AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Thursday, September 19, 2013

***From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin -The Old Neighborhood Buries One of Its Own

Joshua Lawrence Breslin comment:
As a matter of historical record for much of the first half of the 20th century January was traditionally the month to honor fallen working class leaders like Lenin, Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. That tradition still goes on, however, more in the European working class movement than here in America. January, however, can and should also be a time to honor other working class people, those down at the base, as well. Here in its proper place is another about a fallen daughter of the working-class who died in January 2007.

In early 2006 Peter Paul Markin went searching for his roots in his old North Adamsville working class neighborhood where he grew up, grew up to manhood. One of the stories he had related to him after some inquiries to an old-time resident still struggling to get by there was about Kenny, Kenny Callahan, an old childhood friend who got caught up in a bad situation. The gist of that story has been told in a previous sketch. But there were more, more stories.

Maybe it was age, maybe it was memory, maybe it was the need at that late date to gain a sense of roots but that return back in time and place haunted Peter Paul for a long afterwards. (I know he would return to the subject, sometimes out of the blue, on many subsequent talking occasions.) He, moreover, had gone back gone back a couple of times after that to hear more of what had happened to those in the old neighborhood from a woman who continued to live there and had related the above-mentioned story to him. This one is about the fate of his childhood friend Kenny's mother Margaret. Read it and weep.

Peter Paul had, as mentioned, lost track of Kenny who as he reached maturity took the death of a friend, Jimmy Jackman, who died in Vietnam in 1968 very hard. Harder than one could have even imagined. The early details were rather sketchy but they may have involved drug use. The overt manifestations were acts of petty crime and then anti-social acts like pulling fire alarms and walking naked down the street. At some point Kenny was diagnosed as schizophrenic. The institutionalizations inevitably began. And subsequently, almost naturally, the halfway houses and all the other forms of control for those who cannot survive on the mean streets of the world on their own kicked in. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.

Needless to say Kenny’s problems were well beyond his mother and father’s ability to comprehend or control. His father, like Peter Paul’s, had had a limited education and meager work prospects. In short, there were no private resources for Kenny so he, and they, were thus consigned to endure public institutionalization schemes. The shame of this inability to provide for one’s own, among other things, led to his father’s early death many, many years ago. His mother, strong Irish Catholic working- class woman that she was, thereafter shouldered the burden by herself until Kenny’s death. The private and public horrors and humiliations that such care entailed must have taken a toll on her most of us could not stand. Apparently in the end it got to her as well as she let her physical appearance go downhill, she became more reclusive, and she turned in on herself reverting in conversation to dwelling on happier times as a young married woman in the mid-1940s.

Kenny’s woes, however, as Peter Paul later found out were only part of this sad story. Kenny had two older brothers whom he did not really know well because they were not around. Part of that reason was they were in and out of trouble or one sort or another. Trouble with a big “T,” that spelled some prison time, or times. Peter Paul’s neighborhood historian related to him that at some point both sons had dropped out of sight and had not been seen by their mother for over thirty years. They were presumed to be dead or that is the story Margaret told my historian. In any case, since Kenny’s death Margaret’s health, or really her will to live, went downhill fairly rapidly. Unable, or unwilling, to care for herself she was finally placed in a nursing home where she died in January 2007. Only a very few attended her funeral (and no sons) and her memory is probably forgotten by all except Peter Paul and his historian friend.

Peter Paul Markin, after relating this story to me, tried to draw, as is his wont, some “lessons” from its telling. He is a proudly a working- class political person. That is the great legacy that his parents left him, intentionally or not. He asked -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, came his rather quick answer, but he swore that when we build the new society that this country and this world needs we will not let the Kennys of the world be shunted off to the side. And we will not let the Margarets of the world, our working- class mothers, die alone and forgotten. As for Kenny and Margaret may they rest in peace.

***Taking A Turn As Neighborhood Historian-Tales From A 1950s Working-Class Neighborhood

Markin Comment:

Despite the somewhat academic-sounding title of this commentary this is really a part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about previously in several earlier commentaries in this space. As I mentioned in them, this space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. This is the fourth part of what, as I will explain in the next paragraph, now has now turned into a five part saga of the fate of a working class family from my old neighborhood. Let me continue that tale.

In detecting information did I need to be a super sleuth? No. Did I need to spent hours poring over documents? No. I have in this space, on more than one occasion, railed against the information superhighway as a substitute for political organizing but for finding public records that lead one to missing people it cannot be beat. That, and using the old telephone, did yeoman’s service.I have thus now found the brothers, or at least the whereabouts of the oldest one James, Jr. whom I have already interviewed and who has rather mysteriously promised to lead me to his younger brother Francis. Francis’s story will be detailed in a separate commentary after I interview him.

To refresh the story for those who make have not read the previous parts let me summarize. Probably, after I finish the fifth part I will rewrite this whole thing as one story to avoid the repetitions inherent in presenting each part in piecemeal fashion. For now though, dear reader, bear with me. In previous commentaries I have mentioned that I had recently (May 2007) returned to the old working class neighborhood where I grew up after a very long absence. I also mentioned that maybe it was age, maybe it was memory, maybe it was the need at this late date to gain a sense of roots but that return has haunted me ever since. I have gone back a few times since last May to hear more of what had happened to those in the old neighborhood from a woman who continues to live there and had related the above stories to me. The first story was about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny. A second in January 2008 recounted the fate of Kenny’s mother, Margaret, and History, written in February 2008, mentioned above, presented the story of Kenny’s father, James. (Check the archives for these three stories.)

My own family started life in the housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the Valhalla of the newly emerging suburbs. By clawing and scratching my parents saved enough money to buy an extremely modest single-family house. The house was in a neighborhood that was, and is, one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950’s, my parents and others including Kenny’s parents, to own their own homes and not be shunted off to decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. That is where I met Kenny and through him his family, including his mother Margaret, his father James and his two brothers, James, Jr. and Francis.

In my teens I had lost track of Kenny who as he reached maturity took the death of a friend who died in Vietnam very hard. The early details of his behavior changes are rather sketchy but they may have involved illegal drug use. Apparently, with drugs and therapy, there were periods of calm but for over three decades poor Kenny struggled with his inner demons. In the end the demons won and he died a few years ago while in a mental hospital.

Needless to say Kenny’s problems were well beyond his mother and father’s ability to comprehend or control. His father, like mine, had a limited education, few marketable skills and meager work prospects. Thus, there were no private resources for Kenny and he and they were thus consigned to public institutionalization schemes. The shame of this, among other things, led to his father’s early death many, many years ago in the mid-1980s.

Kenny’s woes, as I found out this January (2008), were only part of this sad story about the fate of Margaret and James' sons. The two older brothers, James, Jr. and Francis, were in and out of trouble or one sort or another and were not around the neighborhood much. My neighborhood historian mentioned in January that at some point both sons had dropped out of sight and had not been seen by their mother for over thirty years. They are presumed to be dead or that is the story Margaret told my historian. James Jr.’s story now comes into focus.

I found James, Jr. living in seedy, rundown rooming house in a Boston neighborhood. Strangely, he was more than willing to talk to me about his life and family although he was only vaguely familiar with whom I was, except that he remembered that I was vaguely political. His story, in general outline, is not an unfamiliar one, at least not to me. Early on he got into petty crime and then more serious crime. As a teenager during the Vietnam War era he got into enough trouble that he was given a choice by the court system to ‘volunteer’ for military duty or go to jail. He took the military service, for a while.Given orders to Vietnam, he went AWOL not for any political reason but just, as he said, because. After time in military confinement and later a civilian confinement he got ‘religion’-that is he figured the percentages of keeping up his current ‘lifestyle’ did not add up to a long and happy life.

Based on that street wisdom he became a drifter, grafter and midnight sifter (his words) but stayed on the legal side of the line. The inevitable failed marriages, jobs and financial problems followed, in their natural course. Moreover, this harsh lifestyle wore down his psychological capacities and at some point he was diagnosed as clinically depressed, unable to hold a steady job and put on welfare. That pretty much sums up the balance of his life for our purposes here. I make no pretense that this is a typical working class story, it is not. Nor is this a typical working class family saga. But there is just enough of the pathologies of working class existence to make the story serve its purpose as a descriptive, if not, cautionary tale about the plight of working people in modern American society.

Now, about the question that must be on the reader’s mind, as it surely was on mine. What in this biography warrants going underground from one’s family for over thirty years? His answer-shame. James just flat out got tired of taking a psychological beating every time his mother Margaret berated him in his early youth for some seemingly trivial mistake. To not have to deal with that as he started to get into real trouble he just walked away from his family. His rationale was that if they did not know about it then he was doing them a favor. Strange reasoning, perhaps. However, I too know, and perhaps you do also, the wrath of an Irish mother when she gets into the shaming ritual. I faced that more than one time myself. It is not pretty. James may have stayed away too long and, in the end, broke his father’s heart, but there is nothing absurd about his response. We all face our demons in our own particular ways.

I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven, thus far, to not be necessary as this is a most prosaic story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin,to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters. It needs an appraisal of how the transmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’ generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remains broken in the baby-boomer generation (their and my generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ generation that is not there now that today’s youth look like they are ready to ‘storm heaven’.

As I have said in the previous commentaries on this story I am a working class politician.That is the great legacy that my parents left me, intentionally or not. As I have asked previously in relating the other parts of the story -are there any great political lessons to be learned here? No, I do not think so but this family’s saga of turning in on itself in the absence of some greater purpose and solution goes a long way to explaining why down at the base of society we have never had as much as nibble of independent working class political consciousness expressed in this country.

***Taking A Turn As Neighborhood Historian-Tales From A 1950s Working-Class Neighborhood – “…and the tin pan bended, and the story ended”

Markin comment:

The title of this commentary takes its name from what turned out to be the late folksinger and folk historian Dave Van Rock’s last album. This seems as an appropriate title as any for the twists and turns of this series. Despite Van Rock’s alliterative title this is really part of the very prosaic working class story that I have written about in several earlier commentaries in this space. As I have mentioned in them, this space is usually devoted to ‘high’ politics and the personal is usually limited to some experience of mine that has a direct political point. Sometimes, however, a story is so compelling and makes the point in such a poignant manner that no political palaver is necessary. This is the fifth and final part of what, as I will relate in the next paragraph, has now turned into a saga of the fate of a working class family from my old neighborhood. Let me finish the tale.

In part three of this story, History and Class Consciousness (hereafter, History), about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny’s father I mentioned that if I had time I would try to find out the fates of his two long missing older brothers who had not been heard from by the family in over thirty years. I have become so intrigued by this family’s story that I have made time to dig deeper into it. In Markin Takes a Turn as Neighborhood Historian (hereafter, Markin) I related how I found James, Jr. the older brother and told his story. I note here that when I interviewed James, Jr. he said that he would put me in contact with Francis. He has kept his word. Here to complete the saga I will end with the younger brother Francis’s story.

To refresh the story for those who make have not read the previous parts let me summarize. Probably, in the near future I will rewrite this whole thing as one story to avoid the somewhat confusing repetitions inherent in presenting each part in piecemeal fashion. For now though, dear reader, bear with me. In previous commentaries I have mentioned that I had then recently (May 2007) returned to the old working class neighborhood where I grew up after a very long absence. I also mentioned that maybe it was age, maybe it was memory, maybe it was the need at this late date to gain a sense of roots but that return has haunted me ever since. I have gone back a few times since last May to hear more of what had happened to those in the old neighborhood from a woman who continues to live there and had related the above stories to me. The first story was about the fate of my childhood friend Kenny. A second in January 2008 recounted the fate of Kenny’s mother, Margaret, and History, written in February 2008, mentioned above, presented the story of Kenny’s father, James. (Check the archives for these three stories.)

Kenny’s woes, as I found out this January, were only part of this sad story about the fate of Margaret and James' sons. The two older brothers, James, Jr. and Francis, were in and out of trouble or one sort or another and were not around the neighborhood much. My neighborhood historian mentioned in January that at some point both sons had dropped out of sight and had not been seen by their mother for over thirty years. They are presumed to be dead or that is the story Margaret told my historian. Francis’ story now comes into focus.

James was somewhat mysterious in his agreement to get me in touch with Francis. I thus expected that Francis’s story would be similar (or even more depressing than his). That was entirely not the case. Apparently Francis is to be considered the success of the family. I mentioned that I found James to be smart if more on the street side than academically. Well, Francis seemed to have traversed both sides. I interviewed him in a law office in Boston, his law office. Somewhere along the way he figured out faster than James that unless your heart is totally into it a life of crime just takes too much energy. But here is the odd part. He had total recall of me as a kid, including my politics. He even remembered something that I had not-he was my captain in canvassing for John F. Kennedy for President in 1960. I am not sworn to secrecy but I should add that today he is a fairly influential member of the Massachusetts Democratic Party establishment.

That poses two questions. The first and obvious one posed when I interviewed James about the question that must be on the reader’s mind, as it surely was on mine. What in this biography warrants going underground from one’s family for over thirty years? His answer was that unless he got a fresh start he would have wound up like his brother James.Just flat out got tired of taking a psychological beating every time his mother Margaret berated him in his early youth for some seemingly trivial mistake. To not have to deal with that as he started to get into real trouble he just walked away from his family. His rationale was that if they did not know about it then he was doing them a favor. Strange reasoning, perhaps. However, I too know, and perhaps you do also, the wrath of an Irish mother when she gets into the shaming ritual. I faced that more than one time myself. It is not pretty. James may have stayed away too long and, in the end, broke his father’s heart, but there is nothing absurd about his response. We all face our demons in our own particular ways.

The second question is why if he were so political and knowledgeable did he become a class traitor. As satted before he knew that I had gone ‘commie’ so that was no big deal but here is whee the cautionary tale for working class kids comes in- he saw his best chance of advancement for himself by working his way up the Democratic Party hierarchy. This, my friends, is ultimately the problem we have to deal with if we are every to get our own workers party with some bite. The Francis’s of the American political landscape can be had but not until we have leaverage.

I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven to not be necessary as this is a most prosaic story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin,to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters. It needs an appraisal of how thetransmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remains broken in the baby-boomer generation (their and my generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ generation that is not there now that today’s youth look like they are ready to ‘storm heaven’.

***Taking A Turn As Neighborhood Historian-Tales From A 1950s Working-Class Neighborhood – “…and the tin pan bended, and the story ended”

Markin comment:

I commented, off-handedly, in History that at a point where I had been successful in locating the two older brothers I would I will surely need the literary talents of someone like James T. Farrell in his Studs Lonigan trilogy for guidance. That has proven to not be necessary as this is a most prosaic story. What this story really calls for is the skills of someone like the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, or better yet a Lenin,to try to analyze and to generalize how a couple of fairly smart working class kids turned the wrong way and in the end turned inward rather than become class fighters. It needs an appraisal of how thetransmission belt of working class political consciousness that broke down in our fathers’generation (the so-called “greatest generation” that survived the Great Depression and fought World War II) remains broken in the baby-boomer generation (their and my generation, the generation of ’68). There is thus something of a ‘lost’ generation that is not there now that today’s youth look like they are ready to ‘storm heaven’.

***On The Nature of True Love-In Search Of The Great Working Class Love Song- With Donna Walker, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, In Mind

This song is from YouTube performed by Thompson, although a stronger version is done on a cover by folk singer Greg Brown not there.

Said Red Molly to James that's a fine motorbike

A girl could feel special on any such like

Said James to Red Molly, well my hat's off to you

It's a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952

And I've seen you at the corners and cafes it seems

Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme

And he pulled her on behind

And down to Box Hill they did ride

Said James to Red Molly, here's a ring for your right hand

But I'll tell you in earnest I'm a dangerous man

I've fought with the law since I was seventeen

I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine

Now I'm 21 years, I might make 22

And I don't mind dying, but for the love of you

And if fate should break my stride

Then I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae

For they've taken young James Adie for armed robbery

Shotgun blast hit his chest, left nothing inside

Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside

When she came to the hospital, there wasn't much left

He was running out of road, he was running out of breath

But he smiled to see her cry

And said I'll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world

Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl

Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do

They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52

He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys

He said I've got no further use for these

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome

Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

And he gave her one last kiss and died

And he gave her his Vincent to ride

********
As noted in the headline, the search for the great working class love song, was prompted by a question that I had been asked about before from old North Adamsville high school classmates in the recent past- what music were you listening to back in the day? Back in the early 1960s day when the music was exhausted and we were waiting, waiting impatiently, or I was, for some fresh breeze to come from somewhere when Elvis died (or might as well have), Jerry Lee was busted up with some second cousin, Chuck was out of circulation for messing with Mister’s women, and we were stuck with a batch of songs and singers who made us want to head back to mother womb 1940s music that at least had good melodies. Well, for me at least that subject is totally exhausted. I no longer want to hear about how you fainted over Teen Angel, Johnny Angel, or Earth Angel. Christ there were more angels around then than could fit on the head of a needle or fought it out to the death in John Milton’s epic revolutionary poem from the seventeenth century , Paradise Lost.

Moreover, I have had enough of You're Gonna Be Sorry, I'm Sorry, and Who's Sorry Now. What was there to be sorry about, except maybe some minute hurt feelings, some teenage awkward didn’t know how to deal with some such situation or, in tune with today’s theme, some mistake that reflected our working class-derived lacks, mainly lacks of enough time, energy and space to think things over without seven thousand parents and siblings breaking the stream. And a little discretionary dough would have helped(dough for Saturday night drive-ins, drive-in movies, hell, even Saturday night dance night down by the shore everything’s all right) to take some teen angel somewhere other than the damn walk to seawall down Adamsville Beach.

And no more of Tell Laura I Love Her, Oh Donna, and I Had A Girl Her Name Was Joanne, or whatever woman's name comes to mind. Old sweet woman, sweet mama. sweet outlaw mama, Red Molly, all dolled up in her black leather (and set off by her flaming red hair making every boy dream, dream restless night dreams, until James took over and then you had best not look, not if you wanted to keep your place in the sun, or breathe to find your own leather tight woman. Guys tried, guys tried and failed as guys will, so be forewarned. ) put them all to shame, yah, puts them all to shame. So it is time, boys and girls, to move on to other musical influences from our more mature years, say from our post-traumatic stress high school years.

But why, as the headline suggests, the search for the great working class love song? Well, hello! Our old town, our old beloved North Adamsville, was (and is, as far as I can tell from a very recent trip back to the old place) a quintessential beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday working class town (especially before the deindustrialization of America which for North Adamsville meant the closing of the shipyards that has left it now as a basically low-end white collar service-oriented working class town, dotted with ugly, faux-functional white collar office-style parks to boot). The great majority of us came from working class or working poor homes. Most songs, especially popular songs, then and now, reflect a kind of "one size fits all" lyric that could apply to anyone, anywhere. What I was looking for was songs that in some way reflected that working class ethos that is still in our bones, that cause our hunger even now, whether we recognize it or not.

Needless to say, since I have posed the question, I have my choice already prepared. As will become obvious, if you have read the lyrics, this song reflects my take on the corner boy, live for today, be free for today, male angst in the age old love problem. However, any woman is more than free to choice songs that reflect her female angst angle (ouch, for that awkward formulation) on the working class hit parade.

And a fellow female classmate did proposing Bruce Springsteen’s version of Jersey Girl and here is my response:

Come on now, after reading these lyrics above is any mere verbal profession of undying love, any taking somebody on a ride at some two-bit carnival going to make the cut. I am thinking here of another working class song suggested to me by a female classmate , Bruce Springsteen's cover version of Tom Waits’ Jersey Girl where they go down to the Jersey seashore to some amusement park to while the night away in good working class style, cotton candy, salt water taffy, win your lady a doll, ride the Ferris wheel, tunnel of love, hot dog, then sea breeze love , just like our Paragon Park nights, some buying of a gold ring like every guy on the make is promising to do for his honey if she…, or some chintzy, faded flowers that melt away in the night, or with the morning dew going to mean anything? Hell, the guy here, bravo James, is giving her, his Red Molly, HIS bike, his bike, man. No Wild One, Easy Rider, no women need apply bike night. HIS bike. Case closed.

And you think, big deal he gave her his bike as a dying declaration, that such an action is so-so and just a guy trinket love thing, not the stuff of eternity. No way. I KNOW of at least one female, noted above in the dedication, who might relate to this song. I also know at least one male, who shall remain nameless, who snuck out the back door of old North Adamsville High with another classmate, a female classmate, to ride his bike during school hours back in the day. So don't think I have forgotten my medication, or something, when I call this a great working class love song. Romeo and Juliet by what’s his name is nothing but down in the ditch straight punk stuff compared to this. And I repeat, for the slow learners here, the guy, my boy, my corner boy James, in the song gave her HIS bike, man. That is love, no question.

From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International-

Workers Vanguard No. 953	26 February 2010

TROTSKY

LENIN

Students and Capitalist Society

(Quote of the Week)

A Leninist vanguard party is built through the fusion of the most politically conscious workers with intellectuals who have been won over to the side of the working class. In his 1910 article, “The Intelligentsia and Socialism,” Leon Trotsky examined the role of intellectuals in capitalist society, refuting the view expressed in Austrian Social Democrat Max Adler’s 1910 pamphlet “Socialism and the Intellectuals” that the mass of intellectuals are predisposed to socialism. In particular, Trotsky focused on students, who tend to be polarized to radicalism or reaction under the influence of social struggle, drawing on their differing roles in the defeated European democratic revolutions of 1848.

Among the workers the difference between “fathers” and “sons” is purely one of age. Among the intelligentsia it is not only a difference of age but also a social difference. The student, in contrast both to the young worker and to his own father, fulfils no social function, does not feel direct dependence on capital or the state, is not bound by any responsibilities, and—at least objectively, if not subjectively—is free in his judgment of right and wrong. At this period everything within him is fermenting, his class prejudices are as formless as his ideological interests, questions of conscience matter very strongly to him, his mind is opening for the first time to great scientific generalisations, the extraordinary is almost a physiological need for him. If collectivism is at all capable of mastering his mind, now is the moment, and it will indeed do it through the nobly scientific character of its basis and the comprehensive cultural content of its aims....

Throughout their entire history—in its best, most heroic moments just as in periods of utter moral decay—the students of Europe have been merely the sensitive barometer of the bourgeois classes. They became ultra-revolutionary, sincerely and honourably fraternizing with the people, when bourgeois society had no way out but revolution. They took de facto the place of the bourgeois democratic forces when the political nullity of these prevented them from standing at the head of the revolution, as happened in Vienna in 1848. But they also fired on the workers in June of that same year, in Paris, when bourgeoisie and workers found themselves on opposite sides of the barricade.... Here we have militant idealism—sometimes just like that of a fighting cock—which is characteristic not of a class or of an idea but of an age-group; on the other hand, the political content of this idealism is entirely determined by the historical spirit of those classes from which the students come and to which they return. And this is natural and inevitable.

—Leon Trotsky, “The Intelligentsia and Socialism” (1910)

*********

Leon Trotsky

The Intelligentsia and Socialism

(1910)

Written: 1910
Publisher: New Park, London, ISBN 0 902030 58 2. First printing January 1966 Second impression 1974. Reprinted from Fourth International (London), Autumn-Winter 1964-65
Source: Volume 20 of Collected (Russian) Works of L.D. Trotsky, Moscow 1926
Translated: Brian Pearce
Online Version: Marxists Internet Archive, 2002
Transcribed: Robert Barrois
HTML Markup: David Walters
Proofreading: Einde O’Callaghan, November 2006.

Ten years ago, or even six or seven years ago, defenders of the Russian subjective school of sociology (the “Socialist-Revolutionaries”) might have successfully utilized for their purpose the latest pamphlet by the Austrian philosopher Max Adler. During the last five or six years, however, we have passed through such a thorough, objective “school of sociology”, and its lessons are written on our bodies in such expressive scars, that the most eloquent apotheosis of the intelligentsia, even coming from the “Marxist” pen of M. Adler, will not be of any help to Russian subjectivism. On the contrary, the fate of our Russian subjectivists is a most serious argument against Max Adler’s allegations and conclusions.

The subject of this pamphlet is the relation between the intelligentsia and socialism. For Adler this is not merely a matter for theoretical analysis but also a matter of conscience. He wants to convince. Adler’s pamphlet, based on a speech made to an audience of socialist students, is filled with ardent conviction. The spirit of proselytism permeates this little work, giving a special nuance to ideas which have no claim to novelty. To win the intelligentsia for his ideals, to conquer their support at whatever cost, this political desire utterly prevails over social analysis in Adler’s pamphlet, giving it the particular tone it has, and determining its weaknesses.
What are the intelligentsia? Adler gives this concept, of course, not a moral but a social definition: the intelligentsia are not an order bound together by a historic vow, but the social stratum which embraces all kinds of “brain-work” occupations. However hard it may be to draw a line of demarcation between “manual” and “brain” work, the general social features of the intelligentsia are clear enough, without any further going into details. The intelligentsia are an entire class – Adler calls them an inter-class group, but essentially there is no difference – existing within the framework of bourgeois society. And for Adler the question is: who or what possesses the better right to the soul of this class? What ideology is inwardly obligatory upon it, as a result of the very nature of its social functions? Adler answers: the ideology of collectivism. That the European intelligentsia, in so far as they are not directly hostile to the ideas of collectivism, at best stand aloof from the life and struggle of the working masses, neither hot nor cold, is a fact to which Adler does not shut his eyes. But it shouldn’t be like that, he says, there are no adequate objective grounds for it. Adler decidedly opposes those Marxists who deny the existence of general conditions which could bring about a mass movement of the intelligentsia towards socialism.
“There exist,” he declares in his foreword, “sufficient factors – though not purely economic ones, but drawn from another sphere – which can influence the entire mass of the intelligentsia, even apart from their proletarian life-situation, as adequate motives for them to join with the socialist workers’ movement. All that is needed is that the intelligentsia be made aware of the essential nature of this movement and of their own social position.” What are these factors? “Since inviolability, and above all, possibility of free development of spiritual interests,” says Adler, “are among the essential conditions of life for the intelligentsia, theoretical interest is therefore fully on an equality with economic interest where the intelligentsia are concerned. Thus, if the grounds for the intelligentsia joining the socialist movement are to be sought principally outside the economic sphere, this is explicable no less by the specific ideological conditions of existence of mental labour than by the cultural content of socialism” (page 7). Independently of the class nature of the entire movement (after all, it’s only a road!), independently of its everyday party-political image (after all, it’s only a means!), socialism by its very essence, as a universal social ideal, means the liberation of all forms of mental labour from every sort of socio-historical fetter and limitation. This premise, this vision, provides the ideological bridge over which the intelligentsia of Europe can and must pass into the camp of Social Democracy.
This is Adler’s basic standpoint, to developing which his whole pamphlet is devoted. Its radical fault, which at once leaps to the eye, is its non-historical nature. The social grounds for the intelligentsia to enter the camp of collectivism which Adler relies on have indeed been there for a very long time; and yet there is no trace, in a single European country, of any mass move by the intelligentsia towards Social Democracy. Adler sees this, of course, just as well as we do. But he prefers to see the reason for the estrangement of the intelligentsia from the working-class movement in the circumstance that the intelligentsia don’t understand socialism. In a certain sense that is true. But in that case what explains this persistent lack of understanding, which exists alongside their understanding many other extremely complicated matters? Clearly, it is not the weakness of their theoretical logic, but the power of irrational elements in their class psychology. Adler himself speaks about this in his chapter Bürgerliche Schranken des Verständnisses (Bourgeois Limits to Understanding), which is one of the best in the pamphlet. But he thinks, he hopes, he is sure – and here the preacher gets the better of the theoretician – that European Social Democracy will overcome the irrational elements in the mentality of the brain-workers if only it will reconstruct the logic of its relations with them. The intelligentsia don’t understand socialism because the latter appears to them from day to day in its routine shape as a political party, one of many, just like the others. But if the intelligentsia can be shown the true face of socialism, as a world wide cultural movement, they cannot but recognize in it their best hopes and aspirations. So Adler thinks.
We have come so far without examining whether in fact pure cultural requirements (development of technique, science, art) are in fact more powerful, so far as the intelligentsia as a class are concerned, than the class suggestions radiating from family, school, church and state, or than the voice of material interests. But even if we accept this for the sake of argument, if we agree to see in the intelligentsia above all a corporation of priests of culture who up to now have merely failed to grasp that the socialist break with bourgeois society is the best way to serve the interests of culture, the question then remains in all its force: can West-European Social Democracy offer the intelligentsia, theoretically and morally, anything more convincing or more attractive than what it has offered up to now?
Collectivism has been filling the world with the sound of its struggle for several decades already. Millions of workers have been united during this period in political, trade-union, co-operative, educational and other organizations. A whole class has raised itself from the depths of life and forced its way into the holy of holies of politics, regarded hitherto as the private preserve of the property-owning classes. Day by day the socialist press – theoretical, political, trade-union – re-evaluates bourgeois values, great and small, from the standpoint of a new world. There is not one question of social and cultural life (marriage, the family, upbringing, the school, the church, the army, patriotism, social hygiene, prostitution) on which socialism has not counterposed its view to the view of bourgeois society. It speaks in all the languages of civilized mankind. There work and fight in the ranks of the socialist movement people of different turns of mind and various temperaments, with different pasts, social connections and habits of life. And if the intelligentsia nevertheless “don’t understand” socialism, if all this together is insufficient to enable them, to compel them to grasp the cultural-historical significance of this world movement, then oughtn’t one to draw the conclusion that the causes of this fatal lack of understanding must be very profound and that attempts to overcome it by literary and theoretical means are inherently hopeless?
This idea emerges still more strikingly in the light of history. The biggest influx of intellectuals into the socialist movement – and this applies to all countries in Europe – took place in the first period of the party’s existence, when it was still in its childhood. This first wave brought with it the most outstanding theoreticians and politicians of the International. The more European Social Democracy grew, the bigger the mass of workers that was united around it, the weaker (not only relatively but absolutely) has the influx of fresh elements from the intelligentsia become. The Leipziger Volkszeitung sought for a long time in vain, through newspaper advertisements, an editorial worker with a university training. Here a conclusion forces itself upon us, a conclusion completely contrary to Adler: the more definitely socialism has revealed its content, the easier it has become for each and everyone to understand its mission in history, the more decidedly have the intelligentsia recoiled from it. While this does not mean that they fear socialism itself; it is nevertheless plain that in the capitalist countries of Europe there must have occurred some deep-going social changes which have hindered fraternization between university people and the workers, at the same time as they have facilitated the coming of the workers to the socialist movement.
What sort of changes have these been? The most intelligent individuals, groups and strata from the proletariat have joined and are joining Social Democracy. The growth and concentration of industry and transport is merely hastening this process. A completely different type of process is going on where the intelligentsia are concerned. The tremendous capitalist development of the last two decades has unquestionably skimmed off the cream of this class. The most talented intellectual forces, those with power of initiative and flight of thought, have been irrevocably absorbed by capitalist industry, by the trusts, railway companies and banks, which pay fantastic salaries for organizational work. Only second-raters remain for the service of the state, and government offices, no less than newspaper editors of all tendencies, complain about the shortage of “people”. As regards the representatives of the ever-increasing semi-proletarian intelligentsia – unable to escape from their eternally dependent and materially insecure way of life – for them, carrying out as they do fragmentary, second-rate and not very attractive functions in the great mechanism of culture, the cultural interests to which Adler appeals cannot be strong enough independently to direct their political sympathies towards the socialist movement.
Added to this is the circumstance that any European intellectual for whom going over to the camp of collectivism is not psychologically out of the question has practically no hope of winning a position of personal influence for himself in the ranks of the proletarian parties. And this question is of decisive importance. A worker comes to socialism as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass, which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality, and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes up against obstacles – and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become. At the beginning of the Social-Democratic movement, every intellectual who joined, even though not above the average, won for himself a place in the working-class movement. Today every newcomer finds, in the Western European countries, the colossal structure of working-class democracy already existing. Thousands of labour leaders, who have automatically been promoted from their class, constitute a solid apparatus at the head of which stand honoured veterans, of recognized authority, figures that have already become historic. Only a man of exceptional talent would in these circumstances be able to hope to win a leading position for himself – but such a man, instead of leaping across the abyss into a camp alien to him, will naturally follow the line of least resistance into the realm of industry or state service. Thus there also stands between the intelligentsia and socialism, like a watershed, in addition to everything else, the organizational apparatus of Social Democracy. It arouses discontent among members of the intelligentsia with socialist sympathies, from whom it demands discipline and self-restraint – sometimes in respect of their “opportunism” and sometimes, contrariwise, in respect of their excessive “radicalism” – and dooms them to the role of querulous lookers-on who vacillate in their sympathies between anarchism and national-liberalism. Simplicissimus is their highest ideological banner. With various modifications and to varying degrees, this phenomenon is repeated in all countries of Europe. These people are, more than any other group, too blasé, so to speak, too cynical, for a revelation, even the most moving, of the cultural significance of socialism to conquer their souls. Only rare “ideologues” – using this word in both the good sense and the bad – are capable of coming to socialist convictions under the stimulus of pure theoretical thinking, with, as their points of departure, the demands of law, as in the case of Anton Menger, or the requirements of technique, as in that of Atlanticus. But even such as these, as we know, do not usually get as far as the actual Social-Democratic movement, and the class struggle of the proletariat in its internal connection with socialism remains for them a book sealed with seven seals.

* * *

In considering that it is impossible to win the intelligentsia to collectivism with a program of immediate material gains Adler is absolutely right. But this still does not signify that it is possible to win the intelligentsia by any means at all, nor that immediate material interests and class ties do not affect the intelligentsia more cogently than all the cultural-historical prospects offered by socialism.

If we exclude that stratum of the intelligentsia which directly serves the working masses, as workers’ doctors, lawyers, and so on (a stratum which, as a general rule, is composed of the less talented representatives of these professions), then we see that the most important and influential part of the intelligentsia owes its livelihood to payments out of industrial profit, rent from land or the state budget, and thus is directly or indirectly dependent on the capitalist classes or the capitalist state.
Abstractly considered, this material dependence puts out of the question only militant political activity in the anti-capitalist ranks, but not spiritual freedom in relation to the class which provides employment. In actual fact, however, this is not so. Precisely the “spiritual” nature of the work that the intelligentsia do inevitably forms a spiritual tie between them and the possessing classes. Factory managers and engineers with administrative responsibilities necessarily find themselves in constant antagonism to the workers, against whom they are obliged to uphold the interests of capital. It is self-evident that the function they perform must, in the last analysis, adapt their ways of thinking and their opinions to itself. Doctors and lawyers, despite the more independent nature of their work, necessarily have to be in psychological contact with their clients. While an electrician can, day after day, install electric wiring in the offices of ministers, bankers and their mistresses, and yet remain himself in spite of this, it is a different matter for a doctor, who is obliged to find music in his soul and in his voice which will accord with the feelings and habits of these persons. This sort of contact, moreover, inevitably takes place not only at the top end of bourgeois society. The suffragettes of London engage a pro-suffragette lawyer to defend them. A doctor who treats majors’ wives in Berlin or the wives of “Christian-Social” shopkeepers in Vienna, a lawyer who handles the affairs of their fathers, brothers, and husbands, can hardly allow himself the luxury of enthusiasm for the cultural prospects of collectivism. All this applies likewise to writers, artists, sculptors, entertainers – not so directly and immediately, but no less inexorably. They offer the public their work or their personalities, they depend on its approval and its money, and so, whether in an open or a hidden way, they subordinate their creative achievement to that “great monster” which they hold in such contempt: the bourgeois mob. The fate of Germany’s “young” school of writers – now already, by the way, getting rather thin on top – shows the truth of this as well as anything. The example of Gorky, explained by the conditions of the epoch in which he grew up, is an exception which merely proves the rule: his inability to adapt himself to the anti-revolutionary degeneration of the intelligentsia rapidly deprived him of his “popularity”.
Here is revealed once more the profound social difference between the conditions of brain work and manual work. Though it enslaves the muscles and exhausts the body, factory work is powerless to subject to itself the worker’s mind. All the measures which have been attempted to get control of the latter, in Switzerland as in Russia, have proved uniformly fruitless. The brain worker is from the physical standpoint incomparably freer. The writer does not have to get up when the hooter sounds, behind the doctor’s back stands no supervisor, the lawyer’s pockets are not searched when he leaves the court. But in return, he is compelled to sell not his mere labour-power, not just the tension of his muscles, but his entire personality as a human being – and not through fear but through conscientiousness. As a result, these people don’t want to see and cannot see that their professional frock-coat is nothing but a prisoner’s uniform of better cut than ordinary.

* * *

In the end, Adler himself seems to be dissatisfied with his abstract and essentially idealistic formula on the interrelation between the intelligentsia and socialism. In his own propaganda he addresses himself, really, not to the class of brain workers fulfilling definite functions in capitalist society, but to their young generation who are only at the stage of preparing for their future role – to the students. Evidence of this is provided not only by the dedication “To the Free Students’ Union of Vienna” but also by the very nature of this pamphlet-speech, its impassioned agitational and sermonizing tone. It would be unthinkable to express oneself in this manner before an audience of professors, writers, lawyers, doctors. Such a speech would stick in one’s throat after the first few words. Thus, in direct dependence on the human material with which he finds himself working, Adler himself limits his task. The politician corrects the formula of the theoretician. In the end it is a question of struggle for influence over the students.

The university is the final stage of the state-organized education of the sons of the possessing and ruling classes, just as the barracks is the final educational institution for the young generation of the workers and peasants. The barracks fosters the psychological habits of obedience and discipline appropriate to the subordinate social functions to be fulfilled subsequently. The university, in principle, trains for management, leadership, government. From this angle even the German student societies are useful class institutions, since they create traditions which unite fathers and sons, strengthen national self-esteem, implant the habits which are needed in a bourgeois setting, and, finally, supply scars on the nose or under the ear which will serve as the stamp of one’s belonging to the ruling class. The human material which passes through the barracks is, of course, incomparably more important for Adler’s party than that which passes through the university. But in certain historical circumstances – namely, when, with rapid industrial development, the army is proletarian in its social composition, as is the case in Germany – the party can nevertheless say: “I won’t trouble to go into the barracks. It’s enough for me to see the young worker as far as its threshold and [the main thing] to meet him when he comes out again. He won’t leave me, he’ll stay mine.” But where the university is concerned, the party, if it wants at all to carry out an independent struggle for influence over the intelligentsia, must say exactly the opposite: “Only here and only now, when the young fellow is to a certain extent freed from his family, and when he has not yet become the captive of his position in society, can I count on drawing him into our ranks. It’s now or never.”
Among the workers the difference between “fathers” and “sons” is purely one of age. Among the intelligentsia it is not only a difference of age but also a social difference. The student, in contrast both to the young worker and to his own father, fulfils no social function, does not feel direct dependence on capital or the state, is not bound by any responsibilities, and – at least objectively, if not subjectively – is free in his judgement of right and wrong. At this period everything within him is fermenting, his class prejudices are as formless as his ideological interests, questions of conscience matter very strongly to him, his mind is opening for the first time to great scientific generalizations, the extraordinary is almost a physiological need for him. If collectivism is at all capable of mastering his mind, now is the moment, and it will indeed do it through the nobly scientific character of its basis and the comprehensive cultural content of its aims, not as a prosaic “knife and fork” question. On this last point Adler is absolutely right.
But here too we are again obliged to pull up short before a bald fact. It is not only Europe’s intelligentsia as a whole but its offspring, too, the students, who decidedly don’t show any attraction towards socialism. There is a wall between the workers’ party and the mass of the students. To account for this fact merely by the inadequacy of agitational work, which has not been able to approach the intelligentsia from the correct angle, which is how Adler tries to account for it, means overlooking the whole history of the relations between the students and the “people”, it means seeing in the students an intellectual and moral category rather than a product of social history. True, their material dependence on bourgeois society affects the students only obliquely, through their families, and is therefore weakened. But, as against this, the general social interests and needs of the classes from which the students are recruited are reflected in the feelings and opinions of the students with full force, as though in a resonator. Throughout their entire history – in its best, most heroic moments just as in periods of utter moral decay – the students of Europe have been merely the sensitive barometer of the bourgeois classes. They became ultra-revolutionary, sincerely and honourably fraternizing with the people, when bourgeois society had no way out but revolution. They took de facto the place of the bourgeois democratic forces when the political nullity of these prevented them from standing at the head of the revolution, as happened in Vienna in 1848. But they also fired on the workers in June of that same year, in Paris, when bourgeoisie and workers found themselves on opposite sides of the barricade. After Bismarck’s wars had united Germany and appeased the bourgeois classes, the German student hastened to become that figure, bloated with beer and conceit, who, alongside the Prussian lieutenant, is always turning up in the satirical papers. In Austria the student became the banner-bearer of national exclusiveness and militant chauvinism in proportion as the conflict grew sharper between the different nations of this country for influence over the government. And there is no doubt that through all these historical transformations, even the most repellent, the students showed political keenness, and readiness for self-sacrifice, and militant idealism; the qualities on which Adler relies so strongly. Though the normal philistine of 30 or 40 will not risk getting his face smashed in for any hypothetical notions about “honour”, his son will do this, with fervour. The Ukrainian and Polish students at Lvov University recently showed us again that they not only know how to carry out any national or political tendency to the very end, but also to offer their breasts to the muzzles of revolvers. Last year the German students of Prague were ready to face all the violence of the mob in order to demonstrate in the street their right to exist as a German society. Here we have militant idealism – sometimes just like that of a fighting cock – which is characteristic not of a class or of an idea but of an age-group; on the other hand, the political content of this idealism is entirely determined by the historical spirit of those classes from which the students come and to which they return. And this is natural and inevitable.
In the last analysis, all possessing classes send their sons to university, and if students were to be, while at the university, a tabula rasa on which socialism could write its message, what would then become of class heredity, and of poor old historical determinism?

* * *

It remains, in conclusion, to clarify one other aspect of the question, which speaks both for Adler and against him.

The only way to attract the intelligentsia to socialism, according to Adler, is to bring to the forefront the ultimate aim of the movement, in its full scope. But Adler recognizes, of course, that this ultimate aim looms clearer and more complete in proportion to the progress of the concentration of industry, the proletarianization of the middle strata and the intensification of class antagonisms. Independently of the will of political leaders and the differences in national tactics, in Germany the “ultimate aim” stands forth with incomparably greater clarity and immediacy than in Austria or Italy. But this very same social process, the intensification of the struggle between labour and capital, hinders the intelligentsia from crossing over to the camp of the party of labour. The bridges between the classes are broken down, and to cross over, one would have to leap across an abyss which gets deeper with every passing day. Thus, parallel with conditions that objectively make it easier for the intelligentsia to grasp theoretically the essence of collectivism, the social obstacles are growing greater in the way of political adhesion by the intelligentsia to the socialist army. Joining the socialist movement in any advanced country, where social life exists, is not a speculative act, but a political one, and here social will completely prevails over theorizing reason. And this finally means that it is harder to win the intelligentsia today than it was yesterday, and that it will be harder tomorrow than it is today.
In this process, too, however, there is a “break in gradualness”. The attitude of the intelligentsia to socialism, which we have described as one of alienation which increases with the very growth of the socialist movement, can and must change decisively as a result of an objective political change which will shift the balance of social forces in radical fashion. Among Adler’s assertions this much is true, that the intelligentsia is interested in the retention of capitalist exploitation not directly and not unconditionally, but only obliquely, through the bourgeois classes, in so far as the intelligentsia is materially dependent on these latter. The intelligentsia might go over to collectivism if it were given reason to see as probable the immediate victory of collectivism, if collectivism arose before it not as the ideal of a different, remote and alien class but as a near and tangible reality; finally, if – and this is not the least important condition – a political break with the bourgeoisie did not threaten each brain-worker taken separately with grave material and moral consequences. Such conditions can be established for the intelligentsia of Europe only by the political rule of a new social class; to some extent by a period of direct and immediate struggle for this rule. Whatever may have been the alienation of the European intelligentsia from the working masses – and this alienation will increase still further, especially in the younger capitalist countries, like Austria, Italy, the Balkan countries – nevertheless, in an epoch of great social reconstruction the intelligentsia – sooner, probably, than the other intermediate classes – will go over to the side of the defenders of the new society. A big role will be played in this connection by the intelligentsia’s social qualities, which distinguish it from the commercial and industrial petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry: its occupational ties with the cultural branches of social labour, its capacity for theoretical generalization, the flexibility and mobility of its thinking; in short, its intellectuality. Confronted with the inescapable fact of the transfer of the entire apparatus of society into new hands, the intelligentsia of Europe will be able to convince itself that the conditions thus established not only will not cast them into the abyss but on the contrary, will open before them unlimited possibilities for the application of technical, organizational and scientific forces; and they will be able to bring forward these forces from their ranks, even in the first, most critical period, when the new régime will have to overcome enormous technical, social and political difficulties.
But if the actual conquest of the apparatus of society depended on the previous coming over of the intelligentsia to the party of the European proletariat, then the prospects of collectivism would be wretched indeed – because, as we have endeavoured to show above, the coming over of the intelligentsia to Social Democracy within the framework of the bourgeois régime is getting, contrary to all Max Adler’s expectations, less and less possible as time goes by.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

***Poet's Corner- A Poem To While The Class Stuggle By- Claude Mckay's "If We Must Die"

Markin comment:

Sometimes a poem (or a song, play, or picture, but usually a poem) says more in a few lines than all the "high" communist propaganda we throw out about the stakes for our side in the class struggle. Claude McKay's If We Must Die is one of them.

If We Must Die by Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

***On Intergenerational Sex “…And Keep Me Young As I Grow Old”- With A Tip Of The Stetson To The Belfast Cowboy, Van Morrison

A YouTube film clip of Van Morrison performing The Beauty Of The Days Gone By which has the "... and keep me young as I grow old" line in it.

Markin comment:

This space, fundamentally, is devoted to political struggles, the big picture communist future political struggles that reflect the hard fact, as noted by Leon Trotsky's definitive biographer, Isaac Deutscher, that we communists have in the past, and continue now, to devote the bulk of our energies to the most immediately pressing of the three great tragedies of life, the struggle against hunger. The other two, sex and death, have gotten short shrift other than to be dealt with in broad brush stokes, basically arguing that in our communist future those two acknowledged mysterious passages will be dealt with more thoughtfully, less traumatically, and with deeper insight.

That said, where does that leave my old North Adamsville High School Class of 1964 corner boy class mate, Johnny Silver, and his twin sex and death dilemmas-growing old and still having a yearning for sexual adventure, sexual adventure with younger, much younger women. Other than calling him, rightly I think, a “ dirty old man” for even thinking about having sex with a young, curvaceous, nubile woman, to speak nothing of what it might do to his physical condition, we have no immediate communist program to alleviate his problem. Sorry Johnny. No question though under such a now seemingly utopian regime inter-generational sex will be no more the subject of scandalous gossip that various other homo and heterosexual variations of sexual activity that are the norm now.

Now, if one has been attentive, I have, with the exception of Leon Trotsky’s brief fling with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in the late 1930s during his Mexican exile, not spent much time on the personal sex lives of our revolutionary forbears. That has been in keeping with the traditional reticence of revolutionaries to discuss their personal sexual lives. And with my own preferences in the uses of this space. I, however, feel that Johnny Silver’s case can be instructive for those of us who are going into our “golden years” and are still as randy as middle schoolers. Therefore I have posted Johnny Silver’s story, non-communist, non-political, Johnny Silver’s story, here for your perusal. The weak of heart, those under a doctor’s care, and assorted outraged moral philistines should avoid reading this for the good of your lives and/or souls. Note, and note carefully that other than a little editorial work this is strictly Johnny’s responsibility although I will admit my temperature and pulse were vicariously rising somewhat while performing this onerous task.

Johnny Silver’s comment:

I always liked younger girls when I was just a kid and I never got out of that habit, that sweet young thing habit. I used to take a lot guff from Frankie Riley, Peter Paul, and the other corner boys “up the Downs” at our hang-out, Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, when at sixteen I dated up twelve-year old “Luscious” Linda Lorraine (but “hot,” hot way beyond her years as I found out, have mercy, when she practically “raped” me, raped me if you can believe that, on our first date down at the North Adamsville Beach one summer night. I won’t say more because Peter Paul, who is editing this thing, might take a heart attack when he reads this since he never got to first base with her, and he tried, at least that is what she said, they all tried). They would yell “jail bait,” “baby-snatcher,” “cradle-robber,” and all that stuff that has been said by people, guys especially, since about the time Adam tried to date up Eve (who was a lot younger than he was and must have been pretty “hot” herself to get Adam off the straight and narrow) but she was fine, some sweet soap-smelling fine, and just getting some nice curves and stuff. Maybe that is where I go the habit. [Markin: All we ever said was “watch out” Johnny. Linda, who lived the next street over from me then, was nothing but a “man trap,” a serious man-trap and Johnny was only one of several who enjoyed her “favors” in those days. Despite Johnny’s obvious lapse of memory I never tried to get to first base, or any base with her. As for the others, the corner boy others, I would not be surprised if on some “horny” girl friend-less nights they didn’t take a shot at it. It wasn’t hard. Last we heard of Linda she had had several kids by her early twenties and died of a heroin overdose in her mid-thirties so it wasn’t the age thing at all about Linda whatever Johnny might say now.]

And it's always pretty much was that way going forward. My first wife, Laurie, whom I met and who Peter Paul knows, was nothing but a fox when I was in graduate school and she was in high school and whom I met when I came back for a North Adamsville –Adamsville high school Thanksgiving Day football game. She was captain of the Red Raider cheer-leaders and I took dead aim at her [Markin: I agree Laurie was a fox, no question, but again we told Johnny to “watch out” on her as well because she was nothing but a man-eater as he found out a few kids, and a lot of alimony payments, later. I admit I took a “run” at her myself when they split up but I am still grinding my teeth over the way she treated me during our short “affair,” if that’s what you could call it.] When I met my second wife, Alicia, she was just in graduate school and I was in my late thirties. [Markin: Johnny and I started drifting apart then, mainly different parts of the country, so I don’t know about Alicia’s qualities but Johnny says that she treated him “good,” which to Johnny always meant good at giving him oral sex and stuff like that. Okay, get used to it we are adults and more explicit sexual details will be coming up so be forewarned. And take your heart medicine for god’s sake.] My third wife, Becky, was barely out of college and I was in my forties when we met but she was “good.”

After that I stopped marrying them and just settled into a steady diet of “dating” seemingly ever younger women that I met through my work contacts or other social situations. [Markin: Johnny was, and is, a very good construction site consulting engineer.] And then, after Carrie left to pursue her screen-writing “dream” in California things dried up, dried up hard for this older man [Markin: Carrie was Johnny’s last serious live-in girlfriend, emphasis on the girl part, barely legal]. Well, first, damn the computer age for one thing, since it meant I could do more of my consulting work from home. And get more work done (and charge more as well). But it meant that the social situations also dried up. And no 50-something guy, no 50-something guy in his right mind, is going to the “meat market” singles bars around town trying to pick up the young ones when they have plenty of young guys around to moon over and get worked up about. [Markin: I am trying to be gentle with Brother Silver here but he “forgot” to mention getting laughed at, ridiculed and told to go “back to the nursing home” by those self-same younger women. He also “forgot” to mention that he was not a 50-something guy but a 60-something guy when the “heat” came on him.]. And second, damn, whatever that Adam “spreading his seed” thing was because even if things dried up socially this old man wasn’t dried up, if you get my meaning. [Markin: Translation; he was still as randy as a middle- schooler] So I did whatever any “on the information super-highway” guy would do, I went online looking for sex sites, younger women-centered sex sites. [Markin: Johnny didn’t have to work up a sweat finding them they practically come at you from the homepage onward.]

Of course “dating” services have been going on since just after Adam and Eve got it on. (Eve, by the way, a younger woman, a much younger woman and probably pretty “hot,” with a firm, curvaceous, naked body hot from what I heard, if I didn’t mention it before). Nowadays though (thank god, and thank god I took my medicine beforehand) the sexually explicit stuff women are putting online for your perusal is “over the top,” especially the younger ones, thank god. So naturally I filled out my “profile” page, paid my dough (via credit card but be careful), and “joined” all the other guys, horny guys waiting, wanting to “get laid” tonight.

Well things were kind of slow for a while since I blocked off returning messages to any women over thirty, and rightly so as they started looking kind of sad sack by then (although there were plenty of them around, around with kid baggage, if that is where your tastes run go see). I though at first it might be because there was a prejudice against 50-something guys in this hellish youth-drive universe. [Markin: See note above on the age question, the Johnny Silver age question.] And then Tracy, sweet eighteen-year old Tracy, answered my plea.

Now Tracy was not your average young woman (girl really but let’s leave it at that). She was eighteen, bright, intelligent, ambitious, resourceful, and looking for a “sugar daddy,” whatever that might mean. Yes dear, Johnny Silver is just your meat. [Markin: After some research this old-fashioned term “sugar daddy” could mean, like in the old days, someone, some man, who paid the freight to today’s “hook-up” or “friends-with benefits," or something entirely innocuous.] But here is where the problem came in. We sent many message back and forth and we were making some headway. She stated clearly that she was not into “mere boys,” but older men who had been around, and knew a thing or two (or three). Yes Tracy, Johnny is very, very just your meat.

Eventually she agreed to meet me in a public place to discuss, discuss our “the exact meaning of sugar daddy" business, and the like. But here is where the wheels started to come off, almost. She wanted some pictures of me, presumably recently up-loaded digital camera-produced photos, before we met. Her idea, innocent enough, and actually reasonable enough, was to make sure I was not some three-headed monster or, perhaps, someone recently released from parole for any number of charges from sexual offenses to murder and mayhem [Markin: Smart girl. As for any possible sexual offenses, as far as I know, they were all consensual and not in the least bit criminal although a few irate fathers might differ. The murder and mayhem I would advise that Johnny plead the Fifth on that one.]

And that was the first stumbling block. See, old guys like Peter Paul and me, were not suckled on computer technology practically from birth like today’s kids. We survive on the “information super-highway” but juts barely and while I know, as Markin does, enough to get by let’s just call us “primitives.” In short, I confess, bitterly confess, any pictures I had were not digital, and even if they were I did not know how to up-load them onto any site, sex site or not. Truth. However Tracy did not believe me, and it made sense in her iPhone, iPad, texting, Facebook world that everybody knew how to do such an eight year old simple task. I only avoided total defeat by producing some older photos and reading every manual for up-loading that came with the printer. But it was a near thing.

I won’t bore the reader with the details of our first meeting, or our later meetings but she was certain fetching in person and wiser in age than some of the older young women that I have been with through the years. But the big thing was that she was wonderful in bed. And this is where the faint-hearted, or just plain perverted, can get off and find your own sex site. Well let’s start off as always with the firm, soft, wrinkle-free skin, breast, buttock, thighs, that has driven me wild since old-time Linda Lorraine (hell, I can still smell her Palmolive soap, or perfume or whatever she used to drive the boys wild even now). Then of course the school-girlish strip tease that always gets me going. And then placing her mouth, well, placing her mouth where it did some good. Hell though everybody who reads this knows what’s what. I don' t have to draw a diagram, do I? Yes, we did it did several times (not all in one day, Viagra is good but no that good). She was very inventive with positions and of course, I knew a thing or two (or three) that got her going (read: moaning and groaning for her sugar daddy and not the old –fashioned meaning of the word either whatever Markin’s research said it meant in the old days). She still smiles about those two (or three things when I bring it up).

But the point is really about “… and keep me young while getting old” as the line from the Van Morrison song, The Beauty Of The Days Gone By. Some guys get it by pumping iron or other maniac strenuous exercising, and some by endless youth-enhancing operations. And some, like Markin, by writing endlessly about the old days like they were coming back, or could do anybody any good. [Markin: Watch it, Johnny, watch it brother.] Me, no, I want a young thing, a young firm thing, a young sex-crazed thing, a firm young thing that wants a lesson in those two (or three) things I could teach her (and have her sweaty-smiling a couple of days later over) right next to me right up until, and maybe past, judgment day. Can you blame me?

Markin postscript comment:
We had better get to that communist future in a hurry, a real hurry. In the meantime I’ll go off and take a shower, a very cold shower. Oh yes, Johnny, by the way (BTW for the cyber-slang crowd) what is Tracy’s cell phone number? Or does she have a geezer-craving girlfriend? Whatever you do, Johnny- “don’t watch out, not now.”

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Leon Trotsky

The Intelligentsia and Socialism

(1910)

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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Left Links

About Me