From The Marxist Archives-For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg!

Workers Vanguard No. 928	16 January 2009

For the Communism of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg!

In the tradition of the early Communist International, this month we commemorate the “Three L’s”: Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, who died on 21 January 1924, and revolutionary Marxists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were assassinated 90 years ago on 15 January 1919 by the reactionary Freikorps as part of the Social Democratic government’s suppression of the Spartakist uprising. Lenin’s determined struggle to forge a revolutionary vanguard party was key to the victory of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. In contrast, the German Communist Party was founded only over New Year’s 1919—two weeks before its principal cadres were murdered—with slim roots within the proletariat. The murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht deprived the young, inexperienced Communist Party of its authoritative revolutionary leadership, helping to shipwreck the 1918-19 German Revolution and weakening the party when it faced later upheavals, such as the aborted 1923 German Revolution.

We reprint below a 13 January 1945 article from the Militant, newspaper of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, titled: “Liebknecht and Luxemburg—Heroic Martyrs in the Workers Struggle for Socialism.” The mention of the burial of the Third International at the end of the article refers to its formal dissolution by Stalin in 1943; it had become an agency for promoting the Stalinist bureaucracy’s class-collaborationist treachery long before.

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On January 15, 1919—twenty five years ago—the German proletariat was robbed of two of its greatest revolutionary fighters, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. They were assassinated in the streets of Berlin by Junker hirelings of the Social-Democracy. But neither the ideas nor the tradition of personal heroism bequeathed by these Marxists of the First World War could be slain. Their names will be inscribed in flaming letters when the mighty German working class again rises against its oppressors to find the path to peace and security under the red banner of international socialism.

Intransigent opponents of capitalist war, both Liebknecht and Luxemburg fought persecution and imprisonment to lead the workers of Germany in the struggle for socialist liberation. Son of the founder of the German Social-Democracy, Karl Liebknecht first proved his stature as early as 1906 when he delivered a series of lectures against capitalist militarism to a Socialist Youth organization. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for their subsequent publication.

When World War I broke out, Liebknecht was a member of the Reichstag. The Social-Democratic party to which he belonged opportunistically swung over to support of the war. But Liebknecht adhered to the principles of Marxism. At the December 2, 1914 session he broke the discipline of the Social-Democratic Reichstag group and voted against war credits, thereby taking his place amongst the leaders of international socialism. With Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring, he founded “Die Internationale,” first illegal organ of the German revolutionists.

At the magnificent May Day demonstration he organized in Berlin in 1916, Liebknecht denounced the imperialists and called upon the German working class to intensify the fight against its main enemy—the capitalist class—at home. He was arrested, secretly tried, and sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment.

“Red Rosa”

Rosa Luxemburg, fiery orator, gifted writer, theoretician and activist, conquered physical frailty to become one of the most eminent of revolutionists. Born in Czarist Poland, a political refugee at the age of 18, she devoted all her tremendous talents to the cause of socialism. She secured German citizenship and fought the growing reformist tendencies and the revision of Marxism promoted by the Bernsteinists in the German Social-Democracy. Understanding the problems and strategy of the workers’ movement, she saw in the Russian revolution of 1905 the vitality and strength of the masses. She met the outbreak of war in 1914 by calling upon the German workers to refuse to shoot down their French brothers. Like Liebknecht, she was imprisoned.

Tireless and undaunted, Rosa was able even in prison to smuggle out articles for “Die Internationale.” She also wrote the famous “Junius” pamphlet, circulated throughout Germany, explaining that the victory of either side—German or Allied—would necessarily lead to another world slaughter, and urging the masses to end the scourge of war by taking power from the plutocrats and organizing a workers’ republic.

In prison Rosa received the great news of the Russian Revolution. She burned with indignation over the Brest-Litovsk peace forced by Germany upon the Bolsheviks. She accused the pro-war “socialists” of responsibility for this crime because of their degrading submission to the Junkers. The Russian Revolution deeply inspired her. Enemies of the October Revolution have tried to construe her criticism of the Bolsheviks as an opposition to the Russian Revolution. This is false. It was as one of them that she criticized some of their tactics.

In 1918 came the revolt of the Kiel sailors and soldiers of Berlin. One of the very first acts of the revolutionary workers and soldiers was to throw open the prison gates to free Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The Social-Democratic traitors strove to persuade the Kaiser to remain. Failing to save the monarchy, hating and fearing Bolshevism above everything else, they then strained all their efforts to establish a bourgeois republic and prevent the workers from taking power. The Social-Democracy particularly feared the Spartakus Bund, organized in 1918 by Liebknecht and Luxemburg, which came out as an independent party with the slogan “All Power to the Workers’ Councils.”

Organize for Power

Conscious of their tasks and the pressure of time, Liebknecht and Luxemburg began to organize the German Communist Party with haste. Rosa edited “Rote Fahne” (Red Banner) and wrote the program for the party in complete agreement with the program of Lenin and Trotsky. But events moved too rapidly. The advanced workers were pressing forward. The German Communist Party, just emerging from the Spartakus group, was still too weak to take power.

The leadership of the Social-Democracy, holding the reins of government, did everything in its power to crush the revolution in its infancy. Leaflets were circulated demanding the death of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Large rewards were offered for their capture. On Jan. 15, 1919, they were arrested and murdered.

In his call for the formation of the Third International to carry out the socialist tasks betrayed by the Social-Democracy (April 23, 1917), Lenin singled out for praise the handful of internationalists who upheld the banner of Marxism through the storm of the First World War.

“The most outstanding representatives of this trend in Germany,” wrote Lenin, “is the Spartakus Group or the Group of the International to which Karl Liebknecht belongs. Karl Liebknecht is one of the most celebrated representatives of this trend and of the new and genuine proletarian international...Liebknecht alone represents socialism, the proletarian cause, the proletarian revolution. All the rest of German Social-Democracy, to quote the apt words of Rosa Luxemburg (also a member and one of the leaders of the Spartakus Group) is a ‘stinking corpse’.” After their martyrdom Lenin acclaimed Liebknecht and Luxemburg as “the best representatives of the Third International.”

Last year the Third International which had likewise degenerated into “a stinking corpse” was formally buried by its executioner, the counterrevolutionary Stalin. Today only the Fourth International founded by Trotsky carries on the struggle for international socialism in the revolutionary spirit of Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg.

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Leon Trotsky

Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg!

(June 1932)

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Written: June 28, 1932.
First Published: The Militant [New York], August 6 and 13, 1932.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2005. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

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Stalin’s article, Some Questions Concerning the History of Bolshevism, reached me after much delay. After receiving it, for a long time I could not force myself to read it, for such literature sticks in one’s throat like sawdust or mashed bristles. But still, having finally read it, I came to the conclusion that one cannot ignore this performance, if only because there is included in it a vile and barefaced calumny about Rosa Luxemburg. This great revolutionist is enrolled by Stalin into the camp of centrism! He proves – not proves, of course, but asserts – that Bolshevism from the day of its inception held to the line of a split with the Kautsky center, while Rosa Luxemburg during that time sustained Kautsky from the left. I quote his own words: “... long before the war, approximately since 1903-04, when the Bolshevik group in Russia took shape and when the Left in the German Social Democracy first raised their voice, Lenin pursued a line toward a rupture, toward a split with the opportunists both here, in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and over there, in the Second International, particularly in the German Social Democratic Party.” That this, however, could not be achieved was due entirely to the fact that “the Left Social Democrats in the Second International, and above all in the German Social Democratic Party, were a weak and powerless group ... and afraid even to pronounce the word ‘rupture,’ ‘split.’”

To put forward such an assertion, one must be absolutely ignorant of the history of one’s own party, and first of all, of Lenin’s ideological course. There is not a single word of truth in Stalin’s point of departure. In 1903-04, Lenin was, indeed, an irreconcilable foe of opportunism in the German Social Democracy. But he considered as opportunism only the revisionist tendency which was led theoretically by Bernstein.
Kautsky at the time was to be found fighting against Bernstein. Lenin considered Kautsky as his teacher and stressed this everywhere he could. In Lenin’s work of that period and for a number of years following, one does not find even a trace of criticism in principle directed against the Bebel-Kautsky tendency. Instead one finds a series of declarations to the effect that Bolshevism is not some sort of an independent tendency but is only a translation into the language of Russian conditions of the tendency of Bebel-Kautsky. Here is what Lenin wrote in his famous pamphlet, Two Tactics, in the middle of 1905: “When and where did I ever call the revolutionism of Bebel and Kautsky ‘opportunism’? ... When and where have there been brought to light differences between me, on the one hand, and Bebel and Kautsky on the other? ... The complete unanimity of international revolutionary Social Democracy on all major questions of program and tactics is a most incontrovertible fact” [Collected Works, Volume 9, July 1905]. Lenin’s words are so clear, precise, and categorical as to entirely exhaust the question.
A year and a half later, on December 7, 1906, Lenin wrote in the article The Crisis of Menshevism: “... from the beginning we declared (see One Step Forward, Two Steps Back): We are not creating a special ‘Bolshevik’ tendency; always and everywhere we merely uphold the point of view of revolutionary Social Democracy. And right up to the social revolution there will inevitably always be an opportunist wing and a revolutionary wing of Social Democracy” [ibid., Volume 11, December 7, 1906].
Speaking of Menshevism as the opportunistic wing of the Social Democracy, Lenin compared the Mensheviks not with Kautskyism but with revisionism. Moreover he looked upon Bolshevism as the Russian form of Kautskyism, which in his eyes was in that period identical with Marxism. The passage we have just quoted shows, incidentally, that Lenin did not at all stand absolutely for a split with the opportunists; he not only admitted but also considered “inevitable” the existence of the revisionists in the Social Democracy right up to the social revolution.
Two weeks later, on December 20, 1906, Lenin greeted enthusiastically Kautsky’s answer to Plekhanov’s questionnaire on the character of the Russian revolution: “He has fully confirmed our contention that we are defending the position of revolutionary Social Democracy against opportunism, and not creating any ‘peculiar’ Bolshevik tendency ...” [The Proletariat and Its Ally in the Russian Revolution, ibid., Volume 11, December 10, 1906].
Within these limits, I trust, the question is absolutely clear. According to Stalin, Lenin, even from 1903, had demanded a break in Germany with the opportunists, not only of the right wing (Bernstein) but also of the left (Kautsky). Whereas in December 1906, Lenin as we see was proudly pointing out to Plekhanov and the Mensheviks that the tendency of Kautsky in Germany and the tendency of Bolshevism in Russia were – identical. Such is part one of Stalin’s excursion into the ideological history of Bolshevism. Our investigator’s scrupulousness and his knowledge rest on the same plane!
Directly after his assertion regarding 1903-04, Stalin makes a leap to 1916 and refers to Lenin’s sharp criticism of the war pamphlet by Junius, i.e., Rosa Luxemburg. To be sure, in that period Lenin had already declared war to the finish against Kautskyism, having drawn from his criticism all the necessary organizational conclusions. It is not to be denied that Rosa Luxemburg did not pose the question of the struggle against centrism with the requisite completeness – in this Lenin’s position was entirely superior. But between October 1916, when Lenin wrote about the Junius pamphlet, and 1903, when Bolshevism had its inception, there is a lapse of thirteen years; in the course of the major part of this period Rosa Luxemburg was to be found in opposition to the Kautsky and Bebel Central Committee, and her fight against the formal, pedantic, and rotten-at-the-core “radicalism” of Kautsky took on an ever increasingly sharp character.
Lenin did not participate in this fight and did not support Rosa Luxemburg up to 1914. Passionately absorbed in Russian affairs, he preserved extreme caution in international matters. In Lenin’s eyes Bebel and Kautsky stood immeasurably higher as revolutionists than in the eyes of Rosa Luxemburg, who observed them at closer range, in action, and who was much more directly subjected to the atmosphere of German politics.
The capitulation of German Social Democracy on August 4, 1914, was entirely unexpected by Lenin. It is well known that the issue of the Vorwärts with the patriotic declaration of the Social Democratic faction was taken by Lenin to be a forgery by the German general staff. Only after he was absolutely convinced of the awful truth did he subject to revision his evaluation of the basic tendencies of the German Social Democracy, and while so doing he performed that task in the Leninist manner, i.e., he finished it off once for all.
On October 27, 1914, Lenin wrote to A. Shlyapnikov: “I hate and despise Kautsky now more than anyone, with his vile, dirty, self-satisfied hypocrisy ... Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has the ‘subservience of a theoretician’ – servility, in plainer language, servility to the majority of the party, to opportunism” (Leninist Anthology, Volume 2, p.200, my emphasis) [ibid., Volume 35, October 27, 1914].
Were there no other documents – and there are hundreds – these few lines alone could unmistakably clarify the history of the question. Lenin deemed it necessary at the end of 1914 to inform one of his colleagues closest to him at the time that “now,” at the present moment, today, in contradistinction to the past, he “hates and despises” Kautsky. The sharpness of the phrase is an unmistakable: indication of the extent to which Kautsky betrayed Lenin’s hopes and expectations. No less vivid is the second phrase, “Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote, long ago, that Kautsky has the ‘subservience of a theoretician.’ ...” Lenin hastens here to recognize that “verity” which he did not see formerly, or which, at least, he did not recognize fully on Rosa Luxemburg’s side.
Such are the chief chronological guideposts of the questions, which are at the same time important guideposts of Lenin’s political biography. The fact is indubitable that his ideological orbit is represented by a continually rising curve. But this only means that Lenin was not born Lenin full-fledged, as he is pictured by the slobbering daubers of the “divine,” but that he made himself Lenin. Lenin ever extended his horizons, he learned from others and daily drew himself to a higher plane than was his own yesterday. In this perseverance, in this stubborn resolution of a continual spiritual growth over his own self did his heroic spirit find its expression. If Lenin in 1903 had understood and formulated everything that was required for the coming times, then the remainder of his life would have consisted only of reiterations. In reality this was not at all the case. Stalin simply stamps the Stalinist imprint on Lenin and coins him into the petty small change of numbered adages.
In Rosa Luxemburg’s struggle against Kautsky, especially in 1910-14, an important place was occupied by the questions of war, militarism, and pacifism. Kautsky defended the reformist program: limitations of armaments, international court, etc. Rosa Luxemburg fought decisively against this program as illusory. On this question Lenin was in some doubt, but at a certain period he stood closer to Kautsky than to Rosa Luxemburg. From conversations at the time with Lenin I recall that the following argument of Kautsky made a great impression upon him: just as in domestic questions, reforms are products of the revolutionary class struggle, so in international relationships it is possible to fight for and to gain certain guarantees ("reforms") by means of the international class struggle. Lenin considered it entirely possible to support this position of Kautsky, provided that he, after the polemic with Rosa Luxemburg, turned upon the right-wingers (Noske and Co.). I do not undertake now to say from memory to what extent this circle of ideas found its expression in Lenin’s articles; the question would require a particularly careful analysis. Neither can I take upon myself to assert from memory how soon Lenin’s doubts on this question were settled. In any case they found their expression not only in conversations but also in correspondence. One of these letters is in the possession of Karl Radek.
I deem it necessary to supply on this question evidence as a witness in order to attempt in this manner to save an exceptionally valuable document for the theoretical biography of Lenin. In the autumn of 1926, at the time of our collective work over the platform of the Left Opposition, Radek showed Kamenev, Zinoviev, and me – probably also other comrades as well – a letter of Lenin to him (1911?) which consisted of a defense of Kautsky’s position against the criticism of the German Lefts. In accordance with the regulation passed by the Central Committee, Radek, like all others, should have delivered this letter to the Lenin Institute. But fearful lest it be hidden, if not destroyed, in the Stalinist factory of fabrications, Radek decided to preserve the letter till some more opportune time. One cannot deny that there was some foundation to Radek’s attitude. At present, however, Radek himself has – though not very responsible – still quite an active part in the work of producing political forgeries. Suffice it to recall that Radek, who in distinction to Stalin is acquainted with the history of Marxism, and who, at any rate, knows this letter of Lenin, found it possible to make a public statement of his solidarity with the insolent evaluation placed by Stalin on Rosa Luxemburg. The circumstance that Radek acted thereupon under Yaroslavsky’s rod does not mitigate his guilt, for only despicable slaves can renounce the principles of Marxism in the name of the principles of the rod.
However the matter we are concerned with relates not to the personal characterization of Radek but to the fate of Lenin’s letter. What happened to it? Is Radek hiding it even now from the Lenin Institute? Hardly. Most probably, he entrusted it, where it should be entrusted, as a tangible proof of an intangible devotion. And what lay in store for the letter thereafter? Is it preserved in Stalin’s personal archives alongside with the documents that compromise his closest colleagues? Or is it destroyed as many other most precious documents of the party’s past have been destroyed?
In any case there cannot be even the shadow of a political reason for the concealment of a letter written two decades ago on a question that holds now only a historical interest. But it is precisely the historical value of the letter that is exceptionally great. It shows Lenin as he really was, and not as he is being re-created in their own semblance and image by the bureaucratic dunderheads, who pretend to infallibility. We ask, where is Lenin’s letter to Radek? Lenin’s letter must be where it belongs! Put it on the table of the party and of the Comintern!
If one were to take the disagreements between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg in their entirety, then historical correctness is unconditionally on Lenin’s side. But this does not exclude the fact that on certain questions and during definite periods Rosa Luxemburg was correct as against Lenin. In any case, the disagreements, despite their importance and at times their extreme sharpness, developed on the basis of revolutionary proletarian policies common to them both.
When Lenin, going back into the past, wrote in October 1919 (Greetings to Italian, French, and German Communists) that “... at the moment of taking power and establishing the Soviet republic, Bolshevism was united; it drew to itself all that was best in the tendencies of socialist thought akin to it ...” [ibid., Volume 30, October 10, 1919], I repeat, when Lenin wrote this he unquestionably had in mind also the tendency of Rosa Luxemburg, whose closest adherents, e.g., Marchlewsky, Dzerzhinsky, and others went working in the ranks of the Bolsheviks.
Lenin understood Rosa Luxemburg’s mistakes more profoundly than Stalin; but it was not accidental that Lenin once quoted the old couplet in relation to Luxemburg:

Although the eagles do swoop down and beneath the chickens fly, chickens with outspread wings never will soar amid clouds in the sky.

Precisely the case! Precisely the point! For this very reason Stalin should proceed with caution before employing his vicious mediocrity when the matter touches figures of such status as Rosa Luxemburg.

In his article A Contribution to the History of the Question of the Dictatorship (October 1920), Lenin, touching upon questions of the Soviet state and the dictatorship of the proletariat already posed by the 1905 revolution, wrote: “While such outstanding representatives of the revolutionary proletariat and of unfalsified Marxism as Rosa Luxemburg immediately realized the significance of this practical experience and made a critical analysis of it at meetings and in the press,” on the contrary, “... people of the type of the future ‘Kautskyites’ ... proved absolutely incapable of grasping the significance of this experience ...” [ibid., Volume 31, October 20, 1920]. In a few lines, Lenin fully pays the tribute of recognition to the historical significance of Rosa Luxemburg’s struggle against Kautsky – a struggle which Lenin himself had been far from immediately evaluating at its true worth. If to Stalin, the ally of Chiang Kai-shek, and the comrade-in-arms of Purcell, the theoretician of “the worker-peasant party,” of “the democratic dictatorship,” of “non-antagonizing the bourgeoisie,” etc. – if to him Rosa Luxemburg is the representative of centrism, to Lenin she is the representative of “unfalsified Marxism.” What this designation meant coming as it does from Lenin’s pen is clear to anyone who is even slightly acquainted with Lenin.
I take the occasion to point out here that in the notes to Lenin’s works there is among others the following said about Rosa Luxemburg: “During the florescence of Bernsteinian revisionism and later of ministerialism (Millerand), Luxemburg carried on against this tendency a decisive fight, taking her position in the left wing of the German party.... In 1907 she participated as a delegate of the SD of Poland and Lithuania in the London congress of the RSDLP, supporting the Bolshevik faction on all basic questions of the Russian revolution. From 1907, Luxemburg gave herself over entirely to work in Germany, taking a left-radical position and carrying on a fight against the center and the right wing ... Her participation in the January 1919 insurrection has made her name the banner of the proletarian revolution.”
Of course the author of these notes will in all probability tomorrow confess his sins and announce that in Lenin’s epoch he wrote in a benighted condition, and that he reached complete enlightenment only in the epoch of Stalin. At the present moment announcements of this sort – combinations of sycophancy, idiocy, and buffoonery – are made daily in the Moscow press. But they do not change the nature of things: What’s once set down in black and white, no ax will hack nor all your might. Yes, Rosa Luxemburg has become the banner of the proletarian revolution!
How and wherefore, however, did Stalin suddenly busy himself – at so belated a time – with the revision of the old Bolshevik evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg? As was the case with all his preceding theoretical abortions so with this latest one, and the most scandalous, the origin lies in the logic of his struggle against the theory of permanent revolution. In this “historical” article, Stalin once again allots the chief place to this theory. There is not a single new word in what he says. I have long ago answered all his arguments in my book The Permanent Revolution. From the historical viewpoint the question will be sufficiently clarified, I trust, in the second volume of The History of the Russian Revolution (The October Revolution), now on the press. In the present case the question of the permanent revolution concerns us only insofar as Stalin links it up with Rosa Luxemburg’s name. We shall presently see how the hapless theoretician has contrived to set up a murderous trap for himself.
After recapitulating the controversy between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks on the question of the motive forces of the Russian revolution and after masterfully compressing a series of mistakes into a few lines, which I am compelled to leave without an examination, Stalin writes: “What was the attitude of the German Left Social Democrats, of Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg, to this controversy? They invented a utopian and semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution ... Subsequently, this semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution was seized upon by Trotsky (in part by Martov) and turned into a weapon of struggle against Leninism.” Such is the unexpected history of the origin of the theory of the permanent revolution, in accordance with the latest historical researches of Stalin. But, alas, the investigator forgot to consult his own previous learned works. In 1925 this same Stalin had already expressed himself on this question in his polemic against Radek. Here is what he wrote then: “It is not true that the theory of the permanent revolution ... was put forward in 1905 by Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky. As a matter of fact this theory was put forward by Parvus and Trotsky.” This assertion may be consulted on page 185, Problems of Leninism, Russian edition, 1926. Let us hope that it obtains in all foreign editions.
So, in 1925, Stalin pronounced Rosa Luxemburg not guilty in the commission of such a cardinal sin as participating in the creation of the theory of the permanent revolution. “As a matter of fact, this theory was put forward by Parvus and Trotsky.” In 1931, we are informed by the identical Stalin that it was precisely “Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg ... who invented a Utopian and semi-Menshevik scheme of permanent revolution.” As for Trotsky he was innocent of creating the theory, it was only “seized upon” by him, and at the same time by ... Martov! Once again Stalin is caught with the goods. Perhaps he writes on questions of which he can make neither head nor tail. Or is he consciously shuffling marked cards in playing with the basic questions of Marxism? It is incorrect to pose this question as an alternative. As a matter of fact, both the one and the other are true. The Stalinist falsifications are conscious insofar as they are dictated at each given moment by entirely concrete personal interests. At the same time they are semi-conscious, insofar as his congenital ignorance places no impediments whatsoever to his theoretical propensities.
But facts remain facts. In his war against “the Trotskyist contraband,” Stalin has fallen foul of a new personal enemy, Rosa Luxemburg! He did not pause for a moment before lying about her and vilifying her; and moreover, before proceeding to put into circulation his giant doses of vulgarity and disloyalty, he did not even take the trouble of verifying what he himself had said on the same subject six years before.
The new variant of the history of the ideas of the permanent revolution was indicated first of all by an urge to provide a dish more spicy than all those preceding. It is needless to explain that Martov was dragged in by the hair for the sake of the greater piquancy of theoretical and historical cookery. Martov’s attitude to the theory and practice of the permanent revolution was one of unalterable antagonism, and in the old days he stressed more than once that Trotsky’s views on revolution were rejected equally by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. But it is not worthwhile to pause over this.
What is truly fatal is that there is not a single major question of the international proletarian revolution on which Stalin has failed to express two directly contradictory opinions. We all know that in April 1924, he conclusively demonstrated in Problems of Leninism the impossibility of building socialism in one country. In autumn, in a new edition of the book, he substituted in its place a proof – i.e., a bald proclamation – that the proletariat “can and must” build socialism in one country. The entire remainder of the text was left unchanged. On the question of the worker-peasant party, of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, the leadership of the October Revolution, on the national question, etc., etc., Stalin contrived to put forward, for a period of a few years, sometimes of a few months, opinions that were mutually exclusive. It would be incorrect to place the blame in everything on a poor memory. The matter reaches deeper here. Stalin completely lacks any method of scientific thinking, he has no criteria of principles. He approaches every question as if that question were born only today and stood apart from all other questions. Stalin contributes his judgments entirely depending upon whatever personal interest of his is uppermost and most urgent today. The contradictions that convict him are the direct vengeance for his vulgar empiricism. Rosa Luxemburg does not appear to him in the perspective of the German, Polish, and international workers’ movement of the last half-century. No, she is to him each time a new, and, besides, an isolated figure, regarding whom he is compelled in every new situation to ask himself anew, “Who goes there, friend or foe?” Unerring instinct has this time whispered to the theoretician of socialism in one country that the shade of Rosa Luxemburg is irreconcilably inimical to him. But this does not hinder the great shade from remaining the banner of the international proletarian revolution.
Rosa Luxemburg criticized very severely and fundamentally incorrectly the policies of the Bolsheviks in 1918 from her prison cell. But even in this, her most erroneous work, her eagle’s wings are to be seen. Here is her general evaluation of the October insurrection: “Everything that a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness, and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky, and the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which the Social Democracy of the West lacked were represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism.” Can this be the voice of centrism?
In the succeeding pages, Luxemburg subjects to severe criticism the policies of the Bolsheviks in the agrarian in the agrarian sphere, their slogan of national self-determination, and their rejection of formal democracy. In this criticism we might add, directed equally against Lenin and Trotsky, she makes no distinction whatever between their views; and Rosa Luxemburg knew how to read, understand, and seize upon shadings. It did not even fall into her head, for instance, to accuse me fact of the fact that by being in solidarity with Lenin on the agrarian question, I had changed my views on the peasantry. And moreover she knew these views very well since I had developed them in detail in 1909 in her Polish journal. Rosa Luxemburg ends her criticism with the demand, “in the policy of the Bolsheviks the essential must be distinguished from the unessential, the fundamental from the accidental.” The fundamental she considers to be the force of the action of the masses, the will to socialism. “In this,” she writes, “Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hütten, ‘I have dared!’”
Yes, Stalin has sufficient cause to hate Rosa Luxemburg. But all the more imperious therefore becomes our duty to shield Rosa’s memory from Stalin’s calumny that has been caught by the hired functionaries of both hemispheres, and to pass on this truly beautiful, heroic, and tragic image to the young generations of the proletariat in all its grandeur and inspirational force.

Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Crime Noir Night- When Stanley Kubrick Learned His Trade

DVD Review

Killer’s Kiss, directed by (and just about everything else except maybe janitor) Stanley Kubrick, United Artists, 1955

A while back in a feverish dream I started thinking, thinking in black and white thinking, about many of the crime noirfilms, some good, some bad, some with sweet femme fatales, others with very dangerous, watch out femme fatales, and you really better take my advice on that latter point, I had seen when I was kid growing up in the 1950s and was addicted to Saturday matinee double- features. That double-feature idea explains why when you pick up DVDs from this period they are all in the hour and one half range- you had to be home for supper, or else, and Ma glad to have you in some other place than underfoot on that afternoon to get a moment’ s breather drew the line, a line in the sand , at being late for supper and hence Hollywood took note, or that was how it was explained to me one time when I asked about the length of films from that period.

If you can believe this in that feverish dream I honed in on one of Stanley Kubrick’s early noir films, Killer’s Kiss, one that featured just an ordinary woman (although here with a somewhat exotic past) that I was too young to understand about back then, the why part of why femmes or just ordinarys drove guys crazy with their antics (I eventually figured it out, okay, let’s be honest, half figured it out). And the young woman (played by Irene Kane), a dime-a-dance worker in a shady Times Square seen better days walk-up dance hall run by a very, very shady gangster-ish older guy (played by Frank Silvera), was central to the plot-line. See what I mean by ordinary, ordinary just a working-class girl (not necessarily a working girl, what would a young kid know of working girls, in New York, or Adamsville back then), down on her uppers, trying in the hard-edged city to breathe a little without falling down further.

Seems that said gangster was smitten, very smitten by this blonde fluff, although for my money I would just let her go. (Of course that Solomonic judgment is based on a recent re-view of the film not back then, then I might have had a different feverish take on the matter). There are a million others around, especially in New Jack City and especially women down on their uppers, although not always blonde if that was that randy old gangster’s preferred hair color. Here is the ‘skinny’ though such are the effects that some women have on guys, even tough gangster guys. But see she had turned cold on him, especially when one been-on-the-ring-floor-just-one-too-many-times boxer (and convenient next door neighbor in their walk-up cold- water flat New York tenement world, played by Jamie Smith), paid some attention to her after a rough night of being pawed at by the gangster. Needless to say the world was not big enough for a small-time gangster, a small-time smitten very possessive gangster, and an ex-pug with eyes on the same woman.

That “tension” drove the plot unto the final battles on the lonely warehouse back streets of black and white 1950s New York.

Yeah, I know, not much of a plot, not something to throw in the crime noir classics archives. Agreed. Not like fall guy Robert Mitchum and gangster Kirk Douglas fighting it out over Jane Greer, who has them both looking over their shoulders worried about whether her love was worth a slug or two in the back , in the classic Out Of The Past. But hear me out. This is an early Stanley Kubrick film, almost a cinema school effort in fact, where he does all the heavy conceptual lifting (writer, director, editor, etc. and just maybe the janitor too). What is missing in plot line, dialogue, and that kind of thing that makes other films noir classics is made up for here by the feel of it.

The feel of 1950s black and white New York with its all-night eateries like something out of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawk (although the denizens of the places lack either the benign quality of that painting or the romantic Runyonesque New York wise guy style), its trashy back alleys (literally , although no reflection on that city’s rubbish collectors who have a massive job picking up after the nightfall of those eight million stories wedged into that lighted city), its seedy apartment buildings populated by the losers in the great post-World War II American dream night and by run-down back alley offices populated by assorted repo men, low-rent insurance adjusters, and failed dentists.

This was not jazz-etched, smoked-filled, coffee mug café Ginsberg/Kerouac mad poets and writers screaming out the new word in be-bop Greenwich Village/Soho New York, this was not Big Apple fixed-up, up-scale million/billion dollar New York, but the heart of white tee-shirt, cigarette pack rolled up a sleeve, jeans hitched up with a handy belt buckle just in case, engineer boots, holding some store front corner- boy New York, where things flared up just like that. Flared up and flooded the flowing Hudson and East Rivers with faces down. And that is how Stanley Kubrick learned his craft, used to great effect later in his film career-on the mean streets of New York.

***“You Are On The Bus Or Off The Bus”- The Transformation Of “Foul-Mouth” Phil Into “Far-Out” Phil- With Mad Hatter Writer Ken Kesey And His Merry Pranksters In Mind

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters

Peter Paul Markin comment:

Everybody, well everybody who checks things out here, or on other sites that I am associated with, knows that I am dedicated to swapping lies about the old days. The old days in this case being the 1960s, and more specifically the 1960s old time corner boy days in front of Salducci’s Pizza Parlor in North Adamsville, my growing-up working class hometown. And, of course, if one wants to swap lies about those old days, or any days, then one needs a, well, foil, or foils. Needless to say, via the “miracle” of the Internet, in its various manifestations, all one has to do is latch onto some search engine, type in “corner boys,” “North Adamsville,” or some such combinations and, like lemmings from the sea, our homeland the sea, every surviving corner boy with enough energy to lift his stubby little fingers will be on your screen before you can say, well, say, be-bop night.

Frankie Riley, our lord and chieftain was the first, although he has lost much speed in his pitch since the old days. I won’t bore you with the details of his “exploits.” You can fumble through the archives here for that. Nor will I speak of fast-talking Johnny Silver, except to point out that he is the culprit, there is no other way to put it, who started the sexual revolution. No, no the real one that started with “the pill” in the early 1960s and continues through to today with the struggle for women’s liberation, liberation from all kinds of second-class citizen stuff from jobs and wages to help with childcare and housework. No, Johnny started the AARP-version of the sexual revolution-old geezers looking for love, looking for love in all the wrong places, if you ask me but nobody is, asking that is. Those gripping tales can also be found in the archives here.

All of this, of course, is prelude to the real subject here. Phil Larkin’s transformation from corner boy “Foul-Mouth” Phil (and he really was, as he would tell you in that moment of candor that he is occasionally capable of) in early 1960s North Adamsville to “Far-Out” Phil on one of the ubiquitous Merry Prankster-inspired converted yellow brick road school buses that dotted the highways and by-ways of the American be-bop heading west night from about the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s (maybe a little earlier in the ‘70s). (For those too young to know, those who have forgotten, and those who have conveniently feigned forgetfulness just in case some statute of limitations has not run out I have placed a link above to a Wikipedia entry for the Merry Pranksters with this post.)

When last we hear from Phil he was heading to Pennsylvania to meet up with some doctoral program research addict whom he “met” on Facebook. That tale, ah, can also be found in the archives here. However, unlike these seemingly endless “haunting the Internet” schoolboy antics from guys old enough, well I am no snitch, so let’s say old enough to know better, looking for the fountain of youth, or whatever this Phil transformation story actually interests me. And so here it is. As usual I edited it lightly but it is Phil’s story, and I am pleased to say a good one.
*********

Phil Larkin here. Jesus, The Scribe [Markin: Like I warned the other guys, Phil, watch on that scribe, or The Scribe thing] actually liked this idea of me telling about riding the, what did he call it, oh ya, the yellow brick road bus, back in my prankster days [Markin: Just to keep things straight, since Phil still likes to play a little rough with the truth, not the famous Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters bus made famous through Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but certainly inspired by it]. I barely got by with my stories about real stuff that people want to read like the trials and tribulations of an older guy trying to “hook-up” with the ladies on what amounted to a sexless sex site and my rendezvous with Amy (and she is not a research addict, Markin, no way, although she is an addict another way but you don’t want to hear that real stuff story), my lovely sociology doctoral student down at Penn State (Go, Nittany Lions!). But he is all over, all f—king over, some little bit of “cultural history” stuff that nobody, except AARP-guys (and dolls) would do anything but yawn over. And those AARP-guys (and dolls) are too busy trying to “hook-up,” to grab some sex before is too late to spent more than two seconds on ancient history. So this one is strictly for The, oops, Peter Paul Markin.

What got the whole memory lane thing started was that somewhere Markin picked up, probably second-hand off of Amazon if I know him, a CD from Time-Life Music entitled something like Shakin’ It Up: 1966. Now the music on the compilation, the music in the post-British invasion, heart of acid rock night, was strictly for laughs. But the artwork on the cover (as Markin told me was true on other CDs in this expansive classic rock 'n' roll era series) featured nothing more, or nothing less, than a day-glo bus right out of my prankster days, complete with some very odd residents (odd now, not then, then they were righteous, and maybe, just maybe still are). That scene gave us a couple of hours conversation one night and jogged my memory about a lot of things. Especially about what Markin, hell, me too, called the search of the great American freedom night. (He put some colors, blue-pink like just before dark, dark out West anyway, in his but we, for once. were on the same page.)

Naturally, Markin as is his wont [Markin: “Wont” is my word not Phil’s. His, I prefer, strongly prefer, to not to post], once he played the CD and played me for information (I know this guy, remember) ran off like a bunny and wrote his version as part of a review of the CD. Of course, being, well, being Markin he got it about half-right. So let me tell the story true and you can judge who plays “rough” with the truth.

Markin at least had it just about right when he described that old bus:

“A rickety, ticky-tack, bounce over every bump in the road to high heaven, gear-shrieking school bus. But not just any yellow brick road school bus that you rode to various educationally good for you locations like movie houses, half yawn, science museums, yawn, art museums, yawn, yawn, or wind-swept picnic areas for some fool weenie roast, two yawns there too, when you were a school kid. And certainly not your hour to get home daily grind school bus, complete with surly driver (male or female, although truth to tell the females were worst since they acted just like your mother, and maybe were acting on orders from her) that got you through K-12 in one piece, and you even got to not notice the bounces to high heaven over every bump of burp in the road. No, my friends, my comrades, my brethren this is god’s own bus commandeered to navigate the highways and by-ways of the 1960s, come flame or flash-out. Yes, it is rickety, and all those other descriptive words mentioned above in regard to school day buses. That is the nature of such ill-meant mechanical contraptions after all. But this one is custom-ordered, no, maybe that is the wrong way to put it, this is “karma”-ordered to take a motley crew of free-spirits on the roads to seek a “newer world,” to seek the meaning of what one persistent blogger on the subject has described as the search for the great blue-pink American Western night.”

“Naturally to keep its first purpose intact this heaven-bound vehicle is left with its mustard yellow body surface underneath but over that primer the surface has been transformed by generations (generations here signifying not twenty-year cycles but trips west, and east) of, well, folk art, said folk art being heavily weighted toward graffiti, toward psychedelic day-glo splashes, and zodiacally meaningful symbols. And the interior. Most of those hardback seats that captured every bounce of childhood have been ripped out and discarded who knows where and replaced by mattresses, many layers of mattresses for this bus is not merely for travel but for home. To complete the “homey” effect there are stored, helter-skelter, in the back coolers, assorted pots and pans, mismatched dishware and nobody’s idea of the family heirloom china, boxes of dried foods and condiments, duffel bags full of clothes, clean and unclean, blankets, sheets, and pillows, again clean and unclean. Let’s put it this way, if someone wants to make a family hell-broth stew there is nothing in the way to stop them. But also know this, and know it now, as we start to focus on this journey that food, the preparation of food, and the desire, except in the wee hours when the body craves something inside, is a very distant concern for these “campers.” If food is what you desired in the foreboding 1960s be-bop night you could take a cruise ship to nowhere or a train (if you could find one), some southern pacific, great northern, union pacific, and work out your dilemma in the dining car. Of course, no heaven-send, merry prankster-ish yellow brick road school bus would be complete without a high- grade stereo system to blast the now obligatory “acid rock” coming through the radiator practically.”

That says it all pretty much about the physical characteristics of the bus but not much about how I got on the damn thing. Frankly, things were pretty tough around my house, things like no having much of a job after high school just working as a dead-ass retail clerk up at Raymond’s Department Store in Adamsville Plaza. Not really, according to dear mother, with dear old dad chiming in very once in a while especially when I didn’t come up with a little room and board money, being motivated to “better myself,” and being kind of drift-less with my Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys long gone off to college, the service, or married, stuff like that. Then too I was having some girl trouble, no, not what you think girl baby trouble just regular the battle of the sexes stuff when my honey, Ginny McCabe, practically shut me off because I didn’t want to get married just then. But I knew something was in the air, something was coming like “the scribe” was always predicting. [Markin: I'll let that small case scribe pass, Phil] And for once I wanted in on that. But the specific reason that I split in the dead of the North Adamsville night was that I was trying to avoid the military draft, now that the war in Vietnam was escalating with nowhere else to go. I knew my days were numbered and while I was as patriotic (and still am, unlike that parlor pinko, commie, Markin) as the next guy (and these days, girls) I was not ready to lay down my life out in the boondocks right then. So I headed out on the lam.

[Markin: Phil, as he related this part of the story that night, had me all choked up about his military plight and I was ready to say brother, welcome to the anti-imperialist resistance. Then I realized, wait a minute, Phil was 4-F (meaning he was not eligible for drafting for military service due to some medical or psychological condition in those days for those who do not know the reference. A prima facie example, I might add, of that playing rough with the truth I warned you about before.]

Hey, I am no slave to convention, whatever the conventions are, but in those days I looked like a lot of young guys. Longish hair, a beard, a light beard at the time, blue jeans, an army jacket, sunglasses, a knapsack over my shoulder, and work boots on my feet.(Sandals would not come until later when I got off the road and was settled in a “pad” [Markin: house, rented or maybe abandoned, apartment, hovel, back of a “free” church, back of a store, whatever, a place to rest those weary bones, or “crash”] in La Jolla and were, in any case, not the kind of footwear that would carry you through on those back road places you might find yourself in, places like Deadwood, Nevada at three in the morning with a ten-mile walk to the nearest town in front of you). I mention all this because that “look” gave me the cache to make it on the road when I headed out of the house that Spring 1966 be-bop night after one final argument with dear mother about where I was going, what was I going to do when I got there, and what was I going to do for money. Standard mother fare then, and now I suppose.

So short on dough, and long on nerve and fearlessness, then I started to hitchhike with the idea of heading west to California like about eight million people, for about that same number of reasons, have been heading there since the Spanish, or one of those old-time traveling by boat nations, heard about the place. Of course, nowadays I would not think to do such a thing in such a dangerous world, unless I was armed to the teeth and that would take a little edge off that “seeking the newer world” Markin has been blabbing about since about 1960. But then, no problem, let’s get going. Especially no problem when just a few miles into my journey a Volkswagen mini-bus (or van, neither in the same league as the yellow brick road school bus, no way, that I will tell you about later but okay for a long ride, and definitely okay when you are in some nowhere, nowhere Nebraska maybe, back road, hostile territory dominate by squares, squares with guns and other evil implements and they, the VW-ites, stoned, stoned to the heavens stop to ask you directions because they are “lost” and invite you on board) stopped on Route 128, backed up, and a guy who looked a lot like me, along with two pretty young girls says, “where are you heading?” (Okay, okay, Markin, young women, alright.) West, just west. And then the beautified words, “Hop in.”

Most of the road until the Midwest, Iowa is the Midwest right, was filled with short little adventures like that. A mini-van frolic for a few hours, or a few days. Maybe a few short twenty-miles non-descript rides in between but heading west by hook or by crook. Did I like it? Sure I did although I was pretty much an up-tight working class guy (that was what one of those pretty girls I just mentioned called me when I “passed” on smoking a joint and, hell, she was from next door Clintondale for chrissakes) who liked his booze, a little sex {Markin: Phil, come on now, a little?], and just hanging around the old town waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I could see, after a few drug experiences, no, not LSD, that I was starting to dig the scene. And I felt every day that I was out of North Adamsville that I was finally shaking off the dust from that place.

Then one night, sitting in the front seat of a big old Pontiac (not everybody, not every “hip” everybody had the mini-bus, van or school bus handy for their “search” for the great American night), Big Bang Jane between us, the Flip-Flop Kid driving like god’s own mad driver, smoking a joint, laughing with the couple of in back, Bopper Billy and Sweet Pea, we headed into a pay-as- you go roadside camp near Ames out in Iowa. And at that campsite parked maybe five or six places over from where we planted ourselves was god’s own copy of that day-glo merry prankster bus I mentioned before. I flipped out because while I had hear about, and seen from a distance, such contraptions I hadn’t been up close to one before. Wow!

After we settled in, the Flip-Flop Kid (and the guy really could never make up his mind about anything, anything except don’t go too close to Big Bang Jane, no kidding around on that, no sir), Bopper Billy (who really thought he was king of the be-bop night, but, hell in the North Adamsville corner boy night Frankie Riley, hell, maybe even Markin, would have out be-bopped him for lunch and had time for a nap), Big Bang Jane (guess what that referred to, and she gave herself that nickname, but I never tried to make a move on her because she was just a little too wild, a little too I would have to keeping looking over my shoulder for me then, probably later too when things got even looser. And then there was the Flip-Flop Kid’s warning ), and Sweet Pea (and she was a sweet pea, if Bopper Billy wasn’t around, well we both agreed there was something there but in those 1966 days we were still half tied up with the old conventions of not breaking in between a guy and his girl, well that was the convention anyway whether it was generally honored or not, I did) we headed over once we heard the vibes from the sound system churning out some weird sounds, something like we had never heard before (weird then, little did we know that this was the wave of the future, for a few years anyway).

Naturally, well naturally after the fact once we learned what the inhabitants of the bus were about, they invited us for supper, or really to have some stew from a big old pot cooking on a fireplace that came with the place. And if you didn’t want the hell-broth stew then you could partake of some rarefied dope (no, again, no on the LSD thing. It was around, it was around on the bus too, among its various denizens, but mainly it was a rumor, and more of a West Coast thing just then. In the self-proclaimed, tribal self-proclaimed Summer of Love of 1967, and after that, is when the acid hit, and when I tried it but not on this trip. This trip was strictly weed, hemp, joint, mary jane, marijuana, herb, whatever you wanted to called that stuff that got you high, got you out of yourself, and got you away from what you were in North Adamsville, Mechanicsville or whatever ville you were from, for a while.

So that night was the introduction to the large economy size search for the freedom we all, as it turned, out were looking for. I remember saying to Sweet Pea as we went back to our campsite (and wishing I wasn’t so square about messing with another guy’s girl, and maybe she was too, maybe wishing I wasn’t square about it) that we had turned a corner that night and that we had best play it out all the way to the end right then for the chance might not come again.

The next day, no, the next night because I had spent the day working up to it, I became “Far-Out” Phil, or the start of that Phil. Frankly, to not bore you with a pipe by pipe description of the quantity of dope that I smoked (herb, hashish, a little cocaine, more exotic and hard to get then than it became later) or ingested (a tab of mescaline) that day, I was “wasted.” Hell I am getting “high” now just thinking about how high I was that day. By nightfall I was ready for almost anything as that weird music that crept up your spine got hold of me. I just, as somebody put a match to the wood to start the cooking of tonight pot of stew to keep us from malnutrition, started dancing by myself. Phil Larkin, formerly foul-mouthed Phil, a cagey, edgy guy from deep in corner boy, wise guy, hang-out guy, never ask a girl to dance but just kind of mosey up world, started dancing by himself. But not for long because then he, me, took that dance to some other level, some level that I can only explain by example. Have you ever seen Oliver Stone’s film, The Doors, the one that traced the max-daddy rocker of the late 1960s night Jim Morrison’s career from garage band leader to guru? One of the scenes at one of the concerts, an outdoor, maybe desert outdoor one, had him, head full of dope, practically transformed into a shaman. Ya, one of those Indian (Markin: Native American, Phil] religious leaders who did a trance-dance. That was me in late May of 1966, if you can believe that.

And see, although I wasn’t conscious of it first I was being joined by one of the women on the bus, Luscious Lois, whom I had met, in passing the night before. This Lois, not her real name, as you can tell not only were we re-inventing ourselves physically and spiritually but in our public personas shedding our “slave names” much as some blacks were doing for more serious reasons than we had at the time. [Markin: Nice point, Phil, although I already ‘stole’ that point from you in my review.] Her real name was Sandra Sharp, a college girl from Vassar who, taking some time off from school, was “on the bus” trying to find herself. She was like some delicate flower, a dahlia maybe, like I had never encountered before. I won’t bore you with the forever have to tell what she looked like stuff because that is not what made her, well, intriguing, maddeningly intriguing, like some femme fatale in a crime noir film that Markin, from what I can gather, is always running on about. She was pretty, no question, maybe even a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty if it came to a fair description in the light of day but what made her fetching, enchanting, if that is a different way to say it, was the changes in her facial expressions as she danced, and danced provocatively, dance half-nakedly, around my desire. And I danced, shedding my shirt although I do not remember doing so, danced half-naked around her desire. Then, faintly like a buzz from some hovering insect, maybe a bee, and then more loudly I kept hearing the on-lookers, half-mad with dope and with desire themselves, yelling far out, far out. And Far-Out Phil was born.

Oh, as for Luscious Lois and her desire, well, you figure it out. I might not have been as wise to the ways of the Vassar world in those days when such places were bastions to place the young women of the elite and keep them away from clawing upstarts from the corner boy night as I should have been but the rest of my time on the bus was spend hovering around Lois, and keeping other guys away. I even worked some plebeian “magic” on her one night when I started using certain swear words in her ear that worked for me every Sunday after 8:00 AM Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church with foxy Millie Callahan, back in the day. Far-Out Phil got a little something extra that night, proper Vassar girl or not.

No offense against Iowa, well only a little offense for not being near an ocean, I think. No offense against the university there, well only a little offense for not being Berkeley but after about a week of that campsite and its environs I was ready to move on and it did not matter if it was with Flip-Flop and his crowd or with Captain Crunch (the guy who “led” his clot of merry pranksters, real name, Samuel Jackman, Columbia Class of 1958, who long ago gave up searching, searching for anything, and just hooked into the idea of taking the ride). Captain Crunch, as befitted his dignity (and since it was “his” bus paid for out of some murky deal, probably a youthful drug deal, from what I heard), was merely the “leader” here. The driving was left to another, older guy. This driver was not your mother-sent, mother-agent, old Mrs. Henderson, who prattled on about keep in your seats and be quiet while she is driving (maybe that, subconsciously, is why the seats were ripped out long ago on the very first “voyage” west) but a very, very close imitation of the god-like prince-driver of the road, the "on the road” pioneer, Neal Cassady, shifting those gears very gently but also very sure-handedly so no one noticed those bumps (or else was so stoned, drug or music-stoned, that those things passed like so much wind). His name: Cruising Casey (real name, Charles Kendall, Haverford College Class of ’64, but just this minute, Cruising Casey, mad man searching for the great American be-bop night under the extreme influence of one Ken Kesey, the max-daddy mad man of the great search just then). And Cruising was, being just a little older, and about one hundred years more experienced, also weary, very weary of co-eds, copping dope and, frankly, staying in one place for so long. He also wanted to see his girlfriend, or his wife, I am not sure which in Denver so I knew where we were heading. So off we go, let’s get going.

And the passengers. Nobody from the Flip-Flop Express (although Flip-Flop, as usual, lived up to his name and hemmed and hawed about it), they were heading back east, back into the dark Mechanicsville night. I tried, tried like hell, to get Sweet Pea to come along just in case the thing with Lois fell apart or she took some other whim into her head. See, re-invented or not, I still had some all-the-angles boyhood rust hanging on me. We did know for sure that Casey was driving, and still driving effortlessly so the harsh realities of his massive drug intake had not hit yet, or maybe he really was superman. Other whose names I remember: Mustang Sally (Susan Stein, Michigan, Class of 1959, ditto on the searching thing), Captain Crunch’s girl friend, (although not exclusively, not exclusively by her choice, not his, and he was not happy about it for lots of reasons which need not detain us here). Most of the rest of the “passengers” have monikers like Silver City Slim, Penny Pot (guess why), Moon Man, Flash Gordon (from out in space somewhere, literally, as he told it), Dallas Dennis (from New York City, go figure), and the like. They also had real names that indicated that they were from somewhere that had nothing to do with public housing projects, ghettos or barrios. And they were also, or almost all were, twenty-somethings that had some highly-rated college years after their names, graduated or not). And they were all either searching or, like the Captain, were at a stage where they are just hooked into taking the ride.

As for the rest. Well, no one could be exactly sure, as the bus approached the outskirts of Denver, as this was strictly a revolving cast of characters depending on who was hitchhiking on that desolate back road State Route 5 in Iowa, or County Road 16 in Wyoming, and desperately needed to be picked up, or face time, and not nice time with a buzz on, in some small town poky. Or it might depend on who decided to pull up stakes at some outback campsite and get on the bus for a spell, and decide if they were, or were not, on the bus. After all even all-day highs, all-night sex, and 24/7 just hanging around listening to the music is not for everyone. And while we had plenty of adventures, thinking back on it now, they all came down to drugs, sex, and rock and roll with a little food on the side. If you want to hear about them just ask Markin to contact me. The real thing though, the thing that everybody should remember is that dance night in Ames, Iowa when Phil Larkin got “religion,” 1960s secular religion. He slid back some later, like everybody does, but when he was on the bus he was in very heaven.

Markin note: No question that this story, except perhaps for hormonal adolescents, is better than those dreary old geezer searching for young love tales that he ran by us before. By the way Phil, you don’t happen to have Luscious Lois’, ah, Sandra Sharp’s, cell phone number or e-mail address. And don’t lie and say you don’t have it. You never crossed off a woman’s name from your book in your life. Give it up.

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night, Christ The Heart Of Any Night- The Songs of Tom Waits-Take Two  

 

 

A link to a YouTube film clip of Tom Waits performing  Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night.

 

If you, as I do, every once in a while, every once in a while when the norms of bourgeois push to get ahead and then what get you into some angst-ridden despair about where you went off  that angel-driven dream of your youth and need some solice put the headphones on some Tom Waits platter (oops, CD, YouTube selection, etc.- “platter” refers to a, ah, record, vinyl, put on a record player, hell, look it up in Wikipedia, okay).

 

If the norms of don’t rock the boat, the norms of keep your head down because you don’t want to wind up like them (and fill in the blank of the “them”) drive you crazy and you need to listen to those ancient drum beats that spoke of the better angels of your nature when those angel dreams ruled your days. Turn up the volume on that Tom Waits selection.  

 

If you need, just to sort things out, just to recapture that angel-edge, to hear about boozers (and about titantic booze-crazed struggles in barroom, on beaches, in the back seats of cars, lost in the mist of time) , losers (those who have lost their way not those who never had a way to be lost), dopesters (inhaling, in solidarity hotel rooms, down in dark alleys, out in nighttime canyons flame blaring off the walls, the seven seas of chemical dust and creating vision of long lost tribes trying, trying like hell, to get “connected,”  connected in the campfire shadow night), hipsters (all dressed in black, mary mack dressed in black, speeding, speaking be-bop this and be-bop that to stay in fashion), fallen sisters (sisters of mercy, sisters who need mercy, sisters who were mercifully made fallen  in some mad dash night), midnight sifters (lifting in no particular order hubcaps, tires, an occasional gem, some paintings or whatever may be left in some sneak back alley, it is the sifting that counts), grifters (hey, buddy watch this, now you see it, now you don’t, now you don’t see your long gone John dough), drifters (here today gone tomorrow with or without dough, to Winnemucca, Ogden, Fresno, Frisco town and the great big blue seas), the driftless (cramped into one room hovels, shelters, seedy rooming houses afraid to stay in-doors or to go outside), and small-time grafters (the ten-percent guys, failed insurance men, repo artists, bounty hunters, press agents, personal trainers, need I go on). You know where to look, right.

 

If you need to be refreshed on the subject of hoboes, bums, tramps (and remind me sometime to draw the distinction, the very real and acknowledged distinction between those three afore –mentioned classes of brethren), the fallen (fallen outside the gates of Eden, or, hell, inside too), those who want to fall (and let god figure out who made who fall, okay), Spanish Johnnies (slicked back black hair, tee shirt, shiv, cigarette butt hanging from a parted lip, belt buckle ready for action, leering, leering at that girl over there, maybe your girl but watch  out for that shiv, the bastard), stale cigarette butts (from Spanish Johnnie and all the johnnies, Camels, Luckies, no filters, no way), whiskey-soaked barroom floors (and whiskey-soaked drunks to mop the damn place up, for drinks and donuts, maybe just for the drinks), loners (jesus, books could be written on that subject so let’s just pass by), the lonely (ditto loners), sad sacks (kindred, one hundred times kindred to the loners and the lonely), the sad (encompassing all of the above) and others at the margins of society then Tom Waits is your stop.

 

Tom Waits is an acquired taste, but one well worth acquiring as he storms heaven looking for busted black-hearted angels, for girls with Monroe hips, for the desperate out in forsaken woods who need to hold to something, and for all the misbegotten.

 

Tom Waits gives voice in song, a big task, to the characters that peopled Nelson Algren’s novels (The Last Carousel, Neon Wilderness, Walk on the Wild Side, and The Man with the Golden Arm). In short, these are the people who do not make revolutions, far from it, but they surely desperately could use one. If, additionally, you need a primordial voice and occasional dissonant instrumentation to round out the picture go no further. Finally, if you need someone who “feels your pain” for his characters you are home. And that, my friends, is definitely a political statement. Keep looking for the heart of Saturday night, Brother, keep looking.

We Need 100, 000 Signatures-Sign The On-Line Petition -President Obama Pardon Private Manning - Free Chelsea Manning- The Heroic Whistle-Blower Formerly Known As Bradley Now 

 

 

 

On August 22, 2013 David Coombs announced that as of that date Private Bradley Manning, the unjustly imprisoned heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower wants to be called Chelsea and to be referred to by use of the feminine pronoun. How this change affects the language used in campaigns like the Amnesty International/Bradley Manning Support Network’s petition to President Obama remains to be seen but for now we will use Pardon Bradley Manning. More later. Link to announcement-

http://www.today.com/news/i-am-chelsea-bradley-mannings-full-statement-6C10974052 

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge on August 21, 2013 marks a new focus on the campaign to free Private Manning. The central theme of the day and of the new campaign is –“President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning.” An immediate task is to begin organizing around the call by Amnesty International and the Bradley Manning Support Network to sign an on-line petition directed to the President. The goal is to get 100,000 on-line signatures by September 20, 2013 to make our case loud and clear. All pardon petition efforts should focus on the on-line petition to send that message as one voice.

Below is a link to the Amnesty International/Bradley Manning Support Network to sign the on-line petition. The process is a little more cumbersome than other such petitions, including having to set up an account with an e-mail but since they (and you know who the they are (first letter N) have all our e-mail addresses anyway push on. This is for Bradley.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-united-states’-human-rights-record-and-grant-clemency-pvt-bradley-manning/L7zHZv4r

Manning wants to live as a woman named Chelsea

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 From Markin-Sign  The On-Line Petition -President Obama Pardon Private Manning - Free Chelsea Manning- The Heroic Whistle-Blower Formerly Known As Bradley 

 

On August 22, 2013 David Coombs announced that as of that date Private Bradley Manning, the unjustly imprisoned heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower wants to be called Chelsea and to be referred to by use of the feminine pronoun. How this change affects the language used in campaigns like the Amnesty International/Bradley Manning Support Network petition to President Obama remains to be seen but for now we will use Pardon Bradley Manning. More later. Link to announcement-

http://www.today.com/news/i-am-chelsea-bradley-mannings-full-statement-6C10974052 

 

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DAVID DISHNEAU, AP
3 hours ago

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by the U.S. Army, Pfc. Bradley M...

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — Bradley Manning wants to live as a woman named Chelsea and begin hormone treatment as soon as possible, the soldier said a day after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for giving government secrets to WikiLeaks.

Manning announced the decision Thursday in a statement provided to NBC's "Today" show.

"As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible," the statement read.

The statement asked people to use the feminine pronoun when referring to Manning. It was signed Chelsea E. Manning.

Manning received the stiffest punishment ever handed out in the U.S. for leaking information to the media. With good behavior and credit for more than three years of time served, Manning could be out in as little as seven years, the soldier's attorney David Coombs said.

Coombs told "Today" he hoped officials at the military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., will accommodate Manning's request for hormone treatment. If they don't, Coombs said he would do "everything in my power" to make it happen.

The Army said it doesn't provide the treatment or sex-reassignment surgery.

"All inmates are considered soldiers and are treated as such with access to mental health professionals, including a psychiatrist, psychologist, social workers and behavioral science noncommissioned officers," Army spokesman George Wright said.

Many transgender people use cross-sex hormone treatments to alter their gender characteristics. Guidelines from the Endocrine Society endorse the therapy along with monitoring for potential health risks of long-term use. For instance, high doses of the female sex hormone estrogen given to someone born male promote breast development.

Leavenworth is an all-male prison. Spokesman George Marcec said there had never been a case similar to Manning's, and the soldier would need to petition for a transfer to a federal prison to receive hormone treatment.

As far as where Manning would be held, the prison staff has some leeway to separate them from the general population based on the security risk to themselves and others, Marcec said.

Manning has spent more than two years at a minimum-to-medium-security facility for pretrial prisoners at Leavenworth, but after sentencing, he was to be moved to military's only maximum-security prison, which is also at Leavenworth.

Greg Rinckey, a former Army prosecutor and now a lawyer in Albany, N.Y., said he doubted the military would voluntarily move Manning to a civilian prison, but that a transfer could be ordered by a judge. He said if Manning dressed as a woman, the soldier might have to be segregated from the general population.

He also said the military was adamant about not providing hormone treatment.

"You enlisted as a male, you're a male, you're going to be incarcerated as a male," he said.

Manning's struggle with gender identity disorder — the sense of being a woman trapped in a man's body — was key at his court-martial.

Retired Sgt. 1st Class Paul Adkins testified as a defense witness, saying in April 2010, just a month before Manning was arrested, the soldier emailed him a picture of himself in a blonde wig and lipstick with a letter titled, "My problem."

"I don't know what to do anymore, and the only 'help' that seems to be available is severe punishment and/or getting rid of me," the email said. "All I do know, is that fear of getting caught has caused me to go to great lengths to consciously hide the problem."

Manning's attorney said the email was evidence the military knew of Manning's struggles, yet allowed him to stay in Iraq as an intelligence analyst and keep his security clearance.

Meanwhile, Coombs and supporters said they will ask the Army to reduce Manning's sentence and they want President Obama to grant a pardon. The White House said the request would be considered "like any other application."

However, a pardon seems unlikely. Manning's case was part of an unprecedented string of prosecutions brought by the U.S. government in a crackdown on security breaches. The Obama administration has charged seven people with leaking to the media; only three people were prosecuted under all previous presidents combined.

The lawyer decried the government's pursuit of Manning for what the soldier said was only an effort to expose wrongdoing and prompt debate of government policies among the American public.

The sentencing fired up the long-running debate over whether Manning was a whistleblower or a traitor for giving more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents, plus battlefield footage, to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. By volume alone, it was the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history, bigger even than the Pentagon Papers a generation ago.

Manning was found guilty last month of 20 crimes, including six violations of the Espionage Act, but was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, which carried a potential sentence of life in prison without parole.

———

Associated Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Sagar Meghani and Eric Tucker in Washington, and John Milburn in Topeka, Kan., contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Free Chelsea Manning- The Heroic Whistle-Blower Formerly Known As Bradley

Heroic whistle-blower addresses gender publicly: ready to move on to next phase of her life

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The Army private and WikiLeaks whistle-blower formerly known as Bradley Manning announced, in a statement via lawyer David Coombs, the decision to transition to life as a woman and a request to be referred to as Chelsea and with female pronouns. Her statement is below:
The Next Stage of My Life
I want to thank everybody who has supported me over the last three years. Throughout this long ordeal, your letters of support and encouragement have helped keep me strong. I am forever indebted to those who wrote to me, made a donation to my defense fund, or came to watch a portion of the trial. I would especially like to thank Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network for their tireless efforts in raising awareness for my case and providing for my legal representation.
As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition. I also request that, starting today, you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility). I look forward to receiving letters from supporters and having the opportunity to write back.
Thank you,
Chelsea E. Manning
Chelsea’s mailing address remains:
Commander, HHC USAG
Attn: PFC Bradley Manning
239 Sheridan Ave, Bldg 417
JBM-HH, VA 22211