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
Friday, March 13, 2015
Crime And Vengeance With Boston's Own Dennis Lehane
Best-selling author Dennis Lehane takes blood, crime and vengeance to Tampa in his newest novel, “World Gone By.”
Novelist Dennis Lehane sits in the On Point Studio on Friday, March 13, 2015. (Jesse Costa / WBUR)
Dennis Lehane does gritty, literary crime fiction with a bloody elegance that just keeps coming. In ‘A Drink Before the War,” “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Moonlight Mile,” “ Mystic River,” and many more, his crime novels have built a big following way beyond his Boston hometown. Hollywood snaps up his books. He’s written for “The Wire” and “Boardwalk Empire,” too. His latest book goes World War II-era Florida, to old Tampa and Cuba and gangster days. It’s blood and betrayal again. This hour On Point: Dennis Lehane on America now and his new novel “World Gone By.”
Why ‘Our Kids’ Aren't Still Winning Today
COMMENTARY (2007)
RECENT HARVARD STUDY PRODUCES DISTURBING RESULTS
As a professed socialist I know that our ultimate aim is to mix the various peoples of the world, their institutions and the way they look at the world in order to benefit humankind as a whole. In short, we are decidedly in favor of the concept that has entered into the political vocabulary as multiculturalism. With this proviso –we know that the material basis for such solidarities as expressed above require a totally different form of social organization and use of ‘social’ capital than currently exists. Nevertheless we support multilingualism, international acts of solidarity and ‘diversity’ cultural events as steps in the right direction. We have no interest in the ‘superiority’ of one language over another, one race over another, one nation over another or one culture over another.
That said, a recent study concerning this very question of multiculturalism in America has been the subject of some agony by liberals and delight by conservatives. Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard, well-known for his now classic study of the breakdown of civil solidarity in America in “Bowling Alone”, has concluded a massive long time survey that indicates that the more heterogeneous a society (like the United States, for example) the less likely that the various social, ethnic and racial groups that make up that society will coalesce and work together to create a greater unitary civil society. Of course, as a quintessential liberal these conclusions have frightened the good professor and he has been campaigning to lessen the impact of his study. Conservatives, obviously, delight in these conclusions and will use this information to deny the value of affirmative action, immigration, bilingualism, etc.
We, however, will take the study for what it is worth. As a good indicator, for an academic study, of how far we have to go to get to those goals mentioned in the first paragraph. Whether the sociological methodology behind Professor Putnam’s work is politically reliable is an open question. Some of it seems to be the same old academic ‘hat trick’ methodology that, unfortunately for the professor, went astray when confronted with political and social reality. And that is the point. Liberals, through such programs as affirmative action, changes in the educational curriculum and the mere fact of celebrating diversity through recognition of various cultural events formerly neglected, truly believe that these actions would be enough to make a multicultural society. In short, if everyone made 'nice' things would be nice. Even an off hand look at the social composition of most educational institutions in America including those of higher learning, housing patterns and cultural events could have confirmed the professor’s thesis without the paperwork. The only significant place, important for us, where there is mingling is in the workplace. That is to the good. And that is added confirmation about why we have to organize those workplaces for socialism.
When the doors of opportunity close on America’s children. How and why it’s happened, with Robert Putnam and his new book, “Our Kids.”
An image from the cover of Robert D. Putnam’s new book, “Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis.” (Simon & Schuster)
Robert Putnam is perhaps the most famed social scientist in the United States. A kid from working class Ohio. Now a big deal at Harvard. He went out to see how it is now for kids hoping to rise up in working class America. And he was shocked. Deeply unsettled at how difficult it has become. At how rocketing American inequality has shoved the American dream stunningly out of reach for millions and millions of kids. “Our kids,” he says. And put America’s very future at risk. This hour On Point: Robert Putnam’s new cry to save our kids and our country.
Washington Post: The terrible loneliness of growing up poor in Robert Putnam’s America — “For the past three years, Putnam has been nursing an outlandish ambition. He wants inequality of opportunity for kids to be the central issue in the 2016 presidential election. Not how big government should be or what the ‘fair share’ is for the wealthy, but what’s happening to children boxed out of the American dream.” New Yorker: Richer and Poorer – “Income inequality is greater in the United States than in any other democracy in the developed world. Between 1975 and 1985, when the Gini index for U.S. households rose from .397 to .419, as calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Gini indices of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, and Finland ranged roughly between .200 and .300, according to national data analyzed by Andrea Brandolini and Timothy Smeeding. But historical cross-country comparisons are difficult to make; the data are patchy, and different countries measure differently.” New York Times: ‘Our Kids,’ by Robert D. Putnam — “The idea that growing inequality will hurt upward mobility might seem self-evident. But the academic verdict on intergenerational trends is still out, and data on today’s children will lag for decades. Likening the problem to climate change, Putnam says we can’t wait for perfect clarity but must act now to save the American dream.”
Boston
Pride Will March in the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, March
15th
March
13, 2015 (Boston, MA) – Boston Pride, which will commemorate its 45th
anniversary as an organization celebrating the LGBT community in June, has been
accepted by the South Boston Allied War Veteran’s Council to march in the 114th
annual South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The parade will take place on
Sunday, March 15th.
“We are looking forward to
celebrating Boston’s diversity, our veterans and the Irish heritage of so many
members of our community by marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” said
Sylvain Bruni, president of Boston Pride. “While we recognize there is still
much work to be done to protect the rights of the LGBT community both here and
around the world, and to ensure everyone’s rights to express themselves and to
celebrate, we are aware of how symbolically important it is for members of our
community to be proudly out among their friends and neighbors as a part of this
historic parade.”
"I'm thrilled that the St.
Patrick's Day parade is inclusive this year, and the addition of Boston Pride to
the list of participants reflects the values of the South Boston neighborhood,"
said Mayor Walsh. "With this year's parade, Boston is putting years of
controversy behind us."
In 1995, the United States
Supreme Court ruled that the organizers of the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day
Parade had a constitutional right to exclude LGBT organizations and individuals
from participating in the annual parade. Twenty years later, Boston Pride and
the LGBT community will be marching proudly in the parade, alongside OUTVETS, a
group that formed last year and represents openly gay veterans.
“We are eager to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the
same respectful manner we ask participants to observe at the Pride Parade every
year. As importantly, we are looking forward to showing our pride in an
established Boston tradition and in our community by marching on Sunday, and we
invite all LGBT and ally individuals to march with us,” said Bruni.
About Boston Pride
Boston Pride produces events and activities to achieve inclusivity,
equality, respect, and awareness in Greater Boston and beyond. Fostering
diversity, unity, visibility and dignity, we educate, communicate and advocate
by building and strengthening community connections.
Kicking off June 5 through June 14, Boston Pride will host ten days
of events and activities that bring people together from all walks of life to
celebrate diversity. Opening with the Annual Flag Raising Ceremony at City Hall,
2015 Pride Week will also include, the first annual Gala, Pride Day at Faneuil
Hall, Black Pride Cruise, AIDS Walk, Pride Diplomatic Reception, Pride Lights,
Human Rights Forum, Queeraoke, Pride Night at Fenway Park, Boston Pride Festival
and Parade, Pride Youth Dance, Back Bay Block Party, and JP Block Party. The
theme of this year’s Pride Parade and Festival is "45th Anniversary -
#WickedProud."
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner
In say 1912, 1913,
hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war
clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed
their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing
business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists,
Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the
Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those who saw the
disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint,
sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that
building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems;
writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish
theory of progress,humankind had moved
beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty
would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling
cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes
and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing
words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to
denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin,
neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose
muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress
and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets,
ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing
on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before
touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or lying their
own heads down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those
few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting
their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war
drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish,
Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in
quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the
course.
And then the war
drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out
their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets,
beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed
leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and
dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e.
cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors
sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones,
and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as
the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly
mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of
them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all
sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always
suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school,
old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the
war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England
right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow
loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front,
and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies
and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea.
Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.
And do not forget
when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and
buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary
human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not,
musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for,
well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….
First published in English to wide acclaim in 1928, The Case of Sergeant Grischa is the story of a soldier of the Russian Army and prisoner of war of the Germans who escapes and tries to find his way home across the war-ravaged wastes of Central Europe. To evade arrest, he wears the uniform of a dead German soldier he finds in the snow. But the dead German was a deserter,First published in English to wide acclaim in 1928, The Case of Sergeant Grischa is the story of a soldier of the Russian Army and prisoner of war of the Germans who escapes and tries to find his way home across the war-ravaged wastes of Central Europe. To evade arrest, he wears the uniform of a dead German soldier he finds in the snow. But the dead German was a deserter, and when Grischa is recaptured he is sentenced to be shot. He struggles to establish his true identity, but will it save him?...more
Veterans for Peace cancels annual Saint Patrick's Peace Parade after judge's initial ruling allows City to deny noon start time on March 15
ACLU lawsuit on behalf of VFP will continue to challenge City's 11-month delay in acting on permit application, and favoritism for South Boston Allied War Veterans parade, which excludes most LGBT and veterans' peace groups.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, March 9, 2015
CONTACT: Christopher Ott, communications director, 617-482-3170 x322, cott@aclum.org Patrick Scanlon, Veterans for Peace, 978-590-4248, Vets4PeaceChapter9@gmail.com
BOSTON -- The Massachusetts chapter of Veterans for Peace (VFP) today announced the cancellation this year of its annual St. Patrick's Day Peace Parade, which had been scheduled for noon on March 15. The cancellation follows a lengthy delay by the City of Boston—which for nearly a year refused to respond to VFP's permit application. It also follows a federal court ruling in VFP's lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts against the City, issued on the evening of Friday, March 6, which declined to order the City to issue VFP a permit for noon. The ruling leaves in place the City's decision to favor the parade run by the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which traditionally begins at 1pm and has excluded gay organizations, Veterans for Peace, and other peace organizations.
The ruling also allows the City to continue its past practice of relegating the Veterans for Peace Chapter 9, Smedley D. Butler Brigade parade to a late start on a winter afternoon. In reaching that decision, Judge Leo Sorokin concluded that, at this stage of the litigation, VFP could not show a First Amendment violation "at this time." But Judge Sorokin recognized that between March 2014, when VFP filed its permit application, and February 2015, when VFP filed suit, City officials did not "respond to the VFP regarding its permit application" and did not "respond in any way to the various inquiries made by [VFP's] counsel regarding the permit."
Patrick Scanlon, the coordinator of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of VFP, issued this statement:
"Veterans For Peace sadly and reluctantly has concluded that it will be necessary to cancel this year's Saint Patrick's Peace Parade. Having sought a permit for a noon start time and asked other participants to join us then, we were faced with the daunting task of rescheduling and re-organizing at the last minute when the City notified us we would again have to start in the late afternoon. Even after the federal court refused to overturn the City's decision, we had hoped we would be able to go forward, but too many of those who had expected to march in the Peace Parade could not join us later in the day, making it impossible to bring together a strong and effective counter-statement to the parade organized by the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council (AWVC).
"As veterans of the U.S. Military, many decorated in war, we are very disappointed and appalled by the treatment we have received this year by the City of Boston.We have a simple message of peace, equality and social justice, in contrast to the other parade that has a militaristic and exclusionary message. Yet our message is once again prohibited on the streets of South Boston during the Saint Patrick's Day celebrations. Putting us one mile behind the other parade again would have resulted in our military veterans walking in the late afternoon when most spectators have left the area.
"We as veterans are tired of the deplorable treatment we have experienced over the past five years. We are proud soldiers, sailors and airmen and we will not be denigrated, marginalized and treated with total disrespect. We, who have served this country, have seen first-hand the horrors of war and now work for peace and the peaceful resolution of conflict, are ostracized by the City of Boston and the AWVC excluding these messages on the streets of Boston. The City of Boston and the AWVC should be ashamed of themselves. We are not going away. To paraphrase General Douglas McArthur's pronouncement in 1941, 'Keep the flag flying, we will be back.'"
Sarah Wunsch, deputy legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, expressed disappointment with the City's treatment of the St. Patrick's Peace Parade and noted that the lawsuit against the City will continue. "The Veterans for Peace organization has First Amendment rights to be heard and seen by those who gather in South Boston to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and we hope those rights will be vindicated as the case goes forward."
VFP Smedley D. Butler Brigade is a chapter of the national VFP. Founded in 1985, Veterans for Peace is a national organization of men and women of all eras and duty stations, including from World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars, as well as other conflicts. Veterans for Peace works to expose the true costs of war and to support veterans and civilian victims. For more information, go to www.smedleyvfp.org
For more information about the lawsuit, go to:
https://www.aclum.org/news_2.12.15
For more information about the ACLU of Massachusetts, go to:
https://aclum.org
Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Then, And Now
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Several years ago, I guess about three years now, in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement with the shutting down of its campsites across the country (and the world) I wrote a short piece centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radical and revolutionaries that I ran into in the various campsites and on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses. Now a few years later it is apparent that they have, mostly, moved back to the traditional political ways of operating or have not quite finished licking their wounds.
Although I initially addressed my remarks to the activists still busy I also had in mind those intellectuals who had a radical streak but who then hovered on the sidelines and were not sure what to make of the whole experiment although some things seemed very positive like the initial camp comradery. In short, those who would come by on Sunday and take a lot of photographs and write a couple of lines but held back. Now in 2014 it is clear as day that the old economic order (capitalism if you were not quite sure what to name it) that we were fitfully protesting against (especially the banks who led the way downhill) has survived another threat to its dominance. The old political order, the way of doing political business now clearly being defended by one Barack Obama with might and main is still intact. The needs of working people although now widely discussed (the increasing gap between the rich, really the very rich, and the poor, endlessly lamented and then forgotten, the student debt death trap, and the lingering sense that most of us will never get very far ahead in this wicked old world especially compared to previous generations) have not been ameliorated. All of this calls for intellectuals with any activist spark to come forth and help analyze and plan how the masses are to survive, how a new social order can be brought forth. Nobody said, or says, that it will be easy but this is the plea. I have reposted the original piece with some editing to bring it up to date.
*******
No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon, a founding member of the American Communist Party and the founder of the Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined. A century later with some tweaking, unfortunately, those same theories and the same need for organization are still on the agenda although, as Trotsky once said, the conditions are overripe for the overthrow of capitalism as it has long ago outlived its progressive character in leading humankind forward.
The conclusion that I originally drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them, and plenty of them, especially those who can write, is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders, guys like Cannon, like Debs from the old Socialist Party, like Ruthenberg from the early Communist Party, to lead the fight for state power.
In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. He led the anti-war movement in Germany by refusing to vote for the Kaiser’s war budgets, found himself in jail as a result, but also had tremendous authority among the left-wing German workers when that mattered. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have, as mentioned previously, held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. Not so Communist Party leaders like William Z. Foster and Earl Browder (to speak nothing of Gus Hall from our generation) or Max Shachtman in his later years after he broke with Cannon and the SWP. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spent a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. I find that position stands in need of some amendment now.
Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to lead the struggle to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, rather than some tweaking, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.
It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.
Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.
As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the “new” working class or a “new” vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an idea that goes back to the days of Marx himself.
And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on, frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray (in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. The late Mandel’s students from the 1960s have long gone on to academia and the professions (and not an inconsiderable few in governmental harness-how the righteous have fallen). Debray’s guerilla foci have long ago buried their dead and gone back to the cities. The “cities” of the world now including to a great extent China had broken the third world countryside. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?
***********
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Karl Marx On The American Civil War
Markin comment:
I am always amazed when I run into some younger leftists, or even older radicals who may have not read much Marx and Engels, and find that they are surprised, very surprised to see that Marx and Engels were avid partisans of the Abraham Lincoln-led Union side in the American Civil War. In the age of advanced imperialism, of which the United States is currently the prime example, and villain, we are almost always negative about capitalism’s role in world politics. And are always harping on the need to overthrow the system in order to bring forth a new socialist reconstruction of society. Thus one could be excused for forgetting that at earlier points in history capitalism played a progressive role. A role that Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Marxists, if not applauded, then at least understood represented human progress. Of course, one does not expect everyone to be a historical materialist and therefore know that in the Marxist scheme of things both the struggle to bring America under a unitary state that would create a national capitalist market by virtue of a Union victory and the historically more important struggle to abolish slavery that turned out to a necessary outcome of that Union struggle were progressive in our eyes. Read on. ********* Articles by Karl Marx in Die Presse 1862
London, May 16 On the arrival of the first rumours of the fall of New Orleans, The Times, The Herald, The Standard, The Morning Post, The Daily Telegraph, and other English “sympathisers” with the Southern “nigger-drivers” proved strategically, tactically, philologically, exegetically, politically, morally and fortificationally that the rumour was one of the “canards” which Reuter, Havas, Wolff and their understrappers so often let fly. The natural means of defence of New Orleans, it was said, had been augmented not only by newly constructed forts, but by submarine infernal machines of every sort and ironclad gunboats. Then there was the Spartan character of the citizens of New Orleans and their deadly hatred of Lincoln’s mercenaries. Finally, was it not at New Orleans that England suffered the defeat that brought her second war against the United States (1812 to 1814) to an ignominious end? Consequently, there was no reason to doubt that New Orleans would immortalise itself as a second Saragossa or a Moscow of the “South”. Besides, it harboured 15,000 bales of cotton, with which it could so easily have kindled an inextinguishable fire to destroy itself, quite apart from the fact that in 1814 the duly damped cotton bales proved more indestructible by cannon fire than the earthworks of Sevastopol. It was therefore as clear as daylight that the fall of New Orleans was a case of the familiar Yankee bragging.
When the first rumours were confirmed two days later by steamers arriving from New York, the bulk of the English Ispro-slavery press persisted in its scepticism. The Evening Standard, especially, was so positive in its unbelief that in the same number it published a first leader which proved the Crescent City’s impregnability in black and white, whilst its latest news” announced the impregnable city’s fall in large type. The Times, however, which has always held discretion for the better part of valour, veered round. It still doubted, but, at the same time, it made ready for every eventuality, since New Orleans was a city of “rowdies” and not of heroes. On this occasion, The Times was right. New Orleans is a settlement of the dregs of the French bohème, in the true sense of the word, a French convict colony -and never, with the changes of time, has it belied its origin. Only, The Times came Post festum to this pretty widespread realisation.
Finally, however, the fait accompli struck even the blindest Thomas. What was to be done? The English pro-slavery press now proves that the fall of New Orleans means a gain for the Confederates and a defeat for the Federals.
The fall of New Orleans allowed General Lovell to reinforce Beauregard’s army with his troops; Beauregard was all the more in need of reinforcements, since 160,000 men (surely an exaggeration!) were said to have been concentrated on his front by Halleck and, on the other hand, General Mitchel had cut Beauregard’s communications with the East by breaking the railway connection between Memphis and Chattanooga, that is, with Richmond, Charleston and Savannah. After his communications had been cut (which we indicated as a necessary strategical move long before the battle of Corinth), Beauregard had no longer any railway connections from Corinth, save those with Mobile and New Orleans. After New Orleans had fallen and he was only left with the single railway to Mobile to rely on, he naturally could no longer procure the necessary provisions for his troops. He therefore fell back on Tupelo and, in the estimation of the English p ro-slavery press, his provisioning capacity has, of course, been increased by the entry of Lovell’s troops!
On the other hand, the same oracles remark, the yellow fever will take a heavy toll of the Federals in New Orleans and, finally, if the city itself is no Moscow, is not its mayor a a Brutus? Only read (cf. New York”) his melodramatically valorous epistle to Commodore Farragut, “Brave words, Sir, brave words!” But hard words break no bones.
The press organs of the Southern slaveholders, however, do not construe the fall of New Orleans so optimistically as their English comforters. This will be seen from the following extracts:
The Richmond Dispatch says:
‘What has become of the ironclad gunboats, the Mississippi and the Louisiana, from which we expected the salvation of the Crescent City? In respect of their effect on the foe, these ships might just as well have been ships of glass. It is useless do deny that the fall of New Orleans is a heavy blow. The Confederate government is thereby cut off from West Louisiana, Texas, Missouri and Arkansas.”
The Norfolk Day Book observes:
“This is the most serious reverse since the beginning of the war. It augurs privations and want for all classes of society and, what is worse, it threatens our army supplies.”
The Atlantic Intelligencer laments:
“We expected that the outcome would be different. The approach of the enemy was no surprise attack; it has long been foreseen, and we had been promised that, should he even pass by Fort Jackson, fearful artillery, contrivances would force him to withdraw or ensure his annihilation. In all this, we have deceived ourselves, as on every occasion when the defences were supposed to guarantee the safety of a place or town. It appears that modern inventions have destroyed the defensive capacity of fortification. Ironclad gunboats destroy them or sail past then) unceremoniously. Memphis, we fear, will share the fate of New Orleans. Would it not be folly to deceive ourselves with hope?”
Finally, the Petersburg Express:
“The capture of New Orleans by the Federals is the most extraordinary and fateful event of the whole war.”
From The Archives Of Women And Revolution
Markin comment:
The following is a set of archival issues of Women and Revolution that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting articles from the back issues ofWomen and Revolution during Women's History Month in March and periodically throughout the year.
In
Honor Of Women's History Month- Lucy On The Edge Of The World
From
The Pen Of Frank Jackman
People, ordinarynight owls, hung-over refugees from
the now closed bars and cabarets, average vagabond wanderers of the Harvard
Square night, the shiftless, the toothless homeless, coming into the all-night
Hayes-Bickford seeking, like him, relieve from their collective woes with a cup
of weak-kneed coffee and steamed, steamed everything, did not bother Lucy (the
first name Lucy was all anybody ever found out about as far as he knew) sitting
alone at her “reserved” table in the back of the cafeteria toward the rest
rooms. Lucy Lilac (nicknamed by some ancient want-to-be fellow bard perhaps but
like her surname the genesis undisclosed to him by the other regular tenants of
the night when he asked around) spent her youthful (she was perhaps twenty-two,
maybe twenty-three, had just finished college, he had heard, so that age seemed
about right) middle of the nights just then hunched over a yellow legal notepad
filling up its pages with her writings and occasionally she would speak some
tidbit she had written out loud, not harmful out loud like some of the drunks
at a few of the tables, or some homeless wailing banshee cry, but just out
loud.
Some of it was beautiful, and some of it was, well,
doggerel, about parfor the course with
poets and other writers, But all of it, whatever he heard of it, was centered
on her plight in the world as a woman torn, as a woman on the edge, the edge
between two societies, between as one professor that he had asked about it
later stated it, two cultural gradients if that term has any meaning, and maybe
she had been but let him try to reconstruct what it was all about, all about
for Lucy Lilac night owl. See he became so fascinated by where she was going
with her muse in 1962 summer nights, about how she was going to resolve that
battle between “cultural gradients” and about the gist of what she had to say
to a callow world in those days that he turned up many a two in morning to try
to figure her dream out. He had more than a passing interest in this battle
since he was also spooked by those same demons that she spoke of.
[Oh, by the way, Lucy Lilac, was drop-dead beautiful, with
long black iron-pressed straight hair as was the style then, alabaster white
skin whether from her daylight hours ofsleep or by genetic design was not clear, big red lips, which he did not
remember whether was the style then or not, the bluest eyes of blue, always
wearing dangling earrings and usually wearing some long dress so it was never
really possible to determine her figure or her legs important pieces of
knowledge to him, and not just to him, in those sex-obsesseddays, but he would have said slender and
probably nice legs too. Since neither her beauty, nor the idea of sex, at least
pick-up sex, enter into this sketch that is all that needs to be pointed out.
Except this, her beauty, along with that no-nonsense demeanor, was so apparent
that it held him, and others too, off from anything other than an occasional distant
forlorn smile. ]
What Lucy Lilac would speak of, like a lot of the young in those
days, was her alienation from parents, society, just everything to keep it
simple, but not just that. On that she had kindred spirits in abundance.She was also alienated from her race, her
white race, her nine to five, go by the rules, we are in charge, trample on the
rest of the world, especially the known black world, like lot of the young, him included, were in those days as
well. Part of it was that you could not
turn open a newspaper or turn on a radio or television without having the ugly
stuff going down South in America (and sometimes stuff in the North too
confronting you headlong). But part of it was an affinity with black culture
(the gradient, okay), mainly through music and a certain style, a certain
swagger in the face of a world filled with hostility. Cool, to use just one
word.
Now this race thing, this white race thing of Lucy’s had
nothing to do, he did not think, at least when she spoke never came through, with
some kind of guilt by association with the rednecks and crackers down in places
like Alabama and Mississippi goddams. It was more that given the deal going
down in the world, the injustices, the not having had any say in what was going
on, or being asked either made her feel like she was some Negro in some shack
some place. Some mad priestess fellaheena scratching the good earth to make her
mark. And as she expanded her ideas (and began to get a little be-bop flow as
she spoke, a flow that he secretly kept time to), each night he got a better sense
of what she was trying to say. (He later learned that she was, as he had been,
very influenced by Norman Mailer’s essay in The Partisan Review The White Negro, a screed on what he
called the white hipster, those who had parted company with their own culture
and moved to the sexier, sassy cultural gradient.) And while they both were
comfortably ensconced in the cozy CambridgeHayes (well maybe not cozy but safe anyway) and had some very white skin
to not have to James Crow worry about he began to see what she meant.
And Lucy Lilac really hit home when she spoke of how she
had, to his surprise since she gave every indication of being some cast-off
Mayfair swell’s progeny, minus that important race thing, been brought up under
some tough circumstances down in New Jersey. She spoke about being from poor,
very poor white folks somewhere around Toms River, her father out of work a lot
worrying about the next paycheck and keeping him and his under some roof, her mother
harried by taking care of five kids on two kids money, about being ostracized
by the other better off kids, about seeking solace in listening to Bessie
Smith, Billie, and a ton of other blues names that he recognized. And he too
recognized fellahin kindred since his own North Adamsville existence seemed so
similar ….
Yes, those nights he knit a secret and unknown bond with
Lucy Lilac, Lucy who a few months later vanished from the Hayes-Bickford night,
Lucy from the edge of the world, and wherever she wound he knew just what she
meant by the white Negro hipster-dom she was seeking, and that maybe he was too…
And hence this Women’s History Month contribution.
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues ... Some Remembrances-Writers’ Corner
In say 1912, 1913,
hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war
clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed
their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing
business in the world. Yes the artists of every school the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists,
Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the
Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), those who saw the
disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint,
sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that
building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems;
writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish
theory of progress,humankind had moved
beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty
would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling
cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes
and hidden gazebo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing
words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to
denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin,
neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose
muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress
and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets,
ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing
on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before
touching the hair of another man, putting another man to ground or lying their
own heads down for some imperial mission. They all professed loudly (and those
few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting
their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war
drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish,
Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in
quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the
course.
And then the war
drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out
their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets,
beautiful poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed
leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and
dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e.
cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors
sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones,
and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as
the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly
mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of
them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all
sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always
suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school,
old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the
war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England
right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow
loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front,
and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies
and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea.
Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.
And do not forget
when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and
buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary
human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not,
musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for,
well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….
This book was originally published in 1933. It is the first novel by William March, pen name for William Edward Campbell. Stemming directly from the author's experiences with the U.S. Marines in France during World War I, the book consists of 113 sketches, or chapters, tracing the fictional Company K's war exploits and providing anWith an Introduction by Philip D. Beidler This book was originally published in 1933. It is the first novel by William March, pen name for William Edward Campbell. Stemming directly from the author's experiences with the U.S. Marines in France during World War I, the book consists of 113 sketches, or chapters, tracing the fictional Company K's war exploits and providing an emotional history of the men of the company that extends beyond the boundaries of the war itself. William Edward Campbell served courageously in France as evidenced by his chestful of medals and certificates, including the Croix de Guerre, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Navy Cross. However, without the medals and citations we would know of his bravery. For it is clear in the pages of Company K that this book was written by a man who had been to war, who had clearly seen his share of the worst of it, who had somehow survived, and who had committed himself afterward to the new bravery of sense-making embodied in the creation of major literary art. It is of that bravery that we still have the record of magnificent achievement, the brave terrible gift of Company K....more