AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Reverend Joy Powell

Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.

Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month

Markin comment (reposted from 2010)

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

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

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

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- The Omaha Three’s Ed Poindexter

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Hugo Pinell -George Jackson's Comrade In The San Quentin Six

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Sekou Monga,

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Luis Medina,

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-David McGowan

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Eric McDavid

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Marie Jeanette Mason

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Abdul Majid, (Anthony Laborde)

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

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Oscar López Rivera

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Maliki Shakur Latine-Free Tupac's Father

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- The Omaha Three’s -Mondo We Langa, We (David Rice)

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Richard Mafundi Lake,

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Mohamman Geuka Koti,

*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!-Kevin Kjonaas

From The Big Muddy-Out In The Delta Saturday Night (And Sunday Morning) Night With Mississippi Fred McDowell- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of legendary twelve- string country blues singer Mississippi Fred McDowell performing his classic “You Gotta Move.”

CD Review

Mississippi Delta Blues, Fred McDowell, Arhoolie Records, 1989

Recently I explained (and went mea culpa on and on about it) in a review of Elvis56 (no need for last names, right), his and our, my generation of’ 68 , break-out red scare cold war 1950s be-bop doo wop rock and roll creation time, that I listened to (and preferred) black -centered blues at that young age time. Reason: I was able via “magic” midnight airways to get a blues program, The Big Bopper Show, out of Chicago late at night, late weekend nights, on my transistor radio. (As I pointed out in that previously cited review for those too young, or those who have forgotten, look up that ancient communications transistor radio reference on Wikipedia. Basically though it was a small compact battery-driven unit that had the virtue, the very big virtue, it could be taken up into one’s bedroom, placed close to young ears and one’s parents would be blissfully unaware of the “subversion” until, well, until the big break-out came in 1956 and then they were caught flat-footed. At least at first.)

Now The Big Bopper Show (no relationship, as far as I know, to the rock performer who crashed out in a famous rock history plane crash with Buddy Holly, et. al), was mainly about rhythm and blues with the likes of Big Joe Turner and Ike Turner (pre-Tina) holding forth and about that post-World War II emerging big city, big Midwestern city, up river, up Mississippi River, black migrations to jobs and freedom, well, a little freedom anyway out of the Jim Crow South. Those electrified blues, taking country urban, were wailed by the likes of Muddy Waters (and his various famous band combinations) and Howlin’ Wolf (ditto on the bands).

However, intermingled with those genres was roots, black roots, Africa roots, Mother Earth primordial roots music, country blues, mainly from homeland Delta slave farms (pre-and post -slavery abolition) with some ‘Bama, Carolina Piedmont, Cajun swamp music mixed in. And that is where the performer under review here, Mississippi Fred McDowell, comes in, comes in almost accidentally. See the Big Bopper would play something like
Kokomo Blues or 61 Highway, serious classic blues, by various artists, electric and country, and more likely than not when twelve -string time came it was Brother Mc Dowell whose recording was being used.

But here is the real revelation about black roots music, our Mother Africa transposed, disposed, reposed roots. In the early 1960s, after a bout with serious rock and roll (now called the classic age of rock, ouch) with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, that genre turned to dust (for a while) with the vanilla-ization (nice, huh) of rock. You know Fabian, Ricky Nelson, Booby (oops) Bobby Darren, Vee, all the Bobbys, okay. I turned away from rock and headed back to roots, or what I thought was roots, with the folk revival minute of the early 1960s (Baez-Dylan-Von Ronk-Paxton-Ochs, et. al time).
Who do you think, among others, got “discovered” (really re-discovered) in that minute? Yes, Brother McDowell. And later in an effort to put paid to those discoveries when rock “discovered” it blues roots who do you think got his famous classic song “You Gotta Move” covered? Yes. By whom? The Rolling Stones. Like somebody said the roots, the roots is the toots. Let another generation “discover” that fact.

From #Ur-Occupied Boston (#Ur-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-The Embryo Of An Alternate Government-Learn The Lessons Of History-Lessons From The Utopian Socialists- Charles Fourier and The Phalanx Movement-Of the Role of the Passions

Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
*******
Markin comment October 1, 2011:

There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
**********
In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:

“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”

A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)

I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.

Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.

In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
********
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 of public and private sector workers to unionize.

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

*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 The World!

*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality 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.

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
*******
Charles Fourier (1772-1837)

Of the Role of the Passions

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: The History Guide;
Translated: by Julia Franklin, and published as Selections from the Works of Fourier.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All those philosophical whims called duties have no relation whatever to Nature; duty proceeds from men, Attraction proceeds from God; now, if we desire to know the designs of God, we must study Attraction, Nature only, without any regard to duty, which varies with every age, while the nature of the passions has been and will remain invariable among all nations of men.

The learned world is wholly imbued with a doctrine termed MORALITY, which is a mortal enemy of passional attraction.

Morality teaches man to be at war with himself, to resist his passions, to repress them, to believe that God was incapable of organizing our souls, our passions wisely; that he needed the teachings of Plato and Seneca in order to know how to distribute characteristics and instincts. Imbued with these prejudices regarding the impotence of God, the learned world was not qualified to estimate the natural impulses or passional attractions, which morality proscribes and relegates to the rank of vices.

It is true that these impulses entice us only to evil, if we yield to them individually; but we must calculate their effect upon a body of about two thousand persons socially combined, and not upon families or isolated individuals: this is what the learned world has not thought of; in studying it, it would have recognized that as soon as the number of associates (societaires) has reached 1600, the natural impulses, termed attractions, tend to form series of contrasting groups, in which everything incites to industry, become attractive, and to virtue, become lucrative.

The passions, believed to be the enemies of concord, in reality conduce to that unity from which we deem them so far removed. But outside of the mechanism termed “exalted,” emulatory, interlocked (engrenees) Series, they are but unchained tigers, incomprehensible enigmas. It is this which has caused philosophers to say that we ought to repress them; an opinion doubly absurd inasmuch as we can only repress our passions by violence or absorbing replacement, which replacement is no repression. On the other hand, should they be efficiently repressed, the civilized order would rapidly decline find relapse into the nomad state, where the passions would still be malevolent as with us. The virtue of shepherds is as doubtful as that of their apologists, and our utopia-makers, by thus attributing virtues to imaginary peoples, only succeed in proving the impossibility of introducing virtue into civilization.

We are quite familiar with the five sensitive passions tending to Luxury, the four affective ones tending to Groups; it only remains for us to learn about the three distributive ones whose combined impulse produces Series, a social method of which the secret has been lost since the age of primitive mankind, who were unable to maintain the Series more than about 300 years.

The four affective passions tending to form the four groups of friendship, love, ambition, paternity or consanguinity are familiar enough; but no analyses or parallels or scales have been made of them.

The three others, termed distributive, are totally misunderstood, and bear only the title of vices, although they are infinitely precious; for these three possess the property of forming and directing the series of groups, the mainspring of social harmony. Since these series are not formed in the civilized order, the three distributive passions cause disorder only. Let us define them.

10th. THE CABALIST is the passion that, like love, has the property of confounding ranks, drawing superiors and inferiors closer to each other. Everyone must recall occasions when he has been strongly drawn into some Path followed with complete success.

For instance: electoral cabal to elect a certain candidate; cabal on ‘Change in the stock-jobbing game; cabal of two pairs of lovers, planning a partie carrée without the father’s knowledge; a family cabal to secure a desirable match. If these intrigues are crowned with success, the participants become friends; in spite of some anxiety, they have passed happy moments together while conducting the intrigue; the emotions it arouses are necessities of the soul.

Far removed from the insipid calm whose charms are extolled by morality, the cabalistic spirit is the true destination of man. Plotting doubles his resources, enlarges his faculties. Compare the tone of a formal social gathering, its moral, stilted, languishing jargon, with the tone of these same people united in a cabal: they will appear transformed to you; you will admire their terseness, their animation, the quick play of ideas, the alertness of action, of decision; in a word, the rapidity of the spiritual or material motion. This fine development of the human faculties is the fruit of the cabalist or tenth passion, which constantly prevails in the labors and the reunions of a passionate series.

As it always results in some measure of success, and as its groups are all precious to each other, the attraction of the cabals becomes a potent bond of friendship between all the sectaires, even the most unequal.

The general perfection of industry will spring, then, from the passion which is most condemned by the philosophers; the cabalist or dissident, which has never been able to obtain among us the rank of a passion, notwithstanding that it is so strongly rooted even in the philosophers themselves, who are the greatest intriguers in the social world.

The cabalist is a favorite passion of women; they are excessively fond of intrigue, the rivalries and all the greater and lesser flights of a cabal. It is a proof of their eminent fitness (for the new social order, where cabals without number will be needed in every series, periodical schisms, in order to maintain a movement of coming and going among the sectaries of the different groups.

12th. THE COMPOSITE. – This passion requires in every action a composite allurement or pleasure of the senses and of the soul, and consequently the blind enthusiasm which is born only of the mingling of the two kinds of pleasure. These conditions are but little compatible with civilized labor, which, far from offering any allurement either to the senses or the soul, is only a double torment even in the most vaunted of work-shops, such as the spinning factories of England where the people, even the children, work fifteen hours a day, under the lash, in premises devoid of air.

The composite is the most beautiful of the twelve passions, the one which enhances the value of all the others. A love is not beautiful unless it is a composite love, combining the charm of the senses and of the soul. It becomes trifling or deception if it limits itself to one of these springs. An ambition is not vehement unless it brings into play the two springs, glory and interest. It is then that it becomes capable of brilliant efforts.

The composite commands so great a respect, that all are agreed in despising people inclined to simple pleasure. Let a man provide himself with fine viands, fine wines, with the intention of enjoying them alone, of giving himself up to gormandizing by himself, and he exposes himself to well-merited gibes. But if this man gathers a select company in his house, where one may enjoy at the same time the pleasure of the senses by good cheer, and the pleasure of the soul by companionship, he will be lauded, because these banquets will be a composite and not a simple pleasure.

If general opinion despises simple material pleasure, the same is true as well of simple spiritual pleasure, of gatherings where there is neither refreshment, nor dancing, nor love, nor anything for the senses, where one enjoys oneself only in imagination. Such a gathering, devoid of the composite or pleasure of the senses and the soul, becomes insipid to its participants, and it is not long before it “grows bored and dissolves.”

11th. THE PAPILLONNE [Butterfly] or Alternating. Although eleventh according to rank, it should be examined after the twelfth, because it serves as a link between the other two, the tenth and the twelfth. If the sessions of the series were meant to be prolonged twelve or fifteen hours like those of civilized workmen, who, from morning till night, stupefy themselves by being engaged in insipid duties without any diversion, God would have given us a taste for monotony, an abhorrence of variety. But as the sessions of the series are to be very short, and the enthusiasm inspired by the composite is incapable of being prolonged beyond an hour and a half, God, in conformity to this industrial order, had to endow us with the passion of papillonnage, the craving for periodic variety in the phases of life, and for frequent variety in our occupations. Instead of working twelve hours with a scant intermission for a poor, dull dinner, the associative state will never extend its sessions of labor beyond an hour and a half or at most two; besides, it will diffuse a host of pleasures, reunions of the two sexes terminating in a repast, from which one will proceed to new diversions, with different company and cabals.

Without this hypothesis of associative labor, arranged in the order I have described, it would be impossible to conceive for what purpose God should have given us three passions so antagonistic to the monotony experienced in civilization, and so unreasonable that, in the existing state, they have not even been accorded the rank of passions, but are termed only vices.

A series, on the contrary, could not be organized without the permanent cooperation of these three passions. They are bound to intervene constantly and simultaneously in the serial play of intrigue. Hence it comes that these three passions could not be discerned until the invention of the serial mechanism, and that up to that time they had to be regarded as vices. When the social order for which God has destined us shall be known in detail, it will be seen that these pretended vices, the Cabalist, the Papillonne, the Composite, become there three pledges of virtue and riches; that God did indeed know how to create passions such as are demanded by social unity; that He would have been wrong to change them in order to please Seneca and Plato; that on the contrary human reason ought to strive to discover a social condition which shall be in affinity with these passions. No moral theory will ever change them, and, in accordance with the rules of the duality of tendency, they will intervene for ever to lead us TO EVIL in the disjointed state or social limbo, and TO GOOD in the regime of association or serial labor.

The seven “affective” and “distributive” passions depend more upon the spirit than upon matter; they rank as PRIMITIVES. Their combined action engenders a collective passion or one formed by the union of the other seven, as white is formed by the union of the seven colors of a ray of light; I shall call this thirteenth passion Harmonism or Unityism; it is even less known than the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, of which I have not spoken.

Unityism is the inclination of the individual to reconcile his own happiness with that of all surrounding him, and of all human kind, to-day so odious. It is an unbounded philanthropy, a universal good-will which can only be developed when the entire human race shall be rich, free, and just.

Questions regarding gallantly and the love of eating are treated facetiously by the Civilized, who do not comprehend the importance that God attaches to our pleasures. Voluptuousness is the sole arm which God can employ to master us and lead us to carry out his designs; he rules the universe by Attraction and not by Force; therefore the enjoyments of his creatures are the most important object of the calculations of God.

I shall, in order to dispose others to share my confidence, explain the object of one of these impulses, accounted as vicious.

I select a propensity which is the most general and the most thwarted by education: it is the gluttony of children, their fondness for dainties, in opposition to the advice of the pedagogues who counsel them to like bread, to eat more bread than their allowance.

Nature, then, is very clumsy to endow children with tastes so opposed to sound doctrines! every child regards a breakfast of dry bread as a punishment; he would wish for sugared cream, sweetened milk-food and pastry, marmalades and stewed fruit, raw and preserved fruit, lemonades and orangeades, mild white wines. Let us observe closely these tastes which prevail among all children; on this point a great case is to be adjudged: the question to be determined is who is wrong, God or morality?

God, dispenser of attraction, gives all children a liking for dainties: it was in his power to give them a liking for dry bread and water; it would have suited the views of morality; why then does he knowingly militate against sound civilized doctrines? Let us explain these motives.

God has given children a liking for substances which will be the least costly in the associative state. When the entire globe shall be populated and cultivated, enjoying free-trade, exempt from all duties, the sweet viands mentioned above will be much less expensive than bread; the abundant edibles will be fruit, milk-foods, and sugar, but not bread, whose price will be greatly raised, because the labor incident to the growing of grain and the daily making of bread is wearisome and little attractive; these kinds of labor would have to be paid much higher than that in orchards or confectioneries.

And as it is fitting that the food and maintenance of children should involve less expense than those of their parents, God has acted judiciously in attracting them to those sweetmeats and dainties which will be cheaper than bread as soon as we shall have entered upon the associative state. Then the sound moral doctrines will be found to be altogether erroneous concerning the nourishment of children, as well as upon all other points which oppose attraction. It will be recognized that God did well what he did, that he was right in attracting children to milk-foods, fruit, and sweet pastries; and that, instead of foolishly losing three thousand years in declaiming against God’s wisest work, against the distribution of tastes and passionate attractions, it would have been better to study its aim, by reckoning with all those impulses combined, which morality insults singly, under the pretext that they are hurtful to the civilized and barbarous orders; this is true, but God did not create the passions for the civilized and barbarous orders. If he had wished to maintain these two forms of society exclusively, he would have given children a fondness for dry bread, and to the parents a love of poverty, since that is the lot of the immense majority of mankind in civilization and barbarism.

In the civilized state, love of eating does not ally itself to industry because the laboring producer does not enjoy the commodities which he has cultivated or manufactured. This passion therefore becomes an attribute of the idle; and through that alone it would be vicious, were it not so already by the outlay and the excesses which it occasions.

In the associative state love of eating plays an entirely opposite role; it is no longer a reward of idleness but of industry; because there the poorest tiller of the soil participates in the consumption of choice commodities. Moreover, its only influence will be to preserve us from excess, by dint of variety, and to stimulate us to work by allying the intrigues of consumption to those of production, preparation, and distribution. Production being the most important of the four, let us first state the principle which must guide it; it is the generalization of epicurism. In point of fact.

If the whole human race could be raised to a high degree of gastronomic refinement, even in regard to the most ordinary kinds of food, such as cabbages and radishes, and everyone be given a competence which would allow him to refuse all edibles which are mediocre in quality or treatment, the result would be that every cultivated country would, after a few years, be covered with delicious productions; for there would be no sale for mediocre ones, such as bitter melons, bitter peaches, which certain kinds of soil yield, upon which neither melons nor peaches would be cultivated; every district would confine itself to productions which its soil is capable of raising to perfection; it would fetch earth for spots where the soil is poor, or perhaps convert them into forests, artificial meadows, or whatever else might yield products of good quality. It is not that the passionate Series do not consume ordinary eatables and stuffs; but they desire, even in ordinary things such as beans and coarse cloth, the most perfect quality possible, in conformity to the proportions which Nature has established in industrial attraction.

The principle which must be our starting-point is, that a general perfection in industry will be attained by the universal demands and refinement of the consumers, regarding food and clothing, furniture and amusements.

My theory confines itself to utilizing the passions now condemned, just as Nature has given them to us and without in any way changing them. That is the whole mystery, the whole secret of the calculus of passionate Attraction. There is no arguing there whether God was right or wrong in giving mankind these or those passions; the associative order avails itself of them without changing them, and as God has given them to us.

Its mechanism produces coincidence in every respect between individual interest and collective interest, in civilization always divergent.

It makes use of men as they are, utilizing the discords arising from antipathies, and other motives accounted vicious, and vindicating the Creator from the reproach of a lacuna in providence, in the matter of general unity and individual foresight.

Finally, it in nowise disturbs the established order, limiting itself to trial on a small scale, which will incite to imitation by the double allurement of quadruple proceeds and attractive industry.

Monday, June 11, 2012

From Out In The Doo Wop Be-Bop 1950s Night- The Golden Age – A CD

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing the classic doo wop song, Why Do Fools Fall In Love.

CD Review

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: Doo Wop: Special Edition -1953-63, Ace Records, 2004

Why Do Fools Fall In Love lyrics

Oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah, oh wah

Why do fools fall in love?
Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day
Why do they fall in love?

Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?

Love is a losing game
Love can be ashamed
I know of a fool
You see
For that fool is me

Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyyy
Tell me why

(Background Music)

Why do birds sing so gay?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?

Why does the rain fall from up above?
Why do fools fall in love?
Why do they fall in love?

Why does my heart skip a crazy beat?
Before I know it will reach defeat!

Tell me why, Whyyyy, Whyy

Why do fools fall in love?(Hold Long)

Oh wah, oh wah, Oh wah sure, it is easy, easy for most of you anyway, to dismiss or otherwise degrade our growing up absurd 1950s red scare cold war night be-bop doo wop craze as some aficionado throw-down. Ya, easy for you to say. But I am here to give you the “skinny” and can back it up by pointing to the thirty song contents of the CD under review, Ace Record’s Doo Wop Special Edition-1953-63 (but it was really over by about 1959, okay), that if you were a guy, short, tall, ugly handsome, large or small, and you wanted to get anywhere with the opposite sex, girls, okay, then you had better have been right up to date on what was what in doo wop land.

Or better had some friends that you could group with, maybe three, maybe four others and croon to make Bing Crosby and his ilk blush. To speak nothing of The Inkspots and The Mills Brothers. Squares, ya, has-been squares. Punk acts, pure vaudeville sideshow stuff against The Dubs’ Could This Be Magic or The Charts’ Desiree. Strictly girl magnet stuff, Hell, why else would you strain your growing to manhood boy voice, and that of others, except to dazzle some twist, some frail, some frill, okay, okay some girl.

All made easy if you had a voice (and some sense of rhythm) like Frankie Lymon. But here is the other part of the skinny, they, okay, okay, Dick Clark on American Bandstand, didn’t tell you. What if your voice was turning into some kind of son of Bela Lugosi (before you knew who he was but you knew the voice) gravel pit. Then all chances of holding laughing hands nights by the shore, basement family room petting parties complete with a gaggle of giggling girls, church last dance visions of slow dance be-bop magic with some certain she, were gone. And all chances of golden age of American dream happiness with it. So if you ever had the slightest inkling of teen angst and alienation, whatever your generation, then you know, know deep down that this music could set you right on those lonely single nights. And it did. Damn.

Ancient dreams, dreamed-A Detour - Magical Realism 101

Ancient dreams, dreamed-A Detour - Magical Realism 101

Fidgety. No, not some usual schoolboy preternatural eternal girl swaying in the mind’s eye breeze, next-up girl swaying fidgety, but fidgety, get out of town, get out of the rut, hit the Jack Kerouac asphalt highway curve- kicking Dean Moriarty gear-shifting road (pressing after a mad midnight to dawn fresh air late 1971 re-reading of On The Road, the first time was just 1962 kid’s stuff trying to get out of the house kid’s stuff, and just reading what everybody was reading to be cool, to be beat, faux beat as it turned out), farmer brown get the stink blown off fidgety after wasting away so much breeze on this and that, inconsequential this and that.

And just maybe too, get out of town, hit the highway, to rekindle a sagging girl sway relationship that was heading to the rocky shores (see I told you it goes to the grave, eternal, or close). It was that kind of time. Rocky shores, by the way, just then meaning “commitment,” commitment to white picket fence complete with fully mortgaged white picket fence house, running field dogs, mutts maybe, and flowered gardens (left unspoken those two point three kids to clutter up said house, to pet such dogs and to run amok in the petunias but she, Joyell she to sagging girl sway name her, at least knew how not to sell her case). Jesus, no, jesus one thousand, no, one million times no, not after just escaping, and barely, steel-barred rooms, dram shop de-drunks, and erased sweet bobby kennedy-visioned dreams of forty years, a pension, a gold watch and some minor thefts in the service of the people. No, let’s just shake the dust of this town and see what happens kind of gentle like. Okay. Ah, okay. Joyell finally seeing the light okay, I think.

So off into the chili night (no sic, chili, the final southern destination is winter Mexico before the drug cartels blew into mountain breeze Cuernavaca) we roamed, or rather prepared to roam. Prepared with Salvation Army’s, Joe’s Army-Navy, Harry’s Cheapo Depot cheap, serviceable camping gear, or rather the bare minimum we could squeeze in that broken down box of a car (a Datsun, a gone automobile name yellow, and far from boyhood dream ’57 Chevy cherry reds) that I had managed to cadge off some guy, a friend of a friend guy, who had no cash, needed to get west fast (or at least out of town and west was the only way unless he figured on swimming).West fast meaning either girl trouble or some imminent drug crash out, busted no question, knowing whose friend of a friend he was. We, smart we, smart Joyell we, had set aside plenty of funds just in case this rag-a-muffin of a car decided to join its Zen spirit master on some by-road west when we headed north. North then west then south.

Working funds to see us through thick and thin, you ask? Well said white picket fence dreaming yankee lady had some dough, some father Manhattan NYSE stockbroker (or some such profession I never really did get all the details of his occupation although he acted like a damned proper don in some Mafioso dream sequel and so just in case he or his capo progeny are around let’s stick with stockbroker), which then meant dough, daughter dough. But said princess daughter (WASP daughter, alright) found herself slumming (if dream slumming really, and talking about it too with all her waspish girlfriends like some red badge of courage, but you probably figured that out already) with some half-heathen, half-broken, faux Irishman and while she was not above white picket dreams she still insisted that on this trip we would do frugal, thrifty yankee “dutch treat.” And this fidgety dog-fearing, white paint-hating, and weed-loving half-heathen wanted to have his own dough just in case he decided that he had to go to Butte instead of Beverly Hills in a fit of hubris. Oh, freedom, dough freedom.

So our brother, our story brother, me, worked at this and that and if you asked me (or her, but with scowls) what he did you would receive the usual hobo tramp bum – “a little of this and that.” A little this and that really meaning “the best he could,” just in case the statute of limitations has not run out. And “the best he could” got him that yellow box car, a couple of army sleeping bags(vintage World War II, of course, no Korean War/Vietnam War stuff to revile his dreams, or her dreams of him when she played him a hero, their love was fresh, and they fell fitfully down in first days 1971 New Hampshire snows and kissed gentle kisses just to see what it was like to kiss a hero she later told him and he laughed, and she reddened, and he reached out his laughing hands to her, and, and, but on with our travel story, you can figure out what those laughing hands did, can’t you), a small two-man army surplus tent (excuse me, two person, both to reflect the “new age” of person-hood and that that two part was all that could possibly fit into the damn thing, not even a stray dog could nuzzle his or her nose in), and a “house” worth of utensils. Canteens, Coleman stoves, mess kits, all very travel-worthy stuff as he knew from his minute now expired field army experience. Cheapsville, very cheapsville stuff, got it.

And off, hot August dog days off, heading north to catch a breeze and a dream before it got too cold, or the funds ran out after those first days of spending more than was budgeted because this or that cost more than expected. Backup though- some yankee stockbroker would come through, or some half-heathen would take another stab at “doing this and that.” First stop old time yankee gangway to fresh seas hideout from the Irish and other assorted trash Kennebunkport. (Not Kennebunk, that was for the heathens, she told him without qualification or guile, personal knowledge told him, and he was proud that day she told him, proud of his little smitten waspy conquest and gave just a peep of a thought that maybe a white picket fence might not be so bad with such a find.)

First night sleep out in some yankee farmer’s blueberry late season black fly field and first crack of setting up camp. Long hours to set “pup” tent (with no room for pup, no way, save that for dream white picket fences and petunias), fix hungry dinner on the big pot averse Coleman stove and wait for eternal, infernal water to boil for fresh day coffees and giggles. We are off, we are free, and we are one day into hard adventure and still in one piece- the morning would tell that same tale. Hey, this is easy, he said, easy before the fidgets could speak.

Heading north bright next morning to yankee Bar Harbors, maybe deeper yankee than Kennebunkport (with no Kennebunk for the heathen refuge, just Ellsworth) and more tents, and more eternal, infernal waits for precious coffees. North more, Campobello, north Calais (callus; don’t call it some French thing though if you don’t want to get into an argument). Then more slowly, more north to New Brunswick, sweet Moncktons and switch off youth hostel indoor one night living (nobody probably every called that dorm hostel sweet before, no reason, but I will remain discrete and let you just think of laughing hands), north more to Nova Scotia (New Scotland, no question) Neil’s Harbor tents and Peggy’s Cove bed and breakfast inn (figured in funding, so don’t get nervous). Push until no more norths (or easts) can be seen short of flight or boats and then west, the great blue pink America west night adventure waits and we are both like two intrepid pioneer kids (although now, after a few weeks, old camping hands) hard –faced to the wind.

Still more Canadian lands but island Prince Edward Island lands, sweet Charlottetown, rocked inlet boats, and another bed and breakfast, this time with ocean view and white picket fences but both of us are too rough-hewn now, just now anyway after several weeks on the roads, to care a fig for white picket fences. Or rustic scenes and rolling farm lands, and endless sea-side fishing villages just starting to fog up and rust up with lack of shoals work. Time for the cities, time for Quebec City and Montreal down the mighty Saint Lawrence and ooh, la, la French delights. And lights other than stars, sounds other than night cicadas, and talk other than get firewood, get tent pegs set and hammered, sleeping bags morning dew aired out, and fresh coffee boiling waits, infinity waits. Edge city waits.