***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s High School Dance Night-Save The Last Dance For Me- A Tip Of The Hat To "American Bandstand's" The Late Dick Clark

 

 

A YouTube film clip of The Drifters performing their classic Save The Last Dance For Me. Please, pretty please.
Markin comment:
I was, like probably every other non-goof member of the "Generation of '68," just as anxious to get out of school each weekday afternoon in order not to miss a minute of American Bandstand as anybody else. And while the newness wore off pretty quickly for me that's the facts, jack. Below is a sketch/review that says what I mean better than any further commentary. Adieu Dick Clark.
************
CD Review

The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Last Dance, Time-Life Music, 1990
Hey, I have spent tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” reviewing many aspects of 1950s American teenage culture (and maybe it spread to Europe too. Think about the Beatles and Rolling Stones and what they were listening to), especially that inevitable school dance and its also inevitable last dance. John and Mick had to ask too, remember. A last dance, by the way, that I have been at great pains to describe elsewhere as the last chance for glory for shy boys like me (or girls, for that matter, but they can speak for themselves). That seminal event also ritualistically involved setting off the wallflowers from the “in” crowd in the school social pecking order. And from there by some mysterious process that pecking order was set in stone through three or four long serf-like years of high school. Or, perhaps, for you and your crowd, your guy crowd, it acted as a test to prove that you that something, some moxie to ask that certain she for the last one.

Of course, the critical question, the world -historic question, was whether the last one was to be a slow one that meant that you had to dance close and pray to high heaven that you did not ruin your partner’s feet or shoes in the process. And that the hair cream (Wildroot, a little dab will do ya, of course)had kept your cowlick in place, that using your Gillette steel-edged razor hadn't caused terminal blood lost but only a tissue sop wound, that the deodorant that was suppose to get you through the night did not wear off although you seemed to be sweating, excuse me, perspiring through your tee-shirt, and that that surefire kiss mouthwash that tasted, well, tasted like mouthwash held up as well. Or would it be, with hosanna relief, a fast one, that you could kind of fake that you knew how to dance to, but was not as bound up with the ending of your rising social status like those slow ones. And no worry about hold-your nose mouthwash, hair cream, shaving cream or Right Guard.

As this compilation will let you have memory either as both types of songs are included so you can get “nostalgic” for what did, or did not, transpire in the old days. Or for the younger set to giggle over what your parents or grandparents got all heated up about and thank somebody that you came along in the days of hip-hop nation and avoided all that. Whee!

Standouts here include: Chuck Berry’s Back In The U.S.A. (fast and great doo-woppy back singing parts so you could sing along while you are not paying attention to your partner just in case things didn't work out); Tommy Edwards’ It’s All In The Game (slow, swoony, ouch, I am thinking about that razor-induced neck wound); the legendary late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? (fast and sassy, sassy 'cause girls who liked Bo, well, they "did it," didn't they, and you know what "did it" means, with all that Afro-Carib beat); and, the Flamingos I’ll Be Home (slow, and only if that certain she turned you down and you had to dance with your sister's best girlfriend, or something like that). How is that for deejaying even-handedness?

***IMPORTANT MUMIA ABU JAMAL UPDATE-FREE MUMIA

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Commentary

The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.

The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.

***IMPORTANT MUMIA ABU JAMAL UPDATE-FREE MUMIA

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Commentary

The legendary social commentator and stand up comic Lenny Bruce, no stranger to the American ‘justice’ system himself, once reportedly said that in the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls. The truth of that statement came home on Thursday March 27, 2008 as a panel of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals voted two to one to uphold Mumia’s conviction.

The only question left is that of resentencing- the death penalty or, perhaps worst, life in prison without parole. I have not yet read the decision but we are now a long way away from the possibility of a retrial-the narrow legal basis for even appealing in the legal system in the first place. Know this- in the end it will be in the streets and factories through the efforts of the international labor movement and other progressive forces that Mumia will be freed. That is the only way, have no illusions otherwise, whatever the next legal steps might be.

***Damn It- Free Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Jail!

Click below to link to Leonard Peltier Defense Committee site.

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

Commentary

This entry is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add little except to say that this man, a natural leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), should never have spent a day in jail. Free him now.


Savagely Beaten in Prison (2009)

Free Leonard Peltier!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

In January, Leonard Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement who has been in prison for 33 years for a crime he did not commit, was outrageously put in solitary confinement after having been savagely attacked when he was transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Canaan, Pennsylvania. In a January 20 statement, Betty Peltier-Solano, Peltier’s sister, stated: “We feel that prison authorities at the prompting of the FBI orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety.” We print below a January 22 protest letter from the Partisan Defense Committee to USP Canaan warden Ronnie R. Holt. The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League.

It has come to our attention that soon after his transfer to your prison, political prisoner Leonard Peltier was placed in solitary confinement and allowed only one meal a day. This is an outrage. Given this courageous man’s medical conditions, your actions put his life at risk.

Mr. Peltier had asked that he be transferred to a facility near his family and home in the Dakotas. Instead he was vindictively sent far away to USP Canaan. Shortly after his arrival he was set upon and brutally beaten, reportedly by prisoners he did not know. He sustained numerous bruises, a large lump on his head, discoloration and swelling to his hands as well as pain in his chest and ribcage. This incident is the supposed pretext for his being thrown into solitary.

Mr. Peltier is an innocent man who has been unjustly incarcerated for nearly 33 years because of his activism in defense of the rights of Native Americans. During that period his health has seriously deteriorated. He suffers from high blood pressure, a heart condition, failing eyesight and diabetes. As he is at risk for kidney failure, blindness and/or amputation, it is critical that Mr. Peltier be released from solitary confinement immediately and afforded all necessary medical treatment.

We, along with millions of others, do not believe that Leonard Peltier should have been incarcerated at all. We demand his unconditional release from prison.

***Labor's Untold Story-Clarence Darrow- Labor's Legal Advocate

Click below to link to legal site for information about this important legal advocate for labor in the early part of the 20th century, most famously although not directly, in the Scopes trial, the famous evolution teaching case in Tennessee in the 1920s.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Darrow.htm
 

Every Month Is Labor History Month


This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

***Tales From The 1950s Crypt- “Revolutionary Road”- This Ain’t “Ozzie And Harriet”

A YouTube's film clip of the trailer for the movie, "Revolutionary Road".

DVD Review

Revolutionary Road, based on the book by Richard Yates, starring Kate Winslett and Leonardo DiCaprio, DreamWorks Productions, 2008

Over the past period I have seemingly endlessly retailed the experiences of my young adulthood during the 1960s, the time of the “generation of ‘68”. That makes me, obviously, a child of the 1950s, the time period of this very interesting movie, “Revolutionary Road”, based on a book by the darkly sardonic writer, Richard Yates. I have also seemingly endlessly pointed out my experiences and the effects they had as a result of growing up among the marginally working poor in that ‘golden age’. I am fond of saying that I didn’t know there was any other condition than being poor for a long time. Well, I did find out there were other conditions although in my youth I would still have had a hard time relating to the story line of this film. The ‘trials and tribulations’, then, of an upwardly mobile, prosperous young couple, the Wheelers, Frank and April, with the mandatory two charming children (although amazingly well hidden throughout the film) and a nice leafy suburban house in some nice town in Connecticut would have gone over my head. Now though I can a little more readily appreciate the seamy psychologically paralyzing side of that existence.

As graphically portrayed in the film, that seamy side that also provided some of the most powerful scenes in the movie, and best acting moments by both Winslett and DiCaprio (last seen together in "Titanic") the central driving force of the story is the emptiness of middle class existence in the 1950s. Cookie-cutter is the word that came to mind as Frank and April try to break the golden bonds that keep them tied to their old life. One of the nice moments cinematically is the sequence involving Frank’s routine workday morning ritual catching the train to New York City (along with all the other felt-hatted men, the symbol of success in that period). Another sober moment is when April takes out the rubbish in their deathless suburban tract and realizes that this life is not for her.

But how to break those golden chains? The issues presented here about consumerism, meaningless and vacuous work, the isolated role of women in the nuclear family (and the question of women's reproductive rights that drives the final section of the film), the eternal struggle for security in an individualistically-driven society are all issues that got a fuller workout and wider airing in the 1960s (and since). In a sense the ‘whimsical’ Wheelers were too early.

They were before their time. However, although times have changed, I will bet serious money that if you go to some Connecticut train station headed to New York City on any Monday morning you will see, two generations removed and without the hats, men and women making that same meaningless trip that old Frank made. Yates was definitely onto something about the nature of modern capitalist social organization. But I will confess something, although I know better now the stresses of that fate, I would not have minded, minded at all, growing up in that little ‘cottage’ the Wheelers called home. That, however, is a story for another day. In the meantime note this. I am glad, glad as hell, that I followed my version of the 'revolutionary road', not theirs.

***Out Of The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Put The Lame Blame Frame On Frankie-I Wake Up Screaming- A Film Review

DVD Review

I Wake Up Screaming, starring Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carol Landis,

I have at this point reviewed a fair number of the crime noir films from the 1940s and 1950s. Some are classics like Out Of The Past, some are filled with simple crime doesn’t pay messages, some have femmes fatales that you would gladly commit armed robbery unarmed for just to get a whiff of their perfume. Others you would still be removing the bullets from your body, their bullets. Most, frankly, are just kind of run-of-the-mill like the film under review here, I Wake Up Screaming. Nothing exceptional here but the fact that the film has two, count ‘em two, femmes fatales, well kind of, kind of femmes fatales. And neither is bad, just misunderstood, but hell you would still give something to catch a whiff of that perfume mentioned above. Although maybe you would think twice about robbing banks unarmed for either.

Here’s the skinny. One wanna-be femme fatale starts out like many another country girl hitting the big city serving them off the arm in some hash house. Ms. Waitress (oops, waitperson, played by Carol Landis) is just waiting around to be “discovered” and plucked away from the eggs over easy. As luck would have it three, although only one counts, Frankie Christopher (played by ruggedly handsome, up-from-the dregs Victor Mature), men-about-town camp on her station and Frankie, a promoter of, well, let’s leave it as promoter, decides to take Ms. Waitperson from rags to riches, on the quick. He can see a meal ticket a mile away. And his preparations for the big strike work, work well, for a while.

What fouls things up is that one fine afternoon Ms. Waitperson is found by Frankie dead, very dead, in her apartment. And who fits the bill for the frame by his various actions toward the deceased is none other than Frankie. In a series of flash-backs the motives, actions, and responses of most of those involved are uncovered. And that is where Sis, femme fatale number two comes in; Ms. Waitperson’s sis (played by World War II soldier boys calendar heartthrob Betty Grable) who is her roommate, her confidante and her scolding younger sister is also in love with our boy Frankie (go figure, right) but is confused by the evidence against him. And Frankie is smitten by Sis as well so no fear things will get worked out. Hovering over the whole scene though are the bizarre actions of a relentless big- city cop trying to send Frankie to the chair for his own motives. Uncovering the cop’s motives is what drives the second half of the film. And that is all you need to know about this one. Oh, except as always the message is crime doesn’t pay, doesn’t pay even for bloody coppers. Got it.

***The Space Wars, Circa 1960

From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin

This is another of those answers to questions that my Class of 1964 high school class committee has been asking.

Today's Question: In high school did you ever get caught up in the euphoria over the space program?

We, all of us, are now old enough and presumably have seen enough of this sorry old world, to have become somewhat inured to the wonders of modern technology. Just witness the miracle of cyberspace that we are communicating through. My answer to this question goes back to the mist of time when humankind had just developed the technology to reach for the stars, and we had the capacity to wonder.

For myself, I distinctly remember, as I am sure that you do as well, sitting in some high school classroom as the Principal came over the P.A. system and hooked us up with the latest exploit in space. John Glenn’s trip around the earth comes readily to mind.

My friends, I will go back even further, back to elementary school, when we were just becoming conscious of the first explorations of space. The reaction to the news of Sputnik, the artificial satellite that the Russian had put up in 1957, drove many of us to extend our range of scientific knowledge.

I vividly remember trying to make rockets, in the basement of our family apartment, by soldering tin cans together fused with a funnel on top. I also remember taking some balsa wood, fashioning a rocket-type projectile, putting up wiring between two poles, inserting a CO2 cartridge and hammering away. Bang!!!

After that experience my scientific quest diminished. Moreover, I became much more concerned about the fate of my fellow earthlings and trying to correct a few injustices in this world, but that is another story. Now that I think about it the real question posed above really is aimed at those, unlike myself, who moved beyond our boyish (or girlish) fantasies and used that youthful energy to get serious about science.

***A Donovan Encore- "Catch The Wind"

A YouTube's Film Clip Of Donovan Doing "Catch The Wind".

CD REVIEW

Sunshine Superman, Donovan, Digimode, 1999

Elsewhere in this space I have reviewed a 2007 Donovan benefit concert in Los Angeles, “Donovan: Live In L.A.”, for the movie director David Lynch’s meditation center. As part of that review I noted that the now 60-something Donovan, my contemporary from the"Generation of ‘68”, had lost a step or two after viewing that performance. He kind of mailed it in there. I also noted that if one had a choice between that DVD, which I gave three stars to, and the five stars CD under review here then grab this one with both hands. Without getting all nostalgic about it these tracks, many of them covered in the documentary, jump with the spirit, naiveté, and hopes of the 1960’s. Donovan was, and is, an extraordinary songwriter. But more than that, in his prime he epitomized the hopes and dreams that we could create a “newer world”. That we failed in that important task does not negate the fact that his music was part of that mix in trying to “turn the world upside down”.

Just listing his songs here evokes a whole youth of color, change, causes and clashes. That said, those who decide to get this CD will get a full cycle of Donovan’s early work, including the simple but strong melody of “Colors” and the wistfulness and yearning of “Catch The Wind” (recently used in an automobile commercial-not good) that first brought Donovan’s music to my attention. “Jennifer Juniper” (didn’t we all have dreams of our own Jennifer, or wanted to), the funky, funny sing-along “ Mellow Yellow” , the pacifically-inclined and strongly anti-war Buffy St. Marie song “The Universal Soldier” and Donovan’s theme song “Sunshine Superman” are also included. As are the mystical “Atlantis” and the semi-mystical “Hurdy Gurdy Man”. Ah, those were the days.

In Honor Of The 64th Anniversary Year Of The Chinese Revolution of 1949- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Problems Of The Chinese Revolution (1927) –Is It Not Time to Understand?-May 28, 1928- Moscow

Click on link below to read on-line all of Leon Trotsky's book, Problems Of The Chinesee Revolution

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/pcr/index.htm

Markin comment (repost from 2012):

On a day when we are honoring the 63rd anniversary of the Chinese revolution of 1949 the article posted in this entry and the comment below take on added meaning. In the old days, in the days when I had broken from many of my previously held left social-democratic political views and had begun to embrace Marxism with a distinct tilt toward Trotskyism, I ran into an old revolutionary in Boston who had been deeply involved (although I did not learn the extend of that involvement until later) in the pre-World War II socialist struggles in Eastern Europe. The details of that involvement will not detain us here now but the import of what he had to impart to me about the defense of revolutionary gains has stuck with me until this day. And, moreover, is germane to the subject of this article from the pen of Leon Trotsky -the defense of the Chinese revolution and the later gains of that third revolution (1949) however currently attenuated.

This old comrade, by the circumstances of his life, had escaped that pre-war scene in fascist-wracked Europe and found himself toward the end of the 1930s in New York working with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the period when that organization was going through intense turmoil over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. In the history of American (and international) Trotskyism this is the famous Max Shachtman-James Burnham led opposition that declared, under one theory or another, that the previously defendable Soviet Union had changed dramatically enough in the course of a few months to be no longer worth defending by revolutionaries.

What struck him from the start about this dispute was the cavalier attitude of the anti-Soviet opposition, especially among the wet-behind-the-ears youth, on the question of that defense and consequently about the role that workers states, healthy, deformed or degenerated, as we use the terms of art in our movement, as part of the greater revolutionary strategy. Needless to say most of those who abandoned defense of the Soviet Union when there was even a smidgeon of a reason to defend it left politics and peddled their wares in academia or business. Or if they remained in politics lovingly embraced the virtues of world imperialism.

That said, the current question of defense of the Chinese Revolution hinges on those same premises that animated that old Socialist Workers Party dispute. And strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) on the question of whether China is now irrevocably on the capitalist road, or is capitalist already (despite some very un-capitalistic economic developments over the past few years), I find that many of those who oppose that position have that same cavalier attitude the old comrade warned me against back when I was first starting out. There may come a time when we, as we had to with the Soviet Union and other workers states, say that China is no longer a workers state. But today is not that day. In the meantime study the issue, read the posted article, and more importantly, defend the gains of the Chinese Revolution.

**********

Leon Trotsky

Problems of the Chinese Revolution

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Is It Not Time to Understand?-May 28, 1928- Moscow

Today’s Bulletin of Tass [1], Number 118, not for the press, contains a few telegrams of exclusively political importance. These telegrams are not kept concealed from public opinion because they may cause harm to the soviet state or the Chinese revolution, but because they prove the faultiness of the official course and the correctness of the line of the Opposition. We cite only the two especially striking telegrams:

“Shanghai, May 24. TASS – The central political council in Nanking has decided to make Feng Yuxiang a member of the council.”

That Chiang Kai-shek has made Feng Yuxiang a member of the council (for the time being, perhaps, without the consent of the “cautious” Feng Yuxiang) is now known to the whole world. But it must remain a secret from the Soviet workers. Why? Because Feng Yuxiang has until recently been presented to us at home as a genuine “worker” or “peasant”, as a reliable revolutionist, and so forth, that is, all the mistakes that were previously made with Chiang Kai-shek, were again made with Feng Yuxiang. Now, for the last few week, all telegrams concerning the more than dubious conduct of Feng Yuxiang have been concealed. Why? To what end? Obviously, because some are waiting with the secret hope: perhaps he will not betray us after all! And if he does betray us, they will say: this completely verifies our prediction on the abandonment of the national revolution by the bourgeoisie. But now? Instead of warning the Chinese workers and the Party, instead of stirring the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers to adopt really revolutionary measures against the treason of the generals, we keep quiet, we conceal the telegrams in our pockets. That will not help. The class logic of the revolutionary struggle cannot be concealed in one’s pocket.

The second telegram:

The Situation in Hankow

“Hankow, May 23. TASS – The Central Committee of the Communist Party has proposed to the ‘Hupeh League for Strengthening the Revolutionary Front’ to set in order the relations between the workers and the petty-bourgeoisie. The Central Committee emphasized the necessity of increasing discipline among the workers and of obedience to the decrees of the National Government and declared that the trade unions have not the right to arrest anyone, and must always apply to the authorities when they consider the arrest of this or that person necessary.”

This telegram is even more important than the first. For every serious revolutionist, it illuminates the whole situation and shows the absolute faultiness of the official line, the downright disastrousness of this line, and the absolute correctness of the line of the Opposition.

Just think: the trade unions in the territory of the Hankow government are arresting the enemies of the revolution. This means that the trade unions, by the whole logic of the situation, are forced to assume the tasks of revolutionary soviets. Now what does the Central Committee of the Communist Party do? It recommends to the trade unions to refrain from non-legal actions, to submit to the “decrees” of the Wuhan authorities, and in case of emergency, when a counter-revolutionist, a traitor, or conspirator has to be arrested or shot, to apply respectfully to the authorities who, in all probability, are related or allied to the conspirator. Is this not a mockery of the revolution, of its needs and of its most elementary tasks? Instead of arousing the masses to settle with the enemy right on the spot, the Wuhan government forbids it. Still more, it forbids it not in its own name, but through the medium of the Communist Party. The Central Committee of the Communist Party, in this case, plays the role of a political clerk to cowardly bourgeois radicals and pseudo-radicals, who tremble before the revolutionary masses and believe together with Martynov that the revolution can be carried out through arbitration commissions but not through the liquidation of the enemy by the masses. Isn’t this monstrous? Isn’t this a mockery of the revolution?
It is noteworthy, besides, that the “Hupeh League for the Strengthening of the Revolutionary Front” is given a special commission, namely, to set in order “the relations between the workers and the petty-bourgeoisie”. These relations cannot be set in order by a special League and not by special instructions, but only by a correct policy. The soviets of workers and of semi-proletarian city poor must be the broad organs of such a daily revolutionary policy. If the trade unions are forced to assume the functions of soviets, they will in certain cases almost inevitably leave out of consideration or injure the legitimate interests of the city petty-bourgeois. Thus, the absence of soviets also hits the petty-bourgeoisie and undermines its alliance with the proletariat.
Such is the situation in reality. The trade unions, driven forward by the masses, seek to correct the errors of the Chinese and Moscow leadership, and are proceeding to the immediate liquidation of the enemy. The Central Committee of the Communist Party, however, which ought to be the inspirer and leader of this summary liquidation, holds back the workers, and calls upon them to increase their “discipline” (towards the bourgeoisie), and to bow mutely before the connivance of the Hankow Kerenskys and Tseretelis with the agents of imperialism, of the bourgeoisie and of Chiang Kai-shek.
There is the Martinovist policy for you, not in words but in deeds!
A whole series of telegrams, especially from Tokyo, speaks of the “crumbling” of the Hankow government, of its impending downfall, and so forth. Of course such telegrams must be taken with the greatest caution. These are telegrams from an enemy, who awaits the downfall of the revolution, hopes for it, is on the watch for it, and thinks up all kinds of things and lies. But the two above-mentioned telegrams, like many others of a similar kind which arrive almost every day, compel us to recognize the fact that the position of the Hankow government can become hopeless. If it prevents the workers and peasants from putting an end to the counter-revolutionists, it will collapse. By its false policy, the Central Committee of the Communist Party is accelerating its collapse. Should the Hankow government crash under the assault of the workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets, we will surely not regret it. And it will collapse because it opposes the creation of soviets. If the Hankow government is supported in this ruinous policy, if the Chinese workers and peasants are restrained from immediately eliminating the enemy, and from building soviets, then the Chinese Communist Party is helping the Hankow government to collapse in the shortest time, and to die an inglorious death, not at the hands of the worker and peasant masses, but at the hands of bourgeois reaction. What is more, with such a policy the Hankow government, before it “collapses”, will most probably unite with Chiang Kai-shek – against the workers and peasants.
Is it not really time to understand this?

---

Note

1. TASS, the Soviet Telegraphic Agency, was the official Soviet news agency.

***From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Development of Soviet Educational Policies

Markin comment:

The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution, Spring 1977, that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Women and Revolution during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
************
Markin comment on this article:
Over the past couple of years I have placed as many still relevant social, political, literary, and cultural articles from the journal Women and Revolution as I have been able to find as a source for leftist militants to think about these questions that are not always directly related to our day to day tasks in the class struggle today. I have made some effort into trying to get as many articles about the experiences of the Soviet Union as possible because that experience is, in some senses, our only example of what could have been had things turned out a bit differently back in the early days of the Russian revolution.

A couple of general observations about the tenor of the Soviet-centered articles. First, each article starts with items and ideas that spoke to the promise of the revolution, the things that could or should have been done and that the Bolsheviks raised holy hell to try to accomplish. Second, each article notes that turning inward of the revolution and the erasing of institutions, movements, and currents that surfaced in the revolutionary period and that were slammed in the period of Stalinist degeneration of the late 1920s. Those observations should be etched in the memory or every leftist militant who wants to fight for our communist future so we do better when our chance comes.
*******
Development of Soviet Educational Policies
by Janis Gerrard


Along with the family and the church, the capitalist educational system serves to perpetuate bourgeois ideology. Expensive private schools and elite institutions of higher learning are for the privileged few. Public schools, on the other hand, stress the skills and discipline necessary to prepare the plebeian masses for their future exploitation.

The Bolshevik Revolution, which had as one of its goals the elimination of the distinction between mental and manual labor, took quite a different approach to education. "Every cook must rule," said Lenin. But in order to rule, one must know how to read and write and think. The illiterate person, he said, stands outside politics.

The Bolshevik Party regarded education as both a pledge to the workers and a necessity for workers democratic rule. An illiterate population, steeped in religious superstition, would be a barrier to socialist development.
At the time that the Bolsheviks seized power, the cultural level of the Russian masses was abysmal. Illiteracy, which was the norm for men, was nearly universal among women. The tsarist school system had catered to the children of the aristocracy and the upper middle classes who were preparing for the professions and government posts. There had been trade-school apprenticeships for a lucky few working-class children, but most children of poor families went to work at an early age.

After the 1905 Revolution, despite the general reaction and repression, there was a slight liberalization in the arts and education. Within the tsarist system a layer of educational reformers came to the fore, many of them Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) and other right-wing reformers, and outside it communists and anarchists set up their own schools and study circles, which taught workers and peasants the basics of literacy and hygiene along with politics. This tradition of popular education was part of the Russian radical heritage which dated back to the work of the Narodniki in the 1870s.

The academic intelligentsia enthusiastically welcomed the February revolution, which freed them from the repressive restrictions of the autocracy. However, in October most of them proved to be as anti-communist as they had been anti-autocratic.

This preponderance of anti-communism in academic circles added to the difficulties of the Soviet Commissariat of Education—Narkompros. The tasks it faced were monumental, and during the critical period of the civil war only those commissariats immediately necessary for the survival of the proletarian dictatorship—the army, the food commissariat, the transport authority— received much in the way of human and financial resources.
Almost immediately after the October Revolution, teachers joined the municipal workers of Petrograd and Moscow in an anti-government strike. Allegedly financed by the Ryanbushinsky banking family, the strikers were able to hold out all through the bitter winter. Threats to fire the teachers were ineffective since they could not be immediately replaced.

Many leaders and members of the All-Russian Teachers Union (VUS) joined the counterrevolutionary Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and the Revolution, which worked openly for Bolshevik defeat and used the example of the Bolsheviks' unsuccessful negotiations with the striking teachers in its propaganda. V.M. Pozner, an ultra-leftist within Narkompros, led the tiny minority of pro-Bolshevik teachers out of the VUS to form the Union of Teacher Internationalists and argued that the VUS should be forcibly dissolved. One of the main opponents of this position was Nadezhda Krupskaya, who wrote in Izvestiia (July 1918):

"I, like comrades Pozner and Lepeshinsky, wanted to tear VUS from the influence of its present leaders, but I am an old splitter and thought it more appropriate to break up VUS from within. In my opinion it was necessary to persuade all teachers supporting Soviet power...not to leave VUS, but to attend its Congress as delegates, and there form a compact group and develop their programmed to the full. Then it would have been clear what the real strength of the internationalists was...."

—N.K. Krupskaya, quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightment

The pro-Bolshevik teachers who had left the VUS were not eager to return, preferring the safety of sectarianism to the rigors of struggle. But with the support of Lenin, the "splitters" won against the red unionists and a successful fight was waged inside VUS, resulting in the formation of a broad, independent Union of Workers in Education and Socialist Culture.

Inspired Beginnings...

Despite its shortcomings, Narkompros initially had great authority. Anatol Lunacharsky, the commissar of education, was well-known and greatly admired. During the Bolshevik struggle against the Provisional Government in 1917 his audiences at factories and in the workers' districts regularly numbered in the thousands. His deputy, Krupskaya, was a respected Bolshevik known for her educational work and writing.

From the time the Bolsheviks seized state power they struggled to make education accessible for the first time to the masses. Child labor was abolished and schooling made mandatory for all children between the ages of seven and seventeen. Literacy was made mandatory for everyone through age 50, and a two-hour reduction in the work day was given to those engaged in such study. Tuition was abolished along with all academic titles, tests, degrees and homework. Teachers were subject to dismissal by their pupils. Unfortunately, however, much of this legislation existed only on paper, since the civil war left few funds for its implementation.

Nevertheless, by 1920 about 25,000 schools for literacy had been established, many of them organized by Zhenotdel, the Department of Working Women and Peasant Women. Though placards over the entrances said "Children are the Hope of the World," in fact the whole nation was going to school and learning to read and write. And those who learned also taught. The slogan of the campaign against illiteracy was: "Every literate person trains an illiterate one."

Despite the anti-communism of most professors the universities were kept open, and admission was free to anyone over 16 years of age who could demonstrate literacy. Special departments called rabfaks were also established in the universities to bring workers up to the standard of university entrance.

The early years of Soviet rule witnessed heated theoretical debate on the philosophy and methods of education. Once again V.M. Pozner crossed swords with the Narkompros leadership. Unlike Lunacharsky, he emphasized the replacement of the family by the school commune and a full reintegration of education with life, asserting that labor skills would be taught by "life itself" rather than artificially in a workshpp.

While these concepts were not at odds with Bolshevik ideals, they were unrealistic during a period of "war communism." The imperialist war and then the civil war had left thousands of homeless children roaming the countryside. Under these conditions the skills such children "learned from life" were likely to be lock picking and thievery. Lenin intervened in the controversy to have Lunacharsky's "Declaration on the United Labor School" declared a literary document, which meant that it was no longer subject to alteration. Lenin's implicit support gave the document the edge it needed to defeat Pozner's "Statement on the United Labor School."

...Clash With Hard Realities

While struggling against the threat of ultra-leftists who sought to realize communist ideals in a backward and impoverished country, the Narkompros leadership had also to wage a continual fight against a hardened, right-wing, anti-communist bloc of educators who remained loyal to the defunct Provisional Government, and with short-sighted elements within the Bolshevik party, including many trade unionists, who were most susceptible to the pressure to gear education solely to fill the desperate, immediate need for skilled workers. Narkompros consistently defended a policy of long-term polytechnical education as opposed to early specialization in trade schools and free education as opposed to the reintroduction of tuition fees.

Drawing on the only resources available, Narkompros attempted to supply the Soviet educational system with the facilities of the old, tsarist technical and trade schools During 1918 and 1919 two hundred trade schools were dismantled and destroyed under Narkompros direction—a rash act at a time when skilled workers were desperately needed and before new facilities had actually been created. This put Narkompros in a defensive position against the proponents of monotechnicalism, who were already gathering a "technical lobby" around a proposal for a United Technical School—a system in which only primary education would have a general character. This lobby gained a powerful ally at the end of 1919 in Leon Trotsky's Commission on Labor Conscription.

Trotsky's plan to allow a limited reintroduction of private trade to regenerate the ravaged economy had been rejected. This plan was to be introduced two years later in the form of the New Economic Policy (NEP), but during the period when it was temporarily defeated," Trotsky proposed a quasi-military mobilization of labor as the only alternative. An adjunct to this mobilization to ensure the production of qualified workers was educational conscription, with specialized professional training beginning at age 14. The bloc was short-lived, however. The Controversy which arose over Trotsky's proposal centered on the relationship between the state and the trade unions. Trotsky argued that labor conscription necessitated the transformation of trade unions into a disciplined arm of the state. The trade unionists, who made up the bulk of the "technical\ lobby," while supporting educational conscription, opposed the general plan. Lenin sided with the trade unionists on the question of the unions' right to strike and the threatened infringement of trade-union independence, and with the Narkompros leadership in its defense of polytechnicalism.

Narkompros emerged from this struggle victorious but weakened and with the authority of its leadership damaged. The "technical lobby," although temporarily defeated, was strengthened. The general sentiment that Narkompros, whatever its program, had not been able to organize much of anything was close to the truth.

This lack of confidence in Narkompros reached a crisis when an emergency necessitated an unexpected relationship between Narkompros and the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combatting Counterrevolution, Speculation and Delinquency in Office— otherwise known as the Cheka.
In 1920-the Soviet Union was terrorized by gangs of starving, homeless delinquent youth. Cheka leader Felix Dzerzhinsky proposed that since the Cheka had well-supplied and efficiently operating branches in many areas, it could take on the task of rehabilitating these homeless youth (bespryzornye)—an idea which sent panic through liberal pedagogical circles.

The Cheka proceeded to organize rehabilitation colonies along the lines laid out by Commissar G.F. Grinko of the Ukrainian Narkompros, a long-time foe of the Russian Narkompros' child-centered theories of education. The work was headed by Grinko's protege, Anton Makarenko. Although Makarenko's methods, which included military discipline and hard labor in addition to instruction, were highly unorthodox by Soviet standards, he was successful in rehabilitating seemingly incorrigible delinquents with police records ranging from petty theft to manslaughter.

Each of his collectives was a carefully constructed unit with a built-in stratified, hierarchical and democratic structure calculated to create an atmosphere of intense social pressure to curb the anti-social tendencies of the bespryzornye. Discipline was collective and often self-imposed. Transferred from Narkompros to the Cheka, Makarenko continued to run this operation throughout the 1920's.

Retreat

Under the pressure of the "technical "lobby," Narkompros was forced in 1920 to the conclusion that the shortage of qualified workers made it necessary to temporarily reduce the labor school from nine to seven years and to begin specialized training at age fifteen. This time, even Krupskaya gave in. Since the nine-year school did not exist in any case, except on paper, the real task was to construct the seven-year school.
Narkompros emphasized that this was a regrettable and temporary expedient, and Lenin fought for a reaffirmation of the principle of polytechnical education which he correctly viewed as being in danger during this period of retreat.

The introduction of the New Economic Policy halted the few advances that Narkompros had achieved. The end of food requisitions and the introduction of the tax in kind meant a drastic reduction in state funds available for education. All departments were urged to take advantage of the limited free market and become self-sufficient. Narkompros, however, had nothing to market but theater tickets and literature. At the same time, costs skyrocketed, since public services such as sewage, electricity, fuel and transportation now cost money. In February and March of 1922 an acute financial crisis led to a large number of Soviet employees being taken off state supply. The number of teachers receiving or even entitled to salaries fell drastically, leading to a wholesale closing of schools.

After reaching a peak of 82,000 in 1921, primary schools were driven down to 49,000 by October 1923. Those schools which did survive the removal of central funding initiated local self-taxation in kind, making teachers directly dependent on the kulaks (rich peasants) for their most immediate needs.

Narkompros initially forbade the reintroduction of tuition fees but was soon forced to allow it as a temporary expedient. Krupskaya called this decision, which once again made education a privilege of those who could afford it, a vulgar retreat from the party program.

Stalinist Education

Many Narkompros members became involved in the oppositional struggle against the rise of Stalinist bureaucratism which followed Lenin's death in 1924. Krupskaya initially fought with the joint opposition but was seduced back into the fold by the ultra-left policies of Stalin's "third period." But although she remained a figurehead in Narkompros, she was stripped of all real influence. Lunacharsky avoided the political struggle, apparently hoping to defend the gains of Narkompros in the arts and education against the general social retrenchment.

Although Narkompros now entered a period of demoralization and relative inactivity, it continued to wage some agitational campaigns. In 1925, the League of the Militant Godless, an organization dedicated to the replacement of superstition with scientific knowledge, was founded with Narkompros support. The campaign to combat illiteracy was also pursued vigorously, despite the inability of schools to accommodate students.
The defeat of the Left Opposition meant the defeat of Leninism. However, in education this void was not immediately filled by Stalinist policies. Instead, the crackpot theories of "pedology" and "spontaneous education" became popular during the middle and late twenties. The adherents of these theories predicted the "withering away of the schools," perhaps in an effort to justify the unfortunate reality—there were not enough schools!

The first All-Union Congress of Pedology boasted 2,500 participants.
From 1929 on, Stalin attempted to give programmatic justification to the temporary and unavoidable retreats in the field of education. The old tsarist educators returned to the classrooms, degrees, titles and pedagogic discipline were reinstituted and the schools again were devoted to instilling labor discipline and servility. A major pedagogic text of the early Stalinist period was entitled I Want to Be Like Stalin!
Stalin found his perfect educational theorist in Makarenko. After his successes in the twenties with the besprizornye, Makarenko could argue in the thirties with the authority of an enlightened and successful pedagogue for militarism, discipline and patriotism. With Makarenko at the head of Stalin's campaign against "pedological perversions," the popular theory served as a straw man to guillotine the whole concept of education for individual development. And since Makarenko's old foes in Narkompros, including Krupskaya and Lunacharsky, were tainted by their association with pedology, the campaign served both as a scapegoat for the failure of early Soviet educational policies and as a screen for the turn from the earlier prevailing approach to education.

In 1940 the imminent danger of a German invasion motivated a switch to quick vocational and military training ranging from six-month factory courses to two-year vocational schools. Tuition fees for education beyond the eighth grade made the factory courses the only real option of the poor. By 1942 vocational schools were introduced for children as young as ten years of age, and military training was instituted.

In 1943, separate education for boys and girls was re-introduced on the grounds that co-education had served its purpose—smashing the vestiges of the tsarist oppression of women. The liberated Soviet woman, it was argued, needed a separate education to better prepare her for her special Work in life—not the least of which was marriage and motherhood.
The contradictions generally inherent in Stalinism were duplicated in the Stalinist educational system. The Stalinist bureaucrats achieved their privileged position by politically expropriating the working class, yet they maintained their rule only by defending collectivized property, which is in the historic interests of the workers. These property forms demand technological and scientific development, which is dependent on individual human creativity possible only in the context of a generally high cultural level. Thus, the Stalinist bureaucracy was forced to return a high proportion of the national surplus to mass education. It created an educational system which supplied necessary scientists and technicians and at the same time indoctrinated the young with a misplaced loyalty to the bureaucracy and its programs.

The self-serving bureaucracy is at times its own worst enemy. Disastrous consequences often result from the attempt to bolster the reactionary program of "socialism in one country" with Utopian, anti-materialist theories. Thus, Lysenko's crackpot genetic theories applied to agriculture led to the destruction of vast tracts of arable land. But Soviet education nevertheless achieved great leaps in science, industry and even sports. In a matter of decades the Soviet Union was transformed from a backward, largely feudal agrarian society to a modern industrial state and a major military power. The appearance of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth, and the development of the Soviet nuclear bomb put a spotlight on Soviet education, producing in the U.S. a flood of books with such titles as: What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't, and The Challenge of Soviet Education.

The achievements not only of the USSR but of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and China show what socialized property and centralized education can achieve even without enlightened policies. Only a political revolution based on the program of Lenin and Trotsky, however, will restore intellectual and artistic freedom and unleash the unknown capacities of the human mind. With the victory of the reforged Fourth International, EVERY COOK WILL RULE!

***Untold Story-The Other Side Of The Class War- Allen Pinkerton And His Anti-Labor Detective Agency.

Click below to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, at one time a notorious anti-labor private police force for the capitalists, in addition to their public police. Hey, we have to know our friends, but also keep an eye on our enemies who spend over a billion dollars a year to keep unions out of their work places. Right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pinkerton

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

***The "Max Daddy” Blues Shootout- Alan Lomax’s "Blues At Newport 1966"-Take Four

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Above A YouTube Film Clip Of Skip James Doing "Devil Got My Woman" At The Newport Folk Festival In 1966. Wow!

 

 

 

Son House

Howlin'Wolf

Bukka White

Reverend Pearly Brown

 

 Based on a DVD review of the documentary Devil Got My Woman: Blues At Newport 1966

 

I remember once, long ago, maybe around the time when I first met him on a fateful night at a rock and roll dance at the Surf Ballroom in 1964 in my hometown of Hullsville my old friend Peter Paul Markin (hereafter just Markin like normal guys) telling me all about his love for the blues. He would go on and on about how the blues, first country down in the South, down in the Delta plantation, picking cotton for some Mister and living under what he called Mister James Crow’s laws and then with the great northern migration of blacks to the cities and real jobs around World War II the blues got all electrified that those strands formed the basis, or one of them anyway, for rock and roll. He would then rattle off  

the names of all the then current groups, mostly British, mostly British invasion groups, who cut their teeth on the blues. Bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the like. At that time I was hot into rock and roll, hot into rock and roll in order to keep in step with what the girls (then, young women now) were interested in so I could have a word with them. Have something to say once I stepped up to some certain she that I had my eye on. The Markin world of folk (which he, alternately, went on and on about) and blues, what did he call it, yeah, roots music left me yawning. Then.

A number of years later, maybe the early 1970s I was out in San Francisco and ran into a number of women, young women, okay, who were crazy for the blues, for the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, guys like that. I was working at the Café Noche where I worked for a while as I was drifting up and down the coast trying to find out once the flame of the 1960s stuff blew out what my little niche in life (life then being may the next three years, hell, maybe just one) would turn out to be. Then I caught the blues bug, caught it almost as bad as Markin (almost, okay). And I in my turn would spread the word to all who would listen about how the blues, country and then city, formed the basis, or one of the bases for our beloved rock and roll.

But by then many of the old time country blues singers like Mississippi John Hurt and city blues guys like Muddy and Howlin’ Wolf were either past their prime or had passed on and so, unlike Markin, I never really got a chance to see them in person. And so every once in a while when I would come across some old film footage of the blues kings and queens I would take note. Of course in the age of exponential developments in film preservation and reproduction technology and access to stuff via the Internet that task has been made easier, infinitely easier. One day Markin sent me a copy of the film documentary Devil Got My Woman: Blues At Newport 1966 and I flipped out. I got to see “live” some of the masters at work, or rather at play and just how they all bounced of each other.     

Here were representatives of the various trends in the blues tradition, including both the country blues and the later electrified urban sound most closely associated with places like Memphis and Chicago. And as I touted the film to others (including women, older women, okay) I pointed out in Markin fashion that it was fairly well known that country blues got its start down in the South during the early part of the 20th century (if not earlier) as a way for blacks (mainly) to cope with the dreaded, deadly work on the plantations (picking that hard to pick cotton). The electric blues really came of age in the post- World War I period and later when there was a massive black migration out of the south in search of the, now disappearing, industrial jobs up north (and to get out from under old Mister Jim Crow racial segregation). I guess I must have been paying attention after all.

In this film (and similarly in a couple of other previously reviewed volumes in this series) Stefan Grossman, the renowned guitar teacher and performer in his own right, had taken old film clips and segments from an Alan Lomax experiment at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966 of putting exemplars of both traditions together under one roof and had produced an hour of classic performances.

Let me set the stage on this one to give you a small, small sense of what an historic blues cultural occasion this was. Alan Lomax, the famous musicologist and folk performer, put the then recently "rediscovered" Skip James and Son House and the already well known and powerful voice of Howlin' Wolf together under one roof. Oh yes, and then added Bukka White and the Reverend Pearly Brown to the mix. The motif: an attempt to recreate an old fashioned "juke joint'" from back in the days on a Down South rural Saturday night complete with dancing and plenty of liquor. Watch out. Watch out for that rotgut liquor, watch out for your woman who is eying that brother who just came the door, worse, watch out for that other brother, hooch brave, eying your woman and making you think big thoughts about how glad you were that you had your knife handy, and wished to high heaven that you had brought your gun. But mostly watch (and watch out for too, watch out for your woman watch out once she starts swaying to the beat) those guys who are providing the night’s entertainment because they are on a roll.  

Needless to say anyone even vaguely familiar with the long and storied history of the early blues knows that this was indeed an historic, and fleeting, occasion. 1966 might have been one of the few years that such an event could have been put together as the old country blues singers were starting to past from the scene. But as fate would have it we got one last chance to look at these five performers going head to head, everyone one way or another a legend. With the partial exception of the Reverend Pearly Brown and his religiously- oriented country blues done in the shout and response style of the old Baptist churches reflecting the tradition made popular by the Reverend Blind Willie Johnson, all the other performers were members in good standing of one or another branch of the blues pantheon.

A few of the highlights. Skip James' rendition of his classic "I'd Rather Be The Devil That Be That Woman's Man" (also known by the title of this documentary "Devil Got My Woman"). Son House brought out his classic "Death Letter Blues" that I always go crazy over. Howlin' Wolf was, well, Howlin' Wolf as he almost inhales the harmonica on "How Many More Years" and did an incredible cover of the old Robert Johnson/Elmore James song "Dust My Broom". Reverend Brown does a very soulful rendition of the tradtional religious blues classic "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning." Bukka White too, of course, on Aberdeen Mississippi Woman”. Bukka had been a recent addition to my personal blues pantheon and I have spent some effort praising his work, especially his smoking guitar work on that old National Steel guitar that he makes hum. Hell, just like Markin I would have walked to Mississippi to hear that.

Best of all was the interplay between various players, some drinking off the hip, some glassy-eyed with that tell-tale marijuana glow that one could almost smell as thing got heated, some just letting their muse get them high. All taking the measure of each other, all trying to say “son, you thought you had something, watch this.” Yes indeed, this was the blues shootout to end all shootouts. If you wanted to know what it was like to see men play the blues for keeps that was the place to be.

 

 

***From The Archives (2008)- Allan Greenspan Walks The Plank-Or Should

Markin comment -2013  

Usually in politics, includng my brand of extra-parliamentary  street politics, it sometimes best to let sleeping dogs lie. And under normal circumstances I would follow that advise and let old Ayn Rand-ite Greenspan go off into the wilderness. Except he is planning ot write a book of his memoirs, about his "wisdom" as Federal Reserve Board Chairman. Jesus, will it never end.  


Allan Greenspan Walks The Plank- Or Should. Where Are Those Pirates of The Caribbean When You Need Them?

Commentary

One of the least edifying aspects of this international capitalist meltdown is the rush to point fingers at who is to blame. In America most conservative commentators have fixated on (surprise) the Democrats and their long ago legislation concerning Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac or the Community Redevelopment Act. These actions, rather than traditional Wall Street greed (make that super-greed) are seen as the culprits. The Democrats want to blame (surprise) Wall Street, “the bad capitalists”, for being unregulated. Here again, race and class raise their ugly little heads in the background. Behind all of this palaver are the “little guys and gals” , that is the poor working people of every race but mainly black and Hispanic, who just wanted to have their own homes-not an irrational dream in America whatever this writer’s personal take on the wisdom of such a choice might be. You see the poor are the fall guys and gals because they were in over their heads and should not have pursued that road. Well, we will let that one rest for now because we have bigger fish to fry today.

On October 23, 2008 former Federal Reserve Chairman Allan Greenspan appeared before a Congressional committee investigating the causes of the international financial meltdown. During the course of the interchange between Greenspan and members of the committee he owned up to the fact that, as long time overseer of the capitalist markets, he had miscalculated (“found a flaw” to use his expression) concerning the effects that self-interest should have played in the markets- the so-called “invisible hand” that watches out and safeguards against irrational behavior. Thanks for that insight, Allan. However there is more to it than that. Greenspan’s economic policies reflected his adherence to the ultra-capitalist notions of one of Russian Revolution refugee, Ayn Rand. A lynchpin in that thinking is the belief that markets should regulate themselves with little (really no) oversight from “big brother” government. Well, at least that was the widely accepted “wisdom” before some eight trillion dollars of “paper wealth” in the market proved to be essentially “funny money”.

None of the back and forth between the concepts of liberal “welfare state” capitalism and conservative “free market” capitalism reflected in this investigation is to the point. To paraphrase an old presidential campaign slogan- “It’s the system, stupid”. That is the elephant in the room studiously ignored by Republican and Democrat alike. Private ownership of the means of production and its adjunct credit markets and other financial devises as defined by the long history of capitalist rule has produced one constant- the continuous need for profits. No just any rate of profits but the highest possible, to put it in a word- greed. Until that glorious day when greed is not the central driving force behind economic life and is replaced by rational international socialist planning that will continue to be true. Revolutions have convulsed societies over policies that caused far less damage to the social fabric than have occurred in the present meltdown. But until that time a few heads should roll. As a contribution to that end can anyone disagree that old Allan Greenspan should walk the plank? I think not.