Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire.
He was scared, scared silly, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Rugged hills and hollows born, Appalachia mountain Kentucky hard-scrabble farm born, fear hid under the rug, or somewhere else born he was still scared. He, Prescott Breslin, just weeks, maybe a couple of months if he counted it up, out of those hills and hollows, was scared because his unit, his semper fi 1st Marine Corps Division unit had just received orders to head out in the morning, head out west. And since he was sitting by himself just then at a Camp Pendleton, California make-shift PX table munching coffee and cakes west could only mean the Pacific islands that dotted the way to Japan. Some units had already gone out, gone out quickly all through early 1942 and as 1943 approached all hell was breaking loose with men and material heading west, just like in old time pioneer west if he had thought about it.
But sitting with that cup of black coffee (hell, nobody back home ever had it any other way besides who had milk or cream left over for such fixings, and black was fine anyway) and cruller donut (he had grown to love this donut business after a lifetime of Ma’s old patched-up bread pudding and sunken baking soda-laden cakes) he was not thinking about pioneer west stuff, or even, after he bit into the cruller, scared thoughts so much but about how life was funny. Not funny to laugh over but just the way the cards were dealt funny. It might have been the sugar, or it might have been the caffeine but his started to think about all the stuff that he hadn’t done, and some stuff he had done, to keep the thoughts of the days ahead in check.
First off though was his pride in being one of the best troopers in his training unit down at Parris Island, and then his assigned unit here. It wasn’t so much that it came natural to him, although coming from the hard rock country didn’t hurt when they went out into the “boonies” on those twenty mile full-pack hikes or when he busted out number one on the rifle range with that silly M-I pop gun. It was more that, at first, guys, yankee city guys from Boston and New York, or northern farm boys anyway, laughed at him about his back mountain drawl, about his not knowing about donuts, about not knowing about how to handle a folk and spoon right and all kinds of yankee stuff that didn’t make sense to him, or them when he asked them to explain what they meant and why. After a while, after a ton of callouses and blisters, after a ton of KP, after half a ton of pranks, and after about eight weeks of showing guys, yankee guys and farm boys, that he could be depended on if something happened to them they were practically competing to have him as their “buddy.” More than one guy said, said straight out, when they got the news of the move out that as long as Prescott Breslin was going along with them he wasn’t quite so scared. Here is the kicker though. A couple of days ago they all chipped in to by him drinks at the enlisted men’s club to show their appreciation AND a dozen donuts, assorted the next morning. Still Prescott Breslin was scared.
While he was thinking an odd-scared thought or two somebody, a guy he didn’t recognize sitting with a nice- looking tanned Oceanside girl, at another table had gotten up to put some nickels in the jukebox and he, still thinking about life’s ups and downs, could hear the strains of I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire and that song got him kind of choked up at first. He then laughed, not a funny laugh, as he listened to the lyrics and thought that he sure didn’t want to, and hadn’t, set the world on fire.
He sure hadn’t.
Getting into the heart of the song, the lonely guy misery part, he hadn’t a girl left behind to think of him while he was away blasting Pacific islands to smithereens. Out here, out here in sunny California, he had had not too much luck finding a girl, not much luck really. The girls seemed too fast for him, to ready to dismiss his back mountain drawl and write him down as a damn hillbilly. One time at the Surfside Grille in Oceanside where all the guys went when they had passes he met a girl, a pretty girl who liked his looks she said, liked his black hair, and brown eyes. She nevertheless told him flat out once she found out where he was from that she would pass him by. Why? Well, she, herself was from some podunk okie town and now that she was a California girl she was thinking of becoming a blonde and had definitely shaken the dust her of okie kind of boys. She wanted, and she said this flat out too, a movie star soldier boy like Robert Taylor. Jesus, women, California women.
Sure, back home, he had had a few nibbles, a couple of girls from Prestonsburg and Hazard, girls with nice looks and manners and who couldn’t complain of his drawl. But nothing serious happened, nothing serious because from about age fourteen all the girls where he came from, even Prestonsburg girls, got all moony over being married and, in order to get from under their own large families, start families of their own. He had wanted no part of that, not at twenty, no way. But he got just a little melancholy, taking another sip of that sweet black coffee, when he thought that he might never have a chance to get married. Never have a family of his own to take care of him in his old age, if he had an old age.
Mainly though he thought about the things he did had done over the past few
years before he enlisted and wished that he had had more time to do them. Hell, it wasn’t nothing big, nothing to set the world on fire, but it was his life. His life, six or seven years ago, once he knew the score, knew the hard-scrabble Kentuck farm score, and that if he didn’t want nothing but hard calloused hands and looking eighty at forty (like his pa and grandpa) he had better hit the highway. Since there were twelve kids at home, and only enough to feed about eight right nobody (except Ma, he later, much too much later, found out) missed him when he set out for Lexington one dark night. He got a ride from Colonel Eddie (not really a colonel but everybody with two bucks for a genuine certificate called himself that) the local long-haul driver who was always looking for company on his runs west, and knew how to keep quiet when a guy asked him to about stuff like where he was going, and why.
And he also thought how once he got to Lexington, after a few crop-picking and dish-washing jobs to keep him alive in the city, he met up with a couple of guys at Lucy’s Diner who wanted form a band and make some money playing what they called the coal-dust circuit. He played a fair guitar for a kid, had a decent voice that had become deeper as he aged, and best of all he knew all the old-timey songs that the hills and hollows folks wanted to hear. Boy, did he know them all. Stuff like Tom Doulas, Ommie Wise, and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies.
A couple of weeks later with some practice, a small stake, and lots of dreams, they hit the back road Saturday night places where the locals held their weekly barn dances (complete with plenty of moonshine to liven things up). Sometimes they, now known as the Kentuck Sheiks (that sheik name was popular a few years back and you just added your state name in front and you had a genuine band name), passed the hat, sometimes when there was no dough they just took a couple of days room and board for their troubles.
That lasted for about a year or so, maybe a little bit more, but then times got so bad about 1936 or 37 that three guys just couldn’t make it on bread and butter, literally. So he got off the road, headed back home, and started to work in Mr. Peabody’s coal mines (not every mine was owned by the Peabody Coal Company as he was at pains to inform his fellow platoon members when they had asked what he did in the “real world” but that is what everybody called it around home when a guy went into the mines).
There he was stuck in the mines, the damn black-lung mines (his mother cried every time he came home at night looking, well, looking like a damn nigra, and coughing the dust out half the night) when the news of the Japs hitting Pearl came over the radio and guys, guys like him, all over the country, were lined up three, maybe more, deep, to enlist. Funny though he could, having worked his way up a little in the mines, have gotten a vital industries draft deferral and been sitting right then in the Prestonsburg hotel with some pretty town girl drinking real store-bought liquor and working up his courage to ask her up into his room. But no, on December 9, 1941 he had gone to Prestonsburg and enlisted in the Marines right on the dotted line. And he never looked back.
Scared, scared to death, or not, sitting at that table having a second cruller and a third cup of mud Private First Class Prescott Breslin thought it over for a minute. He then said to himself, hell, between shoveling coal for Mr. Peabody forever and fighting the damn Japs I’ll take the Japs. And that made him just a little less scared as someone put another nickel in the jukebox to play If I Didn’t Care.
Thursday, August 09, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Out In Be-Bop 1950s Crime Noir Night- “Heat Wave”
Click on the headline to link to a Film Noir of the Week blog entry for the 1954 British film Heat Wave.
DVD Review
Heat Wave, starring Alex Nichols, directed by Ken Hughes, Hammer Studios, 1954
Sure, I like my femme fatales as bad as possible, wicked even (cinematically that is, since I don’t always want to in real life be constantly looking over my shoulder to see if some off-hand brunette is waiting to put a slug, or six, in me for some supposed transgression, or just because). And, again theoretically, I suppose I am as likely, maybe more likely, than any other guy to be “swayed’ by some perfumed request of said femme fatales to do a little off-hand heavy lifting in the way of freeing them of some burden. But, damn, I would, and I will, swear on a stack of seven bibles or whatever holy book you want, draw the line at murder. No way, no way at all.
Well, no way except that just maybe I would consider that line of work if white shorts, white blouse, white bandana Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice gave me that second look that she gave John Garfield. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that I would be tempted to tumble to some scheme Barbara Stanwyck had worked up in Double Indemnity after seeing that ankle bracelet come down those stairs. But really I am not build for that heavy lifting, and remember my drawn in the sand line against murder policy. So there is no way, no way in hell, I would fall under the spell of Carol (Hillary Brooke) in the film under review, Heat Wave (aka The House Across The Lake).
See, I don’t mind a blonde or two for company, although I prefer brunettes, but I am always a little wary when they, those blondes, have that look, that you are going to tumble for me but as part of the package I have job for you look. And that job always, always involves some in the way a hubby to be cleared out of the way before she (and I, of course) can be really happy. Like I said I draw the line. I draw the line doubly because in this case this blonde is no big-hearted blonde out of a Dorothy Parker Big Blonde short story but an ice queen, a serious ice queen. Of course our skirt-addled, high-end bourbon -addled, perfume whiff- addled protagonist here, Mark (Alex Nicols), is smitten right off by this butterfly swirl. Worst as the story develops he actually likes the husband (likes him well enough to drink that high-end bourbon when offered).
Of course the story line here in this very B film, very B British noir, very B noir 1950s Hammer production, is as old as Adam and Eve. Maybe older. One young gold-digging wife with no moral compass (and frankly no apparent charms) is tired of older hubby, Beverly, and wants something done about it. And quick. Now today, here in America at least, thank goodness, she could juts file for divorce, make a hefty sum, and go on about her business with the next six guys who come along. That, needless to say, would make for a very short noir, and moreover not satisfy dear Carol’s lust for depravity. Enter patsy, yes, patsy, Mark who while allegedly out in the England country-side taking in the airs in order to write the great English (or American) novel seems to have nothing better to do that drink proffered high-end bourbon and fall under the spell of our damsel in distress.
As with all these, as someone put it, divorce-noir style films the evil deed, the murder, is done (and done with some bravado by Carol) but as with all amateurs and non-professional career criminals this job gets so botched up and the suspects and motives are so apparent that the police can just sit around and wait for the guilty to step to the crime, and the rope. Our boy Mark was clearly not build for this heavy lifting and falls to his part in it after a few more bourbons (assumed to be high-end still although who was paying seems to be have been left up in the air.) Lesson: guys, when some perfumed country estate damsel with ice in her veins gives you that come hither look, check the wedding finger, and get the hell out of there fast. Except if she is a foxy little brunette then maybe you can stop long enough to listen to her story. Enough said.
DVD Review
Heat Wave, starring Alex Nichols, directed by Ken Hughes, Hammer Studios, 1954
Sure, I like my femme fatales as bad as possible, wicked even (cinematically that is, since I don’t always want to in real life be constantly looking over my shoulder to see if some off-hand brunette is waiting to put a slug, or six, in me for some supposed transgression, or just because). And, again theoretically, I suppose I am as likely, maybe more likely, than any other guy to be “swayed’ by some perfumed request of said femme fatales to do a little off-hand heavy lifting in the way of freeing them of some burden. But, damn, I would, and I will, swear on a stack of seven bibles or whatever holy book you want, draw the line at murder. No way, no way at all.
Well, no way except that just maybe I would consider that line of work if white shorts, white blouse, white bandana Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice gave me that second look that she gave John Garfield. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that I would be tempted to tumble to some scheme Barbara Stanwyck had worked up in Double Indemnity after seeing that ankle bracelet come down those stairs. But really I am not build for that heavy lifting, and remember my drawn in the sand line against murder policy. So there is no way, no way in hell, I would fall under the spell of Carol (Hillary Brooke) in the film under review, Heat Wave (aka The House Across The Lake).
See, I don’t mind a blonde or two for company, although I prefer brunettes, but I am always a little wary when they, those blondes, have that look, that you are going to tumble for me but as part of the package I have job for you look. And that job always, always involves some in the way a hubby to be cleared out of the way before she (and I, of course) can be really happy. Like I said I draw the line. I draw the line doubly because in this case this blonde is no big-hearted blonde out of a Dorothy Parker Big Blonde short story but an ice queen, a serious ice queen. Of course our skirt-addled, high-end bourbon -addled, perfume whiff- addled protagonist here, Mark (Alex Nicols), is smitten right off by this butterfly swirl. Worst as the story develops he actually likes the husband (likes him well enough to drink that high-end bourbon when offered).
Of course the story line here in this very B film, very B British noir, very B noir 1950s Hammer production, is as old as Adam and Eve. Maybe older. One young gold-digging wife with no moral compass (and frankly no apparent charms) is tired of older hubby, Beverly, and wants something done about it. And quick. Now today, here in America at least, thank goodness, she could juts file for divorce, make a hefty sum, and go on about her business with the next six guys who come along. That, needless to say, would make for a very short noir, and moreover not satisfy dear Carol’s lust for depravity. Enter patsy, yes, patsy, Mark who while allegedly out in the England country-side taking in the airs in order to write the great English (or American) novel seems to have nothing better to do that drink proffered high-end bourbon and fall under the spell of our damsel in distress.
As with all these, as someone put it, divorce-noir style films the evil deed, the murder, is done (and done with some bravado by Carol) but as with all amateurs and non-professional career criminals this job gets so botched up and the suspects and motives are so apparent that the police can just sit around and wait for the guilty to step to the crime, and the rope. Our boy Mark was clearly not build for this heavy lifting and falls to his part in it after a few more bourbons (assumed to be high-end still although who was paying seems to be have been left up in the air.) Lesson: guys, when some perfumed country estate damsel with ice in her veins gives you that come hither look, check the wedding finger, and get the hell out of there fast. Except if she is a foxy little brunette then maybe you can stop long enough to listen to her story. Enough said.
*From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin- From “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)-The Struggle Against Which Enemies Within the Working-Class Movement
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
*******
With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
**********
The Struggle Against Which Enemies Within the Working-Class Movement
Helped Bolshevism Develop, Gain Strength, and Become Steeled
First and foremost, the struggle against opportunism which in 1914 definitely developed into social-chauvinism and definitely sided with the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. Naturally, this was Bolshevism’s principal enemy within the working-class movement. It still remains the principal enemy on an international scale. The Bolsheviks have been devoting the greatest attention to this enemy. This aspect of Bolshevik activities is now fairly well known abroad too.
It was, however, different with Bolshevism’s other enemy within the working-class movement. Little is known in other countries of the fact that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years of struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle. Marxist theory has established—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge. However, a theoretical or abstract recognition of these truths does not at all rid revolutionary parties of old errors, which always crop up at unexpected occasions, in somewhat new forms, in a hitherto unfamiliar garb or surroundings, in an unusual—a more or less unusual—situation.
Anarchism was not infrequently a kind of penalty for the opportunist sins of the working-class movement. The two monstrosities complemented each other. And if in Russia—despite the more petty-bourgeois composition of her population as compared with the other European countries—anarchism’s influence was negligible during the two revolutions (of 1905 and 1917) and the preparations for them, this should no doubt stand partly to the credit of Bolshevism, which has always waged a most ruthless and uncompromising struggle against opportunism. I say "partly", since of still greater importance in weakening anarchism’s influence in Russia was the circumstance that in the past (the seventies of the nineteenth century) it was able to develop inordinately and to reveal its absolute erroneousness, its unfitness to serve the revolutionary class as a guiding theory.
When it came into being in 1903, Bolshevism took over the tradition of a ruthless struggle against petty-bourgeois, semi-anarchist (or dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism, a tradition which had always existed in revolutionary Social-Democracy and had become particularly strong in our country during the years 1900-03, when the foundations for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat were being laid in Russia. Bolshevism took over and carried on the struggle against a party which, more than any other, expressed the tendencies of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, namely, the "Socialist-Revolutionary" Party, and waged that struggle on three main issues. First, that party, which rejected Marxism, stubbornly refused (or, it might be more correct to say: was unable) to understand the need for a strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their alignment, before taking any political action. Second, this party considered itself particularly "revolutionary", or "Left", because of its recognition of individual terrorism, assassination—something that we Marxists emphatically rejected. It was, of course, only on grounds of expediency that we rejected individual terrorism, whereas people who were capable of condemning "on principle" the terror of the Great French Revolution, or, in general, the terror employed by a victorious revolutionary party which is besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world, were ridiculed and laughed to scorn by Plekhanov in 1900-03, when he was a Marxist and a revolutionary. Third, the "Socialist-Revolutionaries," thought it very "Left" to sneer at the comparatively insignificant opportunist sins of the German Social-Democratic Party, while they themselves imitated the extreme opportunists of that party, for example, on the agrarian question, or on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
History, incidentally, has now confirmed on a vast and world-wide scale the opinion we have always advocated, namely, that German revolutionary Social-Democracy (note that as far back as 1900-03 Plekhanov demanded Bernstein’s expulsion from the Party, and in 1913 the Bolsheviks, always continuing this tradition, exposed Legien’s [10] baseness, vileness and treachery) came closest to being the party the revolutionary proletariat needs in order to achieve victory. Today, in 1920, after all the ignominious failures and crises of the war period and the early post-war years, it can be plainly seen that, of all the Western parties, the German revolutionary Social-Democrats produced the finest leaders, and recovered and gained new strength more rapidly than the others did. This may be seen in the instances both of the Spartacists [11]and the Left, proletarian wing of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which is waging an incessant struggle against the opportunism and spinelessness of the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours and Crispiens. If we now cast a glance to take in a complete historical period, namely, from the Paris Commune to the first Socialist Soviet Republic, we shall find that Marxism’s attitude to anarchism in general stands out most definitely and unmistakably. In the final analysis, Marxism proved to be correct, and although the anarchists rightly pointed to the opportunist views on the state prevalent among most of the socialist parties, it must be said, first, that this opportunism was connected with the distortion, and even deliberate suppression, of Marx’s views on the state (in my book, The State and Revolution, I pointed out that for thirty-six years, from 1875 to 1911, Bebel withheld a letter by Engels [12], which very clearly, vividly, bluntly and definitively exposed the opportunism of the current Social-Democratic views on the state); second, that the rectification of these opportunist views, and the recognition of Soviet power and its superiority to bourgeois parliamentary democracy proceeded most rapidly and extensively among those trends in the socialist parties of Europe and America that were most Marxist.
The struggle that Bolshevism waged against "Left" deviations within its own Party assumed particularly large proportions on two occasions: in 1908, on the question of whether or not to participate in a most reactionary "parliament" and in the legal workers’ societies, which were being restricted by most reactionary laws; and again in 1918 (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [13]), on the question of whether one "compromise" or another was permissible.
In 1908 the "Left" Bolsheviks were expelled from our Party for stubbornly refusing to understand the necessity of participating in a most reactionary "parliament". [14] The "Lefts"—among whom there were many splendid revolutionaries who subsequently were (and still are) commendable members of the Communist Party—based themselves particularly on the successful experience of the 1905 boycott. When, in August 1905, the tsar proclaimed the convocation of a consultative "parliament", [15] the Bolsheviks called for its boycott, in the teeth of all the opposition parties and the Mensheviks, and the "parliament" was in fact swept away by the revolution of October 1905. [16] The boycott proved correct at the time, not because nonparticipation in reactionary parliaments is correct in general, but because we accurately appraised the objective situation, which was leading to the rapid development of the mass strikes first into a political strike, then into a revolutionary strike, and finally into an uprising. Moreover, the struggle centred at that time on the question of whether the convocation of the first representative assembly should be left to the tsar, or an attempt should be made to wrest its convocation from the old regime. When there was not, and could not be, any certainty that the objective situation was of a similar kind, and when there was no certainty of a similar trend and the same rate of development, the boycott was no longer correct.
The Bolsheviks’ boycott of "parliament" in 1905 enriched the revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience and showed that, when legal and illegal parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential to reject parliamentary forms. It would, however, be highly erroneous to apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to other conditions and other situations. The Bolsheviks, boycott of the Duma in 1906 was a mistake although a minor and easily remediable one. [*] The boycott of the Duma in 1907, 1908 and subsequent years was a most serious error and difficult to remedy, because, on the one hand, a very rapid rise of the revolutionary tide and its conversion into an uprising was not to be expected, and, on the other hand, the entire historical situation attendant upon the renovation of the bourgeois monarchy called for legal and illegal activities being combined. Today, when we look back at this fully completed historical period, whose connection with subsequent periods has now become quite clear, it becomes most obvious that in 1908-14 the Bolsheviks could not have preserved (let alone strengthened and developed) the core of the revolutionary party of the proletariat, had they not upheld, in a most strenuous struggle, the viewpoint that it was obligatory to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle, and that it was obligatory to participate even in a most reactionary parliament and in a number of other institutions hemmed in by reactionary laws (sick benefit societies, etc.).
In 1918 things did not reach a split. At that time the "Left" Communists formed only a separate group or "faction" within our Party, and that not for long. In the same year, 1918, the most prominent representatives of "Left Communism", for example, Comrades Radek and Bukharin, openly acknowledged their error. It had seemed to them that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a compromise with the imperialists, which was inexcusable on principle and harmful to the party of the revolutionary proletariat. It was indeed a compromise with the imperialists, but it was a compromise which, under the circumstances, had to be made.
Today, when I hear our tactics in signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty being attacked by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, for instance, or when I hear Comrade Lansbury say, in a conversation with me, "Our British trade union leaders say that if it was permissible for the Bolsheviks to compromise, it is permissible for them to compromise too", I usually reply by first of all giving a simple and "popular" example:
Imagine that your car is held up by armed bandits. You hand them over your money, passport, revolver and car. In return you are rid of the pleasant company of the bandits. That is unquestionably a compromise. "Do ut des" (I "give" you money, fire-arms and a car "so that you give" me the opportunity to get away from you with a whole skin). It would, however, be difficult to find a sane man who would declare such a compromise to be "inadmissible on principle", or who would call the compromiser an accomplice of the bandits (even though the bandits might use the car and the firearms for further robberies). Our compromise with the bandits of German imperialism was just that kind of compromise.
But when, in 1914-18 and then in 1918-20, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia, the Scheidemannites (and to a large extent the Kautskyites) in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler (to say nothing of the Renners and Co.) in Austria, the Renaudels and Longuets and Co. in France, the Fabians, the Independents and the Labourites in Britain entered into compromises with the bandits of their own bourgeoisie, and sometimes of the "Allied" bourgeoisie, and against the revolutionary proletariat of their own countries, all these gentlemen were actually acting as accomplices in banditry.
The conclusion is clear: to reject compromises "on principle", to reject the permissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is childishness, which it is difficult even to consider seriously. A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery; he must direct all the force of criticism, the full intensity of merciless exposure and relentless war, against these concrete compromises, and not allow the past masters of "practical" socialism and the parliamentary Jesuits to dodge and wriggle out of responsibility by means of disquisitions on "compromises in general". It is in this way that the "leaders,, of the British trade unions, as well as of the Fabian society and the "Independent" Labour Party, dodge responsibility for the treachery they have perpetrated’ for having made a compromise that is really tantamount to the worst kind of opportunism, treachery and betrayal.
There are different kinds of compromises. One must be able to analyse the situation and the concrete conditions of each compromise, or of each variety of compromise. One must learn to distinguish between a man who has given up his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to lessen the evil they can do and to facilitate their capture and execution, and a man who gives his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to share in the loot. In politics this is by no means always as elementary as it is in this childishly simple example. However, anyone who is out to think up for the workers some kind of recipe that will provide them with cut-and-dried solutions for all contingencies, or promises that the policy of the revolutionary proletariat will never come up against difficult or complex situations, is simply a charlatan.
To leave no room for misinterpretation, I shall attempt to outline, if only very briefly, several fundamental rules for the analysis of concrete compromises.
The party which entered into a compromise with the German imperialists by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been evolving its internationalism in practice ever since the end of 1914. It was not afraid to call for the defeat of the tsarist monarchy and to condemn "defence of country" in a war between two imperialist robbers. The parliamentary representatives of this party preferred exile in Siberia to taking a road leading to ministerial portfolios in a bourgeois government. The revolution that overthrew tsarism and established a democratic republic put this party to a new and tremendous test—it did not enter into any agreements with its "own" imperialists, but prepared and brought about their overthrow. When it had assumed political power, this party did not leave a vestige of either landed or capitalist ownership. After making public and repudiating the imperialists’ secret treaties, this party proposed peace to all nations, and yielded to the violence of the Brest-Litovsk robbers only after the Anglo-French imperialists had torpedoed the conclusion of a peace, and after the Bolsheviks had done everything humanly possible to hasten the revolution in Germany and other countries. The absolute correctness of this compromise, entered into by such a party in such a situation, is becoming ever clearer and more obvious with every day.
The Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia (like all the leaders of the Second International throughout the world, in 1914-20) began with treachery—by directly or indirectly justifying "defence of country", i.e., the defence of their own predatory bourgeoisie. They continued their treachery by entering into a coalition with the bourgeoisie of their own country, and fighting, together with their own bourgeoisie, against the revolutionary proletariat of their own country. Their bloc, first with Kerensky and the Cadets, and then with Kolchak and Denikin in Russia—like the bloc of their confreres abroad with the bourgeoisie of their respective countries—was in fact desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. From beginning to end, their compromise with the bandits of imperialism meant their becoming accomplices in imperialist banditry.
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Footnotes
[10] Lenin is referring probably to his article "What Should Not Be Copied from the Gennan Labour Movement", published in the Bolshevik magazine Prosveshcheniye in April 1914 (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 254-58). Here Lenin exposed the treacherous behaviour of Karl Legien, the German Social-Democrat who in 1912, in addressing the Congress of the U.S.A., praised U.S. official circles and bourgeois parties.
[11]Spartacists—members of the Spartacus League founded in January 1916, during the First World War, under the leadership of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin. The Spartacists conducted revolutionary anti-war propaganda among the masses, and exposed the expansionist policy of German imperialism and the treachery of the Social-Democratic leaders. However, the Spartacists—the German Left wing—did not get rid of their semi-Menshevik errors on the most important questions of theory and tactics. A criticism of the German Left-wing’s mistakes is given in Lenin’s works "On Junius’s Pamphlet" (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 297-305), "A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism" (see Vol. 23, pp. 28-76) and elsewhere.
In April 1917, the Spartacists joined the Centrist Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, preserving their organisational independence. After the November 1918 revolution in Germany, the Spartacists broke away from the "Independents", and in December of the same year founded the Communist Party of Germany.
[12] The reference is to Frederick Engels’s letter to August Bebel, written on March 18-28, 1875.
[13] The Treaty of Brest Litovsk was signed between Soviet Russia and the powers of the Quadruple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) on March 3, 1918, at Brest Litovsk and ratified on March 15 by the Fourth (Extraordinary) All-Russia Congress of Soviets. The peace terms were very harsh for Soviet Russia. According to the treaty, Poland, almost all the Baltic states, and part of Byelorussia were placed under the control of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Ukraine was separated from Soviet Russia, becoming a state dependent on Germany. Turkey gained control of the cities of Kars, Batum and Ardagan. In August 1918, Germany imposed on Soviet Russia a supplementary treaty and a financial agreement containing new and exorbitant demands.
The treaty prevented further needless loss of life, and gave the R.S.F.S.R. the ability to shift it’s attention to urgent domestic matters. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk promoted the struggle for peace among the broad masses of all the warring nations, and denounced the war as a struggle between imperialist powers. On November 13, 1918, following the November revolution in Germany--the overthrow of the monarchist regime—the All-Russia Central Executive Committee annulled the predatory Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
[14] The reference is to the otzovists [the term otzovist derives from the Russian verb "otozvat" meaning "to recall".—Ed.] and ultimatumists, the struggle against whom developed in 1908, and in 1909 resulted in the expulsion of A. Bogdanov, the otzovist leader, from the Bolshevik Party. Behind a screen of revolutionary phrases, the otzovists demanded the recall of the Social-Democrat deputies from the Third Duma and the cessation of activities in legal organisations such as the trade unions, the co-operatives, etc. Ultimatumism was a variety of otzovism. The ultimatumists did not realise the necessity of conducting persistent day-by-day work with the Social-Democrat deputies, so as to make them consistent revolutionary parliamentarians. They proposed that an ultimatum should be presented to the Social-Democratic group in the Duma, demanding their absolute subordination to decisions of the Party’s Central Committee; should the deputies fail to comply, they were to be recalled from the Duma. A conference of the enlarged editorial board of the Bolshevik paper Proletary, held in June 1909, pointed out in its decision that "Bolshevism, as a definite trend in the R.S.D.L.P., had nothing in common either with otzovism or with ultimatumism". The conference urged the Bolsheviks "to wage a most resolute struggle against these deviations from the path of revolutionary Marxism" (KPSS v rezolutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK [The C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee], Part I, 1954, p. 221).
[15] On August 6 (19), 1905, the tsar’s manifesto was made public, proclaiming the law on the setting up of the Duma and the election procedures. This body was known as the Bulygin Duma, after A.G. Bulygin, the Minister of the Interior, whom the tsar entrusted with drawing up the Duma draft. According to the latter, the Duma had no legislative functions, but could merely discuss certain questions as a consultative body under the tsar. The Bolsheviks called upon the workers and peasants to actively boycott the Bulygin Duma, and concentrate all agitation on the slogans of an armed uprising, a revolutionary army, and a provisional revolutionary government. The boycott campaign against the Bulygin Duma was used by the Bolsheviks to mobilise all the revolutionary forces, organise mass political strikes, and prepare for an armed uprising. Elections to the Bulygin Duma were not held and the government was unable to convene it. The Duma was swept away by the mounting tide of the revolution and the all-Russia October political strike of 1905.
[16] Lenin is referring to the all-Russia October political strike of 1905 during the first Russian revolution. This strike, which involved over two million people, was conducted under the slogan of the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, an active boycott of the Bulygin Duma, the summoning of a Constituent Assembly and the establishment of a democratic republic. The all-Russia political strike showed the strength of the working-class movement, fostered the development of the revolutionary struggle in the countryside, the army and the navy. The October strike led the proletariat to the December armed uprising. Concerning the October strike, see the article by V. I. Lenin ’The All-Russia Political Strike".
[*] What applies to individuals also applies—with necessary modifications—to politics and parties. It is not he who makes no mistakes that is intelligent. There are no such men, nor can there be. It is he whose errors are not very grave and who is able to rectify them easily and quickly that is intelligent.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
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With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
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The Struggle Against Which Enemies Within the Working-Class Movement
Helped Bolshevism Develop, Gain Strength, and Become Steeled
First and foremost, the struggle against opportunism which in 1914 definitely developed into social-chauvinism and definitely sided with the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. Naturally, this was Bolshevism’s principal enemy within the working-class movement. It still remains the principal enemy on an international scale. The Bolsheviks have been devoting the greatest attention to this enemy. This aspect of Bolshevik activities is now fairly well known abroad too.
It was, however, different with Bolshevism’s other enemy within the working-class movement. Little is known in other countries of the fact that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years of struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle. Marxist theory has established—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge. However, a theoretical or abstract recognition of these truths does not at all rid revolutionary parties of old errors, which always crop up at unexpected occasions, in somewhat new forms, in a hitherto unfamiliar garb or surroundings, in an unusual—a more or less unusual—situation.
Anarchism was not infrequently a kind of penalty for the opportunist sins of the working-class movement. The two monstrosities complemented each other. And if in Russia—despite the more petty-bourgeois composition of her population as compared with the other European countries—anarchism’s influence was negligible during the two revolutions (of 1905 and 1917) and the preparations for them, this should no doubt stand partly to the credit of Bolshevism, which has always waged a most ruthless and uncompromising struggle against opportunism. I say "partly", since of still greater importance in weakening anarchism’s influence in Russia was the circumstance that in the past (the seventies of the nineteenth century) it was able to develop inordinately and to reveal its absolute erroneousness, its unfitness to serve the revolutionary class as a guiding theory.
When it came into being in 1903, Bolshevism took over the tradition of a ruthless struggle against petty-bourgeois, semi-anarchist (or dilettante-anarchist) revolutionism, a tradition which had always existed in revolutionary Social-Democracy and had become particularly strong in our country during the years 1900-03, when the foundations for a mass party of the revolutionary proletariat were being laid in Russia. Bolshevism took over and carried on the struggle against a party which, more than any other, expressed the tendencies of petty-bourgeois revolutionism, namely, the "Socialist-Revolutionary" Party, and waged that struggle on three main issues. First, that party, which rejected Marxism, stubbornly refused (or, it might be more correct to say: was unable) to understand the need for a strictly objective appraisal of the class forces and their alignment, before taking any political action. Second, this party considered itself particularly "revolutionary", or "Left", because of its recognition of individual terrorism, assassination—something that we Marxists emphatically rejected. It was, of course, only on grounds of expediency that we rejected individual terrorism, whereas people who were capable of condemning "on principle" the terror of the Great French Revolution, or, in general, the terror employed by a victorious revolutionary party which is besieged by the bourgeoisie of the whole world, were ridiculed and laughed to scorn by Plekhanov in 1900-03, when he was a Marxist and a revolutionary. Third, the "Socialist-Revolutionaries," thought it very "Left" to sneer at the comparatively insignificant opportunist sins of the German Social-Democratic Party, while they themselves imitated the extreme opportunists of that party, for example, on the agrarian question, or on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
History, incidentally, has now confirmed on a vast and world-wide scale the opinion we have always advocated, namely, that German revolutionary Social-Democracy (note that as far back as 1900-03 Plekhanov demanded Bernstein’s expulsion from the Party, and in 1913 the Bolsheviks, always continuing this tradition, exposed Legien’s [10] baseness, vileness and treachery) came closest to being the party the revolutionary proletariat needs in order to achieve victory. Today, in 1920, after all the ignominious failures and crises of the war period and the early post-war years, it can be plainly seen that, of all the Western parties, the German revolutionary Social-Democrats produced the finest leaders, and recovered and gained new strength more rapidly than the others did. This may be seen in the instances both of the Spartacists [11]and the Left, proletarian wing of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which is waging an incessant struggle against the opportunism and spinelessness of the Kautskys, Hilferdings, Ledebours and Crispiens. If we now cast a glance to take in a complete historical period, namely, from the Paris Commune to the first Socialist Soviet Republic, we shall find that Marxism’s attitude to anarchism in general stands out most definitely and unmistakably. In the final analysis, Marxism proved to be correct, and although the anarchists rightly pointed to the opportunist views on the state prevalent among most of the socialist parties, it must be said, first, that this opportunism was connected with the distortion, and even deliberate suppression, of Marx’s views on the state (in my book, The State and Revolution, I pointed out that for thirty-six years, from 1875 to 1911, Bebel withheld a letter by Engels [12], which very clearly, vividly, bluntly and definitively exposed the opportunism of the current Social-Democratic views on the state); second, that the rectification of these opportunist views, and the recognition of Soviet power and its superiority to bourgeois parliamentary democracy proceeded most rapidly and extensively among those trends in the socialist parties of Europe and America that were most Marxist.
The struggle that Bolshevism waged against "Left" deviations within its own Party assumed particularly large proportions on two occasions: in 1908, on the question of whether or not to participate in a most reactionary "parliament" and in the legal workers’ societies, which were being restricted by most reactionary laws; and again in 1918 (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [13]), on the question of whether one "compromise" or another was permissible.
In 1908 the "Left" Bolsheviks were expelled from our Party for stubbornly refusing to understand the necessity of participating in a most reactionary "parliament". [14] The "Lefts"—among whom there were many splendid revolutionaries who subsequently were (and still are) commendable members of the Communist Party—based themselves particularly on the successful experience of the 1905 boycott. When, in August 1905, the tsar proclaimed the convocation of a consultative "parliament", [15] the Bolsheviks called for its boycott, in the teeth of all the opposition parties and the Mensheviks, and the "parliament" was in fact swept away by the revolution of October 1905. [16] The boycott proved correct at the time, not because nonparticipation in reactionary parliaments is correct in general, but because we accurately appraised the objective situation, which was leading to the rapid development of the mass strikes first into a political strike, then into a revolutionary strike, and finally into an uprising. Moreover, the struggle centred at that time on the question of whether the convocation of the first representative assembly should be left to the tsar, or an attempt should be made to wrest its convocation from the old regime. When there was not, and could not be, any certainty that the objective situation was of a similar kind, and when there was no certainty of a similar trend and the same rate of development, the boycott was no longer correct.
The Bolsheviks’ boycott of "parliament" in 1905 enriched the revolutionary proletariat with highly valuable political experience and showed that, when legal and illegal parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle are combined, it is sometimes useful and even essential to reject parliamentary forms. It would, however, be highly erroneous to apply this experience blindly, imitatively and uncritically to other conditions and other situations. The Bolsheviks, boycott of the Duma in 1906 was a mistake although a minor and easily remediable one. [*] The boycott of the Duma in 1907, 1908 and subsequent years was a most serious error and difficult to remedy, because, on the one hand, a very rapid rise of the revolutionary tide and its conversion into an uprising was not to be expected, and, on the other hand, the entire historical situation attendant upon the renovation of the bourgeois monarchy called for legal and illegal activities being combined. Today, when we look back at this fully completed historical period, whose connection with subsequent periods has now become quite clear, it becomes most obvious that in 1908-14 the Bolsheviks could not have preserved (let alone strengthened and developed) the core of the revolutionary party of the proletariat, had they not upheld, in a most strenuous struggle, the viewpoint that it was obligatory to combine legal and illegal forms of struggle, and that it was obligatory to participate even in a most reactionary parliament and in a number of other institutions hemmed in by reactionary laws (sick benefit societies, etc.).
In 1918 things did not reach a split. At that time the "Left" Communists formed only a separate group or "faction" within our Party, and that not for long. In the same year, 1918, the most prominent representatives of "Left Communism", for example, Comrades Radek and Bukharin, openly acknowledged their error. It had seemed to them that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a compromise with the imperialists, which was inexcusable on principle and harmful to the party of the revolutionary proletariat. It was indeed a compromise with the imperialists, but it was a compromise which, under the circumstances, had to be made.
Today, when I hear our tactics in signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty being attacked by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, for instance, or when I hear Comrade Lansbury say, in a conversation with me, "Our British trade union leaders say that if it was permissible for the Bolsheviks to compromise, it is permissible for them to compromise too", I usually reply by first of all giving a simple and "popular" example:
Imagine that your car is held up by armed bandits. You hand them over your money, passport, revolver and car. In return you are rid of the pleasant company of the bandits. That is unquestionably a compromise. "Do ut des" (I "give" you money, fire-arms and a car "so that you give" me the opportunity to get away from you with a whole skin). It would, however, be difficult to find a sane man who would declare such a compromise to be "inadmissible on principle", or who would call the compromiser an accomplice of the bandits (even though the bandits might use the car and the firearms for further robberies). Our compromise with the bandits of German imperialism was just that kind of compromise.
But when, in 1914-18 and then in 1918-20, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia, the Scheidemannites (and to a large extent the Kautskyites) in Germany, Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler (to say nothing of the Renners and Co.) in Austria, the Renaudels and Longuets and Co. in France, the Fabians, the Independents and the Labourites in Britain entered into compromises with the bandits of their own bourgeoisie, and sometimes of the "Allied" bourgeoisie, and against the revolutionary proletariat of their own countries, all these gentlemen were actually acting as accomplices in banditry.
The conclusion is clear: to reject compromises "on principle", to reject the permissibility of compromises in general, no matter of what kind, is childishness, which it is difficult even to consider seriously. A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery; he must direct all the force of criticism, the full intensity of merciless exposure and relentless war, against these concrete compromises, and not allow the past masters of "practical" socialism and the parliamentary Jesuits to dodge and wriggle out of responsibility by means of disquisitions on "compromises in general". It is in this way that the "leaders,, of the British trade unions, as well as of the Fabian society and the "Independent" Labour Party, dodge responsibility for the treachery they have perpetrated’ for having made a compromise that is really tantamount to the worst kind of opportunism, treachery and betrayal.
There are different kinds of compromises. One must be able to analyse the situation and the concrete conditions of each compromise, or of each variety of compromise. One must learn to distinguish between a man who has given up his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to lessen the evil they can do and to facilitate their capture and execution, and a man who gives his money and fire-arms to bandits so as to share in the loot. In politics this is by no means always as elementary as it is in this childishly simple example. However, anyone who is out to think up for the workers some kind of recipe that will provide them with cut-and-dried solutions for all contingencies, or promises that the policy of the revolutionary proletariat will never come up against difficult or complex situations, is simply a charlatan.
To leave no room for misinterpretation, I shall attempt to outline, if only very briefly, several fundamental rules for the analysis of concrete compromises.
The party which entered into a compromise with the German imperialists by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had been evolving its internationalism in practice ever since the end of 1914. It was not afraid to call for the defeat of the tsarist monarchy and to condemn "defence of country" in a war between two imperialist robbers. The parliamentary representatives of this party preferred exile in Siberia to taking a road leading to ministerial portfolios in a bourgeois government. The revolution that overthrew tsarism and established a democratic republic put this party to a new and tremendous test—it did not enter into any agreements with its "own" imperialists, but prepared and brought about their overthrow. When it had assumed political power, this party did not leave a vestige of either landed or capitalist ownership. After making public and repudiating the imperialists’ secret treaties, this party proposed peace to all nations, and yielded to the violence of the Brest-Litovsk robbers only after the Anglo-French imperialists had torpedoed the conclusion of a peace, and after the Bolsheviks had done everything humanly possible to hasten the revolution in Germany and other countries. The absolute correctness of this compromise, entered into by such a party in such a situation, is becoming ever clearer and more obvious with every day.
The Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia (like all the leaders of the Second International throughout the world, in 1914-20) began with treachery—by directly or indirectly justifying "defence of country", i.e., the defence of their own predatory bourgeoisie. They continued their treachery by entering into a coalition with the bourgeoisie of their own country, and fighting, together with their own bourgeoisie, against the revolutionary proletariat of their own country. Their bloc, first with Kerensky and the Cadets, and then with Kolchak and Denikin in Russia—like the bloc of their confreres abroad with the bourgeoisie of their respective countries—was in fact desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat. From beginning to end, their compromise with the bandits of imperialism meant their becoming accomplices in imperialist banditry.
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Footnotes
[10] Lenin is referring probably to his article "What Should Not Be Copied from the Gennan Labour Movement", published in the Bolshevik magazine Prosveshcheniye in April 1914 (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 254-58). Here Lenin exposed the treacherous behaviour of Karl Legien, the German Social-Democrat who in 1912, in addressing the Congress of the U.S.A., praised U.S. official circles and bourgeois parties.
[11]Spartacists—members of the Spartacus League founded in January 1916, during the First World War, under the leadership of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin. The Spartacists conducted revolutionary anti-war propaganda among the masses, and exposed the expansionist policy of German imperialism and the treachery of the Social-Democratic leaders. However, the Spartacists—the German Left wing—did not get rid of their semi-Menshevik errors on the most important questions of theory and tactics. A criticism of the German Left-wing’s mistakes is given in Lenin’s works "On Junius’s Pamphlet" (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 297-305), "A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism" (see Vol. 23, pp. 28-76) and elsewhere.
In April 1917, the Spartacists joined the Centrist Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, preserving their organisational independence. After the November 1918 revolution in Germany, the Spartacists broke away from the "Independents", and in December of the same year founded the Communist Party of Germany.
[12] The reference is to Frederick Engels’s letter to August Bebel, written on March 18-28, 1875.
[13] The Treaty of Brest Litovsk was signed between Soviet Russia and the powers of the Quadruple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) on March 3, 1918, at Brest Litovsk and ratified on March 15 by the Fourth (Extraordinary) All-Russia Congress of Soviets. The peace terms were very harsh for Soviet Russia. According to the treaty, Poland, almost all the Baltic states, and part of Byelorussia were placed under the control of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Ukraine was separated from Soviet Russia, becoming a state dependent on Germany. Turkey gained control of the cities of Kars, Batum and Ardagan. In August 1918, Germany imposed on Soviet Russia a supplementary treaty and a financial agreement containing new and exorbitant demands.
The treaty prevented further needless loss of life, and gave the R.S.F.S.R. the ability to shift it’s attention to urgent domestic matters. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk promoted the struggle for peace among the broad masses of all the warring nations, and denounced the war as a struggle between imperialist powers. On November 13, 1918, following the November revolution in Germany--the overthrow of the monarchist regime—the All-Russia Central Executive Committee annulled the predatory Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
[14] The reference is to the otzovists [the term otzovist derives from the Russian verb "otozvat" meaning "to recall".—Ed.] and ultimatumists, the struggle against whom developed in 1908, and in 1909 resulted in the expulsion of A. Bogdanov, the otzovist leader, from the Bolshevik Party. Behind a screen of revolutionary phrases, the otzovists demanded the recall of the Social-Democrat deputies from the Third Duma and the cessation of activities in legal organisations such as the trade unions, the co-operatives, etc. Ultimatumism was a variety of otzovism. The ultimatumists did not realise the necessity of conducting persistent day-by-day work with the Social-Democrat deputies, so as to make them consistent revolutionary parliamentarians. They proposed that an ultimatum should be presented to the Social-Democratic group in the Duma, demanding their absolute subordination to decisions of the Party’s Central Committee; should the deputies fail to comply, they were to be recalled from the Duma. A conference of the enlarged editorial board of the Bolshevik paper Proletary, held in June 1909, pointed out in its decision that "Bolshevism, as a definite trend in the R.S.D.L.P., had nothing in common either with otzovism or with ultimatumism". The conference urged the Bolsheviks "to wage a most resolute struggle against these deviations from the path of revolutionary Marxism" (KPSS v rezolutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK [The C.P.S.U. in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee], Part I, 1954, p. 221).
[15] On August 6 (19), 1905, the tsar’s manifesto was made public, proclaiming the law on the setting up of the Duma and the election procedures. This body was known as the Bulygin Duma, after A.G. Bulygin, the Minister of the Interior, whom the tsar entrusted with drawing up the Duma draft. According to the latter, the Duma had no legislative functions, but could merely discuss certain questions as a consultative body under the tsar. The Bolsheviks called upon the workers and peasants to actively boycott the Bulygin Duma, and concentrate all agitation on the slogans of an armed uprising, a revolutionary army, and a provisional revolutionary government. The boycott campaign against the Bulygin Duma was used by the Bolsheviks to mobilise all the revolutionary forces, organise mass political strikes, and prepare for an armed uprising. Elections to the Bulygin Duma were not held and the government was unable to convene it. The Duma was swept away by the mounting tide of the revolution and the all-Russia October political strike of 1905.
[16] Lenin is referring to the all-Russia October political strike of 1905 during the first Russian revolution. This strike, which involved over two million people, was conducted under the slogan of the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, an active boycott of the Bulygin Duma, the summoning of a Constituent Assembly and the establishment of a democratic republic. The all-Russia political strike showed the strength of the working-class movement, fostered the development of the revolutionary struggle in the countryside, the army and the navy. The October strike led the proletariat to the December armed uprising. Concerning the October strike, see the article by V. I. Lenin ’The All-Russia Political Strike".
[*] What applies to individuals also applies—with necessary modifications—to politics and parties. It is not he who makes no mistakes that is intelligent. There are no such men, nor can there be. It is he whose errors are not very grave and who is able to rectify them easily and quickly that is intelligent.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Prescott Breslin’s War
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire.
He was scared, scared silly, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Rugged hills and hollows born, Appalachia mountain Kentucky hard-scrabble farm born, fear hid under the rug, or somewhere else born he was still scared. He, Prescott Breslin, just weeks, maybe a couple of months if he counted it up, out of those hills and hollows, was scared because his unit, his semper fi 1st Marine Corps Division unit had just received orders to head out in the morning, head out west. And since he was sitting by himself just then at a Camp Pendleton, California make-shift PX table munching coffee and cakes west could only mean the Pacific islands that dotted the way to Japan. Some units had already gone out, gone out quickly all through early 1942 and as 1943 approached all hell was breaking loose with men and material heading west, just like old time pioneer west if he had thought about it.
But sitting with that cup of black coffee (hell, nobody back home ever had it any other way besides who had milk or cream left over for such fixings, and black was fine anyway) and cruller donut (he had grown to love this donut business after a lifetime of Ma’s old patched-up bread pudding and sunken cakes) he was not thinking about pioneer west stuff, or even, after he bit into the cruller, scared thoughts so much but about how life was funny. Not funny to laugh over but just the way the cards were dealt funny. It might have been the sugar, or it might have been the caffeine but his started to think about all the stuff that he hadn’t done, and some stuff he had done, to keep the thoughts of the days ahead in check.
First off though was his pride in being one of the best troopers in his training unit down at Parris Island, and then his assigned unit here. It wasn’t so much that it came natural to him, although coming from the hard rock country didn’t hurt when they went out into the “boonies” on those twenty mile full-pack hikes or when he busted out number one on the rifle range with that silly M-I pop gun. It was more that, at first, guys, yankee city guys from Boston and New York, or northern farm boys anyway, laughed at him about his back mountain drawl, about his not knowing about donuts, about not knowing about how to handle a folk and spoon right and all kinds of yankee stuff that didn’t make sense to him, or them when he asked them to explain what they meant and why. After a while, after a ton of callouses and blisters, after a ton of KP, after half a ton of pranks, and after about eight weeks of showing guys, yankee guys and farm boys, that he could be depended on if something happened to them they were practically competing to have him as their “buddy.” More than one guy said, said straight out, when they got the news of the move out that as long as Prescott Breslin was going along with them he wasn’t quite so scared. Here is the kicker though. A couple of days ago they all chipped in to by him drinks at the enlisted men’s club to show their appreciation AND a dozen donuts, assorted. Still Prescott Breslin was scared.
While he was thinking an odd-scared thought or two somebody, a guy he didn’t recognize sitting with a nice looking tanned Oceanside girl, at another table had gotten up to put some nickels in the jukebox and he, still thinking about life’s ups and downs, could hear the strains of I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire and that song got him kind of choked up at first. He then laughed, not a funny laugh, as he listened to the lyrics and thought that he sure didn’t want to, and hadn’t, set the world on fire. And hadn’t, getting into the heart of the song, a girl left behind to think of him while he was away blasting Pacific islands to smithereens.
Sure, he had had a few nibbles, a couple of girls from Prestonsburg and Hazard but nothing serious, nothing serious because from about age fourteen all the girls where he came from got all moony over being married and, in order to get from under their own families, start families of their own. He had wanted no part of that, not at twenty, no way. But he got just a little melancholy when he thought that he might never have a chance to get married. Never have a family of his own to take care of him in his old age, if he had an old age.
But mainly he thought about the things he did had done over the past few
years and wished that he had had more time to do them. Hell, it wasn’t nothing big, nothing to set the world on fire, but it was his life. His life once he knew the score, knew the hard-scrabble Kentuck farm score, and that if he didn’t want nothing but hard calloused hands and looking eighty at forty (like his pa and grandpa) he had better hit the highway. Since there were twelve kids at home, and only enough to feed about eight right nobody (except Ma, he later, much too much later, found out) missed him when he set out for Lexington one dark night. He got a ride from Colonel Eddie (not really a colonel but everybody with two bucks for a genuine certificate called himself that) the local long-haul driver who was always looking for company on his runs west, and knew how to keep quiet when a guy asked him to about stuff like where he was going, and why.
And he also thought how once he got to Lexington, after a few crop-picking and dish-washing jobs to keep him alive in the city, he met up with a couple of guys at Lucy’s Diner who wanted form a band and make some money playing what they called the coal-dust circuit. He played a fair guitar, had a decent voice, and best of all he knew all the old-timey songs that the hills and hollows folks wanted to hear. Stuff like Tom Doulas, Ommie Wise, and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies.
A couple of weeks later with some practice, a small stake, and lots of dreams, they hit the back road Saturday night places where the locals held their weekly barn dances (complete with plenty of moonshine to liven things up). Sometimes they, now known as the Kentuck Sheiks (that sheik name was popular and you just added your state name in front and you had a genuine band name), passed the hat, sometimes when there was no dough they just took a couple of days room and board for their troubles.
That lasted for about a year or so, maybe a little bit more, but then times got so bad about 1936 or 37 that three guys just couldn’t make it on bread and butter, literally. So he got off the road, headed back home, and started to work in Mr. Peabody’s coal mines (not every mine was owned by the Peabody Coal Company as he was at pains to inform his fellow platoon members when they had asked what he did in the “real world” but that is what everybody called it around home when a guy went into the mines).
There he was stuck in the mines, the damn black-lung mines (his mother cried every time he came home at night looking, well, looking like a damn nigra, and coughing the dust out half the night) when the news of the Japs hitting Pearl came over the radio and guys, guys like him all over the country, were lined up three, maybe more, deep, to enlist. Funny though he could, having worked his way up a little in the mines, have gotten a vital industries draft deferral and been sitting right then in the Prestonsburg hotel with some pretty town girl drinking real store-bought liquor and working up his courage to ask her up into his room. But no, on December 9, 1941 he had gone to Prestonsburg and enlisted in the Marines right on the dotted line. And he never looked back.
Scared, scared to death, or not, sitting at that table having a second cruller and a third cup of mud Private First Class Prescott Breslin thought it over for a minute. He then said to himself, hell, between shoveling coal for Mr. Peabody forever and fighting the damn Japs I’ll take the Japs. And that made him just a little less scared as someone put another nickel in the jukebox to play If I Didn’t Care.
He was scared, scared silly, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Rugged hills and hollows born, Appalachia mountain Kentucky hard-scrabble farm born, fear hid under the rug, or somewhere else born he was still scared. He, Prescott Breslin, just weeks, maybe a couple of months if he counted it up, out of those hills and hollows, was scared because his unit, his semper fi 1st Marine Corps Division unit had just received orders to head out in the morning, head out west. And since he was sitting by himself just then at a Camp Pendleton, California make-shift PX table munching coffee and cakes west could only mean the Pacific islands that dotted the way to Japan. Some units had already gone out, gone out quickly all through early 1942 and as 1943 approached all hell was breaking loose with men and material heading west, just like old time pioneer west if he had thought about it.
But sitting with that cup of black coffee (hell, nobody back home ever had it any other way besides who had milk or cream left over for such fixings, and black was fine anyway) and cruller donut (he had grown to love this donut business after a lifetime of Ma’s old patched-up bread pudding and sunken cakes) he was not thinking about pioneer west stuff, or even, after he bit into the cruller, scared thoughts so much but about how life was funny. Not funny to laugh over but just the way the cards were dealt funny. It might have been the sugar, or it might have been the caffeine but his started to think about all the stuff that he hadn’t done, and some stuff he had done, to keep the thoughts of the days ahead in check.
First off though was his pride in being one of the best troopers in his training unit down at Parris Island, and then his assigned unit here. It wasn’t so much that it came natural to him, although coming from the hard rock country didn’t hurt when they went out into the “boonies” on those twenty mile full-pack hikes or when he busted out number one on the rifle range with that silly M-I pop gun. It was more that, at first, guys, yankee city guys from Boston and New York, or northern farm boys anyway, laughed at him about his back mountain drawl, about his not knowing about donuts, about not knowing about how to handle a folk and spoon right and all kinds of yankee stuff that didn’t make sense to him, or them when he asked them to explain what they meant and why. After a while, after a ton of callouses and blisters, after a ton of KP, after half a ton of pranks, and after about eight weeks of showing guys, yankee guys and farm boys, that he could be depended on if something happened to them they were practically competing to have him as their “buddy.” More than one guy said, said straight out, when they got the news of the move out that as long as Prescott Breslin was going along with them he wasn’t quite so scared. Here is the kicker though. A couple of days ago they all chipped in to by him drinks at the enlisted men’s club to show their appreciation AND a dozen donuts, assorted. Still Prescott Breslin was scared.
While he was thinking an odd-scared thought or two somebody, a guy he didn’t recognize sitting with a nice looking tanned Oceanside girl, at another table had gotten up to put some nickels in the jukebox and he, still thinking about life’s ups and downs, could hear the strains of I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire and that song got him kind of choked up at first. He then laughed, not a funny laugh, as he listened to the lyrics and thought that he sure didn’t want to, and hadn’t, set the world on fire. And hadn’t, getting into the heart of the song, a girl left behind to think of him while he was away blasting Pacific islands to smithereens.
Sure, he had had a few nibbles, a couple of girls from Prestonsburg and Hazard but nothing serious, nothing serious because from about age fourteen all the girls where he came from got all moony over being married and, in order to get from under their own families, start families of their own. He had wanted no part of that, not at twenty, no way. But he got just a little melancholy when he thought that he might never have a chance to get married. Never have a family of his own to take care of him in his old age, if he had an old age.
But mainly he thought about the things he did had done over the past few
years and wished that he had had more time to do them. Hell, it wasn’t nothing big, nothing to set the world on fire, but it was his life. His life once he knew the score, knew the hard-scrabble Kentuck farm score, and that if he didn’t want nothing but hard calloused hands and looking eighty at forty (like his pa and grandpa) he had better hit the highway. Since there were twelve kids at home, and only enough to feed about eight right nobody (except Ma, he later, much too much later, found out) missed him when he set out for Lexington one dark night. He got a ride from Colonel Eddie (not really a colonel but everybody with two bucks for a genuine certificate called himself that) the local long-haul driver who was always looking for company on his runs west, and knew how to keep quiet when a guy asked him to about stuff like where he was going, and why.
And he also thought how once he got to Lexington, after a few crop-picking and dish-washing jobs to keep him alive in the city, he met up with a couple of guys at Lucy’s Diner who wanted form a band and make some money playing what they called the coal-dust circuit. He played a fair guitar, had a decent voice, and best of all he knew all the old-timey songs that the hills and hollows folks wanted to hear. Stuff like Tom Doulas, Ommie Wise, and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies.
A couple of weeks later with some practice, a small stake, and lots of dreams, they hit the back road Saturday night places where the locals held their weekly barn dances (complete with plenty of moonshine to liven things up). Sometimes they, now known as the Kentuck Sheiks (that sheik name was popular and you just added your state name in front and you had a genuine band name), passed the hat, sometimes when there was no dough they just took a couple of days room and board for their troubles.
That lasted for about a year or so, maybe a little bit more, but then times got so bad about 1936 or 37 that three guys just couldn’t make it on bread and butter, literally. So he got off the road, headed back home, and started to work in Mr. Peabody’s coal mines (not every mine was owned by the Peabody Coal Company as he was at pains to inform his fellow platoon members when they had asked what he did in the “real world” but that is what everybody called it around home when a guy went into the mines).
There he was stuck in the mines, the damn black-lung mines (his mother cried every time he came home at night looking, well, looking like a damn nigra, and coughing the dust out half the night) when the news of the Japs hitting Pearl came over the radio and guys, guys like him all over the country, were lined up three, maybe more, deep, to enlist. Funny though he could, having worked his way up a little in the mines, have gotten a vital industries draft deferral and been sitting right then in the Prestonsburg hotel with some pretty town girl drinking real store-bought liquor and working up his courage to ask her up into his room. But no, on December 9, 1941 he had gone to Prestonsburg and enlisted in the Marines right on the dotted line. And he never looked back.
Scared, scared to death, or not, sitting at that table having a second cruller and a third cup of mud Private First Class Prescott Breslin thought it over for a minute. He then said to himself, hell, between shoveling coal for Mr. Peabody forever and fighting the damn Japs I’ll take the Japs. And that made him just a little less scared as someone put another nickel in the jukebox to play If I Didn’t Care.
*From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin- From “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)-The Principal Stages in the History of Bolshevism-The years of preparation for revolution (1903-05)
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
*******
With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
*************
The Principal Stages in the History of Bolshevism-The years of preparation for revolution (1903-05)
The approach of a great storm was sensed everywhere. All classes were in a state of ferment and preparation. Abroad, the press of the political exiles discussed the theoretical aspects of all the fundamental problems of the revolution. Representatives of the three main classes, of the three principal political trends -- the liberal-bourgeois, the petty-bourgeois-democratic (concealed behind "social-democratic" and "social-revolutionary" labels [2]), and the proletarian-revolutionary—anticipated and prepared the impending open class struggle by waging a most bitter struggle on issues of programme and tactics. All the issues on which the masses waged an armed struggle in 1905-07 and 1917-20 can (and should) be studied, in their embryonic form, in the press of the period. Among these three main trends there were, of course, a host of intermediate, transitional or half-hearted forms. It would be more correct to say that those political and ideological trends which were genuinely of a class nature crystallised in the struggle of press organs, parties, factions and groups; the classes were forging the requisite political and ideological weapons for the impending battles.
The years of revolution (1905-07). All classes came out into the open. All programmatical and tactical views were tested by the action of the masses. In its extent and acuteness, the strike struggle had no parallel anywhere in the world. The economic strike developed into a political strike, and the latter into insurrection. The relations between the proletariat, as the leader, and the vacillating and unstable peasantry, as the led, were tested in practice. The Soviet form of organisation came into being in the spontaneous development of the struggle. The controversies of that period over the significance of the Soviets anticipated the great struggle of 1917-20. The alternation of parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle, of the tactics of boycotting parliament and that of participating in parliament, of legal and illegal forms of struggle, and likewise their interrelations and connections—all this was marked by an extraordinary wealth of content. As for teaching the fundamentals of political science to masses and leaders, to classes and parties alike, each month of this period was equivalent to an entire year of "peaceful" and "constitutional" development. Without the "dress rehearsal" of 1905, the victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible.
The years of reaction (1907-10). Tsarism was victorious. All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression’ demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism; mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle. It is at moments of need that one learns who one’s friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson.
Victorious tsarism was compelled to speed up the destruction of the remnants of the pre-bourgeois, patriarchal mode of life in Russia. The country’s development along bourgeois lines proceeded apace. Illusions that stood outside and above class distinctions, illusions concerning the possibility of avoiding capitalism, were scattered to the winds. The class struggle manifested itself in a quite new and more distinct way.
The revolutionary parties had to complete their education. They were learning how to attack. Now they had to realise that such knowledge must be supplemented with the knowledge of how to retreat in good order. They had to realise—and it is from bitter experience that the revolutionary class learns to realise this—that victory is impossible unless one has learned how to attack and retreat properly. Of all the defeated opposition and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks effected the most orderly retreat, with the least loss to their "army", with its core best preserved, with the least significant splits (in point of depth and incurability), with the least demoralisation, and in the best condition to resume work on the broadest scale and in the most correct and energetic manner. The Bolsheviks achieved this only because they ruthlessly exposed and expelled the revolutionary phrase-mongers, those who did not wish to understand that one had to retreat, that one had to know how to retreat, and that one had absolutely to learn how to work legally in the most reactionary of parliaments, in the most reactionary of trade unions, co-operative and insurance societies and similar organisations.
The years of revival (1910-14). At first progress was incredibly slow, then, following the Lena events of 1912, it became somewhat more rapid. Overcoming unprecedented difficulties, the Bolsheviks thrust back the Mensheviks, whose role as bourgeois agents in the working-class movement was clearly realised by the entire bourgeoisie after 1905, and whom the bourgeoisie therefore supported in a thousand ways against the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks would never have succeeded in doing this had they not followed the correct tactics of combining illegal work with the utilisation of "legal opportunities", which they made a point of doing. In the elections to the arch-reactionary Duma, the Bolsheviks won the full support of the worker curia.
The First Imperialist World War (1914-17). Legal parliamentarianism’ with an extremely reactionary "parliament", rendered most useful service to the Bolsheviks, the party of the revolutionary proletariat. The Bolshevik deputies were exiled to Siberia. [3] All shades of social-imperialism social-chauvinism, social-patriotism, inconsistent and consistent internationalism, pacifism, and the revolutionary repudiation of pacifist illusions found full expression in the Russian emitter press. The learned fools and the old women of the Second International, who had arrogantly and contemptuously turned up their noses at the abundance of "factions" in the Russian socialist movement and at the bitter struggle they were waging among themselves, were unable—when the war deprived them of their vaunted "legality" in all the advanced countries -- to organise anything even approximating such a free (illegal) interchange of views and such a free (illegal) evolution of correct views as the Russian revolutionaries did in Switzerland and in a number of other countries. That was why both the avowed social-patriots and the "Kautskyites" of all countries proved to be the worst traitors to the proletariat. One of the principal reasons why Bolshevism was able to achieve victory in 1917-20 was that, since the end of 1914, it has been ruthlessly exposing the baseness and vileness of social-chauvinism and "Kautskyism" (to which Longuetism [4,5] in France, the views of the Fabians [6] and the leaders of the Independent Labour Party [7] in Britain, of Turati in Italy, etc., correspond), the masses later becoming more and more convinced, from their own experience, of the correctness of the Bolshevik views.
The second revolution in Russia (February to October 1917). Tsarism’s senility and obsoleteness had (with the aid of the blows and hardships of a most agonising war) created an incredibly destructive force directed against it. Within a few days Russia was transformed into a democratic bourgeois republic, freer—in war conditions—than any other country in the world. The leaders of the opposition and revolutionary parties began to set up a government, just as is done in the most "strictly parliamentary" republics; the fact that a man had been a leader of an opposition party in parliament—even in a most reactionary parliament—facilitated his subsequent role in the revolution.
In a few weeks the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries thoroughly assimilated all the methods and manners, the arguments and sophistries of the European heroes of the Second International, of the ministerialists [8] and other opportunist riff-raff. Everything we now read about the Scheidemanns and Noskes, about Kautsky and Hilferding, Renner and Austerlitz, Otto Bauer and Fritz Adler, Turati and Longuet, about the Fabians and the leaders of the Independent Labour Party of Britain—all this seems to us (and indeed is) a dreary repetition, a reiteration, of an old and familiar refrain. We have already witnessed all this in the instance of the Mensheviks. As history would have it, the opportunists of a backward country became the forerunners of the opportunists in a number of advanced countries.
If the heroes of the Second International have all gone bankrupt and have disgraced themselves over the question of the significance and role of the Soviets and Soviet rule; if the leaders of the three very important parties which have now left the Second International (namely, the German Independent Social-Democratic Party, [9] the French Longuetists and the British Independent Labour Party) have disgraced themselves and become entangled in this question in a most "telling" fashion; if they have all shown themselves slaves to the prejudices of petty-bourgeois democracy (fully in the spirit of the petty-bourgeois of 1848 who called themselves "Social-Democrats")—then we can only say that we have already witnessed all this in the instance of the Mensheviks. As history would have it, the Soviets came into being in Russia in 1905; from February to October 1917 they were turned to a false use by the Mensheviks, who went bankrupt because of their inability to understand the role and significance of the Soviets, today the idea of Soviet power has emerged throughout the world and is spreading among the proletariat of all countries with extraordinary speed. Like our Mensheviks, the old heroes of the Second International are everywhere going bankrupt, because they are incapable of understanding the role and significance of the Soviets. Experience has proved that, on certain very important questions of the proletarian revolution, all countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done.
Despite views that are today often to be met with in Europe and America, the Bolsheviks began their victorious struggle against the parliamentary and (in fact) bourgeois republic and against the Mensheviks in a very cautious manner, and the preparations they made for it were by no means simple. At the beginning of the period mentioned, we did not call for the overthrow of the government but explained that it was impossible to overthrow it without first changing the composition and the temper of the Soviets. We did not proclaim a boycott of the bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, but said—and following the April (1917) Conference of our Party began to state officially in the name of the Party—that a bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly would be better than a bourgeois republic without a Constituent Assembly, but that a "workers’ and peasants"’ republic, a Soviet republic, would be better than any bourgeois-democratic, parliamentary republic. Without such thorough, circumspect and long preparations, we could not have achieved victory in October 1917, or have consolidated that victory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes
[2] The reference is to the Mensheviks (who formed the Right and opportunist wing of Social-Democracy in the R.S.D.L.P.), and to the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
[3] The reference is to the Bolshevik deputies to the Fourth Duma, namely, A. Y. Badayev, M. K. Muranov, G. I. Petrovsky, F. N. Samoilov and N. R. Shagov. At the Duma’s session of July 26 (August 8), 1914, at which the representatives of all the bourgeois-landowner Duma groups approved tsarist Russia’s entry into the imperialist war, the Bolshevik Duma group declared a firm protest; they refused to vote for war credits and launched revolutionary propaganda among the people. In November 1914 the Bolshevik deputies were arrested, in February 1915 they were brought to trial, and exiled for life to Turukhansk Territory in Eastern Siberia. The courageous speeches made by the Bolshevik deputies at their trial, exposing the autocracy, played an important part in anti-war propaganda and in revolutionising the toiling masses.
[4,5] Longuetism—the Centrist trend within the French Socialist Party, headed by Jean Longuet. During the First World War of 1914-18, the Longuetists conducted a policy of conciliation with the social-chauvinists. They rejected the revolutionary struggle and came out for" defence of country" in the imperialist war. Lenin called them petty-bourgeois nationalists. After the victory of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the Longuetists called themselves supporters of the proletarian dictatorship, but in fact they remained opposed to it. In December 1920 the Longuetists together with the avowed reformists, broke away from the Party and joined the so-called Two-and-a-Half International.
[6] Fabians—members of the Fabian Society, a British reformist organisation founded in 1884. The membership consisted, in the main, of bourgeois intellectuals. The Fabians denied the necessity of the proletariat’s class struggle and the socialist revolution, and contended that the transition from capitalism to socialism was possible only through petty reforms and the gradual reorganisation of society. In 1900 the Fabian Society joined the Labour Party. The Fabians are characterised by Lenin in "British Pacifism and British Dislike of Theory" (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 260-65) and elsewhere.
[7] The Independent Labour Party of Britain (I.L.P.)—a reformist organisation founded in 1893 by leaders of the "new trade unions", in conditions of a revival of the strike struggle and the mounting movement for British working-class independence of the bourgeois parties. The I.L.P. included members of the "new trade unions" and those of a number of the old trade unions, as well as intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie who were under the influence of the Fabians. The I.L.P. was headed by James Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. From its very inception, the I.L.P. took a bourgeois-reformist stand, laying particular stress on parliamentary forms of struggle and parliamentary deals with the Liberals. Lenin wrote of the I.L.P. that "in reality it is an opportunist party always dependent on the bourgeoisie".
[8] Ministerialism (or "ministerial socialism", or else Millerandism)—the opportunist tactic of socialists’ participation in reactionary bourgeois governments. The term appeared when in 1899, the French socialist Millerand joined the bourgeois government of Waldeck-Rousseau.
[9] The Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany—a Centrist party founded in April 1917.
A split took place at the Congress of the Independent Social-Democratic Party, held in Halle in October 1920, the majority joining the Communist Party of Germany in December 1920. The Right wing formed a separate party, retaining the old name of the Independent Social-Democratic Party. In 1922 the "Independents" re-joined the German Social-Democratic Party.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
*******
With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
*************
The Principal Stages in the History of Bolshevism-The years of preparation for revolution (1903-05)
The approach of a great storm was sensed everywhere. All classes were in a state of ferment and preparation. Abroad, the press of the political exiles discussed the theoretical aspects of all the fundamental problems of the revolution. Representatives of the three main classes, of the three principal political trends -- the liberal-bourgeois, the petty-bourgeois-democratic (concealed behind "social-democratic" and "social-revolutionary" labels [2]), and the proletarian-revolutionary—anticipated and prepared the impending open class struggle by waging a most bitter struggle on issues of programme and tactics. All the issues on which the masses waged an armed struggle in 1905-07 and 1917-20 can (and should) be studied, in their embryonic form, in the press of the period. Among these three main trends there were, of course, a host of intermediate, transitional or half-hearted forms. It would be more correct to say that those political and ideological trends which were genuinely of a class nature crystallised in the struggle of press organs, parties, factions and groups; the classes were forging the requisite political and ideological weapons for the impending battles.
The years of revolution (1905-07). All classes came out into the open. All programmatical and tactical views were tested by the action of the masses. In its extent and acuteness, the strike struggle had no parallel anywhere in the world. The economic strike developed into a political strike, and the latter into insurrection. The relations between the proletariat, as the leader, and the vacillating and unstable peasantry, as the led, were tested in practice. The Soviet form of organisation came into being in the spontaneous development of the struggle. The controversies of that period over the significance of the Soviets anticipated the great struggle of 1917-20. The alternation of parliamentary and non-parliamentary forms of struggle, of the tactics of boycotting parliament and that of participating in parliament, of legal and illegal forms of struggle, and likewise their interrelations and connections—all this was marked by an extraordinary wealth of content. As for teaching the fundamentals of political science to masses and leaders, to classes and parties alike, each month of this period was equivalent to an entire year of "peaceful" and "constitutional" development. Without the "dress rehearsal" of 1905, the victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible.
The years of reaction (1907-10). Tsarism was victorious. All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression’ demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism; mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle. It is at moments of need that one learns who one’s friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson.
Victorious tsarism was compelled to speed up the destruction of the remnants of the pre-bourgeois, patriarchal mode of life in Russia. The country’s development along bourgeois lines proceeded apace. Illusions that stood outside and above class distinctions, illusions concerning the possibility of avoiding capitalism, were scattered to the winds. The class struggle manifested itself in a quite new and more distinct way.
The revolutionary parties had to complete their education. They were learning how to attack. Now they had to realise that such knowledge must be supplemented with the knowledge of how to retreat in good order. They had to realise—and it is from bitter experience that the revolutionary class learns to realise this—that victory is impossible unless one has learned how to attack and retreat properly. Of all the defeated opposition and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks effected the most orderly retreat, with the least loss to their "army", with its core best preserved, with the least significant splits (in point of depth and incurability), with the least demoralisation, and in the best condition to resume work on the broadest scale and in the most correct and energetic manner. The Bolsheviks achieved this only because they ruthlessly exposed and expelled the revolutionary phrase-mongers, those who did not wish to understand that one had to retreat, that one had to know how to retreat, and that one had absolutely to learn how to work legally in the most reactionary of parliaments, in the most reactionary of trade unions, co-operative and insurance societies and similar organisations.
The years of revival (1910-14). At first progress was incredibly slow, then, following the Lena events of 1912, it became somewhat more rapid. Overcoming unprecedented difficulties, the Bolsheviks thrust back the Mensheviks, whose role as bourgeois agents in the working-class movement was clearly realised by the entire bourgeoisie after 1905, and whom the bourgeoisie therefore supported in a thousand ways against the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks would never have succeeded in doing this had they not followed the correct tactics of combining illegal work with the utilisation of "legal opportunities", which they made a point of doing. In the elections to the arch-reactionary Duma, the Bolsheviks won the full support of the worker curia.
The First Imperialist World War (1914-17). Legal parliamentarianism’ with an extremely reactionary "parliament", rendered most useful service to the Bolsheviks, the party of the revolutionary proletariat. The Bolshevik deputies were exiled to Siberia. [3] All shades of social-imperialism social-chauvinism, social-patriotism, inconsistent and consistent internationalism, pacifism, and the revolutionary repudiation of pacifist illusions found full expression in the Russian emitter press. The learned fools and the old women of the Second International, who had arrogantly and contemptuously turned up their noses at the abundance of "factions" in the Russian socialist movement and at the bitter struggle they were waging among themselves, were unable—when the war deprived them of their vaunted "legality" in all the advanced countries -- to organise anything even approximating such a free (illegal) interchange of views and such a free (illegal) evolution of correct views as the Russian revolutionaries did in Switzerland and in a number of other countries. That was why both the avowed social-patriots and the "Kautskyites" of all countries proved to be the worst traitors to the proletariat. One of the principal reasons why Bolshevism was able to achieve victory in 1917-20 was that, since the end of 1914, it has been ruthlessly exposing the baseness and vileness of social-chauvinism and "Kautskyism" (to which Longuetism [4,5] in France, the views of the Fabians [6] and the leaders of the Independent Labour Party [7] in Britain, of Turati in Italy, etc., correspond), the masses later becoming more and more convinced, from their own experience, of the correctness of the Bolshevik views.
The second revolution in Russia (February to October 1917). Tsarism’s senility and obsoleteness had (with the aid of the blows and hardships of a most agonising war) created an incredibly destructive force directed against it. Within a few days Russia was transformed into a democratic bourgeois republic, freer—in war conditions—than any other country in the world. The leaders of the opposition and revolutionary parties began to set up a government, just as is done in the most "strictly parliamentary" republics; the fact that a man had been a leader of an opposition party in parliament—even in a most reactionary parliament—facilitated his subsequent role in the revolution.
In a few weeks the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries thoroughly assimilated all the methods and manners, the arguments and sophistries of the European heroes of the Second International, of the ministerialists [8] and other opportunist riff-raff. Everything we now read about the Scheidemanns and Noskes, about Kautsky and Hilferding, Renner and Austerlitz, Otto Bauer and Fritz Adler, Turati and Longuet, about the Fabians and the leaders of the Independent Labour Party of Britain—all this seems to us (and indeed is) a dreary repetition, a reiteration, of an old and familiar refrain. We have already witnessed all this in the instance of the Mensheviks. As history would have it, the opportunists of a backward country became the forerunners of the opportunists in a number of advanced countries.
If the heroes of the Second International have all gone bankrupt and have disgraced themselves over the question of the significance and role of the Soviets and Soviet rule; if the leaders of the three very important parties which have now left the Second International (namely, the German Independent Social-Democratic Party, [9] the French Longuetists and the British Independent Labour Party) have disgraced themselves and become entangled in this question in a most "telling" fashion; if they have all shown themselves slaves to the prejudices of petty-bourgeois democracy (fully in the spirit of the petty-bourgeois of 1848 who called themselves "Social-Democrats")—then we can only say that we have already witnessed all this in the instance of the Mensheviks. As history would have it, the Soviets came into being in Russia in 1905; from February to October 1917 they were turned to a false use by the Mensheviks, who went bankrupt because of their inability to understand the role and significance of the Soviets, today the idea of Soviet power has emerged throughout the world and is spreading among the proletariat of all countries with extraordinary speed. Like our Mensheviks, the old heroes of the Second International are everywhere going bankrupt, because they are incapable of understanding the role and significance of the Soviets. Experience has proved that, on certain very important questions of the proletarian revolution, all countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done.
Despite views that are today often to be met with in Europe and America, the Bolsheviks began their victorious struggle against the parliamentary and (in fact) bourgeois republic and against the Mensheviks in a very cautious manner, and the preparations they made for it were by no means simple. At the beginning of the period mentioned, we did not call for the overthrow of the government but explained that it was impossible to overthrow it without first changing the composition and the temper of the Soviets. We did not proclaim a boycott of the bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, but said—and following the April (1917) Conference of our Party began to state officially in the name of the Party—that a bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly would be better than a bourgeois republic without a Constituent Assembly, but that a "workers’ and peasants"’ republic, a Soviet republic, would be better than any bourgeois-democratic, parliamentary republic. Without such thorough, circumspect and long preparations, we could not have achieved victory in October 1917, or have consolidated that victory.
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Footnotes
[2] The reference is to the Mensheviks (who formed the Right and opportunist wing of Social-Democracy in the R.S.D.L.P.), and to the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
[3] The reference is to the Bolshevik deputies to the Fourth Duma, namely, A. Y. Badayev, M. K. Muranov, G. I. Petrovsky, F. N. Samoilov and N. R. Shagov. At the Duma’s session of July 26 (August 8), 1914, at which the representatives of all the bourgeois-landowner Duma groups approved tsarist Russia’s entry into the imperialist war, the Bolshevik Duma group declared a firm protest; they refused to vote for war credits and launched revolutionary propaganda among the people. In November 1914 the Bolshevik deputies were arrested, in February 1915 they were brought to trial, and exiled for life to Turukhansk Territory in Eastern Siberia. The courageous speeches made by the Bolshevik deputies at their trial, exposing the autocracy, played an important part in anti-war propaganda and in revolutionising the toiling masses.
[4,5] Longuetism—the Centrist trend within the French Socialist Party, headed by Jean Longuet. During the First World War of 1914-18, the Longuetists conducted a policy of conciliation with the social-chauvinists. They rejected the revolutionary struggle and came out for" defence of country" in the imperialist war. Lenin called them petty-bourgeois nationalists. After the victory of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the Longuetists called themselves supporters of the proletarian dictatorship, but in fact they remained opposed to it. In December 1920 the Longuetists together with the avowed reformists, broke away from the Party and joined the so-called Two-and-a-Half International.
[6] Fabians—members of the Fabian Society, a British reformist organisation founded in 1884. The membership consisted, in the main, of bourgeois intellectuals. The Fabians denied the necessity of the proletariat’s class struggle and the socialist revolution, and contended that the transition from capitalism to socialism was possible only through petty reforms and the gradual reorganisation of society. In 1900 the Fabian Society joined the Labour Party. The Fabians are characterised by Lenin in "British Pacifism and British Dislike of Theory" (see present edition, Vol. 21, pp. 260-65) and elsewhere.
[7] The Independent Labour Party of Britain (I.L.P.)—a reformist organisation founded in 1893 by leaders of the "new trade unions", in conditions of a revival of the strike struggle and the mounting movement for British working-class independence of the bourgeois parties. The I.L.P. included members of the "new trade unions" and those of a number of the old trade unions, as well as intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie who were under the influence of the Fabians. The I.L.P. was headed by James Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. From its very inception, the I.L.P. took a bourgeois-reformist stand, laying particular stress on parliamentary forms of struggle and parliamentary deals with the Liberals. Lenin wrote of the I.L.P. that "in reality it is an opportunist party always dependent on the bourgeoisie".
[8] Ministerialism (or "ministerial socialism", or else Millerandism)—the opportunist tactic of socialists’ participation in reactionary bourgeois governments. The term appeared when in 1899, the French socialist Millerand joined the bourgeois government of Waldeck-Rousseau.
[9] The Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany—a Centrist party founded in April 1917.
A split took place at the Congress of the Independent Social-Democratic Party, held in Halle in October 1920, the majority joining the Communist Party of Germany in December 1920. The Right wing formed a separate party, retaining the old name of the Independent Social-Democratic Party. In 1922 the "Independents" re-joined the German Social-Democratic Party.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Last Chance To Glance
Main street walked, a brand new just off the assembly line wild dream 1964 Mustang just passed by (dark green, complete with sally, sassy blonde-haired sally from down the street, with big breasts and no brains, according to shawlie grapevine lore, but still with that green devil of a mustang paid for by some smitten man out for her midnight romp of local manhood, or men-hood according to Frankie Larkin school boy corner boy lore, and he should know). Cursed no car night shade walked, no dough for car walked, no dough for nothing walked, his poor Pa out of work again. Out of work as the ships that keep North Adamsville afloat are now being built in more exotic locales, foreign places like Taiwan and Malta, wherever that is, and so he, unskilled, last hired, first fired, and built for hills and hollows coal mine childhoods and no waterlogged ocean belts, has no dough to spare. Nada.
So he walked, and only dreamed of cars, not some big deal car like Sally’s Mustang or the “boss” ’57 Chevy of his dreams (nothing but a girl magnet car, and choices too, take a number, girls), and the stuff of hard corner boy chieftain Billy Bradley’s reality but just something to get around in, something to make the girls raise their heads when he passed by, and not keep them pavement-bound while his flannel-shirted in all climes, black chinos un-cuffed in all climes, Chuck Taylor sneakers in all weathers, and midnight faux- beatnik sunglasses at all hours passed them walking by (all by his lonesome, except when Frankie decides he has had enough of main squeeze Joann, or corners).
And not something, some car not girl, too complicated, mechanically complicated, either so that he would have to spent his time and his no dough down the street at Stewball Stu’s homegrown garage waiting on his lordship to fix some silly thing in about one second like tightening something loose with the flick of a wrench, endlessly talk about his latest conquests (plural is correct, girl conquests, of course, what else could Stu talk about, and for real, he know because they, the girls, and not dogs either, talk about it at school, and giggle, giggle that giggle that meant more than tender smooches, jesus), smell his stinking whiskey breathe (rotgut Johnny Walker something but not top shelf but more like Adams River streaked water, and his oil stained, oil-stained everything (clothes, tee-shirt, kitchen table, Christ, how can a guy live like that). Some girl magnet, who knows how or why but they take numbers to ride the curve with Stu, but that was just him being jealous because a couple of times he got Stu’s “left-overs.” So thanks, Stu, for the favors.
But see his Pa out of work meant no telephone, and no dough to put in a telephone or keep it at the ready that is how close to the vest the family had to play it when Pa got his slip, not even a cheap jack two-party line that they, AT&T, practically give away. So this night he was not just walking, Main Street walking for the hell of it, but to rub a few dimes together and find the nearest public telephone to do his talking into. What it’s was about, the talking, he would get to in a minute he said but he wanted to tell me that this nearest phone was located right next to the Minute Motel. Come on, don’t you get it, that was not the real name of the place but do I have to draw you a picture? This is strictly for the “high society” crowd that does their business by the hour, or less. Day and night it seemed, there were always cars pulling in and out. Not ‘57 Chevies, those and their Billy Bradley corner boy owners are down at Adamsville Beach or at Squaw Rock down across from the far end of the beach watching the “submarine races” at midnight for free but more old guy cars. Buicks and Pontiacs. And seeing the traffic going and out of that joint, and why, what goes on, only made his “job” for this evening that much harder.
See he had been walking this night for a while, a couple of hours, trying to get up enough courage to call this Diana, a girl classmate for a date. Diana, a greek goddess wholesale (although he didn’t think she was greek or wholesale but he had her headed that way, that pedestal way), on this atlantic ocean strictly from hunger working class town means streets is who has him walking (and truth to tell kind of muttering to himself, she was that kind of girl). Naturally, Diana was not her real name just like that hotel, motel, no tell was not really called the Minute Motel, I don’t want any trouble okay, and I will tell you why as I get along with what he wanted to talk to her about. Don’t worry it won’t be long.
This Diana and he have been talking, hard and kind of deep talking in school about world issues, music, poets, crazed poets like mad monk Allen Ginsburg and not so crazed T.S. Eliot (they had read Wasteland together in class, wow). Hard talking about the big break-out they knew was coming, about how things are going to be totally different for them when their time came with no Pa out of work and always no dough, or not enough, and they wanted to be part of it. (See, she told him in confidence, her Pa was on the chopping block down at the shipyards too so she knew about no dough, and sniffed dreams too.) So he took her seriously, and she, he thought, took him seriously although she never had had anything good to say about Frankie, Frankie Larkin, his corner boy, but that was because he tried to give her a tumble, he thought, and she knew he was always ball and chain to Joann, or corners. That part isn’t important anyway. What is important is that he dreamed of her, no, I’d better say she disturbed his sleep the way he described it and be closer to the truth.
And here is why. Diana, blonde, naturally blonde, Diana, filled out a cashmere-sweater nicely thank you, white tennis –shoed like every other girl in town but showing off some very nice, well-turned legs, thank you. So you can see where she might disturb his sleep because usually he went for girls (and this I know from first-hand experience) who wanted to be part of the great breakout, just like him, but who well, since I am trying kind and he was trying to keep his emotions in check before he made this call were only “cute,” at best. Although they too wear those white tennis shoes while reading their James Joyce or Albert Camus (yah, it was that kind of crowd he ran with over in Harvard Square when he had his fill of North Adamsville squares, excepting Diana). See he was making this call, this midnight big time call to ask Diana to go on over to the Square with him, just as friends, see.
Right now as you can sense I bet he was only talking to stall, stall having to do this call, cold call really, because he didn’t know that much about her personally and his intelligence network (Sunday night corner boy guys hanging around the boys’ lav on Monday morning speaking of conquests, and other lies) has run cold to the ground. All he really knew about her was that she wanted to break-out and that was good enough for him, and good enough to disturb his sleep lately until he played his hand out.
So he was seeking this public telephone, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turned out; nickel and dime courage when due to no fault of his own (or his Pa’s really when he thought about it) home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore submarine races, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on high school senior errands. Diana
He dropped the dime in ring, ring, ring. Hi, Diana, hi spiel, and then, and then nothingness. No way, no way, damn intelligence no way, see she had a boyfriend, a college guy, probably all done up in plaid shirts, slacks, be serious, slacks, and pennied loafers, and that is where her dream break-out was running. And then dead of night red-face right away, sorry, he didn’t know, alas, red-faced the next day, red faced until parted june freedom fly-out.
And in the telling red-faced even forty years later. Wow.
So he walked, and only dreamed of cars, not some big deal car like Sally’s Mustang or the “boss” ’57 Chevy of his dreams (nothing but a girl magnet car, and choices too, take a number, girls), and the stuff of hard corner boy chieftain Billy Bradley’s reality but just something to get around in, something to make the girls raise their heads when he passed by, and not keep them pavement-bound while his flannel-shirted in all climes, black chinos un-cuffed in all climes, Chuck Taylor sneakers in all weathers, and midnight faux- beatnik sunglasses at all hours passed them walking by (all by his lonesome, except when Frankie decides he has had enough of main squeeze Joann, or corners).
And not something, some car not girl, too complicated, mechanically complicated, either so that he would have to spent his time and his no dough down the street at Stewball Stu’s homegrown garage waiting on his lordship to fix some silly thing in about one second like tightening something loose with the flick of a wrench, endlessly talk about his latest conquests (plural is correct, girl conquests, of course, what else could Stu talk about, and for real, he know because they, the girls, and not dogs either, talk about it at school, and giggle, giggle that giggle that meant more than tender smooches, jesus), smell his stinking whiskey breathe (rotgut Johnny Walker something but not top shelf but more like Adams River streaked water, and his oil stained, oil-stained everything (clothes, tee-shirt, kitchen table, Christ, how can a guy live like that). Some girl magnet, who knows how or why but they take numbers to ride the curve with Stu, but that was just him being jealous because a couple of times he got Stu’s “left-overs.” So thanks, Stu, for the favors.
But see his Pa out of work meant no telephone, and no dough to put in a telephone or keep it at the ready that is how close to the vest the family had to play it when Pa got his slip, not even a cheap jack two-party line that they, AT&T, practically give away. So this night he was not just walking, Main Street walking for the hell of it, but to rub a few dimes together and find the nearest public telephone to do his talking into. What it’s was about, the talking, he would get to in a minute he said but he wanted to tell me that this nearest phone was located right next to the Minute Motel. Come on, don’t you get it, that was not the real name of the place but do I have to draw you a picture? This is strictly for the “high society” crowd that does their business by the hour, or less. Day and night it seemed, there were always cars pulling in and out. Not ‘57 Chevies, those and their Billy Bradley corner boy owners are down at Adamsville Beach or at Squaw Rock down across from the far end of the beach watching the “submarine races” at midnight for free but more old guy cars. Buicks and Pontiacs. And seeing the traffic going and out of that joint, and why, what goes on, only made his “job” for this evening that much harder.
See he had been walking this night for a while, a couple of hours, trying to get up enough courage to call this Diana, a girl classmate for a date. Diana, a greek goddess wholesale (although he didn’t think she was greek or wholesale but he had her headed that way, that pedestal way), on this atlantic ocean strictly from hunger working class town means streets is who has him walking (and truth to tell kind of muttering to himself, she was that kind of girl). Naturally, Diana was not her real name just like that hotel, motel, no tell was not really called the Minute Motel, I don’t want any trouble okay, and I will tell you why as I get along with what he wanted to talk to her about. Don’t worry it won’t be long.
This Diana and he have been talking, hard and kind of deep talking in school about world issues, music, poets, crazed poets like mad monk Allen Ginsburg and not so crazed T.S. Eliot (they had read Wasteland together in class, wow). Hard talking about the big break-out they knew was coming, about how things are going to be totally different for them when their time came with no Pa out of work and always no dough, or not enough, and they wanted to be part of it. (See, she told him in confidence, her Pa was on the chopping block down at the shipyards too so she knew about no dough, and sniffed dreams too.) So he took her seriously, and she, he thought, took him seriously although she never had had anything good to say about Frankie, Frankie Larkin, his corner boy, but that was because he tried to give her a tumble, he thought, and she knew he was always ball and chain to Joann, or corners. That part isn’t important anyway. What is important is that he dreamed of her, no, I’d better say she disturbed his sleep the way he described it and be closer to the truth.
And here is why. Diana, blonde, naturally blonde, Diana, filled out a cashmere-sweater nicely thank you, white tennis –shoed like every other girl in town but showing off some very nice, well-turned legs, thank you. So you can see where she might disturb his sleep because usually he went for girls (and this I know from first-hand experience) who wanted to be part of the great breakout, just like him, but who well, since I am trying kind and he was trying to keep his emotions in check before he made this call were only “cute,” at best. Although they too wear those white tennis shoes while reading their James Joyce or Albert Camus (yah, it was that kind of crowd he ran with over in Harvard Square when he had his fill of North Adamsville squares, excepting Diana). See he was making this call, this midnight big time call to ask Diana to go on over to the Square with him, just as friends, see.
Right now as you can sense I bet he was only talking to stall, stall having to do this call, cold call really, because he didn’t know that much about her personally and his intelligence network (Sunday night corner boy guys hanging around the boys’ lav on Monday morning speaking of conquests, and other lies) has run cold to the ground. All he really knew about her was that she wanted to break-out and that was good enough for him, and good enough to disturb his sleep lately until he played his hand out.
So he was seeking this public telephone, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turned out; nickel and dime courage when due to no fault of his own (or his Pa’s really when he thought about it) home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore submarine races, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on high school senior errands. Diana
He dropped the dime in ring, ring, ring. Hi, Diana, hi spiel, and then, and then nothingness. No way, no way, damn intelligence no way, see she had a boyfriend, a college guy, probably all done up in plaid shirts, slacks, be serious, slacks, and pennied loafers, and that is where her dream break-out was running. And then dead of night red-face right away, sorry, he didn’t know, alas, red-faced the next day, red faced until parted june freedom fly-out.
And in the telling red-faced even forty years later. Wow.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Delores LeBlanc’s War
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Mills Brothers performing there classic World War II song, Paper Doll.
Delores LeBlanc never dreamed, never dreamed in a million years, that she would be sitting every week in the War Relief Office with the blue-haired ladies of Olde Saco darning, darning socks, for the boys across the sea struggling to get rid of that mad man Hitler from the face of Europe, and maybe the world. She hoped that at least one pair would get to her brother, her older brother Jimmy, who was with the 1st Division (Army, nicknamed “The Big Red One,” but what would Delores, a mere girl just graduated from Olde Saco High School and thinking about going to secretarial school down in Boston in the fall in order to break out of the Maine ocean trap know of such things). Each pair she darned and completed was accompanied by a wish that the pair go to Jimmy, or at least to an Olde Saco French-Canadian (locally called F-Cs) friend of Jimmy’s, or barring that some Olde Saco F-C boy like the ones she had gone to school with, had dated, and had enlisted early. Beyond that she would not go in her wish list.
So there she was, week after week, uncomfortably sitting there in that dank office (formerly used to store some of the town’s ever-ready and ever necessary winter plowing gear) used now each Tuesday and Thursday evening for darning socks for the boys along with the old ladies gossip grapevine of the town. The rest of the week during the day it was used by an alphabet soup’s worth of agencies for war relief programs, and for doling out the towns’ rations of gas, sugar, and whatever else the local board (on orders from Augusta and Washington) decided needed to be rationed to support the war effort. She knew little of the ins and outs of those decisions except she resented, resented like hell, the shortage of nylons (for the war effort or not)r that she was forced to endure (and cursed each and every time she had a run in her now ragged pre-war pairs).
Our Delores, it seems, also resented that the old ladies (and the few other just out of high school girls that they could recruit on the basis that since they were foot-loose and fancy free, not married, not working at the Bath Shipyard producing a ship a day that it was their duty to darn socks for the boys across the seas) while doing their patriotic duty were prepared, no, inspired to rip apart the reputations of every man or women in town who came within their grapevine cross- hairs. And the leader of the pack (and the woman who “recruited” her to the task at hand) was one Yvette Leblanc, her mother.
Now for those not in the know the great majority of the population of Olde Saco in those days were F-Cs who had come down from Canada to work in the textile mills of the town back around the turn of the century or something like that. So the grapevine had two components, one, it was mainly times a spoken French communications network (except when the whole town, the whole womanhood of the town, was in an uproar over something, or somebody), and, two, it was directly connected with Ste. Brigitte’s (her parish) or one of the twelve Gallic Roman Catholic churches in the town whose “spy” network controlled what was what in town.
One night, one Thursday night the ladies were livid, were out of their minds with wonder and malice. Apparently the very married Jim MacAdams, young son of the owner of the biggest mill in town, MacAdams Textile Mill, was heard to be running around with someone not his wife. Most definitely not his wife from the informant’s description. Naturally, after checking to see who was darning that night, and seeing that all were proper F-Cs, they ladies began to speak the patois.
And here is Delores description of what she heard them say. Of course a heathen (meaning anybody who was not an “in grace” F-C, a protestant like the MacAdams’ in other words) would have nothing but the morals of an alley cat and what could you except from “them.” Moreover, the girl was probably one of those heathen Irish protestant girls from across Atlantic Avenue, from the cold-water flats near the railroad tracks from the description of her. (The Irish Protestants pre-dated the F-C invasion of Olde Saco by about twenty years but no quarter and no credit was given on that fact.)You know how they are. And from there the speculation went down home fast.
Delores reddened, reddened several times during this lurid conversation while the blue-haired ladies talked their increasingly sex-maddened talk but held her tongue. See, she knew, knew very well, that Jim MacAdams was seeing one Lily Genet, her best friend, whose mother was sitting right next to her mother just then and leading the charge on the loose morals of the Protestant Irish.
She quietly finished yet another part of socks. Delores wished, as always, that this pair would go to Jimmy. But her next wish was that the pair would go to one of the many Irish Protestant boys from the town who had clamored to enlist once the war started and were just then taking heavy loses, according to the daily casualties reports posted in the Olde Saco Gazette, with the Third Army in fighting that mad man Hitler.
Delores LeBlanc never dreamed, never dreamed in a million years, that she would be sitting every week in the War Relief Office with the blue-haired ladies of Olde Saco darning, darning socks, for the boys across the sea struggling to get rid of that mad man Hitler from the face of Europe, and maybe the world. She hoped that at least one pair would get to her brother, her older brother Jimmy, who was with the 1st Division (Army, nicknamed “The Big Red One,” but what would Delores, a mere girl just graduated from Olde Saco High School and thinking about going to secretarial school down in Boston in the fall in order to break out of the Maine ocean trap know of such things). Each pair she darned and completed was accompanied by a wish that the pair go to Jimmy, or at least to an Olde Saco French-Canadian (locally called F-Cs) friend of Jimmy’s, or barring that some Olde Saco F-C boy like the ones she had gone to school with, had dated, and had enlisted early. Beyond that she would not go in her wish list.
So there she was, week after week, uncomfortably sitting there in that dank office (formerly used to store some of the town’s ever-ready and ever necessary winter plowing gear) used now each Tuesday and Thursday evening for darning socks for the boys along with the old ladies gossip grapevine of the town. The rest of the week during the day it was used by an alphabet soup’s worth of agencies for war relief programs, and for doling out the towns’ rations of gas, sugar, and whatever else the local board (on orders from Augusta and Washington) decided needed to be rationed to support the war effort. She knew little of the ins and outs of those decisions except she resented, resented like hell, the shortage of nylons (for the war effort or not)r that she was forced to endure (and cursed each and every time she had a run in her now ragged pre-war pairs).
Our Delores, it seems, also resented that the old ladies (and the few other just out of high school girls that they could recruit on the basis that since they were foot-loose and fancy free, not married, not working at the Bath Shipyard producing a ship a day that it was their duty to darn socks for the boys across the seas) while doing their patriotic duty were prepared, no, inspired to rip apart the reputations of every man or women in town who came within their grapevine cross- hairs. And the leader of the pack (and the woman who “recruited” her to the task at hand) was one Yvette Leblanc, her mother.
Now for those not in the know the great majority of the population of Olde Saco in those days were F-Cs who had come down from Canada to work in the textile mills of the town back around the turn of the century or something like that. So the grapevine had two components, one, it was mainly times a spoken French communications network (except when the whole town, the whole womanhood of the town, was in an uproar over something, or somebody), and, two, it was directly connected with Ste. Brigitte’s (her parish) or one of the twelve Gallic Roman Catholic churches in the town whose “spy” network controlled what was what in town.
One night, one Thursday night the ladies were livid, were out of their minds with wonder and malice. Apparently the very married Jim MacAdams, young son of the owner of the biggest mill in town, MacAdams Textile Mill, was heard to be running around with someone not his wife. Most definitely not his wife from the informant’s description. Naturally, after checking to see who was darning that night, and seeing that all were proper F-Cs, they ladies began to speak the patois.
And here is Delores description of what she heard them say. Of course a heathen (meaning anybody who was not an “in grace” F-C, a protestant like the MacAdams’ in other words) would have nothing but the morals of an alley cat and what could you except from “them.” Moreover, the girl was probably one of those heathen Irish protestant girls from across Atlantic Avenue, from the cold-water flats near the railroad tracks from the description of her. (The Irish Protestants pre-dated the F-C invasion of Olde Saco by about twenty years but no quarter and no credit was given on that fact.)You know how they are. And from there the speculation went down home fast.
Delores reddened, reddened several times during this lurid conversation while the blue-haired ladies talked their increasingly sex-maddened talk but held her tongue. See, she knew, knew very well, that Jim MacAdams was seeing one Lily Genet, her best friend, whose mother was sitting right next to her mother just then and leading the charge on the loose morals of the Protestant Irish.
She quietly finished yet another part of socks. Delores wished, as always, that this pair would go to Jimmy. But her next wish was that the pair would go to one of the many Irish Protestant boys from the town who had clamored to enlist once the war started and were just then taking heavy loses, according to the daily casualties reports posted in the Olde Saco Gazette, with the Third Army in fighting that mad man Hitler.
From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon-Origins of the Labor Party Policy (1923-24)
Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives.
*************
Markin comment on James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party from the American Left History blog:
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.
At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American Socialist Revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the 1930’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles here this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.
As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism (click see all my reviews for reviews of all of these books). I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.
*************
Origins of the Labor Party Policy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Fourth International, Vol.17 No.1, Winter 1956, pp.25-26.
Original bound volumes of Fourth International and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 17, 1955
Dear Sir:
I think there is enough evidence to establish beyond dispute that the initiative for a positive attitude toward a prospective labor party in the United States came from Moscow. Just when the decision was first made by the Comintern, and the specific steps taken by the American party in the process of putting the pdlicy into effect, are not so easy to sort out.
My own recollections are far from clear. It had been my impression that the definitive decision of the Comintern on this question was made only at the time of the Fourth Congress at the end of 1922. I think the statement of the Foster-Cannon group, published in the Daily Worker of November 26, 1924 to the effect that the Comintern’s approval was obtained“ mainlyon the strengthof the information supplied to the Comintern by our delegates” – was intended to refer to the discussions in Moscow at the time of the Fourth Congress, and not to an earlier discussion.
It may be that the earlier 1922 American delegation – Bedacht and Katterfeld – discussed the question at the Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in February-March, 1922, and that some sort of directive issued from the discussion. But I have no recollection of it.
I don’t remember the labor party statement issued by the American party in May 1922. Prior to my departure for Moscow about the middle of that month, I have remembered only general talk and general sympathy for the idea “in principle” but no concrete action to implement it. But now that you refresh my memory, I would say you are probably correct in your guess that the meeting of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in February 1922 stimulated the first action by the party.
I recall a conversationon the subject with Lovestone, initiatedby him. By party standards at that time, we were both “right wingers,” looking for all possible openings for the party to break out of its isolation and become a factor in American life. That was probably his reason for approaching me first.
Lovestone said the party should try to get into this CPPA movement some way or other. I was sympathetic to the idea, although it had not occurred to me until he brought it up. I don’t recall anything concrete being done before I left far Moscow. But reconstructing the evolution of the question, it is probably safe to assume that Lovestone continued to press his idea after my departure and that his persistence contributed, first to the affirmative statement on the labor party question published in the Worker, June 24, 1922 and, later, to the decision to send Ruthenberg to the second conference of the CPPA in Cleveland, in December 1922.
In my memory, therefore, Lovestone stands out as the initiator of the first positive proposal to approach this CPPA movement, which led, in a chain of circumstances, to the Chicago Farmer-Labor convention of July 1923, arranged by a collaboration of the Workers Party with the Fitzpatrick leadership of the Chicago Federation of Labor.
* * *
It must be remembered, however, that in the meantime Pepper had become a factor in the affairs of the American CP – and what a factor! – and that he undoubtedly was the driving force in all the labor party experiments and adventures thereafter. When he entered the situation, the production of ideas and decisions was put on a whirling conveyor and things really moved. I recall now that toward the end of 1922, or early in the next year, before he had his feet wet in the country, he wrote a pamphlet on the problem of the labor party in America. The pamphlet was widely distributed in 1923 as an exposition of the party’s position.
I was outside all these developments during my long stay in Moscow, and again for many months on my tour after my return. For that reason, I had no direct part in the decisions, but I was involved in them by a general sympathy with every move in an outward direction, even at the risk of opportunist errors to which, I must admit, I was not very sensitive at that time.
I do not recall that the question of the labor party was a specific issue between the liquidators and the leftists. But the liquidators had a more affirmative tendency to expand party activity and were undoubtedly the initiators of all the concrete moves, even it the leftists did not specifically oppose them. By the middle of 1923 the “Goose Caucus” of the leftists had been demolished and any opposition from its few recalcitrant members wouldn’t have counted for much anyhow.
As far as I know, all the liquidators went along with the various decisions that lead upto the organization of the July 3 convention at Chicago. The differences within their camp became serious, and took definite form, only after the catastrophe of the July 3 affair.
Yours truly,
James P. Cannon
*************
Markin comment on James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party from the American Left History blog:
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.
At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American Socialist Revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the 1930’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles here this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.
As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism (click see all my reviews for reviews of all of these books). I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.
*************
Origins of the Labor Party Policy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Fourth International, Vol.17 No.1, Winter 1956, pp.25-26.
Original bound volumes of Fourth International and microfilm provided by the NYU Tamiment Labor Libraries.
Transcription & Mark-up: Andrew Pollack/Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 17, 1955
Dear Sir:
I think there is enough evidence to establish beyond dispute that the initiative for a positive attitude toward a prospective labor party in the United States came from Moscow. Just when the decision was first made by the Comintern, and the specific steps taken by the American party in the process of putting the pdlicy into effect, are not so easy to sort out.
My own recollections are far from clear. It had been my impression that the definitive decision of the Comintern on this question was made only at the time of the Fourth Congress at the end of 1922. I think the statement of the Foster-Cannon group, published in the Daily Worker of November 26, 1924 to the effect that the Comintern’s approval was obtained“ mainlyon the strengthof the information supplied to the Comintern by our delegates” – was intended to refer to the discussions in Moscow at the time of the Fourth Congress, and not to an earlier discussion.
It may be that the earlier 1922 American delegation – Bedacht and Katterfeld – discussed the question at the Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern in February-March, 1922, and that some sort of directive issued from the discussion. But I have no recollection of it.
I don’t remember the labor party statement issued by the American party in May 1922. Prior to my departure for Moscow about the middle of that month, I have remembered only general talk and general sympathy for the idea “in principle” but no concrete action to implement it. But now that you refresh my memory, I would say you are probably correct in your guess that the meeting of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in February 1922 stimulated the first action by the party.
I recall a conversationon the subject with Lovestone, initiatedby him. By party standards at that time, we were both “right wingers,” looking for all possible openings for the party to break out of its isolation and become a factor in American life. That was probably his reason for approaching me first.
Lovestone said the party should try to get into this CPPA movement some way or other. I was sympathetic to the idea, although it had not occurred to me until he brought it up. I don’t recall anything concrete being done before I left far Moscow. But reconstructing the evolution of the question, it is probably safe to assume that Lovestone continued to press his idea after my departure and that his persistence contributed, first to the affirmative statement on the labor party question published in the Worker, June 24, 1922 and, later, to the decision to send Ruthenberg to the second conference of the CPPA in Cleveland, in December 1922.
In my memory, therefore, Lovestone stands out as the initiator of the first positive proposal to approach this CPPA movement, which led, in a chain of circumstances, to the Chicago Farmer-Labor convention of July 1923, arranged by a collaboration of the Workers Party with the Fitzpatrick leadership of the Chicago Federation of Labor.
* * *
It must be remembered, however, that in the meantime Pepper had become a factor in the affairs of the American CP – and what a factor! – and that he undoubtedly was the driving force in all the labor party experiments and adventures thereafter. When he entered the situation, the production of ideas and decisions was put on a whirling conveyor and things really moved. I recall now that toward the end of 1922, or early in the next year, before he had his feet wet in the country, he wrote a pamphlet on the problem of the labor party in America. The pamphlet was widely distributed in 1923 as an exposition of the party’s position.
I was outside all these developments during my long stay in Moscow, and again for many months on my tour after my return. For that reason, I had no direct part in the decisions, but I was involved in them by a general sympathy with every move in an outward direction, even at the risk of opportunist errors to which, I must admit, I was not very sensitive at that time.
I do not recall that the question of the labor party was a specific issue between the liquidators and the leftists. But the liquidators had a more affirmative tendency to expand party activity and were undoubtedly the initiators of all the concrete moves, even it the leftists did not specifically oppose them. By the middle of 1923 the “Goose Caucus” of the leftists had been demolished and any opposition from its few recalcitrant members wouldn’t have counted for much anyhow.
As far as I know, all the liquidators went along with the various decisions that lead upto the organization of the July 3 convention at Chicago. The differences within their camp became serious, and took definite form, only after the catastrophe of the July 3 affair.
Yours truly,
James P. Cannon
From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin- From “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)-An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success
From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin- From “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)-
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
*******
With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
***********
An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success
It is, I think, almost universally realised at present that the Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party, or without the fullest and unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class, that is, from all thinking, honest, devoted and influential elements in it, capable of leading the backward strata or carrying the latter along with them.
The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will.
I repeat: the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie.
This is often dwelt on. However, not nearly enough thought is given to what it means, and under what conditions it is possible. Would it not be better if the salutations addressed to the Soviets and the Bolsheviks were more frequently accompanied by a profound analysis of the reasons why the Bolsheviks have been able to build up the discipline needed by the revolutionary proletariat?
As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.
The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.
The fact that, in 1917-20, Bolshevism was able, under unprecedentedly difficult conditions, to build up and successfully maintain the strictest centralisation and iron discipline was due simply to a number of historical peculiarities of Russia.
On the one hand, Bolshevism arose in 1903 on a very firm foundation of Marxist theory. The correctness of this revolutionary theory, and of it alone, has been proved, not only by world experience throughout the nineteenth century, but especially by the experience of the seekings and vacillations, the errors and disappointments of revolutionary thought in Russia. For about half a century—approximately from the forties to the nineties of the last century—progressive thought in Russia, oppressed by a most brutal and reactionary tsarism, sought eagerly for a correct revolutionary theory, and followed with the utmost diligence and thoroughness each and every "last word" in this sphere in Europe and America. Russia achieved Marxism—the only correct revolutionary theory—through the agony she experienced in the course of half a century of unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment. verification, and comparison with European experience. Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia, in the second half of the nineteenth century, acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed.
On the other hand, Bolshevism, which had arisen on this granite foundation of theory, went through fifteen years of practical history (1903-17) unequalled anywhere in the world in its wealth of experience. During those fifteen years, no other country knew anything even approximating to that revolutionary experience, that rapid and varied succession of different forms of the movement—legal and illegal, peaceful and stormy, underground and open, local circles and mass movements, and parliamentary and terrorist forms. In no other country has there been concentrated, in so brief a period, such a wealth of forms, shades, and methods of struggle of all classes of modern society, a struggle which, owing to the backwardness of the country and the severity of the tsarist yoke, matured with exceptional rapidity, and assimilated most eagerly and successfully the appropriate "last word" of American and European political experience.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
*******
With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
***********
An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks’ Success
It is, I think, almost universally realised at present that the Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party, or without the fullest and unreserved support from the entire mass of the working class, that is, from all thinking, honest, devoted and influential elements in it, capable of leading the backward strata or carrying the latter along with them.
The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will.
I repeat: the experience of the victorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline of the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie.
This is often dwelt on. However, not nearly enough thought is given to what it means, and under what conditions it is possible. Would it not be better if the salutations addressed to the Soviets and the Bolsheviks were more frequently accompanied by a profound analysis of the reasons why the Bolsheviks have been able to build up the discipline needed by the revolutionary proletariat?
As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903. Only the history of Bolshevism during the entire period of its existence can satisfactorily explain why it has been able to build up and maintain, under most difficult conditions, the iron discipline needed for the victory of the proletariat.
The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced? First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. Without these conditions, discipline in a revolutionary party really capable of being the party of the advanced class, whose mission it is to overthrow the bourgeoisie and transform the whole of society, cannot be achieved. Without these conditions, all attempts to establish discipline inevitably fall flat and end up in phrasemongering and clowning. On the other hand, these conditions cannot emerge at once. They are created only by prolonged effort and hard-won experience. Their creation is facilitated by a correct revolutionary theory, which, in its turn, is not a dogma, but assumes final shape only in close connection with the practical activity of a truly mass and truly revolutionary movement.
The fact that, in 1917-20, Bolshevism was able, under unprecedentedly difficult conditions, to build up and successfully maintain the strictest centralisation and iron discipline was due simply to a number of historical peculiarities of Russia.
On the one hand, Bolshevism arose in 1903 on a very firm foundation of Marxist theory. The correctness of this revolutionary theory, and of it alone, has been proved, not only by world experience throughout the nineteenth century, but especially by the experience of the seekings and vacillations, the errors and disappointments of revolutionary thought in Russia. For about half a century—approximately from the forties to the nineties of the last century—progressive thought in Russia, oppressed by a most brutal and reactionary tsarism, sought eagerly for a correct revolutionary theory, and followed with the utmost diligence and thoroughness each and every "last word" in this sphere in Europe and America. Russia achieved Marxism—the only correct revolutionary theory—through the agony she experienced in the course of half a century of unparalleled torment and sacrifice, of unparalleled revolutionary heroism, incredible energy, devoted searching, study, practical trial, disappointment. verification, and comparison with European experience. Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia, in the second half of the nineteenth century, acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed.
On the other hand, Bolshevism, which had arisen on this granite foundation of theory, went through fifteen years of practical history (1903-17) unequalled anywhere in the world in its wealth of experience. During those fifteen years, no other country knew anything even approximating to that revolutionary experience, that rapid and varied succession of different forms of the movement—legal and illegal, peaceful and stormy, underground and open, local circles and mass movements, and parliamentary and terrorist forms. In no other country has there been concentrated, in so brief a period, such a wealth of forms, shades, and methods of struggle of all classes of modern society, a struggle which, owing to the backwardness of the country and the severity of the tsarist yoke, matured with exceptional rapidity, and assimilated most eagerly and successfully the appropriate "last word" of American and European political experience.
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From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Prescott Breslin’s War
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Inkspots performing I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire.
He was scared, scared silly, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Rugged hills and hollows born, Appalachia mountain Kentucky hard-scrabble farm born, fear hid under the rug, or somewhere else born he was still scared. He, Prescott Breslin, just weeks, maybe a couple of months if he counted it up, out of those hills and hollows, was scared because his unit, his semper fi 1st Division Marine Corps unit had just received orders to head out in the morning, head out west. And since he was sitting just then at a Camp Pendleton, California PX table munching coffee and cakes west could only mean the Pacific islands that dotted the way to Japan. Some units had already gone out, gone out quickly all through early 1942 and as 1943 approached all hell was breaking loose with men and material heading west, just like old time pioneer west if he had thought about it.
But sitting with that cup of black coffee (hell, nobody back home ever had it any other way besides who had milk or cream for such fixings, and black was fine anyway) and cruller donut (he had grown to love this donut business after a lifetime of Ma’s old patched-up bread pudding) he was not thinking about pioneer west stuff, or even, after he bit into the cruller, scared thoughts so much but about how life was funny. Not funny to laugh over but just the way the cards were dealt funny. It might have been the sugar, or it might have been the caffeine but his started to think about all the stuff that he hadn’t done, and some stuff he had done, to keep the thoughts of the days ahead in check.
While he was thinking an odd-thought or two somebody at another table had gotten up to put some nickels in the jukebox and he, still thinking about life’s ups and downs, could hear the strains of I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire and that song got him kind of choked up at first. He then laughed, not a funny laugh, as he listened to the lyrics and thought that he sure didn’t want to, and hadn’t, set the world on fire. And hadn’t, getting into the heart of the song, a girl left behind to think of him while he was away blasting Pacific islands to smithereens.
Sure, he had had a few nibbles, a couple of girls from Prestonsburg and Hazard but nothing serious, nothing serious because from about age fourteen all the girls where he came from got all moony over being married and, to get from under their own families, start families of their own. He had wanted no part of that, not at twenty, no way. But he got just a little melancholy when he thought that he might never get married. Never have a family of his own to take care of him in his old age, if he had an old age.
But mainly he thought about the things he did had done over the past few
years and wished that he had had more time to do. Hell, it wasn’t nothing big, nothing to set the world on fire, but it was his life. His life once he knew the score, knew the hard-scrabble Kentuck farm score, and that if he didn’t want nothing but hard calloused hands and looking eighty at forty (like his pa and grandpa) he had better hit the highway. Since there were twelve kids at home, and only enough to feed about eight right nobody (except Ma, he later, much too much later, found out) missed him when he set out for Lexington one dark night. He got a ride from Colonel Eddie (not really a colonel but everybody with two bucks for a genuine certificate called himself that) the local long-haul driver who was always looking for company on his runs west, and knew how to keep quiet when a guy asked him to about stuff like where he was going, and why.
And he also thought how once he got to Lexington, after a few crop-picking and dish-washing jobs to keep him alive in the city, he met up with a couple of guys at Lucy’s Diner who wanted form a band and make some money playing what they called the coal –dust circuit. He played a fair guitar, had a decent voice, and best of all he knew all the old-timey songs that the hills and hollows folks wanted to hear. Stuff like Tom Doulas, Ommie Wise, and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies.
A couple of weeks later with some practice, a small stake and lots of dreams, they hit the back road Saturday places where the locals held their weekly barn dances (complete with plenty of moonshine to liven things up). Sometimes they passed the hat, sometimes when there was no dough they just took a couple of days room and board. That lasted for about a year or so, maybe a little bit more, but then times got so back about 1936 or 37 that three guys just couldn’t make it on bread and butter, literally. So he got off the road, headed back home, and started to work in Mr. Peabody’s coal mines (not every mine was owned by the Peabody Coal Company as he was at pains to inform his fellow platoon members when they had asked what he did in the “real world” but that is what everybody called it when a guy went into the mines).
There he was stuck in the mines, the damn black-lung mines (his mother cried every time he came home at night looking, well, looking like a damn nigra, and coughing the dust out half the night) when the news of the Japs hitting Pearl came over the radio and guys, guys like him all over the country, were lined up three, maybe more, deep, to enlist. Funny though he could, having worked his way up a little in the mines, have gotten a vital industries draft deferral and been sitting right then in the Prestonsburg hotel with some pretty town girl drinking real store-bought liquor and working up his courage to ask her up into his room. But no, on December 9, 1941 he had gone to Prestonsburg and enlisted in the Marines right on the dotted line. And he never looked back.
Scared, scared to death, or not, sitting at that table having a second cruller and a third cup of mud Private First Class Prescott Breslin thought it over for a minute. He then said to himself, hell, between shoveling coal for Mr. Peabody forever and fighting the damn Japs I’ll take the Japs. And that made him just a little less scared as someone put another nickel in the jukebox to play If I Didn’t Care.
He was scared, scared silly, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Rugged hills and hollows born, Appalachia mountain Kentucky hard-scrabble farm born, fear hid under the rug, or somewhere else born he was still scared. He, Prescott Breslin, just weeks, maybe a couple of months if he counted it up, out of those hills and hollows, was scared because his unit, his semper fi 1st Division Marine Corps unit had just received orders to head out in the morning, head out west. And since he was sitting just then at a Camp Pendleton, California PX table munching coffee and cakes west could only mean the Pacific islands that dotted the way to Japan. Some units had already gone out, gone out quickly all through early 1942 and as 1943 approached all hell was breaking loose with men and material heading west, just like old time pioneer west if he had thought about it.
But sitting with that cup of black coffee (hell, nobody back home ever had it any other way besides who had milk or cream for such fixings, and black was fine anyway) and cruller donut (he had grown to love this donut business after a lifetime of Ma’s old patched-up bread pudding) he was not thinking about pioneer west stuff, or even, after he bit into the cruller, scared thoughts so much but about how life was funny. Not funny to laugh over but just the way the cards were dealt funny. It might have been the sugar, or it might have been the caffeine but his started to think about all the stuff that he hadn’t done, and some stuff he had done, to keep the thoughts of the days ahead in check.
While he was thinking an odd-thought or two somebody at another table had gotten up to put some nickels in the jukebox and he, still thinking about life’s ups and downs, could hear the strains of I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire and that song got him kind of choked up at first. He then laughed, not a funny laugh, as he listened to the lyrics and thought that he sure didn’t want to, and hadn’t, set the world on fire. And hadn’t, getting into the heart of the song, a girl left behind to think of him while he was away blasting Pacific islands to smithereens.
Sure, he had had a few nibbles, a couple of girls from Prestonsburg and Hazard but nothing serious, nothing serious because from about age fourteen all the girls where he came from got all moony over being married and, to get from under their own families, start families of their own. He had wanted no part of that, not at twenty, no way. But he got just a little melancholy when he thought that he might never get married. Never have a family of his own to take care of him in his old age, if he had an old age.
But mainly he thought about the things he did had done over the past few
years and wished that he had had more time to do. Hell, it wasn’t nothing big, nothing to set the world on fire, but it was his life. His life once he knew the score, knew the hard-scrabble Kentuck farm score, and that if he didn’t want nothing but hard calloused hands and looking eighty at forty (like his pa and grandpa) he had better hit the highway. Since there were twelve kids at home, and only enough to feed about eight right nobody (except Ma, he later, much too much later, found out) missed him when he set out for Lexington one dark night. He got a ride from Colonel Eddie (not really a colonel but everybody with two bucks for a genuine certificate called himself that) the local long-haul driver who was always looking for company on his runs west, and knew how to keep quiet when a guy asked him to about stuff like where he was going, and why.
And he also thought how once he got to Lexington, after a few crop-picking and dish-washing jobs to keep him alive in the city, he met up with a couple of guys at Lucy’s Diner who wanted form a band and make some money playing what they called the coal –dust circuit. He played a fair guitar, had a decent voice, and best of all he knew all the old-timey songs that the hills and hollows folks wanted to hear. Stuff like Tom Doulas, Ommie Wise, and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies.
A couple of weeks later with some practice, a small stake and lots of dreams, they hit the back road Saturday places where the locals held their weekly barn dances (complete with plenty of moonshine to liven things up). Sometimes they passed the hat, sometimes when there was no dough they just took a couple of days room and board. That lasted for about a year or so, maybe a little bit more, but then times got so back about 1936 or 37 that three guys just couldn’t make it on bread and butter, literally. So he got off the road, headed back home, and started to work in Mr. Peabody’s coal mines (not every mine was owned by the Peabody Coal Company as he was at pains to inform his fellow platoon members when they had asked what he did in the “real world” but that is what everybody called it when a guy went into the mines).
There he was stuck in the mines, the damn black-lung mines (his mother cried every time he came home at night looking, well, looking like a damn nigra, and coughing the dust out half the night) when the news of the Japs hitting Pearl came over the radio and guys, guys like him all over the country, were lined up three, maybe more, deep, to enlist. Funny though he could, having worked his way up a little in the mines, have gotten a vital industries draft deferral and been sitting right then in the Prestonsburg hotel with some pretty town girl drinking real store-bought liquor and working up his courage to ask her up into his room. But no, on December 9, 1941 he had gone to Prestonsburg and enlisted in the Marines right on the dotted line. And he never looked back.
Scared, scared to death, or not, sitting at that table having a second cruller and a third cup of mud Private First Class Prescott Breslin thought it over for a minute. He then said to himself, hell, between shoveling coal for Mr. Peabody forever and fighting the damn Japs I’ll take the Japs. And that made him just a little less scared as someone put another nickel in the jukebox to play If I Didn’t Care.
Monday, August 06, 2012
From The Archives Of The American And International Left –From The International Bolshevik Tendency-
Click on the headline to link to the International Bolshevik Tendency website.
Markin comment:
This archival issue of the International Bolshevik Tendency journal may be of some historical interest for old "new leftists,” perhaps, as well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of this and other periodicals from other leftist organizations, past and present, periodically throughout the year.
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
Markin comment:
This archival issue of the International Bolshevik Tendency journal may be of some historical interest for old "new leftists,” perhaps, as well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of this and other periodicals from other leftist organizations, past and present, periodically throughout the year.
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
From The Archives Of The American And International Left
Click on the headline to link to the journal issue described above via the International Bolshevik Tendency website by clicking on Marxist Archives and then Spartacist issues 1-30. Yes,I know two clicks means you really, really want to read this stuff. And guess what, you do.
Markin comment:
This archival issue of the Spartacist journal may be of some historical interest for old "new leftists,” perhaps, as well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Spartacist and other periodicals from other leftist organizations, past and present, periodically throughout the year.
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
Markin comment:
This archival issue of the Spartacist journal may be of some historical interest for old "new leftists,” perhaps, as well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social and political questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Spartacist and other periodicals from other leftist organizations, past and present, periodically throughout the year.
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-The Magdalene Sisters: Women’s Oppression and the Irish Clericalist State (2003)
Click on the headline to link to the article decribed above
Markin comment:
The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Women and Revolution during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
Markin comment:
The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Women and Revolution during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
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