mayor’s admonishments, the protests have not come to a halt. The initial wave of protest was a measure of how fed up a wide swath of society is with daily cop violence.
The two funerals were attended by tens of thousands from across the country, with the New York Times (28 December) describing the scene at the first as “nothing but thick rows of police officers as far as anyone could see.” Large numbers of cops turned their backs on de Blasio when he spoke at the funerals, as had been done when he visited the hospital where the two cops were taken. Here was a demonstrative show of insubordination and resistance to being put on a leash by civilian authorities when what they really want to do is run wild, wreaking vengeance on protesters and the ghetto and barrio poor with impunity.
Among the bourgeois politicians speaking at the first funeral was U.S. vice president Joe Biden, signaling that the maintenance of “law and order” in NYC, the center of American finance capital, is of vital concern to the highest levels of the capitalist rulers. Reflecting this concern, the bourgeoisie’s paper of record, the New York Times, issued an editorial titled “Respect for NYPD Squandered in Attacks on Bill de Blasio” (29 December). The next day, after statistics were released showing that the police were engaging in a slowdown (summonses for minor offenses had plunged by over 90 percent compared to the previous week), the Times instructed the cops to “do your jobs.” The capitalist rulers in the city and beyond are worried that the NYPD has gone too far, doing further damage to the illusion that the police “serve and protect” the population as a whole. In reality, the job of the cops is to maintain the rule of the capitalist exploiters through violent suppression of the working class, black people and all the oppressed.
In New York City, as elsewhere, the cops have a longstanding appetite for bonapartism. In 1992, when black Democratic mayor David Dinkins moved to replace the cops on the sham Civilian Complaint Review Board with civilians appointed by the mayor, a 10,000-strong cop mob stormed the steps of City Hall. That veritable lynch mob was an example of how in America, where capitalist rule has always had racial oppression at its base, even those black people who have supposedly made it are still branded by the color of their skin. (For more on PBA bonapartism, see article on page 2.)
Today, there are racist undertones to the vitriol aimed by the cops and their supporters at de Blasio, whose wife and children are black. A racist, pro-NYPD throng gathered outside City Hall on December 19, where some disgustingly sported shirts reading “I Can Breathe,” a mockery of Eric Garner’s last words as cops were choking him to death. Al Sharpton, who in the past wore a wire to spy on black politicians for the FBI and cops, has also been a target, receiving death threats for supposedly being “anti-cop.” Sharpton has been prominent around the protests against cop terror, working overtime to direct the outrage into support for the capitalist Democratic Party and reliance on the federal government. He serves to reinforce illusions that the police can be reformed to act in the interests of the oppressed by getting rid of a few “bad apples,” never passing up an opportunity to emphasize how much he supports the police.
The tensions between the PBA and the mayor boil down to how much democratic window dressing to put on the police. During his 2013 mayoral bid, de Blasio attracted support from many black people and Latinos by running as an opponent of stop-and-frisk. Lynch’s hysterical claims that de Blasio “thinks he’s running a fucking revolution” couldn’t be further from the truth; de Blasio’s policies are at bottom a repackaging of racist cop terror.
While stop-and-frisk has been curtailed and a few other largely cosmetic reforms have been introduced, arrests for minor offenses have continued unabated under de Blasio/Bratton’s “broken windows” policing strategy. And, of course, it was “broken windows” that brought about the death of Eric Garner, who was targeted for selling loose cigarettes. Bratton introduced “broken windows” policing to NYC during his first stint as police chief in the 1990s. De Blasio’s reappointment of Bratton as chief gave a green light to the NYPD to keep up the war on black and Latino youth.
Cops Are Not Workers
The utter contempt that cops have for black lives has come to the fore in the past few months. But the question is what to do about it. The answer must flow from an understanding of how this class-divided society works. Under capitalism, a tiny elite that owns the factories, mines and banks lives off the sweat and toil of working people. The cops are a core part of the state machinery of repression that ensures the domination of capital over labor. With black oppression rooted in this system of production for profit, cop terror is wielded by America’s rulers to maintain the forcible segregation of the black masses at the bottom of society, despite their lying assertion of equality. Efforts to reform the police cannot alter its fundamentally anti-working-class and racist nature. As our comrades chanted during the December 13 “Millions March NYC”: “Police reform is a hustle, fists in the air for class struggle!”
The crimes of the cops should be met with massive, militant protest based on the social power of labor. The pro-capitalist union bureaucracy, though, pushes the suicidal lie that cops are “fellow workers” and that the PBA & Co. are part of the labor movement. A prime example in NYC is the leadership of the transit union, TWU Local 100, whose president, John Samuelsen, issued a statement referring to the two dead cops as “our Union Brothers.” The Local 100 tops welcomed Lynch onto the platform of union rallies in the lead-up to the 2005 transit strike—which defied a state ban on public employee strikes. For leading the workers out, Samuelsen’s predecessor, Roger Toussaint, was later arrested and briefly jailed.
For this multiracial union, embracing the racist cops is particularly grotesque. Eric Garner’s mother, sister and niece are all Local 100 members, but the leadership did almost nothing to organize solidarity with them in their grief. When the grand jury decision not to indict the cop who killed Garner was announced, Samuelsen offered: “In federal court, in civil suit and in the next life we will bear witness until justice is served.” What is needed is a mobilization of the social power of the unions to fight racist capitalist injustice in this life!
The role of the cops as deadly enemies of labor is starkly demonstrated when workers go on strike. It’s the cops who enforce court injunctions, protect scabs, attack picket lines and arrest strikers. In fact, the unions were built in hard, often bloody, struggle against the bosses and their cops, National Guard, company goons, etc. From the Haymarket martyrs of 1887, hanged in Chicago for fighting for the eight-hour day, and the Ludlow, Colorado, massacre of striking miners and their families by the Rockefellers’ hired guns in 1914, to the PATCO air traffic controllers fired and dragged away in chains for striking in 1981, labor struggles have always run up against the capitalist state. When there are long periods with little to no class struggle like today, the social role of the cops can become obscured to the working class.
A vivid expression of the anti-working-class nature of the PBA was its denunciation of unions that had co-sponsored a march last August in Staten Island against police brutality, above all the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The steering committee of the UFT caucus “Movement of Rank and File Educators”—which counts a supporter of the reformist International Socialist Organization, Brian Jones, as a founding member—issued a statement urging “the leaderships of the UFT and PBA, to find ways to work together and unite us.”
Rather than building unity with the shock troops of capitalist rule, there must be a fight for the independence of the labor movement from all agencies of the capitalist state. It speaks volumes that the first thing the NYPD’s Peter Liang reportedly did after shooting the unarmed Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn housing project in November was to text his PBA rep, while Gurley lay dying. Or take the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association that is defending its members’ sadistic reign of terror against inmates in the Rikers Island jail. What the cop organizations want is more officers and weapons and fewer restrictions in going after workers, blacks, immigrants and leftists—and to get paid more for doing it.
In the early 1930s, reformist leaders of the German working class politically disarmed the workers by preaching reliance on the police to stop Hitler’s Nazis. Those cops had largely been recruited over the years from among pro-socialist workers. Leon Trotsky—one of the leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which saw the proletariat smash the existing capitalist state apparatus and establish their own state power—sharply warned in What Next? (1932): “The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker…. And above all: every policeman knows that though governments may change, the police remain.”
Over recent decades, while workers unions in the U.S. have been decimated, “unions” representing cops, prison guards and security guards have grown tremendously. The presence of large numbers of cops and security guards within unions like the SEIU and AFSCME is especially dangerous. Cops out of the unions!
A recent Daily News (30 December) opinion piece titled “Labor Must Reject Pat Lynch’s Bitter Bile” by Jonathan Tasini, former president of the National Writers Union who has twice sought the Democratic Party nomination for public office, reflects unease within a section of the union bureaucracy over its association with the PBA. Recoiling from Lynch’s venom, Tasini beseeches city union leaders to speak out against the PBA head because “standing by while a rogue union leader launches vituperative attacks may weaken public support for the mayor.” For Tasini, the overriding priority is to preserve labor’s ties to the Democratic Party, which no less than the Republicans is a political instrument of the class enemy.
What is necessary is to mobilize the social power of labor to fight for its own interests and those of the oppressed, in opposition to the bosses, their political representatives and their state. But the possibility for such a mobilization is undermined by the sellout labor bureaucracy, which shackles the potential power of the unions by feeding workers the lies that cops are their union brothers and sisters and that Democrats are their friends. The way forward is to fight for a class-struggle leadership of the trade unions. As long as the capitalist system remains, so will racist cop terror. To lead it in the struggle to break the capitalist state power and expropriate the bourgeoisie, establishing a workers government, the working class needs its own, revolutionary party.
